A bell rang when I pushed open the door to the motel's main office. The fluorescent lights clashed with the dull green of the walls. Somewhere in the room, a lightbulb was flickering in shaky patterns.

The room was considerably small. A counter stood at the center, in front of the farthest wall. There, a door led to somewhere unknown. Around the room, there were a few chairs for people to sit and wait. On the walls, there were old posters of the Simmer Down Fest. Others promoted vacation packages and travel-related things that looked too uninspiring to pay mind to them.

There was no one other than us in the room.

"Does anybody even work here?" Millie asked, before snorting, annoyed.

"I guess they want us to ring for them," Paxton said as he pointed at a silver bell on the counter that had seen better times.

"Are you kidding me? Did we time travel to the past or something?" Millie commented.

Pax snickered and shook his head at Millie.

"Well, I guess we're going to find out," Millie shrugged. She leaned her body on the counter, supporting herself on her right elbow. She tapped the bell a couple of times before we waited for a reaction.

Nothing. Nobody.

She tapped the bell quickly a few more times. We all stared at the door behind the counter, waiting for someone to come through it. Instead, we were greeted by silence.

Releasing an exasperated sigh, Millie began to tap on the bell as fast as she could. She bit her lips with the pressure of the action. We heard a rumbling as we listened to the water running loudly through the pipes, just as the sound of a toilet being flushed came from nearby.

Muffled, from the other side of the bathroom door, we heard, "I heard you the first time! For the love of Christ and all things holy! People don't know patience, Jesus. I can't even take a dump in peace in this place."

The three of us bit our lips to keep our laughter from bursting out. We composed ourselves when the bathroom door opened. Out came a small man, weakly bouncing on his feet, his back slightly slouched. His hair was paler than snow, thinly covering his head. He wore bottle eyeglasses that made his eyes look magnified by the lenses. Once he was behind the counter, his face met ours while he stood there blinking at us.

"Well?! What do you kids need?!" he yelled after a few seconds, his shrill voice making us flinch slightly.

"Excuse me, sir. You don't need to yell. We're right here," Pax rose his finger at the man to politely ask him to lower his voice.

"I'm sorry, what?!" he yelled once again.

"You don't have to yell!" Paxton replied, raising his voice now higher.

"Oh? OH!" the man smiled unabashedly, shaking his head as his hand drifted up to his ear. A small click led our attention to his hearing aids.

"I'm so sorry about that. This old mind of mine forgets to turn the stupid things on. I forgot I turned these off because of all that ringing you were making!"

"No worries, sir," Paxton said.

"I'm Mr. Alder. What can I do for you kids?" the man said, his voice returning to a more normal tone. He smiled as he awaited our response, and for a strange reason, it warmed my heart.

"We need a room for a couple of nights," I said.

"You're lucky I still have rooms available. With the festival coming up, there's barely any vacancy anywhere," Mr. Adler answered. He turned to a small computer desktop, much more outdated than what we saw at The Oak Hotel.

"Let's see. I have a room on the second floor. One double bed, one pullout couch," the old man continued.

"A couch?" Paxton asked.

"Yes, kid. A couch. Does that work for you?"

"Sure," Paxton answered. Millie and I shrugged. All we needed was a place to crash for two nights while we did our best to spy around and try to find any hints on Corina.

We couldn't complain. The price was ridiculously low for a place in Gray Oak during festival time. Mr. Alder gave us two keys to our room, and we headed out of the main office. Paxton ran to bring his car into the motel's parking lot. Millie and I walked across it to reach the stairs that took us to where our room should be on the second floor. There, we waited near the stairs for Pax to arrive and park.

The Oak H was the typical two-floor, roadside motel. When you looked at it from the front, you could see the low and top main hallways lined up multiple times by a door and a big glass curtained window. The top floor had a railing, it's white paint beginning to crackle. As a whole, it was surrounded by big dark green walls that protected it all around. The rest of the building was painted off-white, with accents in the same dull green of the main office. Mr. Alder spoke as if there was barely any room free, but the parking lot seemed too empty to confirm that. It was pretty quiet, although, on the other side of the tall walls, Gray Oak Boulevard was waking up at a fast pace.

Paxton parked at a nearby spot. We approached his car, moving around it as we got our things. It was then that I remembered we were so thrown out by our arrival at The Oak H that we forgot one of the reasons we were here. Nonetheless, I shrugged it off and decided not to bring our friend Corina up into a conversation with Mr. Adler just yet. I was positive we had an advantage. We came here before planned, which meant we probably had more time to go around. So, we focused on settling in.

"I guess it's not as bad as we thought it would be," Paxton said as he entered, right behind Millie and me, the room we would share.

He was right. For the price and our current needs, it was fine. The room fitted a double bed pressed against the left wall of the room. The small pullout couch was to the right. At the end of the room was space where a counter ran tightly between the walls, holding a sink. To the left, there was the bathroom door and, to the right, a sliding door for a small closet.

"It's comfier than I thought it would be," I agreed with Pax.

"I guess we judged it wrong by the exterior," Paxton continued.

"It's dull as hell, though," Millie interfered.

She was right. The room seemed pretty clean, but the lighting wasn't great. There was a yellowish light high on one of the walls and a table lamp between the two beds. I pulled the curtains on the big glass window apart to let sunlight in.

"Better?" I asked. Millie grimaced.

"No privacy," she complained.

Paxton scoffed by the bathroom door while he took a look around.

"There's no satisfying you, Millie. So how about we take that uncomfortable look off your faces by getting some breakfast?" He stood, smiling at the other side of the room from us, hands on his hips.

"Food is always good, right, Mill?" I said, nudging her.

She made a face but couldn't fight the smile long enough before she gave in, "Fiiiine! Breakfast better be worth it!"

We walked down the Boulevard for a few minutes before finding a small restaurant cafe with an attractive brunch menu. Once we were sitting in the comfort of a cute little round table in one of the restaurant's back corners, I felt Paxton's eyes staring at me from the edge of his menu.

"Spit it out," I spoke out, calmly passing another of the few pages of the menu. From the corner of my eye, I saw him drop his own on the table. Millie followed, confused.

"This all feels great, but also odd at the same time. The change in our plans isn't a big deal, but I am aware we're here earlier for other business," Pax paused to clear his throat. "So, what if we find Corina? We're not the police or know anything about this. Yet, we're being reckless enough to try it out."

"I've said it a million times... I can do this alone and not continue to drag you along with me," I said. I felt like I was beginning to sound like a scratched record playing the same line repeatedly.

"That's not going to happen, you know it."

"My only plan is to go with the flow of whatever happens and hope all of that takes me to Kimi."

Millie pursed her lips and looked down at her hands. Pax just nodded.

"Look, this might all seem ridiculous, but I— I have a feeling that there's something more in this whole thing. I want to figure it out," I said.

"What if she's dead?" Millie asked so quietly, it could've passed by unperceived, but I heard her clearly.

A sudden disappointment coursed through me, then fear, then frustration. Ultimately, I felt a fire in my chest. In my mind, I felt a confidence I couldn't explain, "Kimi is not dead."

Millie looked up. For the first time since all this had started, I saw doubt in her eyes. "But what if? You can't pretend you haven't thought of that possibility. Who knows what truly went down at that camp! Or what is this girl we're looking for even involved in? We might be putting ourselves in danger for something that is out of our con—"

I averted my eyes to look over Millie's shoulder to the street through the glass windows. Trying to contain my emotions. My gaze picked up on the sunlight beaming over beautiful chocolate-colored hair that creeped out from the sides of a dark gray hoodie. My body froze, and my eyes followed the walk of that stranger as if she moved in slow motion. I couldn't see her face, but something about the way she walked, as if she was trying not to attract any attention, rang bells in my head.

Corina... I thought.

"Are you even listening to me, Kerri?" Millie responded, clearly annoyed.

I met Millie's eyes for a second, "Y—Yes. But, look... there's—" When I looked back up, she was gone.

"Kerri, what's wrong? What did you see?" Paxton looked at me concernedly and kept following my gaze to try and figure it out.

"Hello again, are you guys ready to order?" the waitress that had seated us finally came by, but I couldn't stay put. Suddenly, she was in my way.

I burst up from my chair, swerving to not bump into the waitress, ran for the door, and out onto the big sidewalk. My friends called out to me, questioning my outburst. I heard Paxton apologize to the young waitress before my friends' chairs slid noisily over the tiled floor. Before they could reach the entrance, I began running in the direction the hooded girl had walked. She was nowhere in sight, but I still ran.

The sidewalk was already full of people, mostly youngsters like us and others some years older. The Boulevard was already in full swing. The sun shone brightly as the morning heat began hitting me in waves. Sweat dripped down my hairline as I tried to pay no mind. I focused on finding the dark gray hoodie between the crowds.

When I thought I saw it, I lost it again. Over and over again. The crowds began dispersing as I was clearly entering a much less crowded area of the Boulevard. Before I knew it, I was standing at the entrance of The Oak H Motel's parking lot. A few passing by stared at me, wondering. I breathed heavily to regain my strength after the run. When I turned around, I saw my friends pause their own quick pace a few steps from me.

"What the hell just happened, Kerri-Ann?" Millie questioned, out of breath.

I gulped and breathed deeply again, "I saw her."

Both pairs of eyes widened as they met mine. In the middle of the sidewalk, we stood turning on the balls of our feet to look around, searching for no one in sight.