“Mom,” Mia calls out as she trots down the staircase. She skips the last two wooden steps before she lands with a soft thud in the open lounge. “I’m so ready to get this over—”
she stops short.
Irene spins around, lowering her phone from her ear and turning the screen toward her chest, guilt steeping in every feature on her face. Mia groans inwardly, already knowing what’s coming.
“Let me guess, you have to go again?”
Irene lifts a finger to pause the conversation, she murmurs a quick excuse into the phone with an elastic smile before she ends the call with a hard sigh. She meets Mia’s eyes and surrenders a sheepish nod.
“How long?”
“Just two days, babe. Then I’ll be home for a while… before the next one,” she adds, wincing at her own words.
Mia shrugs indifferently. “Congrats, I guess.”
“You think you’ll be okay on your own?”
“Always am.”
“Of course you are, practically raised us both,” Irene says before gesturing to the kitchen. “Fridge and pantry are stocked. But because I’m such an amazing mother. I’ll send you money for takeout too.”
Mia’s lips twitch with the beginnings of a grin. She could already smell the fragrance of her favourite pizza.
Irene points back at her knowingly. “I know that look. Order as much pizza as you want, my peace offering to you…” she trails off to rummage her pockets before reeling out her car keys. “You get to use my car while I’m away, only because I don’t want you to miss a second of school. I need to get ready to leave, but by the time you get back from school today. I’ll be gone.”
Irene pitches them at her with a jingle and she catches the keys mid-air with one hand.
“Be good and stay safe. Go to school, come back. No gallivanting or going out.”
Mia snorts. “That would require me to have friends.”
An honour and forty five minutes later, the auditorium of Braidwood High is at full capacity. Every faculty member lines the front rows of the middle and left sections, their faces set in grim expectation. Students funnel into the remaining seats in a slow lurch of movement. A low hum of conversation buzzes across the hall, wary glances and tight-lipped conversations spoken through the corner of their mouths.
No one knows exactly how they’ve all been summoned to an unplanned assembly but the energy is brittle, the tension snaking through the hall, coiling tighter. Concerned curiosity hangs like dark ash in the air like a prelude to a wildfire. Mia’s eyes lock onto the stage where a single microphone stands front and centre under a white-tinged spotlight.
Then from the left wing, Principal Adkins emerges with a brisk and purposeful stride. He takes his place behind the microphone and surveys the sea of students, his hands clasped behind his back like a pastor ready to read an eulogy at a funeral.
“Good morning, Braidwood High,” he begins, his voice ringing through the hall, “and welcome to your first day back. And to the seniors… who, hopefully, will never experience it again after this year.”
A few polite chuckles ripple through the crowd, failing to lift tension’s heavy shroud. Then his demamoner darkens, the shift sharp without even the sound of his voice.
“I’ve called this assembly to share devastating news—and to ask for your cooperation.” A deep hush begins to fall, even breaths start to thin. “Towards the end of summer break…” he pauses like it’s too painful to utter what comes next. “One of our own went missing. Keila Venus.”
The name drops like a bomb. A chorus of gasps and panicked whispers erupts across the auditorium. Mia presses back into the seat, sinking into the shadows.
“Settle down,” Principal Adkin says quickly, fluttering his hands futilely. “Please. Settle down.” The students’ voices climb to a crescendo, panic on the verge of taking hold.
“Keila has disappeared but we are not powerless. With the help of the town, its people and the entire BPD, we are doing everything humanly possible to bring her home. Safely.” His gaze sweeps across the silent-choked crowd. “Your parents have already been informed. Attached to the email is a schedule for coordinated search efforts. The first which begins today, after school.” A sorrowful breath seeps out of his lips but the edges of his words are still sharp.
“If any of you know something,” he begins, his eyes scanning the crowd with unnerving precision like he’s looking for one person in particular. “Anything, even the smallest detail, do come forward. You can speak to the police through a direct call line, or talk to a teacher. And my door is always open, too. There is no judgement in confession. The only sin is suppression,” he says gravely. “If you’re withholding something, even if you weren’t involved. Even if it’s a secret you think is unrelated… Silence makes you just as complicit.”
Mia’s eyes drop to her lap, clamping shut for a scorching moment as her pulse pounds painfully in her ears. Then, with no further ceremony, Principal Adkins inclines his head.
“You’re dismissed.”
Not long after, Mia is slouched at the back of the classroom, barely registering the literature lesson she’d normally gleam some sense of fascination from. Her playbook lies open on a random page, her arms folded tight on the edge of her desk as if bracing for impact.
She stares blankly ahead until her ears catch it first—a result of hushed voices, speaking in low and urgent tones. Mia’s brows furrow as she glances sideways with a stare that could turn lakes into disks of ice. Three girls whisper in feverish bursts, two of them are sitting together. The one ahead twists around her seat to showcase her screen. A picture of Keila’s face, beneath it a long, captioned post with blocks of text.
“Right, class. I know we are forced to start the year on such a horrid note, but as they say. The show must go on,” Mrs Jefferson says sullenly and inhales a tremulous breath, fixing on an unconvincing smile. “So, let’s start by resuming where we left off in the previous term. By discussing Shakespeare’s use of the technique of elision, in which certain key events take place offstage in Macbeth. Why do you think he uses this technique?”
Several hands sprout. Miss Jefferson elects one volunteer. Suddenly, a vibration buzzes in Mia’s over-sized denim jacket. She pulls out her phone and checks the new message.
~Much Love,
Angie Venus. ~
~
The following day arrives like a shadow slipping beneath the door, unwelcome and unwanted. Mia ghosts through the school hallways like a tortured ghoul, numb to the drag of each passing period. The hours bleed together in a blur of lectures and half-formed thoughts but she feels every single one—pressing against her with steady pressure.
It didn’t take an expert investigator to figure out why she wanted to meet after all these years. Everyone in the town remembers how Erin vanished without a trace. And now Keila has disappeared, just the same, a haunting pattern etched into the bones of Braidwood, returning, repeating… reaping.
When the last bell shrieks, Mia flinches at the sound.
After scrambling up her scattered notes and textbooks, Mia moves with the tide of students pouring out of the building. When she’s finally in her car, she dumps everything in the passenger seat with the first throb of a headache pulsing in her temple.
She doesn’t even have to think about her route there as she drives on autopilot, a sense more primal than instinct and more permanent than memory. The roads eventually wind through the suburbs like old scars leading her to a house she hadn’t set sight on in seven years. Fifteen minutes later, she rolls into Keila’s neighborhood and the cold dread seizes blood and bone as the questions come in a quiet onslaught.
Her grip tightens on the wheel as her knuckles bloom white. The questions rise louder, now deafening like the shadows of death slouching towards her from every direction. Without warning, the Venus house approaches ahead, familiar, unchanged and yet… wrong.
She parks at the curb and kills the engine and silence snaps. Mia pulls the key free from ignition and opens the door, steps out and shuts it behind her. She arms the car with a button press followed by a faint beep.
Mia walks on and keeps to the neat pebble path that meanders to the front entrance. At the porch, she steps up the short wooden staircase, creaking underfoot with a weary groan. She knocks before she can abort, echoing three hard thuds like a gavel.
Seconds stretch…
Then the beige doors opens.
