I had to end the last chapter there because I am a SUCKER for cliffhangers.
Anyway...
***
Chapter Thirteen
Aftermath
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was trees. Stupidly I thought, "Wait, this isn't my bedroom!"
Actually, I couldn't remember actually going to sleep. Then Smith's face came into focus and I remembered everything that happened yesterday. Yesterday? No, today. It's the same day.
"Ari? Are you okay?" Smith asked.
I sat up quickly. Too quickly; dizziness rushed to my head and I squinted. "Yeah, I'm fine. But...that girl!" I suddenly remembered. "There was a man in a hoodie-she's getting kidnapped! Is she okay?" I said breathlessly.
"What happened? Who's getting kidnapped?" asked Smith. Quickly I told him about what I saw.
He stood up. "Becca, make sure Ari is okay. I'm going to go check out the place where her task took place." He hurried away.
"I'm fine," I told Becca.
"I'm just going to make sure," she said, then asked the class if anyone had x-Ray vision. One kid did.
"Check for any breaks of fractures," Becca told him.
I felt awkward with the kid looking up and down my body, but at least I didn't have any breaks or fractures. Once that was established, I stood up and brushed dirt off myself. "What happened?"
Evi came up to me. "We don't know. We just found you out cold on the ground. You really don't know what happened?"
"All I remember was seeing that girl being dragged away in the middle of being shot at, and I didn't know what to do, so I just ran at them and right before I hit...." I trailed off. "That's all."
"Being shot at?" Becca asked.
"By darts," I clarified.
"Ari...your task had nothing to do with darts," said Becca.
"What? But that's what it said on my envelope," I say.
"Show me," said Becca. I handed her the envelope with the yellow sticker.
"This isn't right," Becca said upon reading it. "You weren't supposed to get another envelope. Your task was to count the number of trees deep the forest was."
"Oh," I say. "It's four hundred and thirty two."
"How'd you know that?"
"I counted them anyway, as I ran down here. I'm not sure why."
She shrugged. "Well, that's good, but I still don't understand how you got the wrong envelope. Smith gave them to me immediately after he finished them, and I locked them away in a filing cabinet. That's where they've been until today."
"Can I see the other envelope?" She asked.
"I dropped it back in the forest. But I could go get it."
She shakes her head. "It's okay. Smith might find it."
We all stood around then, not really knowing what to do. Then I remembered something I thought I should mention.
"There was another envelope when I found my second one."
"Another red envelope?" Evelyn asks. "Who was it for?"
"Carlos," I said quietly. Looking around, I didn't see him anywhere.
"What was his task?" Evelyn asked Becca.
"I'm didn't see it, but I know he wasn't supposed to get a second envelope either," Becca answered.
"Who would've cared about THIS enough to change our tasks?" I wondered.
"We should go check out the place where you found the envelopes," Becca said. "We might run into Smith."
Evelyn and I agreed. Becca told the class to stay there and we walked into the forest.
We walk for about ten minutes. "I don't remember the forest being this big," I say, trying to conceal how impatient I am.
"That's because you were running so fast," Becca says.
Finally we get to the other side of the forest. I'm relieved.
"That's the tree where I found the red envelope," Becca and I go over to it and recover the envelope with Carlos's name.
"I've never seen this before," Becca says.
"Wow, that's a lot of darts," Evelyn says. We both look over and see the small clearing where I dodged them.
Becca picks one up. "What were they fired from?" she asks.
"I don't know. It seemed like they were coming from nowhere," I say.
She tells us to look around in the trees. Eventually we find what look like little guns cleverly hidden in the trees surrounding the tiny clearing. That's where the darts came from.
We take a few and look at them. "Can you tell anything about them?"
"No, we'll have to see what's inside them to figure out anything. Just don't prick yourself with them," Becca says. She gives them to Evelyn and opens Carlos's envelope.
"There's mine," I retrieve my red envelope from the ground.
"They're the exact same," Becca says, comparing them.
"Let's go find Smith. We'll show him," Evelyn suggests. We agree and trek back through the forest.
When we make it back, Smith is waiting with the class.
"Becca, you left the class alone," he says.
"Sorry, we went to investigate," Evelyn apologizes for her.
Smith nods. "I never found the girl who you saw, Ari, or even any signs of a struggle. But I called the police and reported it."
"Look what we found." Becca shows Smith the envelops and the darts, and she explains to him everything I said.
"Hm," says Smith. "Well, I think this field trip is over. We'd better get back to school."
***
As soon as we got back, Smith took the darts down to the science lab. The chemical inside the darts was analyzed.
Becca told me the name of it but it's really long and I forgot as soon as she said it. "It's a hallucinogenic," she said.
"So?" I ask, not catching up at first.
"Ari, you claim you saw a girl getting kidnapped and yet there's been no one reported missing. There were no signs of a struggle. You must've hallucinated it."
"But I never got hit with any of the darts," I protested.
"You might not've noticed it. Any contact at all with your skin and the drug inside would've gotten into your system."
"It didn't feel like a hallucination, though," I say.
"That's the point. It makes you think that what you're seeing is real."
"That's dumb. Why would there even be darts in the forest making me see things if it wasn't even part of the assignment?"
"I don't know, but it's good news! It means that no one was actually kidnapped!"
"But it also means I was drugged, and I didn't even know it," I say.
"Well, yeah. But you'll be fine, there are no side effects."
"That's not what I m-" I start to say but I'm interrupted by Becca's phone ringing.
"Sorry, hold on a second," she says to me and answers.
As she's listening to whoever's talking, her face suddenly becomes worried. "Do you know who it is?"
After a pause she says "But that could mean that Ari saw-"
Another pause an she hangs up, looking even more worried. "I need to go talk to Mr. Pulcher. And Smith."
"Why, what happened?" I ask.
"Someone in the neighborhood behind that forest just reported a girl missing. She fits the description you gave."