Swallowed by the City

I was wandering home from school when I saw something at my feet. I blinked. It was a notebook. But it wasn’t just any notebook. I knew that notebook. It was Lily’s notebook. Lily, who had been my best friend for 5 years. Lily, who had gone missing just last week, we were playing Sardines with the twins during recess. It took a long time to be sure beyond doubt that she was gone, since she had always been very good at hiding. Gingerly, I picked the notebook up and wondered if I should read it. In the end, I decided to bring it home and read it in my room so no one could read over my shoulder.

“Any idea where she might be?” Anastacia asked her sister.

“Well, let’s see what happened,” Aurelia answered, looking thoughtful. “I had just found her and was hiding with her, and two seconds later, you found both of us , and we decided to sneak up on Mia, since she was going to be the last person to find us anyway. And so we ran across the recess yard and attempted to look for her. When we couldn’t find her…”

Anastacia finished her sentence for her, “We realized Lily was gone too and assumed she had tricked us and hidden again after we ran away, and Mia had just found her. So we split up again…”

“and looked for Lily and Mia,” Aurelia continued. “After about five minutes of looking, I saw Mia running and was about to ask her what happened. And that’s when the annoying whistle blew.”

As I hurried along the sidewalk, eager to get home and read Lily’s notebook, I saw a puddle of water on the ground. I stopped quickly, and, being careful not to drop the notebook, I studied the footprints in front of the puddle. They were Lily’s footprints, I was sure of it, since I frequently saw her footprints when the ground was wet, but it wasn’t raining enough for indoor recess. When it happened, we were allowed to have a “walking only” recess.