I gasped. “They told us about you at our church meeting.”

Her hands went to her mouth and she chewed on a fingernail. “Really?”

“Yeah. They were asking people if they’d seen you. They said if anyone knew anything to come forward. You know, the usual stuff when someone goes missing.”

I didn’t mention the conversation about how she was the only Normal that had gone missing. I guess she was a separate case after all.

I could see the tears glistening on her cheeks in the sunlight, even in my peripheral vision. She sniffed. “I saw posters of me in town and everything, but I need you to tell them to stop looking.”

A feeling of sadness swept over me and I tried to do the math in my head. “You went missing on the Friday and we heard about it in church on the Sunday, so that’s like ten or eleven days ago.”

Her eyes snapped to mine, but I quickly looked away. “Has it been that long? Wow. Time is really weird now. I don’t need to sleep. I’ve been wandering around trying to work out what to do. No one could see or hear me till you came along. Thank you so much for talking to me.”

Don’t thank me yet. I don’t know how I’m gonna pull this off without ending up back at Mirrabooka.

My heart sank. I shouldn’t be doing this. It would be a huge risk. I didn’t want to ruin everything I’d worked for. The thought of having to go back there almost gave me palpitations. Then I remembered that they all knew I could see ghosts, so I wouldn’t be going back. The relief washed over me and I closed my eyes and refocused.

I opened my eyes again, my mind made up. “How far is it? Can we walk there?”

“Yes. It’s not that far. Maybe a ten-minute walk? I can show you where it is.”

Was I really doing this?

If the situation was reversed, I would be screaming at her to help. Well, maybe not screaming, but I’d be so scared that she would say no and my mum would never know what happened to me. I couldn’t let her body sit at the bottom of the river for the rest of whatever.

“Okay. Hang on while I text my boss.”

“Thank you!”

Sophie looked like she was barely restraining herself from hugging me in public.

I just told Ruby that something important had come up and I would explain later. She said it was fine and that it wasn’t busy today.

I glanced at Sophie, then looked away. “Lead the way.”

As we walked through the streets and out along River Road, we didn’t speak until there were no people around. The sound of cicadas picked up as the sounds of civilization died away.

She told me that her parents came out to Australia from Malta before she was born and fell in love with the country and with Angel Falls. She had two brothers and a loving boyfriend looking for her too.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Sometimes it really sucked to be able to talk to ghosts. My heart ached for her and her family and I tried not to imagine their reactions when they found out that after eleven days of searching and worrying, she was never coming home.

Just as I was starting to wish I’d brought a bottle of water with me, she pointed to the bend in the road up ahead. “There.”

I could see the old wooden bridge too. We picked up the pace and once we reached the bend, I had to look closely to see any sign of a car driving off the road. The grass and weeds near the edge of the bitumen didn’t really look damaged, but as I walked further from the road, I could see small shrubs that had broken branches. I kept walking and the ruts from the tyres became clearer as we neared the bank.

Some small trees were snapped off at the trunk and the wheel marks cut deep into the mud. There was no mistaking it; a car had gone into the water.

Sophie brought her hands up to her mouth. “Oh, my God. I really am dead, aren’t I?”

I gave her a sad smile. “Yeah. I’m so sorry.”

I still had my headphones in my ears from when I was pretending to talk to Sophie on the phone, so I called triple zero and told them what I’d found. They told me to wait here and they would send someone out as soon as they could.

I found a shady spot closer to the road and sat on a large rock to wait for them. Sophie cried softly as the cicadas drowned out any other sounds and I put an arm around her. There was no one around to see and she needed someone — especially after being alone for eleven days.

We waited and I was thankful for the shady trees as the sun beat down from a cloudless sky. I looked toward the river as my thirst grew. All that water and I couldn’t have a drink.

As a car approached, I dropped my arm from Sophie’s shoulder and was relieved to see it was a police cruiser. Two officers stepped out of the car and I bit my lip. Would they believe my lame story about going for a walk and randomly finding these tyre tracks when I was on my lunch break?

I stopped biting my lip so I wouldn’t look nervous or guilty.

The officers introduced themselves as Constable Parkinson and Senior Constable Martin and I relaxed a little. I’d been told that these two cops knew about the Descendants. Constable Parkinson, the younger of the two, was a Descendant himself.

Senior Constable Martin asked me to explain what happened and I did my best to sound convincing. I explained that I came down to the river bank to think about whether I wanted to be in a relationship with Blake. At least the part about needing to think about it all was the truth. My mind was still kind of messed up when it came to Blake.

“Can you show us what you found?”

I took them down to the bank and they had a good look at the damaged foliage and tyre tracks. Constable Parkinson turned to us. “It certainly looks like a car entered the water right here.”

He used his radio to call for a couple of divers and some sniffer dogs. I was excited at the thought of watching the dogs and divers in action, but the knowledge that they would be recovering Sophie’s body made me feel guilty for feeling excited.

It took about twenty minutes for the dog squad to arrive, but about forty-five minutes for the divers. Sophie and I watched and waited. At some point, Constable Parkinson gave me a bottle of water. I was so thirsty at that point that I was thinking of drinking the muddy river water, so I was so grateful.

It didn’t take long for the divers to confirm that the car was in there, so they called for a tow truck with a winch to drag the car out. By then, they had put up police tape around the area and I was told to stay behind it.

The sun was low on the horizon and my heart was in my throat as the vehicle emerged from the water and I watched as the water poured from the doors, the wheel arches — basically everywhere.

Once the truck stopped dragging it, the officers moved to the driver's door. Constable Parkinson leaned in and confirmed that there was a body in the driver’s seat.

Oh, my God.

I knew she would be in there, but the reality hit me in the gut. I was going to see an actual dead body, and it wasn’t going to be pretty after so long in the water.

Parkinson opened the door and more water gushed out and Sophie’s body slumped forward in the seat. Sophie’s spirit gasped and put her hands over her mouth.

“Sophie! Turn away! Don’t look!”