Maggie smiled and pinched my cheek like I was a child. When she walked out of the store, I wiped my cheek with my sleeve.

  A black car pulled up in front of Maggie, and she stopped in her tracks. I frowned, watching her through the store window.

  “That’ll be three sixty-eight,” the cashier said.

  I fished in my pocket for money. When I heard Maggie cry out, I looked up again. A big guy had his arms around her, pinning her arms down. Another guy was opening the trunk of the car talking fast, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I couldn’t see their faces clearly. It was as if their features were blurred.

  “That lady is in trouble,” I said to the cashier. My heart beat in my throat.

  “Looks like she’s handling herself just fine,” he said.

  When I looked again, there were flames everywhere. It looked like one of them had a flamethrower. I felt like I had been yanked out of the quaint small-town set into an action movie. Was I supposed to do something?

  “Someone’s going to get hurt,” I said, stepping closer to the door. My stomach was twisted in a knot. My hands trembled, and my palms started heating up again. Maggie looked at me, her eyes filled with fire, and she shook her head. I realized that the flames were coming from her. And there was no flamethrower in sight.

  “Aren’t you going to do something?” I asked.

  They hit Maggie over the head with something, and the flames stopped when her head lolled to the side. They stuffed her into the trunk of the car, closed it, and jumped into the car, driving away as if nothing had happened. I felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. I couldn’t breathe, my chest hurt, and a ringing started up in my ears.

  When I looked at the cashier, he was waiting patiently for my money.

  “Did you not just see that?” I asked. “They took her.”

  “She paid for her groceries,” he said. “This is not my problem.”

  I blinked at him. “Are you kidding me?” I asked. This was too hard to process.

  “Three sixty-eight,” he said flatly.

  I threw five dollars on the counter and grabbed the milk bottle. I ran out the door before he could give me change.

  I made it all the way onto the bus before my legs turned into jelly. I collapsed in an open seat, breathing hard.

  What the hell just happened? I looked down at my hands. My fingers were trembling, but my palms were cool again. Lately, the heat in my hands was all that had been happening. There had been no fire, thank God.

  But Maggie had had fire, too. I didn’t just imagine it. And I was pretty damn sure she’d created fire without help, just like me. But I couldn’t ask her about it because she’d been taken. What if she’d been taken because of her weird power? What if I was next?

  I shook my head, trying to clear the thoughts. I was working myself up for nothing. No one knew who I was and what I could do. And it had to be an illusion or something. There was no way Maggie could have done something like that.

  Just like there was no way I could have done something like that at school before we’d been forced to move.

  Shit.

  I scrubbed my face. The cashier hadn’t cared that Maggie had been grabbed. He hadn’t cared about anything other than the stupid money. Why had he been okay with what had happened?

  I looked around. The bus had been trundling through town. I couldn’t go home, yet. I got up and jumped off at the next stop.

  A jogger sprinted past me, “Excuse me,” I said, but he ignored me.

  “Wait,” I said, running after him. I grabbed his sleeve. When he spun around, his eyes were amber, and they almost glowed. I let go of him. The man shook his head, and when he looked at me again, his eyes were brown. Normal. Like I had imagined the jewel tones.

  “Are you okay?” he asked and offered me a friendly smile.

  “Can you direct me to the police station?” I asked in a small voice.

  He nodded. “If you walk down that road, it’s two lefts and a right,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said, backing away before I turned and started running.

  Something very weird was going on here. But I had no time to figure out what I’d seen. If I’d seen anything.

  The police station was an old brick building with blue accents and modern glass doors that looked out of place. I pushed through them and walked up to the front desk. Everything inside the station was new, as if it had recently been redone. It smelled like lemon scented detergent. The hum of the aircon felt like static on my skin.

  “I’d like to report a kidnapping,” I said to the man behind the counter. He sat with his back to me and slowly spun around after I spoke. The police officer looked at me over the rim of his glasses. He wore a blue uniform and a mustache.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  I nodded, frowning. Yeah, I was sure I wanted to report a kidnapping.

  “My… aunt. She’s been grabbed.” I explained to the police officer what I had seen. I didn’t mention the fire. I had been called crazy back home, I wasn’t planning on carrying on that trend here.

  “Are you sure that’s what you saw?” he asked when I was done.

  I nodded. “Of course, I’m sure. Why would I make this up?”

  The officer shrugged his shoulders. “It sometimes happens that you think you see something; stress, imagination, television these days.” He shook his head. He was treating me like a child. I knew I didn’t exactly qualify as an adult, but I wasn’t stupid.

  What was this guy’s problem? Weren’t the police supposed to help? Weren’t they supposed to investigate any information they found? I had always been taught the police were on my side.

  “If you don’t believe me, check the security cameras at the store.”

  He sat back in his chair with a sigh. “There’s no need to get snappy, miss,” he said.

  I leaned on the counter with my elbows.

  “Someone went missing. She was taken,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be doing something?”

  “I’ll open a case file, and we’ll check in with the store when we have a chance,” the officer sighed, as if this was a colossal waste of his time.

  I shook my head and took out my phone. Maybe I should phone my mom. They would take an adult more seriously, right? But I had already caused so much trouble for my mom; the school, the fire, moving back here. And what if I really had seen it all wrong? This officer, the cashier’s relaxed attitude, what if it had all been in my head? Maggie couldn’t have been throwing fire around with her bare hands. What if none of this was real?

  “So, what am I supposed to do, then?” I asked.

  The officer drummed his fingers on the table before he reached for a piece of paper and handed it to me.

  “If you’re really worried, you can come back in twenty-four hours if your aunt hasn’t come back. We’ll file a missing person’s report and take it from there.”

  I nodded. The phone rang, and the officer answered. While he spoke into the handset, I looked at the notice board behind him. It was filled with pages stuck to it with thumbtacks. The pages all had photos of people on them with descriptions of their height, weight, and eye color.

  They had all gone missing. I couldn’t believe how many of them were against the board. Some of them were doubled up, pages stuck on top of each other.

  Something gave me the idea that these people had never been found. What if I file Maggie as a missing person and she ended up on that board? Eventually, they would just stick someone else’s face over hers; a newer casualty, another person who had been grabbed and no one seemed to give a damn about.

  “I’ll come back later,” I said.

  The officer nodded absently, still on the phone. I turned around and walked out of the police station. When I stood outside in the sun, I realized I’d left my milk on the bus.

  The police weren’t going to do anything about this. No matter what I told them, they seemed to think I was just making it up. And judging by those other reports, it wasn’t the first time they thought that about something or someone. It didn’t make sense—the police were supposed to care. They were supposed to want to find the people that had gone missing, to protect the citizens of Safety Beach. Instead, they seemed not to care at all. Apathy was the name of the game.

  I sighed and tucked my hands into my hoodie, walking back to the main road. I waited at the stop for a bus, but when one didn’t come soon enough, I started walking in the direction of home. My head spun with everything that had happened.

  Had I really just made it all up? Everyone else seemed to think so. Maybe it was just me, maybe I was going crazy. I pressed my hands to my temples. A headache thumped dully behind my eyes.

  As I walked, I started paying attention to my surroundings. Safety Beach really was a beautiful place. The town lay against the foot of a mountain, everything sloping down so there were very few places that you couldn’t see the ocean from. The breeze picked up, and it tasted salty on my tongue. But everything around here was like a picture, too perfect, almost.

  When I finally arrived home, it was getting dark. The sun touched the horizon, painting the sky with splashes of orange and purple, and the breeze picked up.

  “Where have you been?” my mom asked, coming to the door.

  “Have you talked to Maggie?” I asked, ignoring her question.

  “Where’s my milk?”

  “I forgot it on the bus. Call Maggie, mom.”

  My mom shook her head. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Please, just call her.”

  “I need milk, Emily,” my mom said

  “Mom!” I snapped. “Call Maggie. Now.”

  My mom’s face became pinched the way it did when she was about to shout at me.

  “I’m sick of your attitude,” she said. “Since I packed up our life in Cali, you’ve been acting like I’m the enemy. I’m not going to stand here and wait for you to make me the bad guy again.”

  “Mom, that’s not what this is about. Maggie is gone.”

  “Go to your room,” my mom said, not even bothering to listen to me. I was getting angry.

  “No one is listening to me!” I shouted. “Not you, not the police, and not that idiot behind the till, either.”

  “Now, Emily,” my mom said.

  I let out a frustrated groan and ran upstairs to my room. I slammed the door and leaned against it.

  This was bullshit.

  3

  It was well after dark when my mom knocked on my door.

  “Go away,” I said.

  My mom opened the door, anyway. “A friend came to see you,” she said with her don’t-be-rude look.

  Chloe stepped into my room. I sat up on my bed.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I’m here for gossip and girl-talk,” she said with a shrug. “Thank you, Mrs. Frank.”

  My mom smiled at Chloe. “Call me Alicia.” She closed the door behind her and Chloe collapsed on my bed.

  “So, this place isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It’s smaller than I thought but nice, you know?”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Chloe lay back on the bed, making herself at home.

  “You really need to spice up this room, though. It’s so boring.”

  “We just moved in,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  Chloe shrugged. “I was bored. And I knew you weren’t going to be busy or anything. Match made in heaven, right?”

  “Right.”

  Chloe rolled onto her stomach, kicking her legs in the air. Something was different about her. Her hair was tied back, and she wore a jacket over her revealing shirt, but that wasn’t it. It took me a moment to realize she wasn’t wearing so much makeup. In fact, she didn’t seem to be wearing any at all, aside from mascara and eyeliner. And she was beautiful.

  In a model way.

  “What are you staring at?” Chloe asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Chloe raised her eyebrows. “Your mom said you’re in a mood.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, that sounds like something she would tell the only friend I’ve made in town.”

  “Really?” Chloe asked.

  I nodded. “We’re not on the best terms right now.”

  “No, I mean, am I your friend?”

  I looked at Chloe. She looked like the popular type that had tons of friends. Her surprise was out of place.

  “Can you keep a secret?” I asked. She was my only friend. Maybe I could talk to her about what had happened.

  “I’m as silent as the grave,” Chloe said with a grin. She was curious.

  “I saw a kidnapping today,” I said.

  Chloe shifted a little closer. “Tell me about it.”

  I explained what had happened. Again, I left out the part about the fire. I had thought about it since arriving home, and I’d decided that I had made it up. The whole fire thing was my hang-up, so now I saw it everywhere.

  “I don’t get why the police wouldn’t do anything about it,” I said. “I thought they were supposed to care.”

  “Yeah, they don’t give a shit in this town.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Chloe pulled up her shoulders. She took out her phone and started scrolling. “They just don’t. It’s really sad, but Maggie might not come back.”

  “What?” I asked. “How can you sound so calm about it?”

  “Because freaking out about every person that disappears around here is only going to give you ulcers. The best you can do is to make sure it’s not you.

  “What do you think about this?” She held up her phone, showing me a photo of a bedroom with decorations and photos on the wall. “I think you can pull this off with a bit of paint. We have a really cool second-hand store here where you can get this stuff for, like, a fraction of the price.”

  I shook my head. “Are you seriously just going to pretend like this is no big deal?”

  Chloe sighed and sat up. For a moment, she dropped her cool-girl act, and her face was serious. I caught a glimpse of the girl I imagined she was when she wasn’t wearing the popular clothes and scrolling on her phone like the real world didn’t matter.

  “Look, Emily, things go wrong sometimes. You can’t get all worked up, okay? It’s not a big deal.”

  “It is a big deal,” I said. “Maggie is my mom’s only friend. And she’s a person. People can’t just be replaced.”

  Chloe sighed. “Here, it’s not that simple.”

  I shook my head. “So, all those people on the board at the police station? They’re all gone?”

  “Like I said, be glad it's not you. That’s all that matters.”

  This was all wrong. “What are we supposed to do?”

  Chloe picked up her phone again. “I think we need to go take some selfies so you have something to print and stick up. So these walls aren’t so bare. You and I. That sounds fun, right?”

  I blinked at Chloe. Her mask was back, and she was going on again about my room and how to decorate it.

  I picked up my phone, dialed a number and held it to my ear.

  You’ve reached Maggie. I’m either meditating, cooking or sleeping. Leave your number, and I’ll call you back!

  “What are you doing?” Chloe asked.

  “I got Maggie’s number from my mom’s phone earlier. Her phone is off.”

  “Emily,” Chloe said, reaching over and putting her hand on my phone, “give it up.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t just give it up. I saw them take her. And the police won’t do anything. My mom thinks I'm a sullen teenager, and Maggie could be hurt.”

  “There’s nothing you can do about it,” Chloe said.

  “Yeah, there is,” I said, putting my phone down. “I can look for her.”

  Chloe chuckled. “And how are you going to do that?”

  I shook my head. I had no idea. I was just a teenager. But I couldn’t sit back and let this happen.

  Chloe looked at me for a moment before she nodded.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay, what?”

  “I’ll help you find her.” She sat back against my pillows, leaving her phone on the bed.

  “Really?” I asked. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”

  “We’re all crazy in this town,” Chloe said. “I don’t know how we’re going to find her or anything, but we can try.”

  I grabbed Chloe and hugged her. She froze.

  When I let go of her, her eyes were wide, and she swallowed hard.

  “Don’t do that, okay?” she asked.

  “What? Hug you?”

  Chloe nodded. “I don’t do physical contact. Ever. I… have anxiety attacks. It’s stupid.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not. I get it.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded. Now and then, when Chloe forgot to keep up the act, I saw glimpses of someone completely different. I had a feeling that she wasn’t at all who she tried to be.

  “Emily, you should know that if you start digging around, you’re going to find things you might wish you didn’t.”

  “Like what?”

  Chloe shrugged. “This place has secrets.”

  “Like what?”

  Chloe laughed. “If I told you, they wouldn’t be secrets. But seriously, if you want to do this, I’m here. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  It sounded ominous. But whatever it was, I could deal with it. I had to find out what had happened to Maggie. Even if I just ended up finding her at home, safe and sound, and it had all been in my head, at least I would know.

  “Thank you, Chloe,” I said.

  “For what?”

  I pulled up my shoulders. “Being a friend.”

  Chloe smiled. “It’s cool.”

  We both lay on the bed again.

  “So, what do you think of Reece?” Chloe asked.

  “The guy who showed me to class?”

  Chloe nodded. “Do you like him?”

  “I don’t know him,” I said.

  Chloe sighed. “I guess. He’s great, though. He’s the most popular guy in school. A football quarterback, handsome as hell, and apparently his marks are good, too. Full package.”

  “It sounds like you like him,” I said with a grin.

 

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