CHRISTABEL

"The Girl Who Vanished"

There were two versions of Christabel Fisher.

The first was the girl everyone remembered-bright-eyed, quick to laugh, the kind of person who made mornings feel lighter just by walking into a room. That Christabel had worn sundresses in September, scribbled song lyrics in the margins of her notebooks, and once convinced half the debate team to sneak out at lunch for milkshakes.

Then, one summer, she disappeared.

Not literally. She still walked the halls of Oakland High, still sat in the same cracked plastic chair in third-period English. But the girl who came back after those three empty months was a stranger. The sundresses were replaced by oversized sweaters. The laughter had been swallowed whole. She moved through the world like a ghost haunting its own life, flinching at sudden movements, speaking only when necessary.

People whispered. Maybe it was the accident that took her parents. Maybe it was drugs. Maybe she'd gotten pregnant. The theories spun wilder with each passing week, but no one ever asked.

No one, until Sebastian Parker.

He noticed things others didn't-the way she'd tense when a man's voice rose too loud, how she'd check the exits in every room like she was mapping escape routes. Most telling of all? The bruises. Faint, but there. Always there.

Sebastian shouldn't have cared. He had his own problems-a father who measured love in achievement, a future that felt more like a cage than a promise. But Christabel's silence was a puzzle he couldn't stop turning over in his hands.

And when Sebastian Parker fixated on something, he didn't let go.

Not until he'd torn it apart.

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