notes: yo so i started watching stranger things on netflix and lemme tell you, that's some good stuff right there.
let's kick it: kind of slow burn in this first chapter, but stick with it. also title subject to change once i actually find a decent one. it's past two am alright. let me live.

x

[it's hard to believe in coincidences; it's even harder to believe in anything else]

x

MISSING:

Blossom Utonium

Age: 17

Physical Description: female, long auburn hair, pink eyes, freckles

Notes: last seen wearing a black skirt, pink sweater, and black boots

Date of Disappearance: October 18, 2010

Last seen walking home from a late night at the library. If you have an information regarding the whereabouts of Miss Utonium, please call the following numbers listed.

x

i—and the world came crashing down,

but you didn't make a sound

Townsville is like any other Midwest North American small town—quiet and sleepy. It's a place where nothing ever happens. There's a county fair, there's a locally owned diner on main street where you can get bottomless coffee all day and a healthy serving of gossip to go with it. They have a pie auction every year, one of those annual things to raise money for the local fire department and hospital. Everyone knows everybody. The worst thing that had ever happened was when old lady Henderson broke her hip trying to chase off a family of raccoons with a baseball bat. The official police report stated that although the raccoons may have been going through her trash, they had not broken her kitchen window.

(Rather, that was the bat, because it'd gone flying through her window when she'd fallen. She'd only blamed it on the family of raccoons.)

And then Blossom Utonium had disappeared without a trace one unnaturally chilly autumn night when she was walking home from the library.

She was the town sweetheart—one of them, at least. There were actually three Utonium sisters, and therefore that meant three town sweethearts, because everyone just adored them. But Blossom was the oldest, and arguably, the prettiest. She was a straight A's student who took AP classes, tutored younger kids in her spare time, and helped out wherever she could. She was sweet, hard-working, and always polite—a true Good Girl.

Blossom had been studying at the library with a friend. There was a killer AP chem test the next day, and she'd "just wanted to be prepared." It was barely after eight when she'd left, but it had already been dark for hours. On her way home, she had stopped in at the corner store to buy some milk and a small box of hot tamale candy. Then she'd headed out again, met old man chainsmoker McGuffee, they'd exchanged waves, and then she was gone. She never made it home that night. Old Chainsmoker was the last person to see her before she went missing.

Predictably, the entirety of Townsville panics. Her sisters make up posters to put up around town in addition to the ones issued by the police department. The sheriff organizes a search party, then a second, then a third. They search and search but they do not find any trace of a missing seventeen-year-old girl. She's just gone from their lives, like the flame of a blown-out candle, and all she leaves behind in her wake is the waning smoke of now-painful memories.

And that's what people start to believe: Blossom Utonium left Townsville of her own accord that Thursday night. She didn't stop to say goodbye to her family or friends, she just ran. The rumor mill also runs, and runs, and runs, and it doesn't stop—never really does. Maybe she was pregnant? Who—Blossom? You know she's only been on like, two dates. Maybe she left for the city? She's smart enough to do anything she sets her mind to. Maybe she dreamed too big and they were not something to be kept inside of a sleepy town. She's an independent girl living in an era where she can do most anything she wishes.

It's an easier thought to digest. Because girls don't just disappear in Townsville—from Townsville. Especially not girls like Blossom.

So, little by lots, the search parties stop looking, and people try to move on with their lives. They do not think about the girl with auburn hair who always carries the groceries for elderly people, the girl who's been wearing the same red ribbon in her hair since she was five, the girl who got homesick on the last trip she took into the city.

See, the thing is, people don't just leave Townsville, either.

It's a place where people come to disappear to, not from. And no matter how hard he tries to go back to normal, to his life before her disappearance, Brick can't. Her father and sisters can't act like she was never there, and neither can he. Because the thing is, Blossom Utonium didn't disappear on her way home from the library, and she did not leave town in the dark with nothing but a carton of milk and a box of candy. She disappeared from a road nearly five miles out of town.

Old man McGuffee wasn't the last person to see Blossom before she went missing.

He was.

It's been three months, and Brick still expects to see her walk into the classes they share together and sit down in her desk, long hair dusting the back of her chair. She doesn't of course, never does. He remembers seeing her face in the headlights of his car right before he'd swerved and nearly missed killing her. He's never seen someone so terrified, and the thing is, he knows it's not from her near death experience with the hood of his car.

She'd just appeared out of nowhere—from the woods, of all places. Her skirt and sweater were torn, her hair had been a mess, and she'd had at least one bleeding scratch on her cheek. Her image is burned into his memory. He can't forget her. And the thing is, he can't remember her any other way, either.

He'd stopped his car in the middle of the two-lane road immediately and gotten out to see if she needed help, and what the hell she was doing in the woods in the dark. They weren't friends, per say, at least not anymore, but he wasn't about to leave her out there. Even if he kind of hated her guts. But she hadn't been there. In the minute or so it'd taken him to stop his car and get out, she was gone. He'd called for her, apologized for being such a dick and almost hitting her—but if she hadn't just run onto the goddamned road like a lunatic, then maybe—but no dice.

That's when he found her hair bow. The stupid red thing she'd worn every day since they were kids. Beside it was an opened but barely touched box of hot tamale candy.

Girls like Blossom didn't just disappear from Townsville, and somehow Brick is one of the only people who know this.

Something had happened to her. He doesn't know what, or why, or how, but he's going to find out.

He tells himself it's not because they were kind-of-friends when they were kids, but rather because their police department (if you could even call it that) is a shitty excuse for law enforcement. Blossom deserves justice. She deserves to be found. She deserves better than rumors about her that aren't even remotely true. Her family deserves closure.

So that's what they're going to get.

x

tbc

end notes: how many times must i write 'townsville' before i begin to suffer.