The day her dad disappeared was the day Molly Lovebourg decided she was done for.
It was a Wednesday, the worst day of the week, when Molly was sitting at her desk at the back of her History class, when her teacher Mr. Trentlake had just—she disappeared. There was no poof. There was no sound. She was just—gone.
At first Molly hadn't noticed. She'd never noticed. School wasn't her thing. She was so out of it all the time, so in her own world, but she managed to get B's and C's. She wasn't the best student, but she got by. Now, the only thing that snapped her back into focus was a boy next to her saying, "Hey! Did you see that?"
He was talking to his friend, and suddenly Molly recognized them both. The one talking was Quinn. The other, his friend, was Sam. School Bus Sam. She'd been in his class the day he saved all of their lives, when the bus driver had had a heart attack and Sam took the wheel.
Molly tuned in to listen.
"Yeah." Sam said, turning his head to Quinn. He was talking quietly, as if he wanted no one else to hear. "Mr. Trentlake…." He seemed at a loss for words.
"Poofed?" Quinn suggested.
"..Yeah." Sam said dreamily. "He poofed."
More of the same questions fluttered across the room. Where did Mr. Trentlake go? Is this a trick? Is this real? Why isn't he coming back?
Molly craned her neck around Quinn out the window. A car had smashed into an apartment building across the street, a silver Honda Civic. Smoke faintly came out from the hood. The only thing she noticed was that there was no one behind the wheel.
She almost jumped with excitement as the door opened. Mr. Trentlake! She turned so fast her long red hair smacked her face. But it wasn't her teacher. It was Astrid Ellison.
Everyone had thought that it was Mr. Trentlake, too. So what Astrid saw as a bunch of deranged, frantic teenage facing staring at her. She raised her eyebrows and some of the boys recoiled.
"Where's you teacher?" she forehead crinkled.
There was a collective shrug. "Poof." Quinn said.
"He's not out in the hallway?" A skinny girl asked.
"No." Astrid frowned. "No teachers are. Something weird is going on. My whole math study group….." She restrained from saying 'Poofed'. "..Disappeared."
Sam choked. "What?" immediately you could tell from his face he didn't mean to say it. Astrid stared at him.
"They disappeared," she repeated. "They're gone."
Awkwardly, Sam stood up. He walked stiffly to the door, and Astrid stepped away so he could walk past. Molly crinkled her eyebrow at Astrid, not really knowing why. But Quinn followed Sam, and that seemed to break the ice. Kids got up, piling out the doors, not really knowing where they were going, but just knew that they had to go somewhere than that room. But Molly took her time. She was in no rush to leave. She knew her whole family was gone, because she was the youngest of her whole family. She was an only child. She for some reason she got the feeling she was alone. She walked slowly to the door, her eyes lingering on the window. What had really happened? She knew it was more than just a freak accident. It was planned. Some kind of reaction had made this. She started to feel claustrophobic as she walked out the door, as if the world was closing in on her. She had nowhere to go. Her only friend….she only had one friend, wow, she was lame. Her only friend was Alexis, a tall girl that was in high school, while Molly was only in 8th grade. She lived a few blocks from her own house, and right then Molly really had nowhere to go.
Kids were everywhere in the halls. Two boys were talking to Sam, Quinn, and Astrid by the teacher's lounge. She didn't glance at them twice. She pushed through kids frantically trying to call with their cell phones, but there was no service. One boy asked her "Is your phone working?"
Molly squinted. "I haven't tried." She said. "But I'm assuming it doesn't."
The boy, taken aback, didn't care as Molly kept going, swishing through the circular, spinning doors or the front of the school. The streets were empty. Only a few kids had had the guts to venture outside, like her. She wondered if Alexis had gone home yet. She was about to find out.
She passed a pitiful looking house with a small cat being the only person occupying it. It was a tabby cat, with thick orange fur, and a scowl across its face. Molly took pity on it, since it was locked up in a crate, and kicked the door open, and opened the hatch. The cat rubbed its head on her shin affectionately before scampering off.
Molly sighed and walked on. Whatever was happening, she knew it wasn't good. But there had to be some adult out there. Because now she'd decided that all the adults had disappeared, not the kids.
She thought faintly about the disaster that had made Perdido Beach's nickname "Fallout Alley". Could that be something having to do with it? She didn't have time to think about it now. She approached Alexis' house and walked awkwardly up the steps. She rang the doorbell, but no one answer. She knocked on the door, and then she heard footsteps.