There are some things you just never want to open your front door to; murderers, preachers, door-to-door salesman. Today however, it was none of the above. Today it was, in Charity's opinion, something worse than all three combined. A man and a woman who looked to be in their late twenties, stood in the entrance to Charity's house, wearing Police Officer uniforms, with grim expression spread over both of their faces.
"Miss Charity Davenport?" the male policewomen asked. Charity responded with a silent nod of the head. "We have a serious situation to notify you about Miss Davenport."
"What's happened officer?" Charity stuttered over her words nervously.
"We need to ask you a few questions about Skylar Branning, if you could please accompany us to the station we can get this done quickly," the female police officer stated formally.
A lump had now formed in Charity's throat, what had Skylar done now? Skylar had always been a reckless, liveing in the moment person but what could he have done to peek the police officers interest, and why did they look so sullen?
After twenty minutes the police officers, who Charity had learned were named Ellen Winter and Blake Walker, and herself were entering a stark white room. The only furnishings were a black table and a set of black chairs. Two of the chairs were already occupied by people Charity knew very well, Dakota Johnson and Tabitha Maxwell, two of her three best friends. Three other blank chairs sat vacant, which Charity assumed were for Ellen, Blake and herself.
"Officer can you please tell us what is going on here?" Dakota practically begged Ellen and Blake for information as we sat down in the empty chairs.
"Miss Branning's parents reported her missing at a quater past ten this morning, she's been gone for the last fourty- eight hours, she also reported that you three were the last ones to see her. You were supposed to be having a sleepover on Friday night and Miss Branning never returned home after that night," Ellen explained to the group who were listening intently to the officer talk, Tabitha's mouth dropped open to form an 'o' shape as Ellen spoke.
"Skylar never showed up, she called an hour after she was supposed to be at my house and said she had contracted the flu. She told us that she was curled up on her couch with a blanket, a box of tissues, a cup of hot chocolate and was about to turn on The Notebook. We haven't heard from her since then," Tabitha explained to Ellen who was chewing on her bottom lip as she considered Tabitha's words.
"And you didn't try to convince her to come over anyway?" Blake spoke up for the first time.
"You don't try to convince Skylar of anything, once she made up her mind she stuck to her guns," Charity stated.
"I see, so do you have any idea where she would have gone. A favourite place of hers, maybe she went to see a boyfriend?" Ellen asked us.
"Skylar's favourite place was the mall and you don't stay there for two days in a row, not even Skylar was that crazy about shopping, and Skylar doesn't do boyfriends only a long list of flings," Tabitha told them.
The questioning went on for another hour and a half before the officers were happy enough with the girls' answers to let them go. Blake scribbled down notes as the girls rattled off answers to all of Ellen's questions, the three girls gave as much detail to the police about Skylar's life and that Friday night as they could but none of the information was any good to the officers. Ellen and Blake had only let the girls go because they were either telling the truth about not knowing the whereabouts of their friend or they were just extremely good liars, the officers still had no insite to where the issing girl could possible be.
Charity, Tabitha and Dakota didn't feel like going home after there long questioning session, so instead they walked to a nearby park, the only one in the small town of Burlingwood. Considering the town was only populated by about three thousand people they only needed one park to satisfy the needs of the towns citizens.
The three seventeen year old girls sat under the large Oak tree on the south-east side of the park. Charity lay her head in her hands so that she could think about the nights events without being distracted by the squirells running around the grass or the birds flying from tree to tree, illuminated by the late afternoon glow of the sun. Tabitha twirled her shoulder length brown hair as she basked in the late afternoon sunlight, she spread her lengths out infront of her and leaned back against her hand that wasn't busy playing with her hair, she wracked her brain for any clue to lead her to her best friend Skylar. Dakota drew her knees in to her stomach and wrapped her arms around them to hold them in place, she felt exhausted from all the crazy events that had unravelled during what was supposed to be a care-free Sunday afternoon. All three girls wore glum expressions on their faces.
"They think we did something horrible to her, don't they?" Tabitha spoke up after a couple of moments in stark silence.
"They wouldn't have questioned us if they didn't think we knew something. But we need to worry about Skylar right now, not ourselves. I know that she's reckless but she wouldn't dissapear for fourty-eight hours without telling one of us where she is," Dakota replied, panic eminent in her voice.
"Do you think somebody's done something awful to her?" Charity asked.
"I'm not sure but we should start to head home, I don't think it's safe right now and it's going to get dark soon." Dakota bit down on her bottom lip nervously before sweeping her eyes over the park, but nothing looked particularly out of the ordinary. A couple lay in the soft green grass happily making out, some squirrels rustled leaves in the trees and birds scavanged for food scraps that people had carelessly left on the ground.
"I don't want to be alone right now, sleep over at mine?" Tabitha asked the other two girls.
"Yeah, we need to stick together," Dakota agreed.
The small group of girls walked silently across the park, and the two blocks it took to get to Tabitha's. The sun set slowly behind them and the girls made it to their house just before the sky turned dark and the street lights automatically turned themselves on.
Tabitha poured her friends a cup of cold water from the glass bottle she had put in the fridge earlier that day and the girls sat down on the three-seated sofa. The group of girls normally sat in this place to watch movies and eat popcorn during there biweekly sleepovers, two girls normally sat on the couch with one girl on either side sitting in the one-seated sofa chairs. But with Skylar missing all three girls had made the decision to sit on the larger couch. None of them made themselves comfortable, instead they each sat stiffly, with two hands around their glasses of water.
Tabitha put the groups favourite movie, Mean Girls, in to the family dvd player and the girls stared at the screen as the movie played a long. Nobody laughed at the jokes the actors made, they just stared at the television emotionlessly. It didn't feel the same without Skylar. Butterflies grew in all three of their stomaches and horrible thoughts ran threw their brains, they all made up scenarios in their head of what could have happened to Skylar, or what could be happening right now.
As the movie drew to an end the girls decided to pack up for bed, Dakota and Charity had always kept blankets, pillows and spare clothes at Tabitha's house considering how much more time they spent at her house that theirs. Tabitha's family was moderately rich, they had a big house with a pool, air conditioning for the warmer months and heat for the colder of them. Tabitha's room was also bigger than any of the other girls and had two beds large enough to hold two girls each, so they spent the most time there, it was just a lot more convinent for them.
Tabitha turned the door knob to her bedroom and swung the door open wide. The first thing her eyes laid on was the vintage cabinet that stood on her back wall, but it had changed since the last time any of the girls had seen it. Tabitha dropped the blanket she had been grasping tightly as she read the words 'The bracelet will guide the way' , that had been neatly written on her cabinet doors.
Tabitha slowly walked towards the cabinet and as she reached it she shakily traced her finger down the front of it. A plastic sandwhich bag had been stuck on the wall with sticky tape. Tabita tore the plastic bag from the cabinet door and peeked inside of it, but immediately dropped it as she recognised what the bag contained. Skylar's charm bracelet, the one that the girls had all chipped in for on her sixteenth birthday. All the charms signified an important event in Skylar's life.
"This wasn't written in pen," Tabitha announced to the other girls, as if it wasn't obvious to them all.
"Nail polish," Dakota whispered.
"Not just any nail polish, it's Butter London's Scallywag, Skylar's favourite colour," Charity said as tears began to fall from her cheeks, down to the floor.
AUTHORS NOTE-: This is my new book called Deceive me, to my loyal Violet Adrenaline fans: no this is not going to be like all my others story, I will be working on both these stories at the same time instead of replacing that one with this one. This story may seem creepy and spooky at time, so if you're easily scared you should probably click out of this right not, infact you should probably just click out of the internet and never come back ever again, it's a dark and evil place. Song on the side is for your listening pleasure and actually has nothing to do with the story except for the fact that I've had it on repeat for the last three hours because it is just the best thing I've ever heard.