PROLOGUE; AND SHE NEVER CAME BACK

HER NAME WAS SUZY LEE. She had glistening fair curls and eyes a crystal sapphire. Her voice was the prettiest mellow sound anyone has ever heard. And she was stolen.

The moonlight slanted through the open window, a silvery shadow upon our bedroom floor. Nothing could be heard except the soft chirping of crickets, loud in the silence. It was the dead of the night and the summer air was humid.

I tossed and turned but no matter which way I lied, the sheets of cotton blankets seem to suffocate me. Abruptly, there was a small clunk as a rock, miraculously out of nowhere, hit our window. Suzy sat upright in her bed. Ears perked up like a dog.

"Wha--?" I started, only to be shushed by my twin sister. She slipped out of bed and stealthfully crept to the window, avoiding all the tell-tale creaks in the wooden floorboard. I didn't dare to even set foot on the ground. Momma was the lightest sleeper and I am an elephant on my feet. Besides the fact that I was literally tangled in my bedsheets and would roll off the bed if I wanted to untangle myself.

"Who is it?" I hissed, as quietly as possible. Suzy lifted the window pane higher, a secretive grin pasted upon her face and it dawned my thickheaded skull. It was the look whenever she saw him. It was the look when she talks about him. It was the look when she was with him. And he was Matt Carson. The self-proclaimed hottest jock in our school and absolutely no doubt about it. He was Suzy's boyfriend.

I'll be back in a second! She mouthed, but I was never really good at reading lips so she had to repeat it about five times before I got it. I snorted almost immediately, muffling it in my blankets. I know, and she knows that it will take her more than a second. And more than a minute, or an hour or even two hours. It's her night escape from the strangling clutches of our mother who has us wound up so tightly in her fingers. I let her go.

And she never came back.