Wraithlight

"Has anyone seen Odalys?" The question moves through the gym faster than the music does. Someone kills the speakers halfway through a chorus, and three hundred kids in rented suits and cheap heels go quiet at once. I'm by the punch table, where I've been standing since eight, holding a plastic cup I haven't touched. Nobody talks to me at prom. Nobody talks to me most days, if I'm honest, but prom makes it official — I'm furniture in a green dress my aunt found on clearance. "She was right there." A girl in gold — Priscilla, treasurer, always counting something — points at the double doors like they'll answer for themselves. "Like ten minutes ago." "Check the bathroom." "Already did." "Parking lot?" Teachers start moving. Mr. Halden, who chaperones every year like it's a punishment, pushes through the crowd toward the exit, phone already up to his ear. The DJ doesn't start the music again. Somebody's crying near the photo booth, though I don't know if it's real crying or the kind people do at parties when something feels wrong and they don't know where else to put it. I stay by the punch table. I watch Theodore Nicky — golden boy, student council president, Odalys's own cousin — stand very still in the middle of the gym floor while everyone around him moves. He doesn't call her name. He doesn't run for the doors like the others. He just stands there, hands in his pockets, watching the exit she walked out of. That's the first thing I notice. Not the panic. Him not having any. "You're Emrys, right?" I turn. Caspian Rook is looking at me like he already knows the answer, arms crossed, leaning against the wall three feet from the punch table like he's been there the whole night and I only now noticed. "Yeah." "You were standing here the whole time." "So?" "So you saw her leave." He tilts his head toward the doors. "Which way'd she go?" I didn't, actually. I'd been staring at my cup, counting the seconds until I could leave without anyone noticing I'd gone. But something about the way he asks makes me not want to admit that. "Why do you care?" "Because in about ten minutes, every teacher in this room is going to ask the same question, and you're going to say you don't remember." He pushes off the wall. "And that's going to be true. Because you weren't really looking. Nobody looks at anything at these things." "You're looking at me." "You're the only one still standing still." He almost smiles. "Everyone panics the same way. You didn't." Before I can answer that, Mr. Halden's voice cuts through the gym, sharp and official. "Everyone stay where you are. Nobody leaves until we sort this out." Nobody stays where they are. The gym breaks into a hundred different directions at once — kids pulling out phones, texting, calling, some already crying into each other's shoulders like Odalys is already gone instead of just late back from wherever she went. Priscilla's still by the doors, arguing with a teacher about letting people leave. Jasper Vane has his phone out, filming the whole thing like it's content. Caspian doesn't move with the crowd. "You should go home," he says. "This isn't going to end tonight." "You sound very sure of that." "I am." He walks off before I can ask him what that means, disappearing into the chaos like he was never there at all. Three days later, prom is old news everywhere except Ashcombe, where it's the only thing anyone talks about. Odalys Nicky hasn't come home. The police were at the school Monday morning, talking to teachers behind closed doors. By Tuesday, the word going around isn't missing anymore. It's runaway. I don't believe it, not that anyone's asked me. I didn't know Odalys well enough for my opinion to matter to the people investigating. I knew her the way everyone at Ashcombe knew her — from a distance, gold-lit, untouchable, the kind of girl who says four words to you in three years and you remember every one of them. My shift at the library starts at four. Mrs. Alvarez has me clearing the overflow bin behind the desk — books people returned that nobody's bothered to reshelve, some of them untouched for years. I'm halfway through the stack when I pick up a water-stained copy of The Secret History, spine cracked, the kind of book that's been sitting in somebody's bag longer than it should've been. Something's taped inside the front cover. I peel back the corner without thinking about it — muscle memory, the way you pick at a loose thread. It's not a bookmark. It's not a note. It's a flash drive. Small, black, no label, taped down so carefully whoever did it didn't want it falling out by accident. I flip the book over, check the due-date slip glued inside the back cover. Last checked out three years ago. Nobody's touched this book since before I even started working here. Which means whoever taped this inside didn't do it this week. They did it months ago. Maybe longer. Before Odalys ever put on that silver dress. Before anyone even knew her name was about to be the only thing this town talked about. I'm still holding the book when Mrs. Alvarez calls my name from the front desk, and I shove it — drive and all — into my bag before she can see what I'm looking at. My hands don't stop shaking the entire walk home.