Out of Sight

Chapter 1

 A chilly gust of air blew past my face as I walked down the crowded pathways of Arroyo Seco Junior High. 'God, it's cold.' I thought to myself as I burrowed deeper into my snow-covered scarf. The wet stuff crunched under my soaked boots, and chattering voices were raised in the crisp air.

 I loved the feeling of snow crushed against my favorite snow boots. I arrived at my science class. People started filling in one by one, and I followed. The seat was freezing as I sat down and got my supplies out. Mrs. Mahoney, the teacher, droned on and on about genetics. I busied myself by casting looks at the clock and taking notes on genetics. That subject is hard for me so I was concentrating on my paper.

The room fell quiet. Mrs. Mahoney had stopped talking. Those annoying boys stopped chatting during class. What happened? Suddenly, I looked up and I saw no one except for this guy, he hadn't noticed yet. He was still looking at his paper. I looked around the room wildly. Was I hallucinating? 30 people had just been in here, now there was only two. 

There was no one in the room except for him. I coughed loudly. He looked up, startled by the noise in the total silence. Had he not noticed the silence before? The boy's eyes widened in realization. "Wh-Where is everyone?" he gasped, eyes scanning the room.

I was just as shocked as he was. "I don't know!" I replied, voice rising in hysteria. "Everyone just vanished!" He looked around the room. "Is this a joke, because it's not funny!" he yelled. 'Wow this guy must be really self absorbed to think that I made 30 people disappear to play a prank on him.' "I did not play a joke on you! You think I made 30 people INCLUDING the teacher leave? No!" I was honestly getting annoyed at this point. 

Then, I calmed myself down. He's in shock. So am I. If I were anybody else, I'd think it was a joke too. There was no other possibility. "Alright, let's get out of the classroom and check the other ones." He only nodded, eyes still wide open. As I stood up and headed outside, I wracked my brain for his name. I didn't know what his name was. 

I knocked on the door of the class next to ours. No response. "Do you think everyone else disappeared too?" The boy's voice startled me, because he snuck up behind me without me noticing. "Um, I don't know. That's impossible, though!"

I cracked the door open a bit, and nearly shut it in surprise. There was no one in there too. "Hey, do you think that they went to some kind of assembly without us?" "We could check the K Hall if you want to." He nodded. We walked side by side to the main gathering room, where an assembly would usually be staged.

The silence frightened me. Even during classes, there would always be some noise emanating from the classrooms. Now there was just dead silence. We cracked open the door of the K Hall. Empty. "Alright, I'm starting to get freaked out." The guy murmured as we checked other classrooms fruitlessly. "So am I. Where could they have gone?!" I cursed under my breath.

"The entire school couldn't have disappeared in a minute. I only looked down at my paper for a few minutes and then they were gone! Urgh..." We wound up at the entrance of the school. I stared out at the endless expanse of houses. "We've checked practically all of the classrooms." I began. 

He seemed to know exactly what was on my mind. "Uh, you want us to leave school?" I turned to him. "What else could we do? I haven't heard about any major school field trip, maybe the neighbors have. We could ask." The boy closed his eyes.

 "Well... I guess we have no other choice. No one's in the office we can ask. We might as well try." I punched him in the arm playfully. "That's the spirit! Come on. The gate can't be that hard to jump."

 It turned out it was pretty hard to jump the gate. But we did it anyway in 5 minutes. As we sat huffing and puffing, he asked me something. "Hey, I never really got your name. If I'm walking out of school with someone, I might as well know their name." I rolled my eyes, and spoke. "It's Rebecca." "That's a cool name. I'm Chance."

The pale sun weakly shone down onto the sparkling snow as we crunched through the neighborhoods surrounding the school. None of the chimneys were trailing with smoke. Weird. Usually, practically every day of the winter, the air was putrid with smoke because people were using their fireplaces all the time. I knocked on a large house's door. 

No one answered. I rang the doorbell. Still no answer. "Maybe they're still sleeping." I said. "I'm not surprised. I wish I was still sleeping too." Chance nodded in agreement. "Let's try another house." We tromped through the snow, knocking on the door of house after house. 

There was no answer to any of them. After about 10 houses, I gathered a ball of snow and smashed it onto the ground in frustration. "Why is nobody answering their door? This is no better than school!" Chance looked around. "Something weird is up. This neighborhood is too quiet." "Ok, well how about we just go to my house and check if my parents are there, but they won't be happy to know I ditched school if I find them there, but I'm sure they will understand once we tell them the situation." 

I looked at him and waited for him to answer, but he just nodded. So we walked all the way there. It was a pretty long walk considering I usually took the bus home. God this is going to be a long walk. I struck up some awkward conversation after the first 10 minutes. "So... have you visited your elementary school teacher lately?" He stared at the quiet streets. No cars had passed by. 

"Yeah, just once. Her name is Mrs. Ranelle. She's actually a pretty nice teacher." I nodded, and shuffled my feet a little. "I have too. My teacher's name is Mr. McDonald. He's also nice." Chance nodded too, and we just nodded for a good hour. at least it felt like that. Oh my god, it was so awkward. Finally, we arrived at my house. 

It was a fancy two-story house with large windows. I rapped on the door 5 times, and hollered, "Mom, Dad, are you home?" I was dreading the answer, or lack of it. My heart sank as there was no answer. "Hm, maybe they're upstairs or something." I muttered, frowning. I pulled out my phone and called my mom's cell phone, then my dad's a couple of times. 

They didn't pick up. Chance stated the words I dared not speak. "...Maybe they disappeared too." I stared down at my phone clutched in my hand. "No, I refuse to believe that. Come on, let's go through the back door." "Isn't that breaking into your house, though?" "Dude, they're not answering the door or their phones. What else could we do?!" I snapped.

 He shrugged, then followed me. I unlocked the gate that led to our backyard, and flinched as it screeched open in the unnatural silence. Chance followed me to my grassy backyard, the grass covered in crunchy snow. The door from the backyard was unlocked, so I easily slid it open and into my family room. "Mom? Dad?!" I hollered at the top of my lungs. 

I wasn't surprised when no one answered me, but my heart was beating faster and faster. Where were my parents? They couldn't have disappeared too! Without me?! "Come on, you search downstairs for them, I'll search upstairs." I told him gruffly. Chance nodded, then set off to look around the large house. I covered my face with my hands and took a deep breath. I thought, 'It's ok. We'll be fine. We'll find out why everyone disappeared. And I'm not entirely alone, at least. I've got Christian.'

"Did you find anything?" I asked Chance as we gathered on the first floor. He shook his head, to my disappointment. I sighed, and looked at my feet. "Me neither." I raised my head again, looking at him. "...Now what? We've checked my parent's house, everyone seems to be missing, what do we do now?" 

Chance could obviously tell that I was starting to panic, "Well...I guess it wouldn't hurt to check some other houses." I sighed, and nodded in agreement. It was the best we could do at this point. As we were heading out of my house, Chance suddenly tripped. I instinctively reached out to help him. "Are you okay?" "Yeah, I'm fine." he replied, giving a dirty look at the spot of ground that tripped him.

Suddenly, his glare softened into a gaze of surprise and interest. "What?" I asked, and sat down on the ground next to him to try to get a better look at what he was staring at. The boy reached out a few feet in front of him, and took hold of a small object. It was grey and metallic, and look a little like a calculator. On the back, small intricate letters were inscribed: IoS. 

We both inspected the object, curious. "IoS? What, like, the iPhone? Cause if this did come from Apple, it must have been from the 19th century!" I joked, poking the metal rectangle tentatively. Suddenly, the screen lit up and it started beeping.

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