We agreed to meet up the following day.

I slept for I don't know... Forty five minutes or something the whole night. I had decided to see if I could go on without the sleeping pills. Seemingly, I couldn't.

I took the fictional book and decided to go through it once again to see if we missed something. If there were any underlined words, or ghosted within the pages, or magically highlighted, anything that would lead a clue on the owners of the house.

Wade couldn't have been the owner. The pictures in the house were taken in like the early 19's, not even the children could be as young as Wade. The reason he directed us there was what I needed to know.

Illuminating light through the pages and all the detective skills I had seen on TV, there was nothing fishy in either of the hundreds of pages. I went back to the bar code after rereading the book twice. I counted the bars hoping I would get anything productive, but there wasn't any.

I looked at the book in all angles, grazing my fingers on each and every inch to ensure unison in level, meticulously scanning each and every edge, curve and corner. The book was nothing more than an ordinary aged book.

I threw it back to the bedside table, and decided to sketch something before dawn. Which was not too far from then.

Ever since my hand relented and made a drawing of Wade in a black coat, I dashed my sketch book it in the basement and I wasn't in any way going for it down there.

Sketching was in my blood, so I couldn't quit doing it. I shoved out a sheet of plain paper and a pencil from my cupboard. Hoping my hand wouldn't relent and start making a creepy drawing, I placed it on the sheet of paper clasping a pencil. A few seconds of both bemusement and suspense passed. It didn't. How gleeful I was.

Furtively glancing at the book and back to the sheet of paper, I notice something abnormal.

The edge of the square bar code was not in level with the book cover. It was an inch or less higher. I raised the book against my eyes and noticed the same.

Using the sharp graphite tip of my pencil, I started poking the edges of the bar code rattlingly. It started ripping itself off, until finally my nails could get a fair grasp of one of the edges. I pressed it in between my index finger nail and thumb nail and ripped it off.

There was another bar code behind it. It was a sticker.

That could only mean one thing, the book was a clue from Wade. He did it intentionally. He wanted us to find not another book but that one. Our next move was on his fingertips, and if not wary enough we would be in utter jeopardy.

The fact that Gwen snuck in a phone in detention class and might have informed him about us reading books, there was a possibility that he had a blind spot. Albeit that mia probability, we had to be ready for anything that would come our way.

He definitely wanted us to know something, the missing part of the puzzle.

°*°

The down of Thursday came. As agreed, we met at the spot by the bus station. Alma wasn't to meet but go to school and make sure we weren't noticed missing. If noticed then she would have our backs, and notify us as soon as possible.

Isabella refused, to be the one left behind at school instead of Alma, though her leg was in no good condition. She couldn't let slip an adventure in front of her.

Though Alma was a way better exception to Isabella, she would be a terrible idea. She would probably make up a non existent disease or say that we were dead and we would appear later and everyone would be looking at us like we were ghost.

We were to arrive back at or before lunch break. As we had promised Alma.

I was surprised to apparently be the last one to get to the meet. If Isabella was there before me, then it was all settled I was way late.

I brought with me an extra hand. Noodles. She had a day off. Since we had been communicating, I invited her.. Okey she invited herself. She said that she couldn't just sit there taking care of her cat and adding on her now growing cellulite all day long while her friend was doing something that could help her lose some extra calories. Basically she was in for an exercise and making sure I was safe. She brought her big fat lazy cat with her. It couldn't quit following her.

Anyway, we needed as much hands as we could get and claws if they counted.

Camilla and Isabella already knew Noodles and she knew them, so I only had to introduce her to Brian.

Each one of us fully armed mostly to face the cold weather in downtown than the psycho's butcher weapons arsenal, we decided to take off.

We were like the suicide squad but without weapons, bounty, and the slightest modicum of common sense. That was Camilla's suggestion. She thought it was stupid risking our lives for what she highly doubted would be of any help, but she followed us anyway.

I panicked a little at both the thought of skipping classes and researching about a person who could be after our asses any time or all the time. No, no, no what if MM finds out?

"Don't worry, we will be gone and back within no time," Isabella reassured after noticing the panic plastered around my face. She didn't seem to have faith in her own words by the sudden twitch of her left eyebrow. I trusted her not a single bit. I knew she was equal addled and naive to whatever we would experience next.

It was no trekking distance so we had to catch a bus. Non of our parents could give us their car more so because we were supposed to be in class at the moment.

It took forever and a day get a bus that was headed that direction. Most were heading people out of danger unlike ourselves we wanted to go to the direction where rains and storms were made. We did a lot of sweet talking to an old driver headed for downtown.

"Just hop in," he sighed.

We jumped in as it revved off steadily.

Seated on the vibrating bus seats, I told them what I had discovered about the bar code earlier that morning. They suspected the same. That Gwen was leaking some information to him. Maybe Gwen was the stalker at detention class or at school.

Wade still hadn't sent another text, and while Isabella was going through Gwen's phone she didn't find anything of meaning in it. She had deleted almost everything. She had planned to leave the phone, and for us to get it and open it. All our moves were drawn, we just had to find a way to manoeuvre.

The distance was widely vast that when we got there, I was already exhausted. The bus came to a delicate halt, and the door automatically snapped opened.

"Here is the furthest I can drop you off."

"Thank you," as we alighted.

At least that day the rains had taken a break, but not for long said the creeping dark grey clouds. What persisted were strong winds that occasionally blew by. Glad we were heavily dressed for both the rains and the winds.

The remaining distance was short, and so the trekking begun. The more we trekked the foggier it became making my sense of sight a little poor.

The trees besides the road were disappearing, tendrils of fog creeping on them insidiously. One after another like a venomous transmitted disease. Until they had all disappeared in the white. My friends were next.

At a distance, we noticed swarming red and blue lights. A police barrier, it was.

A police car at the far right and another at the far left of the road. There were also some cops toddling from one point to another scanning the area.

There were some cars that were driving out of that side of town but non getting into it.

A lady who seemed to be begging them to go in was forced to leave. She didn't relent that much she walked back and drove off a white SUV.

We exchanged glares among ourselves like what now.

It was dubious that we would find the author. I mean, it was forecasted that the storm would start by striking that part of the town first at an unspecified time between Thursday midday and Saturday so the probability of the owner of the house still being there was next to impossible. Unless she wanted to commit suicide.

I would also have been nowhere close to the town if not for the fact that I was being a hero for my next boyfriend. Anyway we had to take the risk.

"A distraction.. We need a distraction," Isabella's bulb lit with a crazy idea, "if we can just get someone to volunteer and distract them then we can get past them."

It was a great idea but who would that be? Obviously, it wouldn't be me because I was in the middle of the entire thing. Not Isabella because she would refuse, so we left Camilla, Noodles and Brian to decide on who to distract them.

We really needed a guy in that type of mission, but Camilla suggested girl power.

"I'll go then," Brian volunteered.

I didn't know that Brian was so good at break dancing. He started break dancing from the spot where we were, up to where the cops were. I was impressed in his break dancing and robot dancing skills almost mesmerized to forget my mission. Camilla was also impressed by the ghost smile she made, like she was proud of her guy.

Beamed by a torch, a cop toddled for him and hitched him by placing his hand by his chest. Everything they said was muffled.

He continued break dancing, even with the cops hand against his chest, and now he was getting more attention from the other cops.

The plan was to go around the police barrier through the bushes beside it, and into the deserted side of the town.

We slunk one after the other maintaining the highest level of silence as we could. I personally, tiptoeing. Making sure the crackling of leaves behind me was Noodles and not an unwanted visitor with a weapon to butcher me.

We were just a few inches from the barrier, and now we could hear the male voice that was communicating to Brian, "hey, sir you should leave its not safe__"

Suddenly I stepped on a dry piece of wood and it snapped with a load crack. A lady cop from near one of the cars heard and swiveled her head towards us abruptly, beaming her torch at our direction. Swift to duck and hide behind a shaggy bush, we went pin drop silent.

The lady cop toddled closer and closer to the bush squinting to get a better view, until Brian noticed her. He shouted for her calling her aunty just to buy space for us to pass.

"Young man you are nuts, I am not your aunty. Hey, Rag take him for a drug test," the lady pointed at one of the other cops. Beaming back, we were gone already.

"T!" Camilla called in a voice hardly above a whisper.

"I didn't mean to."

At least we had already gotten past the barrier, but we were forced to walk in the bushes for a little more distance just to make sure we were completely out of site.

The bushes were a complete torture if not for the heavy jacket I was wearing, I would have walked out like one that was in a serious scuffle for the way outside a bush.

There were mosquitoes everywhere that I covered my face not to be violently attacked, including my eyes. When I uncovered it I was met by a tree branch. Right at the nose and stumbled backwards.

Isabella chuckled secretly. If secretly meant out loud but the face looking away, since she had something to do with it. The others giggled.

Camilla was the one with a GPS and a map on her phone. The author's address on the other hand. We wouldn't dare give Isabella a chance to trail us, she would probably lead us to somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

Out of the bushes and onto the main road, we went. How delighted I was, like we were already done with a better percentage of the mission.

A short distance walk, and now we could make the buildings of the town. Though clouded.

The town seemed abandoned, and some shops broken into. I guessed thieves took advantage of the pandemic.

There was a supermarket that we could peer in, through the broken windows. It seemed to have almost nothing. I couldn't even get one left M&M chocolate dropped on the floor. Thieves had done a good job.

There were also some houses' whose doors, windows or walls were damaged or broken. Cars whose parts were missing, other parts crushed, and windows broken. Like there was a rampage across the town. Generally it was like the town was hit by a theft pandemic before a rain storm pandemic could strike.

Swerving over the shattered glass pieces, we kept on following the maps through the forlorn town. Still dubious if there would be anyone where we were headed, we kept moving.

Unexpectedly, we heard blaring of police siren and made blue and red lights at a distance for our direction.

If we would get caught then we would be taken back to uptown which for now we didn't want.

"There."

We choose a random house and raced towards it even Isabella who had lost her clutches somewhere, but somehow she could limb quickly. She was so stubborn that she did not need any help.

We got to the only house that was locked in between several others that had been broken into.

Luckily, Camilla had curried a wire with her for such a scenario. She shoved it from her pocket, put it in the lock, and fumbled with it for some seconds till it cracked open. We jumped in, and swiftly closed the door behind us sprinting for the parlor. Everyone hid behind random obstacles.

I hid behind a coach. Besides me was Isabella.

The car went past without much assessing. Seemingly, the cops had not seen us, but it was foggy so I guess it was not their fault.

The room had a silvery dangling chandelier above our heads, four whitish coaches, a brown carpet around the centre room, and a wooden table in the middle.

The white-painted wooden walls were well leveled, each curve and corner well angled.

The mantle shelf had some antique sculptures of different people, animals, and plants on it and colourfully framed pictures.

The fire place had semi-dead ashes which I was quick to notice, meaning that there must have been a person in there recently.

Isabella had already begun to explore the house. One second we were there hidden with her, the other she was in the dining room her fingers grazing a flowerpot.

"Hey, Isabella," I whispered, "let's get the hell out of here."

My mind was fully determined to the mission that had brought us, but not explore a house that was literally giving me goosebumps. She wanted to explore one more second. That us enough time for a psycho to butcher someone. My insecurities alarmed.

Camilla was also doing the same thing.

"Not you Camilla," she had also joined Isabella and was grazing on a sculpture that I couldn't clearly tell what it was.

I switched my gauze to Noodles, and she shrugged joining the others. She started with her favourite room the I presumed kitchen. Her cat sluggishly crawling after her.

I sighed and gave myself a seat my forehead aching to do what brought us there.

"Any body move a muscle and you are a goner!" A hoarse voice from somewhere in the house threatened. I whimpered and swiftly got to my feet, but a shotgun was pointed right at my face.

It was an old man maybe in his late eighties, all wrinkled but mostly by the cheeks and the forehead. He had some freckles, wide eyed, grey haired, grey eyed, and was dressed in an over sized white t-shirt without any pants nor short, an oversized pair of white socks and on his hands he was clasping a shotgun.

He cocked the gun and shot at the ceiling insinuating that he was serious.

Some dust from the now broken ceiling, fell on him together with some itty bitty shattered wood. Comically, he flicked them off his shoulders and above his head pointing the gun back at me.