BROCK

I finish getting the radiation reader from Mrs. Ladlien, and get in my car to drive to the nearest mall. I read the levels from the reader, looking around and surveying the crowd around me. A head of platinum blonde stands out from the rest, and I recognized her as Lea Jones, a girl in my science class.

I debate calling out, but then swiftly decide against it. She barely knows me, and vice versa. She's in what's considered the cool group. I'm in what's considered the nerd group.

I glance down at my radiation reader, and then up in annoyance as someone pushes roughly past me, clearly in too much of a hurry to bother being polite. I catch a glance of Lea's platinum blonde hair as she runs a hand through it.

In front of my eyes, she disappears.

I stop in my tracks and stare at where she was. For a few moments I don't move, wondering if I saw it correctly. Stuffing the reader in my pocket, I run to the place where I saw her last. Maybe she saw that I was looking at her and ducked into a nearby store? But I know that's not true. I saw her vanish.

My heart rate starts to accelerate, and I look around, straining to catch a glimpse of her. But I don't see anything.

Calm down, Brock. It's not possible for her to have vanished into thin air. Where would she have gone? Still, I find it pretty hard to listen to myself.

I duck into the store she was closest to, and scan it. It's a phone store, and none of the few people in there look remotely like Lea. A store employee comes over. She's roughly college age, with black hair and blue eyes, and smiles at me. "Can I help you find anything?"

"Uh..." I falter for a second, feeling awkward. "I just... did a girl with blonde hair come in here recently? Platinum blonde, and brown eyes." I clarify, and then wish I hadn't. That just made it sound creepy.

She doesn't say anything about it, so I guess it went past her. Or maybe she just didn't say anything? I groan inwardly. Why do I have to over analyze every conversation I have?

The girl shakes her head. "No platinum blondes here. Girlfriend?"

"No, no." I shake my head, and before I can make the conversation more awkward, turn around, mumbling a quick 'thanks'. I exit the store, looking around again.

My science project completely pushed out of the way, I leave the mall. I want to tell myself that she just hurried up, or went into another store. But I know what I saw. She vanished.