27B (COMPLETED)

Chapter Nine ~ (Above Gabriel)

Chapter nine is dedicated to my awesome grandparents, who always read my books. Love yah!

Mollie...
Six hours ago...
Mollie opened the refrigerator and pulled out a water bottle. She saw the empty spot in the back of the fridge where her magic potion disguised in a regular Deer Park bottle used to be. A thick, nagging worry settled in her brain. Had it been stolen? Did Julie drink it? Did Ethan?

She felt sick when she realized. It was the water bottle she had given Ethan. She rushed into Ethan's room, and her face turned a bleached, drained white when she realized that she had indeed given it to him. She checked his night stand, but it was gone.

She knew from experience that it there would be pieces of brown paper with his names on it at the spot that he vanished, and she thought hard about where Ethan would have gone.

Then it hit her. The fire escape. He had been going there with his friends for a few days now. She rushed out the door, leaving Julie to watch SpongeBob for the moment. She sprinted down the hallway, for she was still quite fit for being almost 40.

When she got to the window, she pulled it open frantically and stepped out. Cold flurries of slow caught in her eyelashes and hair and froze her face. She glanced up the chipping black stairs and saw two pieces of crinkled brown paper, pressed up against the wall from the chilling wind.

She went up slowly and picked them up. She pulled open the first one so it was flat.

Ethan Gabriel Young

She felt faint. But still, she managed to open the second.

Harper Leah Denner

💠💠💠

Present Day...
Ethan...
I pushed through the green people until I got to the center of town. There were six brick roads starting there. Yellow, blue, red, purple, green, and orange. I veered to the left and took the blue road. The yellow, blue, red and purple ones started in the corner of the meadow, and the green and orange ones started on the right side of town square. They were each crowned with a golden gate labeling them in swirly black writing. I recalled Ariel's directions and walked uncertainly towards the mouth of the gaping woods starting at the end of the meadow. The trees looked like their branches were draped with the shiny, thin green leaves. Before I could get to the brick road, a man with a black rag wrapped around his head and a long green cloak clasped over his shoulders said, "Excuse me, young sir," he caught my shoulder with his slender, bony fingers. I turned around, a bit afraid. "Would you like to buy a magic potion? I have world changing potions, bringing back the dead potions, transforming potions, all sorts of things,"

He opened his cloak and I saw twelve little bottles clasped with elastic black bands to the velvet inside of the fabric. Next to each of the bottles, there was a small brown paper shoved under the bottle, and each bottle was labled in white block letters. "Umm, no," I said, eyeing the one that said, "Goat Disease Cure."

"Please sir, I just want to get rid of these vials. They are a bother, always clinking around in my cloak. You can have one free,"

He reached into the cloak and gestured across the three rows of four in his cloak. I reached out quickly and pulled out the "Bring Back The Dead." potion. "Thanks," I said, looking at him sideways. He bowed and slid immediately into the crowed.

I looked down at my hand and eyed the little vial with the pitiful rip of tinted brown paper lying next to it. It was the same sort of paper that the note about Harper was on. I slid it into my pocket without reading it, and headed towards the Blue Brick Road.