He wasn’t just hiding. Richard had vanished from the one place he always existed, and the totality of that silence terrified her more than anything he could have written. Eventually, exhaustion pulled her under. Her hands slipped from the keyboard, her thoughts blurring at the edges, and she fell into an uneasy, restless sleep.
She had reached out. She had tried. But Richard had given her nothing back. And that was what frightened her most. By the time prom week arrived, the school had settled into a strange, selective amnesia. For days, whispers about Richard’s disappearance had consumed every lunch table, every group chat, every hallway corner.