Sage had gone through three glasses of Diet Coke before she realized it wasn't that big of a deal. Her fingers laced around her nearly empty glass as she stared at the brown ice that still bubbled with carbonation. It accurately depicted exactly how she felt in her stomach. Bubbles and butterflies.

The café was a cute yellow building that someone had crushed between a dark dank pub that's windows were too dirty to even see a reflection in and an ugly vomit green flower shop that sprayed enough pollen into the air to leave seventeen people choking on the sidewalks.

Not many people knew it existed and even less actually dared go inside. But Sage had found the quaint building (purely by mistake) and she'd made it her fortress of solitude. Textbook walls, pencil soldiers, and paper land that stretched the length of the little table world. A water tower glass of Diet Coke that was never empty for long.

It wasn't that big of a deal. Not at all. The school wasn't a military prison lock down and the lockers were hardly bank vaults.

Anyone could've gotten into Sage's locker. Any one of the bleary-eyed, sluggish zombies in the high school could have thought it was their locker, forced it open, and left a notebook in it. It probably happened often.

Despite that, Sage swallowed another fizzing gulp of Diet Coke. The last thing she wanted to do was see her practically empty book bag sitting in the seat next to her like a worn Jansport boyfriend. The backpack that held only one thing.

The thing about people mistaking lockers and forcing them open and whatnot, is that it required a certain amount of person to be there. Sage knew-- everyone in the whole town knew-- Lucy Maverick was not around to be casually leaving a notebook in Sage's locker.

Sage didn't know what to think about how it got there. But the longer it stayed in the bottom of her bag the more it distracted her from her thoughts.

It was inscribed with gothic font, LM on the cover to which the bored owner had scribbled doodles one with a purple pen. Smiley faces capped the corners with comical tongues sticking out as if they were either going to vomit more ink or just continue stare creepily into your soul. A single silver star sticker was stuck on the top of the imprinted "L".

On the inside cover was Lucy's full name in perfect fluid cursive. Just thinking about it made Sage's stomach flip. Under her name was a detailed drawing, a green dinosaur with purple accents. Lucy had obviously put a lot of thought and time into making it and coloring it. Sage felt that by looking at it, even as just briefly as it had taken her to recognize the name and freak out, she was looking at something sacred. It was just a dinosaur drawing though.

A dinosaur drawing done by a missing girl.

Sage didn't know how to feel about it. She'd never met Lucy Maverick. It was one of those things that just seemed to happen. Sage tended to run by herself, a loner of sorts. Her best friends were books and people often forgot she was there when she was quiet for long enough.

Sage didn't really mind. Of course sometimes she wondered what it would be like if she had friends who could actually reply, or someone to have sleepovers with. But she liked being alone and enjoying the silence that other human beings took for granted.

Lucy, however, seemed to be the exact opposite. Sage constantly overheard fun, exciting stories about her and her friends during classes. Some of them were outrageous, too. Convincing a teacher to discuss movie plots an entire block instead of teaching science? Turning in essays about cats for a history grade? Just thinking about it made Sage wary. Stuff that ridiculous could not be real.

Lucy and Sage just didn't run in the same circles.

"Hey, Sage, you want another coke?" Olivia asked.

Sage glanced up from her dark brooding on the secrets to life to see the grinning face of the single waitress. Olivia Smith was as close a friend as Sage got. They knew each other's names, made small talk whenever Sage came, and occasionally they both sang the words of a song if it came on in the background.

Olivia was as generic as her last name. She had sandy blond hair and warm brown eyes that twinkled like thousands of stars whenever she started laughing. Her smile was wide as if today was the best day of her life. She always had something to smile about. But something about her smile today seemed bigger, brighter, more blinding-headlights like.

"Ah, no thanks," Sage pushed away her empty glass. She collected her piles of homework that she didn't actually do, and shoved them into her green paint splattered bag pretending like she didn't see the notebook that wasn't hers laying in the bottom.

Olivia smiled, "Drinks on me today, okay?" She played with the straws in her apron front pocket humming a song Sage didn't recognize. She put a hand up when Sage tried to protest, "No, I want to do this! Come on, Sage! I'm in such a good mood!"

"You're always in a good mood, Olivia."

If she heard that comment nothing about her excessive happiness was affected. She scooped up Sage's glass and did a ditzy twirl around the table. Then she laughed at herself for no reason.

"Olivia, are you okay?" Part of Sage was worried. What was wrong with her? Was she high? Had she inhaled a lung-full of the flowers next store? Maybe she'd just cracked under the pressure of Mrs. Cooper's dreaded flashcard quizzes.

But the waitress waved her off. "Is it a crime to be happy?" Olivia pulled a cloth out of another one of her pockets and scrubbed a table that was already clean. "If you must know, the boy I like kissed me this afternoon!" She sighed, her mind's eye seeing her teenage Prince Charming.

Sage made an 'o' with her mouth and nodded to herself. She should've known. If it wasn't pollen induced hallucinations, then it had to be something with a boy.

She left Olivia Smith humming in the back of the tiny café, and ventured cautiously into the outside world. With her backpack slung over one shoulder and jacket zipped up tight, Sage thought she was ready. But stepping onto the sidewalk she found herself hesitating again.

The autumn breeze carried the sounds of lively conversation between people from down the road that Sage had never met as it tussled her dark brown hair. Leaves skidded the road and children's laughter made the day seem a lot warmer than it really was.

The front page of a newspaper lay on a black outdoor table flapping every once in awhile in the wind. Sage didn't have to glance at it to know the bolded title. It had been the same thing all week: Missing Maverick!

They were really milking the story. A teenage girl gone missing. Was it just that she'd gotten lost in the town she had grown up in? Was it a kidnapping? A murder? An alien abduction?

Sage shuffled her feet. If anything, Sage believed Lucy had just run off. She'd probably be back in a couple days. Admittedly, a week was rather long for her to be on her own but at least Sage's idea was plausible. Kidnapping, really? Come on, get real!

Sage steeled herself, drawing on the all the energy and bravery that came from her glasses of Diet Coke. She pointed herself towards the suburbs and strolled towards the last house Sage wanted to go to.

But it didn't matter that Sage had never been invited to Lucy's house. It didn't matter that before the beginning of this week, Sage had never even considered Lucy lived in town. Everyone knew where Lucy Maverick lived now.

With every step, Sage felt like her bag was getting heavier. As if some invisible jerk was placing cinder blocks in her pack just to laugh as she struggled to keep moving. Step after step, Sage focused on moving. She was sure if she stopped now she'd chicken out entirely.

She couldn't. She never would want to try again if she backed down now. It was her responsibility to return Lucy's strange notebook to her mother and explain how she found it in her locker and how, no, she does not know where Lucy is and that she had never met Lucy before this, and-- yeah there was no way she was doing this.

Sage stopped out front of the house that was featured on Wednesday's front page. The driveway had one car, meaning at least one person was home. That was enough to make all those carbonation butterflies come fluttering back like clingy best friends Sage did not want.

She stood there long enough for her hand to go cold. No one came or went from down the street. It was like the Maverick's street was it's own bubble of stopped time.

Come on, Sage. She thought to herself, It's just one person. Give them the book and then you can run all the way home and watch all the Netflix shows that you want to.

While that was a good plan, Sage couldn't move her feet. At least, she couldn't bring herself to walk confidently onto the porch, ring the doorbell, and shove Lucy's diary into the hands of whoever answered the door. What if it was Lucy's mom?

Then as if sensing her presence, the front door started to open.

Sage panicked. She scrambled to the mailbox and yanked open the fashionable black door. She didn't hesitate in throwing the notebook inside and slamming it shut with a noise that resembled a gunshot.

Sage was running back down the street before the noise faded. If someone really wanted to know who put that book in the mailbox, they could just DNA test it or whatever. Sage didn't know a thing about Lucy, but she was glad she'd returned that book. For some reason that book made her uneasy and to have it out of her possession was a weight off her back.

It was a relief Sage didn't realize she'd relished until the next morning before classes when she opened her locker and a leather notebook with the imprint "LM" tumbled out into her lap.