"How in the world will we even get over there? The hall's all boarded up! If you plan on kicking them down I'm leaving," Shelby huffed, backing away from the friend she hardly recognized.

"This isn't right," Carmen muttered.

"Of course I'm not going to kick it down. Who do you think I am?"

Carmen let out a small sigh of relief. At least her sass was coming back. "At least tell us where you're taking us, please. You're worrying me."

"You're always worried," Amber said. Hearing her own harsh tone, she looked at Carmen softly and added, "But I promise you don't need to. I only want to take us somewhere safe where I can tell you the things I need to without anyone overhearing. Now follow me."

Carmen and Shelby turned to each other, passed a look of silent agreement and trailed behind Amber as she opened a door immediately nearby.

"How..?" Carmen stared bewildered.

Amber beckoned them in and shut the door quietly behind them.

They stepped into a dark empty classroom, half of which clearly hadn't been used in ages. Dust was literally settled on tables. The chairs were propped upside down on the desks, presumably to give the absent janitor an easier time.

"This is the room where the Academic Decathlon team meets sometimes," Amber explains. "They always forget to lock the door after practice, which is quite convenient for us."

Shelby brushed a finger over the edge of a desk, and held it up to her face. She blew on the dust and watched it disappear as a grey cloud.

"Shelby, help me move this closet aside," Amber directed, already placing her weight on one side.

Shelby lifted an eyebrow in confusion but went along and pulled the closet towards her on the opposite end while Amber and Carmen leaned forward.

The trio grunted as they pushed the heavy oak closet to reveal an opening in the wall behind it.

"What in the world..." Carmen tilted her head to the side and eyed the gap. It was a good-sized hole, and revealed how thin the walls really were, at least in this building.

"Wow!" Shelby echoed behind them. "How did that even happen?"

"You're not going to make us crawl in there, are you?" Carmen gripped her necklace sheepishly and backed up.

"We have to. Please, I'm not just doing this for nothing, there's something I need to show you guys," Amber pleaded.

Carmen rubbed her arm apprehensively. It wasn't often that someone with as big an ego as Amber, no offense, begged. If she didn't really need them, she would have gone alone. It had to be something important.

"Fine," Carmen mustered up her courage and dropped her arms to her sides.

Amber smiled back gently. "Thank you."

"Uh.. do you wanna do the honors since you're leading us?" Shelby pointed and laughed nervously.

Amber nodded in response and knelt down. It was a good thing she wore denim pants today, although a darker wash would have been more practical in hiding the dirt that now stuck to her pants as she crawled forward.

Carmen and Shelby watched curiously as Amber stood up at the other side, the hole only providing a view from her knees down.

Amber leaned down so they could see her face and motioned them forward with a whisper.

"I can keep guard, you go," Carmen glanced back towards the door and beckoned Shelby.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, go go go."

Shelby quickly crawled through without hesitation. Carmen took one last glance behind her, just to be safe, and slowly got down on her knees to crawl through. She grimaced as her bare knees touched the dusty floor. Despite the discomfort, she managed to get through the hole quickly too. Once standing, she brushed off a few specks of crumbled wall paint that had stuck to her legs.

Carmen looked around and realized they were now in another classroom. It was just as old and forgotten as the one before it.

"Won't people know we've crawled in here?" Shelby said, rubbing her suddenly cold shoulders.

"All we need to do is move this wooden board here," Amber picked up a short piece of wood with visible ease and leaned it against the wall. "There, now it'll look like the paint just faded. Nobody will bother to check. Come on."

Carmen and Shelby passed each other another silent glance of concern. Amber would have a lot of explaining to do, and soon. Neither were sure how long they could keep up these charades. Nevertheless, they followed her out the empty classroom and into the forbidden hallway.

Dim ceiling lights flickered a warning that they could give out any moment. At least some glints of faint sunlight came in through the windows lining the corridor, though they obviously hadn't been wiped in years.

Carmen grimaced at an infinite trail of ants marching next to the window on the dusty checkerboard floor. Walking along here felt like a reverse dream.. one where the dreamer visits a place no longer saturated in the hues of a sleeping fantasy. The sensations are still as real as a lucid dream, but the place is dull in comparison because it is stripped away to a state of reality with the passage of time.

If there were ants here, Carmen figured there was food. If there was food, there were people. Carmen wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or threatened knowing they hadn't been the only ones to trespass recently.

Amber shut the door quietly after beckoning the girls into a grimy bathroom with graffiti'd mirrors and dilapidated stalls, some of which were missing their own doors.

"Oh gosh, how have they not cleaned here?" Carmen coughed from all the dust. It was so hard to breath, her nose felt stuffy only after a few minutes of having crossed over. She was appalled by the sight of cigarette butts in a mossy sink. It might have been ages since they've been there, or it might have been recent. Either way, it felt dangerous to be in this room.

"I doubt they've cleaned in at least a decade, judging by the marks on these stalls," Shelby observed. Someone had etched "J + R" with the numbers "12 - 21 - 1980" underneath. Some ancient lover must have wanted to keep a record.

"That's actually what I wanted to talk to you guys about. Listen..." Amber lowered her voice. "She's losing her patience. I almost drowned at the pool earlier, and I saw Rain."

Shelby's face twisted in horror. Carmen reached out to hold Amber's arm for comfort, but couldn't stop her own hand from trembling.

"Oh my gosh, are you ok?" Carmen choked out.

Amber shook her head. "I am. I was just..."

Scared, she thought. "I didn't expect to see her there, I thought I was alone."

Amber rubbed her shoulders before taking a deep breath to continue. "I ended up following her footsteps to the girls locker room."

"How do you know it wasn't somebody else?" Carmen asked.

"Because the only other person there was —"

"Well?" Shelby and Carmen urged anxiously.

"The beanie ki- Hayden."

"Hayden?!" Shelby yelped.

"Thank gosh he saved you.. but what was he doing there?" Carmen furrowed her brows.

"That's a good question..." Amber said quietly. It was a question that would have to be resolved later. "Anyway. I followed her footsteps to the girls locker room and you won't believe what I found."

Amber gently pulled a thin piece of paper from her denim jacket pocket and unfolded it. Carmen and Shelby leaned in on either side to get a closer view.

"Whoa, what is that?" Shelby said in a surprised tone.

"It's a love letter," Amber responded, letting the girls read it over. "Rain wanted us to see this, and I have reason to believe she wrote it."

"Who would she have written it to?" Shelby murmured as she took the paper gingerly. She must have been deeply in love to write something like that.

Carmen held her necklace tight and stared at the letter in Shelby's hand. "Secret admirer.. she wrote it for her crush, Darren Banks! I remember dreaming about it. She was showing the letter to her friends before she slipped it into his locker."

"Would she have offed herself just because he didn't like her back?" Amber suggested, starting to pace across the grimy restroom.

"We don't know if he didn't like her," Carmen responded. "Besides, there might have been chemistry. He always smiled at her."

"I don't know if we have time to wait until tonight your next dream Carm. I nearly died today," Amber's voice trembled. "Look.. I brought something with me."

She swung her leather designer tote bag over her chest and dug through a small zipper before pulling out a small white bottle. "Here. This is diphenhydramine."

"Diphephenwhat?" Shelby eyed her friend suspiciously.

"Sleeping pills. My mom usually takes them after she comes back from the marine lab. I'm sure she won't notice a few gone," Amber shook the bottle and turned around. "Carmen, how does a short little nap sound right about now?"

"Right now?" Carmen echoed in bewilderment. "Those things don't work instantly, you know! I'll be trudging to fifth period after the bell rings and likely fall asleep in the middle of class. How is that useful?"

Amber sighed. "Your fifth period is basically study hall, it's fine."

"Well I don't—"

"Guys! Quit arguing and get over here, I just found something," Shelby's chirpy voice echoed from inside the stall closest to the edge of the room. The girls quickly huddled into the messy graffiti-ridden space.

"Look here. Does this handwriting look familiar to you guys?"

Above Shelby's finger were some words etched onto the bathroom wall in dark blue ink. The letters were somewhat small, neat, and round.

"I want to die. They all hate me," Amber read carefully.

"I don't get it. All this evidence points to a suicide." Carmen furrowed her brows and held her cross.

"Unless the letter was forged?" Shelby suggested.

"It couldn't have been, I saw Rain holding it in my dream. It was hers."

"See, this is why you need to take these pills," Amber insisted, pulling out the bottle from her jean jacket's pocket. "Rain wouldn't be asking us for help if she wasn't wronged. The more time we waste is the more angry she gets, and the more in danger we all are."

Amber began pacing, not letting her eyes off Carmen. "You almost fell out of a window, but you got lucky so your hand got sliced on glass. You heard what happened to me. I almost drowned, and I would have if Hayden hadn't seen me. And now? Shelby could be next."

Carmen finally looked up from the ground. There was a startled expression on her face, and Amber knew she was finally getting through to her.

"You need to go to sleep. For Rain. For our safety. For justice."