Hidden Beauty

Introduction

   -Introduction- Katrina   

        When you've lived in a neighborhood for as long as I have you get to know all the places you can go to get away or otherwise known as the secret hideouts. In our small neighborhood, buried in the little town of Merrimack, there were very little people living there. We had four girls, and a few boys plus their families. It was a quiet neighborhood and peaceful, nothing bad happened there. Until the end of Summer in 2016, we had had a great summer, we found new places to hide and new people moved into our neighborhood while old friends moved out. That was when I and my friends had made a new friend who had just moved in. Her name was Ailen Zyanya, she is native American and wears the coolest clothes. She moved in near the beginning of Summer and right away all my friends and she were bffs. She was fun and soon knew where all the hideouts were and showed us a new one, The Jumps. As the name says it's just a few bike jumps and a lot of trails but we never guessed it would be so dangerous. It started off normal we had a few fight here and there, but we had known Ailen for most of the summer so we got to know more and more about her, and they say the more you know someone the more topics you can fight on. And that was exactly what happened. One day Ailen had fought with Kit Madilyn (one of my friends), and Celeste Annalee (my other friend) about which idea was better for our project, Kit had suggested we do our project on the River in one of our secret forts and we could do background information on the river and our perspective on it and make a painting on it, but Ailen said she couldn't paint and that she hadn't been around long enough to know that much background on our river hideout so she suggested we do a project on The Jumps, which she knew a lot about and so did everyone and we could do the same thing but with the jumps. They didn't like that idea so Celeste and Kit wanted to do the river project and Ailen wanted to do a project on The Jumps. Me and Davina Alethea (my other OTHER friend, which trust me is the last one) didn't care we just wanted to get the project done. Soooo they got into a huge debate that ended with me and Davina sitting on the picnic table watching Ailen storm off towards the direction of The Jumps and Kit and Celeste storm off in the direction of the River, which was difficult because they were both in the same direction only because they were literally right across from each other. When they got there, I and Davina had followed closely behind, each group went into the desired place they wanted to do the project on, which was also difficult because they were both buried deep in the woods. Davina went with Ailen into The Jumps while I went will Kit and Celeste to try to figure this out.

    We had spent as good as an hour in there and I was starting to get mad too but not at my friends at the heat which was making it very difficult to stay standing up when it was beating down on you like a big, heavy blanket. After a while I finally sat down and said, "Look can we please just forget about this, it's just a project that has to do with a place no one knows about that we go for sanctuary for English that we all know isn't even gonna matter for the job-" I didn't get to finish my sentence because the next thing I heard was a scream, but a familiar scream, it sounded like someone I knew, DAVINA! We all rushed to The Jumps to see Davina hiding behind a tree frozen in fear.

The next day the paper read:

   "12 years old, Ailen Zyanya has gone missing at hidden bike jump in the woods, time of disappearance unknown, why she disappeared also unknown." Following the title into the paragraph were the woods, "written in the dirt read the words, "You'll be next," the people that are so-called 'next' that reported this/ saw it are Davina Alethea, Kit Madilyn, Celeste Annalee, and Katrina Rylee. Three of these girls were in the baseball field across from The Jumps, while Davina Alethea witnessed it but was too shook to talk about it, while the police try to figure this out the four girls say and I quote, "We aren't going to be 'next' but instead we are going to be the ones to fix this, bring Ailen back, and stop this monster in its tracks." Although we couldn't get much out of the three girls who weren't in post-traumatic shock, because they simply said, "You wouldn't believe us," or "You would have to see for yourself which you can't,". It does indeed remain a mystery for what has happened to here tonight in the small town of Merrimack and in this tiny neighborhood on Wildcat Fall Road, but one thing is for certain whatever happened wasn't good and looks like these girls don't want us to know what really happened. Are these girls more violent than they appear or are the simply hiding us from the truth for our own safety? Like Katrina said, "You would possibly get injured or killed if you knew just what exactly took place here, I'm afraid it's too much for your little mind." New York Times, 2016 at 2:00 pm.