Christy stared at the flashcard in front of her without seeing it. Her own tight penmanship stared back at her in a war that she would undoubtedly lose.

"The Spanish-American War," she said to herself. She switched cards mindlessly again. "Aurangzeb." Christy flicked another one into her growing pile of answered cards without bothering to check if she was right. She was, she knew it already. These were the newest chapter set. Christy had hand written them last night.

Flashcards were easy. They required very little in the way of effort and copying definitions was almost fun. It was like a game. How fast can Christy find the next word and scribble it down? For every ten that she finished she could send two text messages to Kasey. It was a piece of cake.

"Moctezu-" Christy stopped. Her blue eyes stared at the card more ferociously than before. The blue pastel background didn't ease the sickness that swelled in her stomach like a hot air balloon.

Flashcards cards were good for things other than studying. They were good for nervous shuffling, quick reminders, and occasionally, they were perfect for forgetting that your best friend was missing and no one had any clue where'd she'd gone. Until they weren't.

Christy closed her eyes, biting the inside of her lip. Lucy was fine. She was just....just on a vacation. Sure. Lucy was on a vacation, a cruise. She was sipping pina coladas and laying in an uncomfortable, white, plastic beach chair, writing in her notebook or something else that she did when they weren't being weird together.

"Moctezuma." Christy finished, more confidently this time. Lucy was fine. She shuffled the flashcards again mixing them like playing cards as she waited in the hallway. The corridor was loud with the conversation of bored, barely awake kids and teachers and the slamming of the ugly forest green lockers. It all but seemed normal.

How could anything ever be normal?

Christy was trying very hard not to think about it. She needed more flashcards, more studying, more random words that could drown out the intense panic that was casting its shadow over Christy's mind. She wanted to get angry with everyone. Didn't they care? Lucy was missing! She wasn't there! Her seat had been empty for the past week!

But she knew, even if it was the last thing she ever wanted to admit, there wasn't anything they could do.

Christy lowered her studying notecards. Just like every high school student in the building, there wasn't anything those colored rectangles could do either.

It felt weird to be there in the morning, standing in the same place she always stood surrounded by the sounds of endless conversations and still feel so utterly alone. No one came up to her; everyone's eyes seemed to casually slip over her as if now that her exotically amazing best friend was absent, Christy didn't matter anymore. Part of Christy agreed with them. Lucy was a sister, they shared everything that they could possibly share with one another. They were best friends bound by unbroken promises that Christy never intended to ever break. They were warriors that fought and battled the fiercest homework dragons, side by side. They were vampires that spent all nighters sucking the life from Netflix. Lucy had been with Christy through thick and thin.

It didn't help that everyone kept glancing that Christy when they thought she wasn't paying attention with that look of pity as if Lucy wasn't coming back ever.

She was!

She had to.

The first bell rang, announcing the start to another miserable day. Christy sighed. She picked up her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. People moved and shouldered reach other without so much as a look back. Some senior girl with dyed red hair knocked Christy into the wall without pausing her own elaborate story to her friends.

Pastel rectangles scattered across the floor in an invisible wind, finding their way under the feet of tired teenagers. Desperately, Christy scrambled after them, dodging footfalls of people too lazy to change course and scooping her life line cards into a disorganized pile before they were ruined completely.

"Ow!" She snapped at a guy she vaguely recognized from math, "Are you serious?"

His tired look turned to one of horror. "M-my b-bad, Christy," he stammered, scurrying back as if she was a poisonous snake poised to swallow him whole without chewing.

Christy gave a hollow huff and leaned against the line of lockers to organize her cards again. Lucy would've laughed. Some being scared of her? Yeah, right. Christy was as nice as they came. She was the person that gave out candy from the stash in her locker and shared homework answers in the morning. Heck, Christy even volunteered to tutor kids who needed help in math class.

The hall emptied faster than usual. Christy fathomed that maybe she'd missed the announcement about free food in homeroom.

It sucked without Lucy here to laugh at her jokes.

A couple lockers down, a girl in a green jacket fiddled with her locker combination and while humming under her breath. Christy almost recognized the song-- hadn't it been on the radio this morning?-- but she paid no attention until the girl let out a scream and tossed herself away from her open locker.

"What the freak is this!" She gasped short of breath. Her eyes were trained a head at a single book that lay on the tile floor in front of her.

Christy's heart stopped.

"That...That's..." Christy's mouth went dry, and she tried to swallow a lump. Her flashcards fell to the ground again and this time Christy didn't bother picking them up.

That notebook.The notebook. Lucy's leather notebook. That one she took to every class, on every shopping trip, and wrote in during every free second that she claimed. Lucy never left anywhere without it. It...It was the only thing aside from Lucy herself, that no one could find when she disappeared.

"That's Lucy's notebook." Christy said staring at her best friends initials.

The other girl looked her with a deer-in-headlights stare, "No! I mean yes! I mean-"

"Where did you get this?!" Christy demanded. She swiped the book up unable to tear her gaze from the front cover not even to glare at that green girl. It was Lucy's notebook. The same one she'd stuck the silver star on in the corner of the "L" last year.

"I swear, I have no clue how it got there!" the girl defended, "I just wanted my literature book!"

"This is Lucy's book!" Christy said again, "How'd it get in your locker?"

"I-I don't know!" She exclaimed, "It just- I don't know!"

"So what? It just magically appeared?"

The girl tossed her hands up in a hopeless defense. Her brown eyes were wide with both panic and fear giving her a rather childlike impression. For some reason that just made Christy more mad.

"What's going on here?" A new voice broke between them, ringing with authority. Christy and the girl both stiffened, turning to see the oldest woman in the world.

Mrs. Underwood stood at the end of the corridor, silhouetted by the stark white light of the fluorescent tube lights. Her stout figure was hunched over until Christy and her were about the same height. She moved in a slow cramped walk that made it seem as if she had an entire tree stuck up her butt. Maybe that was why she was so virulent all the time.

She staggered over to them, bringing an entire cloud of perfume with her. Christy gagged unintentionally. She smelled like one of those crazy cat ladies and the scent was so strong Christy could taste it. Mrs. Underwood scowled through the thousand years with of wrinkles on her face.

"What is this? A party?" She snapped. When neither of them offered a response, the ancient woman pointed a crooked finger at the girl, "Well is it, Sage?"

"N-no!" the girl named Sage stuttered.

"Well what is it? You both signed those consent forms at the beginning of the year! After that bell has rung you are to be in homeroom!" She swiveled towards Christy, glaring out with those beady black eyes, "What are you doing out here still?"

"Mrs. Underwood, I'm in your homeroom!" Sage squeaked. Christy immediately felt a swell of sympathy for her. It was bad enough trying to dodge this crazy woman in between classes, but to have her for homeroom? You had to be really unlucky to pull that off. "You gave me permission to get my book!"

"I dropped my note cards." Christy said displaying her flashcards with one hand.

Neither of those seemed like good excuse to the teacher. Or Maybe she just hadn't heard them. They say that hearing loss comes with old age and this woman was more than well past her prime. Christy had a sneaking suspicion of what was coming so she wasn't all that afraid when crazy Mrs. Underwood stood up as tall as she could make her four foot seven inch self, and snarled, "Detention! Both of you! So help me, if you miss I'll make you both scrape the gum of the bottom of all the desks in the entire school!"

"Oh no." Christy said in a tone of false fear and surprise. "Anything but that!"

Sage had turned a translucent color that matched the polished tile floor. She was actually shaking with fright. Poor thing looked about ready to drop dead. "Please, Mrs. Underwood! I- I didn't mean it! I'll go to class right now, please anything but detention!"

The ancient lady was unforgiving. She glowered at Sage but didn't say a thing. She pointed one gnarled bony finger towards the end of the hallway, where the detention room was located. The dungeon awaited with its lights dramatically flickering in the way Christy expected it to be with that thick wooden door and heavy metal lock. Just looking at the confined quarters made her claustrophobic.

People broke in that room.

Mrs. Underwood let out a spiteful cackle and left to go pray on some other kid who was out of class at the wrong time. Christy expected to hear organ music from the orchestra room. It would've been rather fitting.

"I'm going to die," Sage whispered. "I'm going to die over a notebook."

"Please," Christy scowled, hugging Lucy's notebook to her chest, "This is not just a notebook! This was Lucy's! She took this everywhere with her! And detention isn't even all that bad!"

Sage turned to look at her, and for once her scared look flashed with anger, "If she took it everywhere with her, then why was it in my locker, huh?"

She stalked off down the hall before Christy could offer an answer. Which was good in part because Christy didn't have an answer to give her. She looked down at the brown leather and the faded ink of Lucy's favorite sparkly pen.

Christy had been the last person to talk to Lucy as far as anyone knew. On the phone she hadn't sounded panicked and she would've told Christy if she thought there was someone suspicious lurking about, right? Lucy was smart, even if at times she did silly things (like make tape mustaches and speak with a bad Italian accent). She wouldn't have gotten herself abducted, and if someone tried to murder her in a dark alley they would've found themselves "Lucy kicked" into next Thursday.

"So, child," Christy said to the notebook, "Why did you leave me and run away?"

The notebook didn't reply.