The next day Elias Shaw was abuzz with talk about Sydney's disappearance. Many students had seen or heard about the news report and some were just finding out about it for the first time. Our teachers did their best to keep us focused on our work, but that was a losing battle. In our minds it was summer already. At lunch, it had gotten bad enough that the principal addressed the entire student body over the announcement system.

"Good morning, students. I know most of you have already heard about Sydney, one of our eighth grade students. I am told the authorities are working around the clock to find out what happened. In the meantime, it's important that you focus on your work and not on rumors. We have no idea what happened at this point and it's very probable that there is an explanation for everything. Sydney is probably just fine and will turn up very soon. This is not the way we hoped we'd end the year at Elias Shaw, but there is one more day yet to go. Let's end on a high note and dive into summer!"

"THAT guy is a tool," Macy sneered. "Seriously, when my dad took my Great Uncle's place on the school board, he tried to get the guy fired. Total pansy, he said."

"Well, he's sort of right, I guess." I said, not really sure if I believed myself. "Sydney could be - " My voice trailed off when I couldn't come up with anything that made any sense. If she'd decided to ditch school to go do something fun, it most likely would have been with us.

"No, that's totally weird, " Cody said.

"Why?" I asked.

"Just because. This isn't the first time someone has gone missing, but everyone at school is acting like everything is fine. My dad thinks she was taken to the mountains." Cody said. "Ever since that hiker went missing on the trails north of town, Dad thinks he knows where they are being taken. I think he even drew a map."

"That's ridiculous." Katie again, always the source of reason. "My Dad says that she ran off with someone. A boyfriend maybe. He said he heard that someone saw her getting into a car with some dude and driving off."

A boyfriend? I was the closest thing to a boyfriend she had, even if it wasn't official or anything. "Did he report that to the cops?" It was all I could manage.

"I'm sure he did," Katie answered. She shrugged her shoulders.

"Yeah, I don't know," Adam said. "She's probably fine, like Principal Strickland said. I was talking to Luke earlier, and he said something about someone seeing a white van. Anyone heard that?

Everyone shook their heads, but my mind went immediately to something that happened at the end of my fifth grade year. Seth and I were playing just off the road in my neighborhood when a van stopped in the middle of the street, the windows tinted so that you couldn't see anything inside. We stood up and looked over at the road. I was waiting for someone to roll the window down and say hello, but they never did. After a minute, the van took off and I never saw it again. I didn't say anything though. I didn't know if it was even connected and I didn't want to worry anyone.

After lunch, we were still talking about it in front of our lockers when one of the seniors walked up to us.

"Y'all talking about that girl who disappeared?" It was Zach and he was on the football team. I had no idea why he would want to talk to us or even look in our direction.

"Yes! Do you know her?" Macy said, eyes wide. She ran ran her hand along her thigh, but I don't think she noticed .

"No, but I'll let y'all in on a little secret. Do you know where the public library is?"

"I do," Cody said. "It's downtown next to the historical society building."

"That's it," he said with a smile. "Go to the second floor and check out the book Cherokee Nation. Cherokee Nation, not the other one. At the back of the book you might find something interesting." His friend laughed as Zach walked back towards him.

"Oh my God, that was Zach Craig," one of the other girls gushed, pulling on Cody's arm. "What did he want?"

"Well, he wasn't talking to you," Macy laughed.

"He's probably just trying to prank us," Adam said.

Macy nodded her head and then smiled. "He can prank me anytime."

I tried to get Zach's attention, but he had already walked off. I wasn't going to walk up to a senior and bother him - that was for sure. The bell rang and it was time for class again.

For the moment, I forgot about Zach's mysterious book.

By the next day at school, things had calmed down a bit, but there was still no sign of Sydney or any information on what happened to her. A report had been made to the Sheriff's department about a white van, but they had already determined it to be bad information and none of the other leads had panned out yet. I didn't really believe she ran off with someone – she was still 13 for Christ's sake – but I also didn't really believe she'd been kidnapped by Indians or trappers from the mountain.

Some deputies showed up during lunch that day and we ended up getting the rest of the day off. Summer was finally here. We dove into those summer days with the same fervor we had on summers prior. Sydney being gone was awful, but we were young and our attention spans were erratic at best. Plus, what could we do but go about our lives and hope that those older and more responsible than us would figure everything out. I'd be lying though if said everything was fine.

***

One day, about a week into summer, Cody, Adam, and I had ridden our bikes downtown to get an ice cream cone when we passed by the public library. Cody spoke up immediately.

"Guys! Stop," He said, hitting his hand brake and coming to stop at the front steps.

I circled around him, unsure about what he was doing. Adam stopped as well.

"You going to start on your summer reading? This early?" I joked.

He made a face at me. "Your mom is starting on her summer reading." We laughed even though it didn't make any sense. That's what made it funny. Cody hopped off his bike and leaned it against the small brick wall that encircled the building. "Remember what Zach said about that book?" He grinned and looked back at us.

I'd totally forgotten about it. "I do. But he was probably just playing a joke, right?" I said.

"What happened to the ice cream?" Adam asked.

"We'll get ice cream after. I'm going in to find this book. I think it has something to do with Sydney disappearing. Are y'all coming or not?" Cody started walking up the steps. Reluctantly, Adam and I followed.

As we opened the door, the smell of old books and stale air conditioning washed over us. If you've ever been in a library, you know the smell. It's not a bad smell; on the contrary, there is something endearing about it – nostalgic even. At the time though, I just thought it smelled weird.

The three of us walked up to the front desk, where an older woman sat behind a counter scanning books into a computer.

"Ma'am," I said, changing the tone of my voice to grown-up speak, "can you help us find a book?"

She set the scanner down and placed her hands on the desk in front of her, folding one over the other. She was old - older than my parents - with a reddish jacket buttoned up to her neck and her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun.. "I sure can, dear. What are you looking for?"

"It's." I started, then couldn't remember the name of the book.

"It's a book about Cherokee Indians. For a project for school." Cody offered, stepping up the counter.

"A project, yes," I said. "We love to learn." I tried to sound eager.

"I see," the woman sighed. "Would it happen to be Cherokee Nation?" she asked, raising her eyebrows slightly.

"Yes, that's it." I said.

"It's on the second floor. Third row from the wall on the left. Bottom shelf." She pointed towards the stairs.

"Thanks!" we said in unison, turning and walking quickly towards the stairs.

"Do you think she knows where every single book in here is?" Adam joked.

"She's old enough," Cody added. But I knew what Adam meant. Knowing the book's exact location was a bit strange.

Once upstairs, we made our way to the third row from the left wall. By that point, I sort of felt like we were treasure hunters on the hunt for a long-forgotten horde of gold.

Cherokee Nation was exactly where the woman said it would be. It was a hardback book of medium length, bearing a tattered dust jacket with a picture of an Indian Chief with a crazy headdress atop a horse. I grabbed it and sat down with my back against the shelf. Cody and Adam sat on either side of me. I flipped to the back page, which was dingy, white, and most importantly, empty.

"What the heck?" I scoffed. "I knew this was a waste of time."

"Let me see that." Cody tried to snatch the book out of my hands. He ended up just getting the dust jacket, pulling it off the book and knocking it to the floor.

"Dude, way to go." I said, picking up the book. That's when I noticed the title on the cover: Cherokee History and Tradition.

"Wait a minute...." I was putting the pieces together. "This isn't the right book. Someone switched the jackets." I twisted around and started riffling through the other books, eventually finding the one with the dust jacket for Cherokee History and Tradition. I put the other book back with its proper jacket, then turned to the back of the actual Cherokee Nation, the anticipation within me about to burst like water through a dam.

"Holy crap," Adam gasped.

Zach was telling the truth. On the final page was a list of names. They didn't appear to be written by the same person; although many were, some appeared in a different handwriting. "Victims" was written at the top of the page in the same handwriting as many of the names.

I placed my finger on the page and scanned through the names to see if I recognized any. Sure enough, Candice Kelley was there. So was Gerald Cline and Seth Baker. I was too creeped out to speak.

"What is this?" Adam whispered. "Ms. Kelley's name is on there."

"It's a list, man!" Cody shouted before we shushed him. He lowered his voice. "It's a list. A list of all of the people who've been taken."

"Who made this?" I asked. We were all whispering now.

"No clue." Cody answered.

He was right. There were names going back even farther than Seth and that was the first person I'd known that had gone missing. Whatever was happening had been going on for a while. I wondered if the person or people who wrote the list knew what had happened to these people.

Then, I noticed something.

"Sydney's name isn't here." I check the list again. It wasn't there.

We sat in silence for a couple moments before Adam spoke. "We have to write it." Cody and I looked over at him. I nodded towards the desk at the top of the stairs. Adam jumped up and disappeared between the rows of books. A minute later he appeared with a pencil in his hand.

I took the pen from him and scribbled a name at the bottom of the list. Sydney Taylor.

I placed the book back in its spot - now with the correct jacket - to be found by the next curious student. When we passed the front desk on our way out, the woman stopped us.

"Boys," she said in a sing-song whisper. It sounded like Bo-ees.

We stopped and turned, hoping we weren't in trouble. The woman's red lips were pursed, the corners of her mouth curling up at the edges.

"Knowledge is a curious thing, isn't it?" she started, her hands crossed on the desk in front of her again. "Knowledge can transform a man from a pauper to a King, but the man who knows too much risks more than his crown. See that you understand the difference." She turned and began her work again, not even watching as we scurried out the double front doors with our hearts in our throats.

***

A couple days later there was a birthday party for one of our classmates at a local pool. Macy and Katie walked up to Adam, William, Cody, and I as we discussed the names in the book.

"You should have seen it William," Cody said, gesturing with his hands. "It had ALL the names of the missing people. We added Sydney's."

"No way." William said. "Y'all are lying."

"He's telling the truth," I admitted. "It totally creeped me out."

"Who in the world would keep a list like that?" Katie asked. "How do they know?"

"Does it matter?" Cody looked exasperated. "This proves that there's something going on. It's all connected."

"What do we do about it?" Adam asked.

"We go find her." Cody was pacing now. "I told y'all my dad has a map. He thinks he knows where they're being taken. Carson, you have camping equipment and you've been in those woods lots of times. We can do this."

Adam spoke up."But that's just a guess! She could be anywhere up there. Or, nowhere near the mountains."

"At least we can say we tried!" Cody pleaded.

It took some convincing, but two days and several phone calls later, we had a plan. We went over to Cody's house to look at his Dad's map while he was at work. Apparently his Dad and some of his friends were obsessed with figuring out the mystery of the disappearances. Each time someone went missing over the last several years, he'd marked the spot on a map. One of those people was a hiker who went missing on a trail several miles into the woods north of town.

There was a note on the map written in pencil:

Smoke reported / private road / Cherokee land?

And, a little bit below that:

Sheriff – cover up

I wasn't an expert at reading maps, but my Dad had taught me the basics. There did appear to be a small road, several miles long, very near where the hiker went missing. However, I couldn't tell whether it would have been Cherokee land or Federal land. Either way, that's the spot we were aiming for.

On Friday, Adam, Cody, and I would use my camping equipment to make camp in the National Park. The next morning we'd hike the several miles it would take to make it to the area on the map where the hiker went missing. We'd each tell our parents we were spending the night at the other's house. It had worked before. My Dad was at a conference for work and wouldn't be around to notice the camping stuff missing.

Looking back I realize it was such a ridiculous plan. I'm not sure what we thought we were going to accomplish on the slim chance that we found anything at all. Plus, it was extremely dangerous. I was very familiar with the woods, but it would be the first time I'd been in the woods alone (without an adult), not to mention overnight, and we would definitely be traveling in areas I'd never stepped foot in.

Overall, there were a million reasons why we shouldn't have done it; I guess we were just concentrating on the one reason that made it seem like we should.

On the Friday of the big day, I got a phone call from Katie.

"I heard about what y'all are doing. I'm going with y'all." She didn't appear to be asking.

"Uh, why? You called us stupid and said we're...."

"I know, I know," she said, interrupting me. "My parents have beat it into my head that none of that is true, but after you told me about the book..." Her voice trailed off. "She's my friend too." She finally said.

I thought about it for a second. "Fine, you can come, but don't tell Macy. She'll probably want a blow up mattress and pasta for dinner. We're going into the woods. It's dark and scary up there at night, you know that right?"

"I don't care. I'm in." Katie said.

"Okay. Meet us behind the Smoky Mountain Campground store. 6:00 p.m."

***

For a rag tag group of soon-to-be ninth graders, we didn't look half bad. Everyone was dressed appropriately and brought backpacks to carry the necessities. Katie and Adam gathered all of the food we needed while Cody and I had the camping equipment. Everyone brought their own sleeping bags. After discussing the plan again, we hopped on our bikes and headed towards the mountains.

The road that led into the forest was one lane in each direction. As small town roads go, it was narrow and not well kept, so riding wasn't particularly easy. There were a few small county roads that branched off during the first mile, but after that the only traffic coming to and fro would be from the National Park, which was closed at night. Luckily, no cars passed us as we made the slow journey up into the foothills.

After about an hour of riding, we had finally completed the first leg of our journey. We had made it to where the main road hit the major trailhead into the Smoky Mountain National Park. There was a circular drive and a guard station, but it was empty.

We were surprised that the main trial into the forest was much larger than we anticipated. It was mostly level and certainly large enough for a car to pass through, although a sign standing on the road said:

NO VEHICLES PAST THIS POINT

"We should leave the bikes here," Katie suggested. "Once we get onto the trail, we'll lose the moonlight. Riding in the dark on uneven ground is probably a bad idea."

After some discussion, we all agreed she was right. We found a small gulley to dump our bikes in about 30 yards into the brush. Hopefully, no one would see them there.

"Guys, this place is creepy," Adam whispered. "Are we sure we want to do this? We could always go back."

He wasn't wrong. Everything is scarier at night, especially when you're a kid. Walking on foot into a forest this large – at night, with only a flashlight to light your way - added another helping of terror on top of the anxiousness we were already feeling from lying to our parents. If I'd agreed with him, it would have been relatively easy to convince the others to leave, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I imagined Sydney somewhere in these woods, alone and scared. Heck, maybe even tied to the pole of a teepee or hut or whatever Indians lived in, like you saw in the movies. That made me think of something.

"Cody, are you sure this is the right way? This is the National Park; the reservation is miles to the East of here. At least that's what the map says."

"Yes, I'm sure," He confirmed, shining his flashlight on the map. "This is where we go in."

We didn't speak much as we walked. The canopy of trees at the beginning of the trail allowed some moonlight to shine through and we were able to carefully pick our way along the trail at a decent pace. After a while, the forest's arms closed around us, stifling any hint of moonlight. It was just the blackness and us. Several times, we thought we heard odd noises in the dark brush around us. Cody and I turned our flashlights on, hoping the light wouldn't draw any unwanted visitors. We had no idea whether there were people who patrolled the area at night, but we didn't see any, or anything else that looked out of place.

When we were too tired to walk any further, we picked a relatively clear place to camp and unloaded our packs. I'd been camping in the park before and knew there were areas set aside for just that, but we couldn't risk being seen by anyone.

We built a small fire and cooked some hotdogs for dinner. Afterwards, we sat cross-legged around the fire and talked, mostly about Sydney. We all missed her very much. Cody told a Cherokee legend about the "moon-eyed" people - strange nocturnal folk with pale white skin and wide eyes who reportedly lived in the mountains here and terrorized those who wandered after dark. As you can imagine, It was the last thing we wanted to hear. After that we called it a night, dousing the fire and crawling into our sleeping bags exhausted and anxious, hoping we'd awake safe and sound in the morning.

In the morning, we packed up our gear and cleaned the campsite, trying to make it look like no one had been there. Once back on the trail, we continued northeast.

At one point, I thought we were completely lost. Looking at the map, we should have been nearing the Cherokee reservation, but we were definitely still in the park.

When we reached the gate, though, I knew we had made it. It was old and rusty and protecting another trail that wound deeper into the forest. Most importantly, it was wide enough for a vehicle.

"This is it!" Cody exclaimed, pointing towards the map.

I took a look and he appeared to be right. "The hiker that disappeared was last seen about a mile north of here," I explained.

"Do we go in?" Katie asked.

"Of course we do," Cody answered quickly. "Don't chicken out now."

"And what do you think we're gonna do when we find something?" She had her hands on her hips, her lips a thin line.

"I don't know, but we can't go back now."

"Let's go, guys." I hiked m leg up and swung my other over the gate, hopping down on the other side. "Follow me."

The road wound deep into the brush, twisting this way and that. About a mile in, the uneven dirt turned into loose gravel.

"Gravel," Adam said, bending down. "Someone is driving vehicles through here."

We kept moving, more slowly now. Where it was silent before, our shoes crunched on the rocks beneath our feet, giving me the false sense that we were being irreverent somehow.

Finally, I could see the forest starting to thin ahead of us. There was something up there. Only a few more steps and we'd find out if our trip had been a total waste of time.

"Whoa." Cody said, exhaling slowly.

The trail led us to a large clearing. In the center was a complex of some sort. There was a large building, several outbuildings, and a parking lot, all surrounded by security fence. We could see a helicopter at the back of the parking lot. We stopped at the tree line where we couldn't be seen, but I could still make out the large text on the outside of the fence.

NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL PAST THIS POINT

This definitely wasn't Cherokee land.

"What is this?" I whispered.

Adam was behind me, but came around my side and crouched down, gesturing towards the parking lot.

"Look!" he said, pointing.

I followed his finger to the side of the parking lot near what looked to be a bay entrance and saw a large, non-descript white van.

"Oh, the van!" I said a bit too loudly. Katie punched my arm.

"No, Carson, the person!"

I looked back and finally noticed the guy walking towards the van from the bay. I'd seen him many times before. I turned to Katie, whose face had already gone pale.

"Dad?" she whispered.