LOST GIRL

Chapter 8

I quickly snatched it out of his hand and ripped it open to read it aloud.

If you want to know where she is

You have to start at the beginning

When you figure that out

You will soon see the ending.

"What the hell does that mean," Brian said.

"I-I don't know. The beginning? The ending? This is starting to feel more and more like a sick joke."

"Wait there's something else," Brian said, pulling out a balled up piece of paper.

I grabbed it and unraveled it, it was a Mr. Goodbar candy wrapper. It was Zalia's favorite candy. Whenever we would go to a gas station, she had to go inside to get her one.

"Does the wrapper mean something to you," Brian asked.

"It was Zalia's favorite candy, but I'm not sure how it connects with the riddle."

    I began to think about it when I suddenly remembered something from the investigation. The gas station clerk told the investigators that the only thing that Zalia purchased besides gas was a Mr. Goodbar.

"We gotta go to the gas station she was taken from," I said to Brian, "let me call Mila to meet us there."

    We sped down the highway to the other side of town. We had no idea what we were supposed to look for but I knew we had to go to that exact gas station. As we got closer, I felt like my heart would explode. I hadn't visited this gas station in years.

As we pulled into the parking lot of the gas station, I could see the memorial for Zalia was still sitting right off of the entrance. There were old teddy bears that were covered in dirt, her photo was fading on the poster of her and the cross was leaning to the side. I felt really ashamed that I had not visited to even fix her memorial.

"We're here," Brian said, grabbing my hand and giving it a squeeze.

"There's Mila. I guess we could all split up and look around for any other clues," I said, pointing to Mila's car.

"Sounds good. I love you Zara and we will figure this out," he said, kissing my forehead.

"I love you too."

    I started on the inside of the gas station. The clerk there was super young, I figured he probably didn't work here 3 years ago so I didn't ask if he remembered anything. I asked him how long they keep their security camera footage. He let me know that they all delete within a year, which was a bummer. I continued to look around the store, and went to the candy aisle. I saw an entire box of Mr. Goodbars and something told me to buy one. I picked one out of the box and there it was. A small card fell from under the candy bar. I put the candy bar down and ran outside to tell Mila and Brian what I had found. I'm sure the store clerk assumed I was a psycho.

    I  gathered the two of them together and we opened the card together. It was a QR code, so I pulled my phone out and scanned it. When it took us to the website, it was a map of our old high school. I scrolled down and there was another riddle:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

I almost failed school

What about you?

"What does this mean," Mila asked.

"I-I'm not sure," I replied.

"Did Zalia fail a class," Brian asked.

"No, but I did one semester and had to repeat it," I said, "but I don't see why this person would want to dig around in my past. This is supposed to be about Zalia."

"Maybe there's something important at your high school that could help, which is why they left this clue about it," Brian said.

"Yeah, let's go check it out," Mila said.

We hopped back into our cars and drove towards Crestville High School. The school was only two blocks away from the gas station. Which was terrifying because of how close the place of Zalia's disappearance was from our home and our school. I still didn't understand how no one saw anything.

We arrived in the school's parking lot in less than 5 minutes. It still looked the same as I remembered. It was two stories high, long and shaped like a backwards number seven. It sat on a huge hill, so there were over 100 steps leading up to the entrance. I used to count them every morning when I would go into school. Once inside, there stood a huge memorial for Zalia, directly in front of the entrance doors. They used her sophomore yearbook picture and added roses around it. There was also a huge white board with many signatures of people from the school on it. Zalia was truly loved by so many.

"Hey Ms. Mills, what are you doing here," Principal Brown asked, looking at us suspiciously.

"Oh, I just wanted to visit and see the memorial and probably just look around. It's been a minute," I said, lying.

"Well it is good to see you. Go ahead and look around but try to be quiet, we don't want any of our students being distracted," he said, turning to walk back towards his office.