Chapter 1

"Klang!" Lockers banged closed around me as high school students rushed to get to class or lunch, before the tardy bell rang and the hall monitors came out in full force ready to hand out little red slips of paper assigning detention for daring to wonder the school halls without a pass. As I too closed my locker, getting ready to go to eat what the school deemed, "nutritional food", I heard a voice call out, "Kara!".

I turned around to see my best friend, Luke, weaving through the crowd. Luke was a tall, lanky teen with his height being his most defining physical feature. Unimpressive brown hair shadowed dark brown eyes and plain facial features. For all of his thin features and long limbs, he moved gracefully through the crowd like some big cat moves through jungle trees. This skill in movement served him well on the school's soccer field as the midfielder of our varsity team.

Luke grinned as he sidled up to me. "You ready to go try the mystery food? I bet you ten bucks you can't eat half." Jackson High was not a big or overly well-funded school. It was the only high school within a twenty mile radius. Which just spoke to the small size of the town that fed its student population. They were not poor by too many means, but the people on the budget committee seemed to have decided that what money the school brought in should not be focused on providing gourmet meals for the students. Long story short, we got the same mush that the other public schools got, just with fancy names. It had been a long standing joke between Luke and myself. You had to take your laughs when you could. High schools everywhere sucked, Jackson was no exception.

"I bet you the food will come alive and try to eat me," I replied. Luke just snickered and led the way to the cafeteria. As we waited in line, I searched the crowded lunch room for our third member of the Troublesome Trio ™ , as dad liked to call us. I spotted Racheal at a round red table in the far corner. Racheal, like me, was small and compact. We were both on the track team and we both liked dogs over cats. That was where our similarities ended. Racheal had short pixie cut blond hair with blue gray eyes. They were a stark contrast to my shoulder length brown hair and green eyes. She smiled and waved with her vegetable of the week. Racheal was adamant that school food was the worst thing for a person and was on a health food kick. Every week she brought in some new healthy food and declared it to be the new super food. Not that she couldn't out eat five football players when it came to pizza.

I waved back and looked up from my musing about this morning's history lesson on some famous person who conquered some country that no longer existed to see a lumpy brown substance land on my tray. A glance behind the counter showed today's meal to be meatloaf with potatoes and an apple. At least we got an apple. The school had been on a banana kick for the last month. Luke made a frown at the food, glanced at me, and laughed. I was sure I had a lovely look on my face that was the twin to his scowl. "Looks like something that my cat hacked up," he commented. I made noncommittal grunt and gave the old woman my lunch card before following Luke to the table Racheal had saved for us.

We plopped down into plastic chairs. Racheal started in on her whole grain something something sandwich, after tossing a glance at our food and a sympathetic look at Luke and me. "You guys look like you could use some actual food. The only safe things in that meal are probably the apple and the milk. Even those may be questionable."

Luke picked up his fork and mentioned "Well, Kara and I have a bet. Ten dollars for her if she can eat half of everything and ten for me if she can't." I cautiously poked my food with my spoon. "Yeah, but I think neither one of us is going to win. I bet this stuff is going to come alive and start a lunch revolution the likes of which have never been see. In fact, I think I just saw movement." Racheal snorted and rolled her eyes. "Speaking of movements, Bryan's fangirls seem to have started one."

I looked across the room to see Bryan, the school's most popular guy sit down with his jock friends who all seemed to be surrounded by at least ten individuals of the female gender for each male at the table. Bryan had the classic good boy athletic look. Short blond hair and sky blue eyes with strong facial features. His number one fan, Alex flitted around him like an anxious bird. With her black hair and icy blue eyes with an attitude to match, she would be better described as a raven waiting for a person to be at a low point before sweeping down to steal whatever she could. I shrugged and pointed out, "The poor guy has enough girls fawning after him, what are a few more going to hurt?" Luke gave an unreadable look toward the spectacle and began to shovel food in his mouth. I glanced at the clock and noticed I had ten minutes left before classes started. Realizing this, I also began the process of numbing my tasted buds to all sensation and began eating.

As it turns out, I wasn't able to scarf down half of me food and spent the five minutes of time before class eating my apple and a granola bar from my bag. Math went by with numbers going in one ear and out the other. My Spanish class also seemed to take no time at all. Languages were my forte and conjugating verbs was nothing challenging. Before I knew it, I was meeting back with Racheal and Luke at our lockers. We all exchanged our book bags for sports bags and Luke went to the soccer fields while Racheal and I went to the track.

The school's track circled the football field, so the track team got to spend lots of quality fun time with the football team. The football players had pointed out that we were stuck dodging their players and added that we were going to be dodging them for the rest of our lives because they would be the ones taking our funding and spots in college. Most of the team silently bristled but did not dare retaliate for a month after the jab had been brought up. That was until Racheal pointed out that we were running laps around their whole team. This cut off any more communication between most players and both teams continued their practices pretending the other did not exist.

This silence would have gone on longer if Bryan hadn't come up to me outside of the girl's locker room and asked, "So, do you guys really need to practice here? You should all be good enough that you can run anywhere. I mean running in circles is kinda pointless, right?" I opened my mouth, but was slow to respond because of a few reasons. First was the fact that I didn't even think Bryan knew I existed. The second was that I wasn't sure if it was a compliment, a statement, a question, or an insult. The last was that coach Barnes called us over at the end of his… observation for lack of a better word. Racheal shot me a questioning look before coach began her speech.

Coach Barnes was an imposing figure. At five feet zip she had graying hair tied up in a ponytail and sharp eyes that could follow you like a hawk. She was fair, but stern and took no excuses. She spent the next ten minutes informing us that we were going to be splitting up into groups of sprinters, middle distance, and long distance runners. Each group would be doing a work out meant for them and any cut distance would be made up at the end of practice. I waved goodbye to Racheal as she went with the sprinters and I joined my fellow long distance runners.

Any worries and troubles became meaningless as my feat ate up the pavement. Miles stretched behind me and in front of me with no clear end or beginning. I began to think about the fall break that would be mine to enjoy after this practice. Two long weeks of freedom. Dad would be home and I could spend time with him and hanging out with my friends.

Eventually practice came to a sweaty tiring end. Coach Barnes sent us off with a clear warning that any slacking over break would be severely punished when we came back. We were a year round team, and we would darn well act like one. Racheal just blinked when I mentioned Bryan's statement and dismissed it with a tiered sigh. He was probably trying to cause trouble and the best this would be to ignore him. I filed the incident in the back of my mind for later review as we met Luke at the soccer field and we headed home together.

Luke was happy to fill the silence on the walk home with endless chatter about goals and defensive midfielders. He barely noticed as Racheal mentioned that we had very little idea what he was talking about. As she turned off onto her road, she gave me a wry grin as though to tell me I was on my own to suffer soccer mania. Luke stopped his rambling long enough to wish her farewell and reminding her that we would be meeting sometime next week to see a movie. She nodded and hastily escaped as Luke picked up his monolog again. I got out my phone to check for any messages from Dad.

Dad had started his own business after mom had died when I was four. He spent most of his time in the big city selling his product. He would text me every day when he got home to tell me he made it back okay. He had taken a week off to spend time as a family together with me.

I frowned at my phone. There was no message today. "Luke, dad didn't text me today. He's normally so consistent with his texts. You could set a clock to them." He immediately stopped midsentence. He had switched to his opinions on the upcoming math exam waiting for us after break without me noticing. He leveled a serious look at me. "We should probably get you home. He may just have forgotten. He's been pretty swamped lately."

We picked up the pace and I ran up the steps to the third floor of my apartment building. I unlocked my door with the spare key from the planter and Luke closed the door quietly behind him. We searched the whole apartment. Nobody. I called Dad's cell and work. Both went immediately to voicemail. My dad was gone.