The familiar melody of the alarm on my phone sung persistently as always.  I groaned, my three hours couldn't be up already.  I slowly but surely got out of bed, realizing that I had slept in my contacts, ugh, today was going to be a great day.  To make it worse today's final was for A.Push, which was going to be arguably the worst one.

I threw on some clothes from my dresser, and headed downstairs.  I was extremely thankful that no one was up yet, I did not feel like talking to anyone at the moment.  I ate a yogurt, then quickly threw together a lunch, packed my backpack, and dashed out the door.

I walked the same path I always did to school, but it felt different.  It was all so gloomy, the weather was on the brink of raining, and the gray clouds let no light through.  It was overall just set a very depressing mood.

It wasn't really until I stepped through the school doors that the true impact of Ty's death really hit me, no one in the cafeteria super early either doing homework or cram studying, it was all so empty.  I sighed and sat down, opening up my binder to the Civil War, I wanted to do some quick review.  I noticed something strange, in the middle of all my other markings on one paper were six blood red circles.  Then encircled 4, L, O, F, O, R.  

It didn't take any experience in cryptology to realize that someone was sending me a message: Floor 4.  I pulled out my phone, not to ask about a possible Brewville trip, but to see if anyone was actually going to be here today.  The response I got was fairly universal, either they didn't have finals today, or their parents got them out of them.  I sighed, guess I was alone.

"Hey Brenton!" Corrina yelled.  I saw her walking across the cafeteria, I suddenly realized I had forgot to text her.

"Hey Corrina, I didn't know you had a final today?" I asked.

"I don't, I just need to get out of the house, besides the school on finals week is a peaceful enough place.  Anyway what are you here for?" she replied.

"I have the A.Push exam in, well 5 minutes, better get over there, I will talk to you later though," I smiled.

The A.Push exam was an absolute pain, not hard, just way too time consuming.  I couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief as soon as I stepped out of that room.  I was pleasantly surprised to find Corrina still at the table, as well as Marissa and Alicia who had joined her.

"Hey guys!" I greeted them.  I got a half-hearted 'hey' in response, "oh so I guess you heard," I added.

"Yeah..." Marissa responded.

"We need to do something to get our minds off of this, I don't know about you guys, but I didn't sleep at all last night," Alicia said.

This was the perfect segway, "I think I have something we could do...  Just let me call Tracy quickly."

I dialed her number, the phone rang for a while until she finally picked up, "Hey Tracy, I know we've all been really down about Ty, completely understandably too, I was wondering what you might think of possibly going on a roadtrip to Brewville this afternoon," there was silence on the other end, "I know it is a bit soon..."

"No, It's perfect, I need to take my mind off everything.  May I ask though, why Brewville?  It's an hour away." She asked.

"Let's just say I might have another lead that is in Brewville."

"Alright, that sounds good, do you want to meet at the High School?"

"Awesome, I assume you'll drive the van?"

"Yup!  I'll see you then!"

"Cya," I hung up.  Everyone was staring at me, extremely curious. "Alright everyone, we're going to Brewville!"

Little did any of us know that today would be the last day we would spend in Summer Valley...