Whenever Melanie and I walked side by side, it alarmed me how much shorter she was than me - 5'2 to my 5'9. Her sister was her exact height, and it had been hilarious to watch them walk together down the hallway, parting the students like herding dogs.

Melanie and I were barely friends back then. It wasn't until Peter and Lisa ran off that she and I ever really talked, not until we had to deal with the rumors and speculation our vanished siblings had left behind. Before that, Melanie was just some girl in my grade, some girl whose older sister was dating my older brother.

Now we were each two halves of a weird little town legend. Everyone talked about and around us for the few months after the night it all happened, and then the talking slowly stopped. Everything went back to normal for everyone except for me and Melanie. The disappearance didn't change anything for the other kids at our school, because nobody really knew Lisa, and nobody really liked Peter.

But Melanie and I were different. We were friends.

Stolen story; please report.

For the first few months, she and I rarely talked about what had happened. One of us would always change the subject. It was just too... real. Too fresh. Sometimes, the best kind of support system was one that didn't make you talk. Much less through stuffed toys for toddlers.

Besides, silence suited my needs. Not talking felt less like lying. Everyone wanted to speculate about why Peter left, what his damage was. I couldn't join in the speculation, because I knew what no one else did: that Peter was different, and his damage was incommunicable to anyone outside of my family, and even to some people inside it.

The secret wasn't mine to tell. As much as it sometimes felt like it would explode out of me.

Sometimes, in my dreams, my mind would guess at what might have happened the night Peter and Lisa disappeared. I would dream myself standing in the tall, unkept grass of that little park, blocks away from Emily Nash's house where the Quarterly was in full swing. I would dream myself watching Peter and Lisa arguing about skipping town. I would picture her hesitance, his persistence, and imagine him reaching his hand inside her head and moving her like a puppet.

I always woke up then, sweating.