GIRL LOST

Chapter 1

Saturday, June 24

Shoreham, NY

Afternoon

Bonnie lay curled up on her bed trying to calm her anxious thoughts. She felt as though her mind was lost in a maze of painful memories from recent events. Thank God I'm home, she thought, safe in my bedroom free from that dreadful place. Bonnie closed her eyes, remembering how concerned she had been worrying about her parents not knowing when or where she had disappeared to, or if she would be back. Tears trickled down Bonnie's face her emotions fragile as she tried to erase her horrible memories. But one haunting question would not go away...why did her mother not know she was missing for four days? There was no police call, no Amber Alert or anything else. It was as if nothing had changed, as though she had not been gone but a few hours. Her mother didn't even blink when she walked through the front door ragged, tired and confused, except to say, "What have you been doing this morning, you look like you've been dragged through the dirt. You should go take a shower and change your clothes; your father will be home soon."

How could her mother not know, Bonnie tried to make sense of it? She sat up and examined her bedroom. It was just as she had left it last Saturday morning. Her skirt was still hanging off the back of the desk chair, and her dirty clothes heaped on the closet floor, and her worn-out Keds lying next to them where she had tossed them.

According to her laptop, today is Saturday, yet her iPhone says it's Tuesday. How can that be, she screamed in silence, her mind ready to explode. The date can't be Saturday, June 24, the same day we all disappeared. Today has to be Tuesday, the twenty-seventh; we've been gone nearly four days. Am I going crazy or what? Confused by the perplexity of her situation, Bonnie continued to mull things over in her mind, retracing every hour, she had been gone, but still, it made no sense.

Bonnie needed answers. Her first impulse was to call Henry but wasn't quite sure what to say; even though, her mind was brimming with questions. Was he okay? Did his parents know he had been gone, and what did his mother say when he returned home? For a moment, Bonnie reflected on how Henry felt about her and if his feelings were the same as hers, but quickly averted her fancy and focused on the events overshadowing the last several days. Can Henry explain what happened? Bonnie's addled brain was unable to figure out any of it, her parents, the missing days, and most of all, the Island.

The only thing she was sure of was that she already missed Jack and Bot, two of the most unforgettable friends she had ever met. They had helped her survive the most harrowing crisis of her life. Jack and Bot had made her feel safe and protected, and in doing so, Bonnie had grown close to the both of them. And now she would never see either of them again.

She picked up her iPhone and tapped Henry's number while thinking back to Friday when Freddie believed he had experienced a sudden image or illusion on the way home from school. Both, Bonnie and Henry concluded that Freddie's mind was playing tricks on him and that he had just imagined seeing something, but that was not to be the case and only the beginning of the woes to come.

Freddie's visual omen occurred unexpectedly while the three of them were riding their bikes home from school, two weeks earlier.

Friday, June 16

Two weeks earlier

Afternoon

We're the Three Musketeers! At least that's what Freddie Weaver likes to call us. It's his favorite quote from the novel, by Alexandre Dumas. It was Freddie's way of challenging us to follow him whenever he was about to do something stupid. "All for one and one for all!" he would shout, as though he was the young, foolhardy, D'Artagnan, himself. But that's just Freddie, Bonnie thought. She has been a best friend and sidekick to both him and Henry Tucker since the third grade. The three of them lived, close by, in the same neighborhood. Always hanging out together whether going to school, to the mall, or a movie, they were inseparable. Bonnie thought of Henry and Freddie as her two big brothers, filling the shoes of the siblings she never had.