“The hedge maze?”
“Took me and my three-man crew a week to get rid of it all.” He scratches the top of his head. “It’s great wanting to give something life. Just maybe don’t let it outside?”
With a subdued smile, he leaves me to get ready for school.
I stare—transfixed.
The hedge maze…
A loud buzz interrupts my reverie.
My phone lights up with a two-word message from Twig.
Check podcast.
Curious, I open our hosting app and do a giant double take.
Our follower count has quadrupled overnight.
Ourdownloads, too.
Almost all of them attributed to our most popular topic.
The Vandenberg Family Cold Case.
News of Emma Rollins and Sienna Clark has spread across the internet and the curious are making connections. Foggy Hollow is a town where people disappear.
27
RAFE REDUX
Come Wednesday, Emma and Sienna are still missing, and the Vandenberg family disappearance isn’t the only one fueling speculation. Budding journalists and online sleuths have pointed to another that up until now, has slid under the radar.
18-year-old Juniper Vale and 20-year-old Scout Mercer, the missing hikers. Unaccounted for since mid-October. Their car was abandoned on a trail head, not in Foggy Hollow, but within hiking distance of Foggy Hollow, leading armchair detectives across the internet to wonder—does Randolph County have a serial abductor on its hands?
The entire town is on edge.
A cloud of unease hangs heavy in the air as agrowing contingent of parents question authorities. Two girls have vanished mere days after pulling another from the river. What was widely believed to be a tragic accident last week is being re-examined beneath the glaring light of fear. What are the police missing? Or worse, what are they hiding?
The student body is distracted.
Teachers are, too.
The goal is to get through today—an early-out before the long Thanksgiving weekend. And maybe, just maybe, when we reconvene, Emma and Sienna will be here, too, and this horrible debacle will come to an end. That’s the unspoken hope. The breath everyone is holding.
If only they knew that breath holds no oxygen.
Even if Emma and Sienna return, the debacle will be far from over.
Lainey and Griffin are proof.
Mr. Langley, my U.S. History teacher, is the only teacher pressing forward with the curriculum. While every other class period has been a “make-up day”, he stands at the front of the room lecturing us about the Boston Tea Party.
On my left, Harper sits with her chin in her hand, gazing glossy-eyed out the windows. News trucks are parked along the street, ready to grab soundbites from any student willing to give oneupon our dismissal. Jude sits on my right, his legs extended in front of him, one ankle crossed over the other as he twirls a pencil around his thumb. We haven’t found any new information about the heart stone, not even with Naomi’s impressive researching acumen. Nor have we found the missing page from Mistress Bramble’s codex.
I glance at the clock, my knee bouncing under the desk.
Time is moving torturously slow.
