Amber sat in the back of the art classroom nervously biting her nails. Two months. It had been two months since she had seen Krystal. No call, text, letter, or even message scattered in acorns on the snow. She hadn’t been in church the past few Sundays nor at bible study, which she usually led.

She’d been wracking her brain. Worrying.

Was she sick? Hurt?

She stared at the clock on the wall and her shoulders dropped as another day passed without the younger girl showing up to class.

Not for the first time, she wondered…and touched her fingertips to her lips that still tingled from that hasty kiss in the cold.

She wouldn’t just drop off of the face of the earth after something like that, especially not after what she’d confessed to Amber. But…Amber shivered, and not just from the cold as she dropped down into the sun flowered seats of her little car.

No. No one could’ve seen…could they?

Could they?

~

Krystal’s hands shook as she stepped up into the back of the van and buckled herself in with the other girls. Hymns played over the speaker as they were each driven home and dropped off, the camp leader stepping out to give them a hug as he left them and their luggage on their parents’ doorstep.

She in a deep breath, pulled her house keys out of her pocket, and clumsily inserted them into the lock.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

“Krystal?”

Her shoulders tensed as she pulled her suitcase over the threshold and her mother stepped into sight.

“Sweetie!”

Something in her seemed to curl up in an attempt to run away as her mother put her arms around her and held her close, as if she hadn’t sent her away in the first place.

“I’ve missed you so much.” She brushed a hand over Krystal’s long hair. “I missed you. You don’t know how much I missed you.” She cupped Krystal’s face gently in her soft hands and tilted it up. “Oh, my beautiful daughter. You’re done with all that.”

Her jaw was clenched so tightly her teeth ached.

“Why don’t you go on upstairs and get unpacked. I’ve got the last of your assignments before you head back to school next week,” she said, tapping her hand against a stack of folders on her desk. “You can work on these Saturday.”

She tried to answer, to say something, but just clicked dryly and she turned and ran up the stairs to her bedroom, her suitcase thumping each stair behind her.

~

Krystal sat at her bedroom window and stared out across the glittering, show-crusted forest, the scene blurry through her tears. Her forehead was cold against the pane of the glass, but she couldn’t seem to move from this spot to her bed so she could lay down and sleep. But if she slept, she would dream and she wanted her head to herself for once. For a while.

She wanted-

Light shifted and moved in the woods. A flashlight beam tracking back and forth.

Krystal pressed her palm to the grass as a leather clad figure stepped from the foliage to peer up at her house, the flashlight abruptly shut off as if she didn’t want to be seen.

She pushed herself closer and closer to the glass as if she could will herself down there. As if she could say words that she wanted, as if she could do with her body what she willed.

But words wouldn’t come and she went no further than the pane of glass allowed. And the figure was gone and her heart was a twisted lump of regret and anger and fear and disgust as she wished she could go too.