SEATED on a white couch in a plain white room, she couldn't help but feel a sense of familiarity. Other than the small square table in front of her, adorned only with an empty white flower vase, there was nothing else present. She couldn't quite pinpoint what it was about the room that struck a chord in her memory, but she was certain she had been there before. Her mind simply couldn't recollect when.

She glanced up to see a woman with her brown hair up in an intricate updo with some strands falling from it to frame her face. A flower crown adorned her head and the scent it brought was sweet and light, filling up Karyn's nose and making her want to breathe more of it. The dress the woman wore shined white, flowed down to her ankles like waves of an ocean and swished around with each step she took toward Karyn.

When Karyn locked eyes with the woman, she marveled at their striking similarities. The arch of her eyebrow, the sharp contours of her slender nose, and her warm brown eyes made Karyn feel like she was staring right at a mirror. The woman smiled and an inexplicable peace erupted in Karyn's chest, making her want to smile with the woman.

"My dear Rynanda."

"Who are you? Where am I?" Her eyebrows rose at her own question and she raised her hand to touch her lips. For the first time, she could speak in a dream.

The woman drew closer before she sat and cupped Karyn's cheeks. Karyn wanted to close her eyes and revel in the soothing feeling the act brought.

"You need to go back. You're not safe here. We were never safe."

"But why? What's wrong?" she asked and her eyes moved over the woman's face, taking in the slight crease in her brows.

"We made a mistake by coming here. Now our enemy sits-"

A loud rumble cut the woman off as the ground shook beneath them. Karyn looked around to find streaks of black infiltrating the room, spreading on the walls, roof, and floors in an entangled mesh. It rushed towards them with a progression that resembled roots spreading in the soil.

The woman whose hands remained on her cheeks turned pale and Karyn could see the fear swirling in her eyes. But within those same brown eyes sparked courage and determination and Karyn could hear it when the woman spoke.

"Rynanda, you must not let the darkness consume you. It is a part of you now, but you can get it out. We may have died here, but this barren land holds no solace for your questions. Only within the white walls shall you find the answers you seek."

Just as the darkness was about to envelop them, the chair she sat on slipped beneath her and she fell to her back before her eyes shot open. With her hands by her side, and her eyes on the ceiling above, she gulped in large breaths of air and only sat up when the pounding in her chest had reduced.

"It's just a dream. It's just a dream."

She closed her eyes, but even in the darkness, the courage in the eyes of the strange woman shone brightly. She stood from her bed and rushed to the bathroom to splash water on her face. When her eyes came up to the mirror, she stared back into the woman's eyes. Her eyes.

Could it have been her mother?

The woman called her by a foreign name. Rynanda. Sure, she'd never seen her birth certificate and didn't know if she had any other name, but on her school file, it was simply Karyn Whyte. No middle name or elongated forms, and she never wondered about it. After all, what use was a middle name if no one even bothered to address you by it?

She rinsed her face once more before she went to sit on her bed. An odd silence wrapped around and tugged at her. Kara was still not back, and nothing was out of place for her to assume otherwise. Where was she? What had happened? Why hadn't she contacted her?

Jamie.

The name popped into her head before she realized it. He seemed to creep into almost everything now. Her aunt, Elowen, and now, her sister.

What if he did something to Kara? After all, she had told Kara to spy on him and hadn't heard from Kara since then.

The thought unnerved her, birthing panic deep in her stomach, so she tried to reason against it. If he couldn't see Kara, how could he have harmed her?

She turned to look at her alarm clock, but when her eyes settled on it, they doubled in size.

6:40 a.m.

Shit!

She shot up and rushed about her business, but it was only expected she got to school late. As she darted through the empty hallway, a thought bugged her. Anytime she was later than the first bell, Elowen would give her a quick call or text to check up on her. She also did the same for Elowen.

What made today different? Maybe Elowen got swamped with early morning duties. It could be anything, so why did it bug her so much? Today, all her classes before lunch were without Elowen, but she knew she wouldn't be at ease till she saw her best friend.

During the first class, she resolved she would rush to her lockers as soon as the bell rang so she would meet Elowen there. Because she had walked in late, the only chair available in Spanish class was in the front row, so she couldn't text Elowen.

Although Mrs. Elena articulated foreign words, Karyn couldn't hear her, as her thoughts were wreaking havoc in her mind. Questions raced and fought for attention and a pitting feeling swirled in her stomach, threatening to upend the organ and the contents in it. If she saw something barely irritating now, she would hurl out the two slices of bread she rushed on her way to school.

Something was wrong. She could sense it, feel it, sniff it if possible. She didn't know how she was so sure, but she was.

Her attempt at calming down was to take a deep breath, but it didn't go unnoticed by Mrs. Elena. She heard her name faintly and glanced to see Mrs. Elena's brows pinched in worry.

"Karyna," Mrs. Elena started. She always called everyone by the Spanish version of their name and if there was none, she would compose one herself. "¿Estás bien? You look like you've seen a ghost."

More like I've not seen one. She forced a smile and said, "It's nothing."

Mrs. Elena gave her a lingering look but nodded in response.

Her further attempts to focus ended up being futile. When the class ended, Karyn, true to her resolution, bolted out of the class. By the time she got to her locker, only a few students hovered around, and Elowen wasn't part of them.

She could be busy or I got here a bit too early, she thought. But after a few seconds, she whipped out her phone and dialed her best friend's number.

It was switched off.

She paced around on the spot in front of her locker, waiting and hoping Elowen would turn up. After a while, she saw Zack coming over. Once he saw her, concern forced his eyebrows to crease.

"You rushed out of class. Are you okay? You look pale. Did something happen?" he asked all at once.

"Have you seen Elowen today?" she asked instead.

"Uh no I've not. Is this about her?"

"Yes. Something doesn't feel right."

Feelings? Now she sounded like Kara.

"Have you called her?" his soft voice came through, despite the growing chatter of students around them who were oblivious to her worry.

"Yes, but it's switched off. She never switches off her phone, unless the battery's dead, and she never lets that happen either."

"Okay. Here's what we'll do. If we haven't seen or heard from her by the end of the day, we could check out her house to see if she's there. She might be down with something bad and may be too weak to call," he reasoned.

She tried seeing it from that point of view but couldn't shake off the feeling it was more than that. Where was Kara? Where was Elowen, and why did their absences feel connected?

Jamie.

"Zack, have you seen Jamie today?" If he was also absent today, she might as well just explode.

"I saw him with Gema and Marcela, as usual."

She remembered Jamie being at her house. They weren't all there then, but she kept the thought to herself. How would that help her state now if she disclosed that to Zack?

The bell rang, and it forced them to head to their separate classes. On her way, the speakers rang out, cracking into the hallways and plunging them into silence.

"Miss Karyn Whyte, please report to the principal's office. Miss Karyn Whyte, please report to the principal's office," came the school secretary's voice.

Normally, when the secretary called students to the principal's office, it meant they were in trouble, but not her. She was the SAC-VP. Of course, that didn't mean if she was in trouble, the secretary wouldn't call her, but most of the time, it was for official duty. Most of the time, Maria was also called. She was rarely called on alone.

She tried to gather her thoughts into a mental box before she got to the admin floor. She didn't want to get distracted by them while she was there, and she succeeded at that. By the time she knocked on Principal Johnson's door, she was level-headed once more. She could go back to her thoughts later, but she had to put duty first.

"Come in," she heard and pushed her feet to enter the office before she closed the door behind her with a gentle push.

Principal Johnson had her eyes on the PC positioned on the right side of the wide desk in front of her. Beside it was a book calendar, and a framed photo of her family, angled in a way that both the principal and whoever she was talking to had a view of the two boys who stood beside her and her husband. Their wide grins made their dark skins glow in a light only those with the love of their family had.

Karyn had never taken a family photo. Her aunt hated pictures and had even gone so far as to banish all mirrors in their house. While her uncle was simply not photogenic.

"Good afternoon Principal J. How can I be of help today?" she asked with her hands clasped behind her.

Two shelves stood like guards on her sides, tall and firm under the weight of books varying in sizes and colors. She doubted the principal knew what half of them contained as they remained untouched and in the same position every single time she visited the office. Just like the pile of books that sat on the left side of the wide desk.

"Please sit and give me a second." Principal Johnson gestured to a chair out of the two on the opposite side of the desk. Karyn's eyes flitted up to the wall behind the principal's chair where an enormous painting of the school hung, adding a sense of pride to the atmosphere.

"I didn't call you here for your duties." Principal Johnson's voice replaced the clacking of keys. The steady rhythm of the wall clock on her left became the only sound in the office as the principal took off her glasses and placed them on the desk.

"I just got off the phone with Mr. Park."

Elowen's dad. This was about Elowen. But why did the principal have to call her to the office?

"As Elowen is one of our stellar students, her absence in the first class today didn't go unnoticed," the principal started. "I have a very close relationship with her, so I wanted to know what could be the reason for her uninformed absence. But, after speaking with her father, I found out that she left for school this morning. He was as surprised as I was when I told him she wasn't here at school. Then, I thought about you. You and Elowen have a close relationship. Best friends?" the principal asked, and she nodded.

She was taking her time to process what this meant, and it was becoming quite clear.

"I wondered if she would have contacted you about her whereabouts or if she had any plans aside from school for today. I understand teenagers don't tell parents everything these days and to some extent that's fine, but not things like skipping school. If you know where she may have gone, you could at least share that with me to put us at ease," the principal finished.

That was it. The reason for her sudden and unending worry.

Elowen was missing.

♛ ♛ ♛

THERE wasn't much said between Karyn and Zack when they met at the end of the day. When he asked her about the speaker's announcement and her trip to the principal's office, she asked if he was still willing to follow her to Elowen's house, which he affirmed he was. That was the end of the conversation.

Where better to start her search for Elowen than her house?

She was thankful he didn't push for answers she couldn't give. How could she have explained her thought process if she was still grappling to understand it?

When they were ready, they headed off with him on his motorcycle, trailing behind her and her bike. They turned away from the road that led to her house and toward the one that led to Elowen's. Since Elowen walked to and from school every day, the distance wasn't so far and they got there in some minutes of her cycling and Zack dragging on behind.

"Are we just gonna walk up and ask her parents about it, or do you have something else in mind?" Zack asked.

She had told him everything on the short ride to Elowen's house, including the conversation she had with Principal Johnson and the ill feeling that plagued her. He listened without interruption.

"That's exactly what I plan to do. If Elowen is missing, someone must have abducted her, and they would have contacted her parents if they wanted ransom."

"How are you so sure about that?" Zack asked.

"That's what they always do in movies," she tried to say casually with a shrug, but her voice came out a pitch higher.

She didn't want to tell Zack that she felt the kidnappers had contacted Elowen's parents. A gnawing feeling had started from the pit of her stomach and moved along her arms and legs. It pushed her to this conclusion. If she was correct, he might seem suspicious of how accurate she was.

She noticed he looked uneasy when she mentioned her ill feelings about what could have happened to Elowen. Perhaps she was reading into something that wasn't there. It's not like looking at him made it any clearer to her what he was thinking.

She spun around, not giving him the chance to see through her half-lie. Half-lie because movies often showed people getting a message from the kidnappers, especially when they wanted ransom.

She walked up the stairs and onto the front porch before she pressed the doorbell that was just beside a blue sign with the number 12 printed in bold black. She caught the faint sound of the ding filtering through the windows on the ground floor, and just moments later, the door swung open.

♛
*A/N*

This chapter is quite important in the general scheme of things and from here on things go up a notch and don't stop. See it as the ball that rolls to meet the first dominos in a chain of dominos!

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ITNC: Karyn follows a trail that is led by her emotions, yet the path she chooses ultimately alters the course of her life.

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~
The Sparkling Authoress,
Mis. A
❤️