"This is all your fault, director's pet. This is a play. I'm not falling in love with you, and I would never ever go out with you, Jack Garrison."
Jack and Shayna can't get through a rehearsal without fighting.
Cheerleader Shayna loathes perfect Ja...
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Jules, Novah, and I scoured the entire theater. We were certain that Anton wasn't there. We'd found a mess of what looked like blood on the stage but no sign of our director.
There wasn't any blood, real or otherwise, in the production. The costume and makeup rooms had a lot of various odds and ends, but neither of us remembered seeing fake blood in the back.
Hugh and Kai did a second sweep of every room in the building. When they came back, we'd all moved away from the mess in the theater and into the lobby.
Not long afterward, Samantha and Juan joined us. Samantha kept rattling off conspiracy theories as she paced back and forth. On the other hand, Juan barely seemed bothered that we were starting late.
An hour later, it still didn't make sense. Anton was never late. His car was in the parking lot, but we couldn't find any trace of him. Carson had finally gone to drive by his house, and we were all waiting on pins and needles for him to return.
I wasn't afraid of blood, but there was the unpleasant uncertainty that it was either staged or, I shuddered to admit, real. I didn't even want to think about where it had come from if it was real.
The theater door opened. Carson pulled his headphones off his ears as he entered the building. He looked at all of us and sighed.
"He isn't home," he said. "And neither is Jack or Shayna."
My thoughts rushed around. Anton's car was here, and he was not. He wasn't at his home. Jack and Shayna weren't at rehearsal; according to Carson, they weren't at their houses either.
"We've waited an hour," Kai said. "I don't get it. Anton is never this late."
"He's never late, period," I pointed out.
"We should just go," Juan said.
Novah just shook her head. "Sure, he's absent-minded, but he wouldn't forget about rehearsal."
Personally, I wouldn't have described Anton as absent-minded. My father put off doing all types of tasks. Anton would never leave us alone. Something wasn't right.
"The place was unlocked, though," Kai said. "And Anton and Shayna's cars are here."
"Something's wrong," I insisted.
I looked at my phone again. My texts to Shayna, Jack, and Anton remained unopened and unanswered. Not one of them had even seen the texts.
Kai also texted Shayna without success. Jules was texting Lilly. They hadn't received a single response. I'd even gone as far as to text Tasha, and she couldn't get ahold of Anton, Jack, or Lilly either.
Jules looked up from their phone. "Shayna just texted me. She said she had an emergency and was on her way."
