"Missy!" My mother's voice carried up the stairs to reach our room. "Can you come down here please!"

I'd groaned, setting my worn copy of Frankenstein aside.

"Someone is in trouble." Dallas had said from his spot in the floor, his back leaned against the metal footboard of his bed. He waggled his eyebrows at me and made noises like I was being summoned to the principal's office out of class.

"If Dallas is home, him too!" Our mother added and I grinned at my brother who stopped making the noises, mouth still open in an O shape.

"If I'm in trouble," I'd said, hopping off of the bed. "Then so are, bro."

We'd shoved each other trying to get out of the door first and laughed trying to race down the stairs.

I'd pretended to trip and grabbed my ankle and he'd taken the bait like I knew he would.

His dark eyes went wide with apology and he stopped to lean over me, just enough to where I could push his shoulder back, making him fall onto his butt with a huff.

I took the stairs two at a time, running down and around the corner into the kitchen.

We could hear the tv playing in the background as Dallas caught up to me, his legs always longer than mine.

"Maybe next time." He'd mussed my hair and strode by me into the living room.

We'd both stopped short inside the door.

Our father was sitting in his recliner, elbows propped up on his knees, his fingers steepled below his chin.

His eyes were on the TV.

"John." My mother had said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Our father picked up the remote from the arm of his chair and switched the tv off.

"You guys come sit with us for a second." He'd said, standing and putting a hand around Mom's waist.

Dallas and I shared a glance. I'd looked to him for some sort of understanding. For an answer to why they were being weird.

You could see it in the lines of their faces. Where smiles usually were, instead they were frowning. Uncomfortable.

"Is it Grandma?" Dallas had spoken first.

Of course, she was old and living alone back on the reservation now. That made sense. Something must have happened to her.

"No, no." Mom had heaved a sigh. "Nothing like that. Come sit." She pointed to the loveseat and after sharing another glance, Dallas and I followed their direction.

We'd sat side by side, knees touching.

I was wracking my brain. I knew I hadn't done anything to get into trouble, but there was that party Dallas had snuck out to.

I was trying to be ready to be his alibi, hopping he was doing the same in case this was about me doing something I didn't remember yet.

Mom and our father crossed the room and sat side by side across from us on the coffee table. My father's hand on my mother's knee.

"We need to talk to you guys about Madison." Mom had spoken first.

"They found her." My father said, looking us both in the eye.

I looked around between the three of them, not understanding why their faces held this strange look of pity and...

"Dead?" I'd asked, not wanting to believe where my mind had gone.

My father took a deep breath and let it out slowly, reaching his free hand over to rest on my knee as well while Dallas sat back into the couch, staring at nothing ahead of him.

"But I..." Dallas spoke but he'd let the sentence go for a few beats. "I'd just seen her."

We both had.

She went to our school and took the same classes and ate in the same lunchroom as us. She was alive and normal and...dead.

"Police found her body early this morning." Our mother told us gently. "She was killed."

"How?"

I didn't know why I asked, but for some reason it felt important to know. To know how a girl who existed in the same places as me, one who had smiled at me countless times over the years we had grown up here, how she no longer would be here to smile at.

"They say it was murder." My father had answered when my mother couldn't meet my eyes. "Her body was found in a ditch."

"Murder." Dallas's astonishment at the use of the word matched the one inside of my head.

This was Faulkner. Kids don't just get murdered around here.

"That's not all." Our father had gone on. "They also..." He'd paused to take a deep breath again. "They also found Trina Kelley."

I knew she was missing.

I knew they were both missing.

The reports had come back to back a day apart from each other.

People had speculated that the two of them had run away together. They were the same age, ran in similar circles, so it made sense. They could have known each other and decided to leave.

That was the comforting resolution to the story. That's where it should have ended. The two girls ran off and were living happily someplace else.

That was a story we could stomach.

But this?

Dallas had sat up beside me, his hands gripping his knees. "When you say they found her?"

Our mother's face pinched. I'd never thought she looked old until right in that moment. The way she looked at us both, I saw a life long lived carved into the lines of her face. I saw the heaviness in her heart and in her soul as she looked at her two children. Her two gifts. The two babies she never thought she could have.

"We need to pray for those families." She'd said, trying to hide a sniffle. Trying not to let us see that she was putting herself in the shoes of those parents who had just lost the most precious things they'd ever had.

"They just broke the news, guys." Our father had told us, trying to steer us back to the matter at hand. "They found Trina in an alley in town." He'd swallowed hard. "They do think the two cases are connected. Not random."

"Mom." I'd said her name like a plea and she had opened her arms for me to fall into. She stood and held me in her arms, squeezing me tightly enough that even though I felt like the world around me was falling apart, as long as she kept holding me that tight, I could stay whole.

"I know this is scary." Our father said as Dallas stood and paced the other side of the room. "They are implementing a curfew, and I don't want you going anywhere without your sister."

I watched as Dallas turned and looked at our father. He stood a little taller and nodded his head. "I won't let anything happen to her." He vowed, and my father smiled. I didn't remember any other time I had ever seen him look so proud.

"Everything is going to be ok." Our mother assured us. "They will catch whoever did this, and things will go back to normal, ok? But until they do we need you guys to be extra careful. Straight home after school. You two stick together."

Straight home after school?

I felt tense at the thought. If I had to come straight home after school, then when would I get to see Aries?

We saw each other between classes and during our time in the gymnasium at the same time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But that wasn't enough.

Sure we talked on the phone for hours. Texted all throughout the day. He was the first person I'd wake up thinking of, checking my phone for his messages, and the last one as I laid my head down onto my pillow at night. Always with a smile on my face as I put my phone away.

I looked forward to school every single day because that's where he was.

But after school...

That's when he would wait for me outside of the gym, his bag slung lazily over his shoulder while he leaned against the building.

He'd smile when he'd see me coming. "Just get here when you can." He'd always teased from me taking so long to change out of my practice clothes.

For an hour every day after school I could count on him.

He'd be there, waiting for me.

He'd look at me in a way I'd never been looked at before. Like he didn't see Misery, but he saw me. And he liked it. He liked me. It was always so hard to get my head around.

He was still such a mystery to me.

One I was desperate to understand.

No matter how many layers of Aries I pulled back, there was more and more.

He was more.

After school is where he and I got to be just us for one hour before everything else in our lives would pull us separate ways.

The first few weeks we would say goodbye, over and over until finally someone would turn and walk away.

Until one day he'd gone to turn away and then he circled back, his brows knitted together as he shrugged a shoulder. "Do you wanna like hug?"

I'd burst out laughing.

I never understood how a person who carried himself with such presence and confidence could be the same guy who said things like do you wanna hug?

I saw how he interacted with everyone else. How easily he moved from group to group, talking freely with everyone and never showing a hint of discomfort, but with me...with me I saw the vulnerability. I saw the shyness. I saw the quirks that made him only that much more endearing to me.

I made Aries Carter nervous.

And something about that made me feel powerful. Special.

I'd laughed and said, "yeah I guess." As I stepped into his arms even though in my head I was screaming for how long I'd wanted this and so much more to happen.

He'd been stiff at first as I put my arms around him, letting my face rest against his chest. His heart was beating furiously, but he slowly relaxed. He'd let his arms go around me and he held me to him like that for a long time.

I knew I loved him then, right when he turned and so dorkily asked for a hug. But I didn't tell him. It was too soon to feel what I was feeling.

In his arms I felt like I found someone who got me. Someone who would always have my back. He listened to me on all of my ramblings, all of my crazy ideas, and he made me feel like I could make any of it come true.

I felt inspired by him. Someone who was so themselves and didn't care what anyone else thought. I wanted to be like him. I wanted to not care like he could. And I loved that the only person who he seemed to care about at all...was me.

In my mother's arms I was struck by guilt. Here they are telling me that two girls have just been murdered, and I'm consumed with thinking about how this means I may not get to see Aries as much.

I felt insanely selfish, but I was just a girl.

Just a teenager in love with a boy that could never actually love me back.

I loved a boy with walls. Walls built so tightly around his heart that no amount of force or caring or comfort or pushing could ever break through.

I'd cracked those walls, bits of me had seeped into the places he tried so hard to hide. But every time I'd make a break. Every time I got too close. The next day I'd find he'd spent the night resealing those cracks against me again.

It was the never ending story of loving a boy too afraid to let anyone inside his fortress.

It's so easy, when you're young and carefree, to push away the ugliness in the world and only think about yourself.

It's easy to be selfish when you find out you're on lockdown now for something you had no part in.

It's simple to want to rebel against it if I means you get to steal a few more moments with someone.

It's so stupid how that had felt like the end of the world. Missing those after school hours. The end of my world when out there there was families who had just had to go and see their children's bodies laying on cold hard slabs of metal.

I tired to keep my head straight.

I tired to understand that this wasn't a personal punishment.

I wanted to believe what my parents told me. That soon the evil person who did this would get caught and soon our lives in Faulkner would go back to normal.

How I craved to be normal.

I craved it with every hour that passed that night as I fell asleep texting Aries.

I craved it the next morning as I got up and got ready for school. Ready to get on the bus.

But we weren't allowed to ride the bus anymore.

Hardly anyone was.

Parents all over Faulkner stoped letting their children go anywhere alone.

We all got dropped off at the front of the school, the line three times as long as it usually was.

They watched us all, staying parked in their spots until they saw us walk safely through the front doors of the school.

They'd be right to do so, after all.

This wasn't random.

They were hunting a killer.

One who at this very moment could be stalking his new prey.

Three days went by.

The funerals came and went.

The curfew remained in place.

Just when you start to feel comfortable, it all begins again.

"Did you hear?" Aries asked me when I walked inside of the school.

"Hear what?"

"Missy..." he looked at me like a hurt animal on the side of the road. "Miss..."

"What?" I grabbed his forearm and squeezed. I needed to feel his skin under my hands. I needed something to brace for whatever he was about to tell me.

"It's Rebecca." He'd said, and the world seemed to go on a tilt. "She's missing."