I and Sarah are sitting in my room munching Doritos when someone rings the doorbell.

"Mom, can you please open the door?" I call out.

The doorbell rings again. This time, three times in succession as if the person is in a hurry to get inside.

"Mom?" I shout this time. When there's no reply I get up with an 'ugh' and run downstairs to open the door. Where is my Mom? I wonder.

I open the door and let out a little gasp.

"Oh my God! Hannah?" I ask her to make myself sure that it really is her. I want to hug her and slap her at the same time. She's back. She is finally back! There's a stupid grin on my face and I am about to call Sarah down, but stop when I look closely at her face. It is tear stained and her eyes are puffed. 

"How could you do this?" she asks me with a new set of tears flowing down her eyes, "I never thought that you of all people would do this to me! You were my best friend Rachel."

"I am sorry Han-"

As she comes closer to me, I see that thers's blood on her face, running down from her head all the way down to her chin and then dripping on the floor. There's some on her hands too. Who did this to her?

"You know that Sal's more than a crush to me! And now you are stealing him away even before I can have him? I hate you, Rachel! I hate you. I HATE YOU!" She spits out the last sentence and shoves me hard with both her hands. I tumble back into my house due to the force and Hannah starts running away. Again. Leaving a trail of blood behind her.

"Hannah wait!"

I opened my eyes and tried to sit up. I have to stop her. She can't leave again, but I noticed that the room was dark. It took me few seconds to realize that I was in my bedroom and what I had sen was a dream. God, that shove from Hannah felt so real. Mixed feelings start running through me: relieved that it was just a bad dream and sullen that Hannah is still not back.

My heart was beating so loud that I was worried I might wake my mom up. Trying to calm myself, I took deep breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

When Sal had asked me to go with him to the Dance, I had just stood there without saying anything, my jaw hanging, like an idiot.

"Um...I'll think about it?" I had said after a few seconds.

"Look, I know you might be thinking that this is not what a friend does, but it's just a dance and if Hannah cared about you as much as you care about her, she wouldn't have left without telling you anything."

Sal had a point. Hannah for sure hadn't thought about us at all before running away. I mean, she could have come to me or Sarah to tell us what was wrong. Though we weren't talking as much but we surely would have given a ear to her problems. That's what bestfriends are for.

But still, just because she had left us with so many unanswered questions, it didn't mean that I could go to the Dance with her only crush. Or could I? He hadn't ask me on a date or something. It was just Homecoming Dance. And I had no interest in the 'stealing' business. Plus he seemed like the only person from their group whom I could ask those unanswered questions. And this Dance excuse seemed like a golden oppurtunity.

******

"Oh my God! So it is true! I was right, see? I was so fucking right!" Sarah beemed at me from the passenger seat.

"What's true?" I asked keeping my eyes on the road.

"He's got a thing for you. Remember how I told you that I've seen him staring at you?"

"It's just a dance, Sars. It means nothing."

"We'll see. You are saying yes, right? You better say yes, Rachel Evans."

"Ugh. My conscience's saying no," Sarah opened her mouth to say something but I stopped her, "but...I need answers or clues or something that can lead us to Hannah, and Sal seems like an open window into their group. So I'm gonna sa-"

"Yess!" Sarah did a mini fist pump even before I could finish the sentence. By the level of her excitement, it seemed as if Sal had asked her to the dance and not me.

We both were headed to the mall for some girls time on Sarah's suggestion. She wanted to do shopping while I was in for some gorging.

"Rach, stop the car," Sarah said suddenly looking outside the window.

I pulled over to the left and she got down without saying anything so I followed her. She went towards a tree on the side of the road and that's when I saw it too. It was the flyer with Hannah's photo on it. Someone had written 'bitch' in caps across her photo.

"Who would do such a thing?" Sarah asked.

I tore the flyer from the tree branch and dumped it in a trashcan. "Someone who's not right in the head." I said through gritted teath and got back in the car.

We didn't talk much after that till we reached the mall. There were a couple of flyers pasted here and there which I saw on our way which were still intact and had no other profanities scrawled on them. The Chamberlains were doing all they could to find their daughter. They had also been to the police to request them to continue the search. But Detective Rhodes had told them that Hannah had left no clue behind nor did any of her friends seem to have any answers. That included me and Sarah too. Due to absence of any significant lead, the search had basically ceased.

Suddenly I remembered the Facebook chat between Hannah and Aaron. Was I supposed to show that to the police? I mean, Aaron's 'You are the one who's gonna have to pay' threat could easily pass for an insignificant verbal warning between two friends. But if one of that friends suddenly runs away, then it surely has to mean something, right?

I still hadn't told Sarah about it and decided to tell her once she was done with her shopping because I knew her well enough to know that she hated when anyone spoiled her Shopping Mood.

After browsing through H&M, Vera Moda and Chanel, we went up to the the food court and sat down with our double cheese burgers, coke float and extra large fries. Who gives a damn about the healthy diet!

"Um, Sars?" I began after a few bites of the burger, "I have to show you something."

"What is it?" She looked at me with big eyes.

"I saw this in Hannah's Facebook account," I handed over my phone to her.

She began reading and slowly her jaw dropped and she kept the burger down on her tray. She scrolled up again and read the whole chat for the second time. I had done the same too.

"Okay," she gave out a sigh, "first things first. How did you get into her account?"

"She had written her password on the last page of my Memory Lane Book couple of months ago."

Sarah looked at me and scrunched her eyebrows. She probably wanted to know the reason as to why Hannah had given me her password.

"She wanted me to chat with Sal...on her behalf." I replied before she could ask.

"Okay. So you think..Aaron..did something..." She trailed off.

"Maybe. Amelia would make his life miserable if she came to know that he had cheated on her."

"But he was drunk, does that count as cheating?"

"Of course, it does! It's either Aaron or Amelia who's involved. Hell, at times I feel as if all of them are hiding something."

"Even Sal?" Sarah asked, her voice dropping a little.

"I don't know," I frowned and concentrated on my burger. Sal seemed okay and even Kyle at times. But being such a tight knit group, there was no way that they wouldn't know each other's secrets.

"Speak of the devil," Sarah said suddenly. I followed her gaze and saw Aaron come inside the food court. He had a Reebok bag in his hand and was talking on the phone.

He sat two tables away from us to the right and hadn't noticed us yet as he was pretty engrossed with who ever was on the other line.

"Shut. The fuck. Up." Aaron shouted and slammed his fist on the table.

I and Sarah gave each other a shocked look. A couple of other people gave him annoyed looks but he seemed oblivious to them.

"Listen, you piece of shit," he tried lowering his voice but was still audible to us, "do as I say or you'll be dead meat. Get that?....Good." Saying that he hung up.

He was still fuming and kept glaring at his phone while cracking his knuckles. It looked as if he was about to explode but then he turned his head and saw us. His expression changed to confusion as if we were some outworldly creatures and he was seeing us for the first time. He abruptly got up which made the chair to fall backwards, and left without bothering to pick it up.

I had never seen Aaron behave this way before. Yeah there had been one or two brawls between him and some of the guys from school but today there was something dark and evil in his eyes. Had he snapped this way in front of Hannah? Because if he had then I too would have run away if I were in Hannah's place. Probably to some other country.