She started walking briskly toward home. Luckily, a young couple from the neighborhood, the Millers, were also leaving the party. They offered to walk with her. The three of them chatted about the Millers’ recent wedding as they walked along the unlit shoulder of the road.
Daisy’s silver cross caught the light of a passing car every now and then. They made it most of the way home, reaching the old oak tree at the fork in the road. That’s when Max appeared out of the shadows. Max was a sixteen-year-old neighbor, a quiet, awkward kid who lived a few houses down from Daisy.
He was tall and lanky, the kind of kid who always looked at his shoes and never said much in the school hallways. Daisy had known him since they were kids, but they weren’t friends—just neighbors who said “hi” in passing. Max told the Millers he was headed in the same direction.
The Millers, thinking it was a good idea for Daisy to have an escort the rest of the way, asked Max to walk her to her gate. Max nodded, and the couple turned down their own street, feeling like Daisy was in safe hands. The two teenagers were left alone on the dark, silent road.
The silence was uncomfortable. Daisy tried to make small talk about school, but Max only gave short, mumbled answers, his eyes fixed on the ground. In the dim light, his face looked pale and tense. They were only a few hundred yards from Daisy’s house.
But Daisy never made it to that gate. The next morning, the town woke up to a chilling silence. Eleanor hadn’t slept a wink, jumping at every sound outside her window. Her heart was racing, and she knew in her gut that something was terribly wrong.
