Chapter 1

"Daniel Hendrickson, Jackson Carlson, Zachary Anderson, Kaitlyn Chase, Emily Banks, Alexandria Fleet, and Brooklyn Fairview. Seven students who have gone missing overnight. No one knows what happened, and no one knows why. The only thing they have in common is their friendship with Paris Railing, a recently deceased student from their high school who tragically died last week in a school shooting." The reporter explained.

The students of that very same high school walked in the door that day, completely and utterly afraid. Not one of them was concerned about their testing or anything else having to do with school. No. They were scared for their safety.

Uneasy, Desiree Sigils walked into her first period and sat down in her seat. She stared at the seat next to her, as if Emily Banks was just going to appear. That seat remained vacant that whole period, as Desiree knew it would. She wasn't the only one who was more focused on the chair than school. Even her teacher looked to the desk several times, ready to call on Emily to answer a question as she normally would when no one else knew the answer.

Every few minutes, a student was called down into the principal's office. No one said what it was about, but everyone knew. It was inevitable soon it would be Desiree's turn.

An hour later she was called down to talk. She walked down the deserted hall to the front of the building. She knocked on the office door and she heard someone inside tell her to come in. She slowly opened the door and walked into the room. She sat down across from her principal, Mrs. Martin.

She smiled at the student before she started talking. "Ms. Sigils, as you know, we've lost 8 students in the last week and a half. We are distraught over this loss, but we need to get on with the school year, and that means we need to find these students. Seven of them went missing just yesterday, and we need to find them as soon as possible. I was wondering if you knew anything about this atrocity, or if you know any of them well enough to know where they might go."

Desiree looked up from the floor and crossed her arms across her chest. She looked the principal in the eyes and glared, "Yeah, I knew all of them at some point. They knew me too. Loved bullying me.  I knew one of them very well, and she's dead now."

Mrs. Martin raised an eyebrow at her revelation, "Ms. Sigils, please lower your voice-" She started.

Desiree stopped her mid sentence, "Look Teach, I don't care about my volume, or if I get suspended. All I care about is the fact that the girl that stopped me from killing myself three times just died, and I couldn't do anything about it, because all the teachers, or so you call them, were completely oblivious to the fact that there was an armed student in the building!"

Mrs. Martin stood up and leaned on her desk, "Sigils, sit down. Now." She tried talking, but Desiree ran out of the room, slamming the door.

She ran out of the room and up the stairs. Completely passing her classroom, she ran through the halls and up another flight of stairs. Soon enough, she was standing on the roof of the building. She sat down on one of the benches and pulled her knees up so she could lean on them.

A minute later, she looked up and saw someone leaning against the guard rail, looking over the edge. The person looked back and looked Desiree in the eye.

The girl smiled, "Hey, Sigils. Still crying over that Martyr, as you all started calling her? Really, I think she deserved it. She was being a complete idiot, standing up to someone with a gun."

Desiree stood up and walked to the guard rail so she could look the girl in the eye. She stood on her tip toes to reach the other girl's face and glared at her. The girl smirked and laughed sadisticaly as she walked away, leaving Desiree standing alone.

Desiree started walking back to the doors, but then the girl yelled something else at her.

"Next time jump!"

She opened the doors, but looked back at Desiree, who had thrown her shoes at the wall and broken into a full sprint towards the guard rail. "As you wish!" She screamed back at the other girl. The door opened before it slammed behind her. Someone else had started running after her, but they were too late.

Desiree had jumped over the guard rail completely and was flying through the air. Her long, pink hair flew out of it's bun and started billowing around her.

She smiled to herself, and time seemed as if it was slowing down. She'd wanted to do that before, but ever time she tried, somehow, she was stopped by the one and only Paris Railing. Every night, she would go to the bride on the west side of town, just to make sure Desiree wasn't standing at it's edge as she had been the one night Paris had ever driven by there.

Now, Paris was gone, and there was no one there to stop Desiree with following through with jumping. In fact, it was like the world was egging her on, seeing if she had to guts to do it. It turns out, you shouldn't test that kind of thing, because maybe, just maybe, the person you're testing or joking with actually does have the guts and you just don't know it.

It was that moment. The other girl had overstepped her boundaries  and now she would have to deal with the consequences of Desiree's death. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't completely this random girl's fault, but Desiree hadn't gone up to that roof with the intention of jumping over the guard rail.

Soon enough, the ground was approaching, and someone was yelling at her from the roof. She landed on the concrete with a loud thud before everything went black. Her body laid lifeless on the ground.

Students on the west side of the school looked out their windows and screamed as they had watched the body of one of their fellow students fall past the windows seconds prior. They gathered around the windows and stared in horror at the body below them that was surrounded in a poll of her own blood.

Her pink hair was slowly being consumed with red and her clothes were soaking through. She was gone.

Above her, on the rooftop, a teenage boy was leaning over the edge of the rail in agony as he stared down at the body. If he had been a second faster, he would have grabbed her in time to stop her, but he didn't.

The girl from the roof ran to the rail next to him and stared down as well, surprised  and utterly horrified. She had not believed words could have such an effect on someone as hers did on Desiree.

Mrs. Martin stared out her window as she frantically talked to the paramedics on the phone. There is no way another student was gone. It wasn't possible.

But it was.

An ambulance showed up a few minutes later and she was taken away from the school, but there was still a pool of blood right outside the main entrance to the school. Everyone was dismissed instantly to go home, but no one moved for a long time.

Eventually, everyone was gone except for the two people who were still standing on the rooftop, staring at the pool of blood just as they had been doing for the last hour. Soon, the boy walked away from the edge, his head in his hands. He paced the roof and sighed.

He looked up at the girl a minute later. She was staring at him, "You know, you almost did it." She said.

He narrowed his eyes at her and his mouth dropped open, "You know, I wouldn't have had to try to stop her if you hadn't told her to jump! Don't think I didn't hear that! You aren't a saint, Eleanor, even though you think you are."

She looked taken aback, "She should know not to listen to me by now. Everyone knows I talk more crap that anyone else. Even I know. Lance, you aren't a saint yourself."

He rolled his eyes and started walking down the stairs back into the school. All the lights were turned off, but it was still only around noon.

He walked through the empty halls for several minutes before he found his way to the main entrance. The blood was still there, but it didn't faze him as he walked around it. About a block down the road, his phone rang.

He looked at the ID. It was Eleanor. He answered reluctantly, "What now?" He asked.

She sighed and started talking, "Look, I know you probably don't want to talk to me, but please don't hang up." He hovered his finger over the end call button for a few second before he decided to hear her out.

"Alright, fine. What could possibly be important right now?" He asked her.

"Lance," She started, happily, "She's alive."

His mouth dropped open. "How?"

He heard a car pull up behind him and stop. He turned around to see Eleanor getting out of her car on the road next to him, "Get in." When he hesitated, she groaned and rolled her eyes, "Look, I know you're going to walk to the hospital no matter what I say, so how about you make this easier for the both of us and just get in."

He grinned at her and she smiled for the first time in a few hours, "She's alive."

Author's Note

Newer chapters will be longer. I just wanted to get this part out.