((update 12/21: Did some edits and will be going through each chapter to fix writing and hopefully make it better! Hope you guys like it! Thank you so much for reading!))

Chapter 1

R ~~~

July 1

Rachel shuffled her personal belongings around her room, trying to fit most of her clothes into two gym bags. All of this while attempting to be as quiet as possible. The last thing she wanted was her mom to wake up and see her packing.

She huffed out a tired breath as she opened her closet, finding another bag inside that would be just big enough to fit the rest of her belongings in. She made sure to check off mentally all the items she was bringing.

'Clothes: underwear, shirts, pants, pajamas, extra shoes. Phone, charger, and headphones. Laptop and charger. Pillow, bathroom stuff?'

She had honestly glanced over the bathroom necessities. She quietly stuffed anything essential she could think of into the bag.

Once that was settled, she began rounding everything up to take outside. She grabbed the cash she had drawn out of her account from the other night, stuffing it in one of the bags. Just in case of an emergency situation. Food would be extremely important. She'd have to eat cheap for a while.

Once all her clothes were packed, and stuffed into bags, she dragged them out into the car waiting for her outside in her driveway. She had to carry them one at a time because of their weight, but her ride was being patient thankfully.

She tried not to take too long but she had to write a note. It was probably way too long - three whole pages - waiting for her mother on the kitchen counter. She explained a few things but left details vague. The last thing she wanted was for her mother to think she'd been kidnapped. Or killed.

She never would have imagined how hard it would be to write it all out. It made sense in her head at first, but getting it onto paper was harder than she thought . Her hands shook a little as she wrote, and this adrenaline rush wasn't helping her calm down. When she was finished, she set it out on the counter for her mother to see the next morning and hightailed it out the door.

Once everything was in the back of the car, she sat down in the passenger seat and too a deep breath. She going away for a while, and she wasn't sure when or if she would be back.

The radio buzzed on, and her new friend's familiar voice hummed through the inside of the car.

"Is this everything?" he asked.

"It's all I could fit. Just my essentials." she replied, bringing her feet up into the seet and pulling her knees against her chest. The car pulled out of her driveway and sped out of her neighborhood.

She had never done anything like this before, though honestly she couldn't be 100% sure on that.

'You're almost twenty. You'll be fine…' she thought to herself. She continued to tell herself these words in her head. The more she repeated them, the less she believed it.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the voice from the car's speakers again.

"Are you sure your okay with this?"

She smiled weakly and then looked out the window. "It'll be easier to deal with all this. I won't be such a bother now, right?"

"I never said you were a bother, Rachel…"

"It's less stress for both of us. Especially you. I don't have a choice really anyway." her last words came out quietly, though she knew he could still hear her.

A lot of things were more important than her own comforts currently. It hadn't been long ago she had realized the world was filled with more than just humans.

"It won't be the same like it was before."

"I don't care." she said, still very quiet in her words.

There was a long silence. She stared outside the window, watching quietly as her home city passed by. The lights of the signs and billboards blinked and shone brightly through the dark night. The farther they went out of town, the darker it was. Less people, less homes, less society. They were heading into the Nevada desert. Into the middle of nowhere.

She was afraid, but she wanted to learn more. It was the only way to get answers. Was it wrong to try and be a bit brave about all this?

Rachel reached for her phone from her pocket and flipped through missed texts and calls. Her mom called quite a few times over the past week. She knew she could never know about anything that was going on. They would go looking for her once they knew she was gone. Police would definitely get involved.

She turned off her phone and took another long breath. She didn't want to think about the mess she would cause. Would the entire town freak out over a missing woman? Would they even notice she was gone?

She nuzzled her head in her knees, leaning against the window and looked outside again.

Her life started when she was ten. She had amnesia of her childhood, the first memory of her life starting out in a hospital bed. She lived the life of an ordinary teenager after her mother adopted her. She was a bit of an anomaly to some people, but thankfully not a lot knew about her amnesia. She didn't like bringing it up.

"Rachel?" the car spoke to her once more.

Rachel turned her head again and looked at the radio, this time genuinely trying not to cry. She was failing miserably, and she couldn't stop her bottom lip from quivering.

"Bumblebee?"

He was quiet, probably in shock at the sight of her currently. She knew she was a mess. "We can go back… if you don't want to do this…"

"We never learn if we don't try." she said, her voice shaking lightly. "Don't talk me out of it. I don't know who the hell I am, Bee. Now I have a chance to find out."

"And what if you discover it's not what you thought it would be?" He asked her.

She gave a small lift of her shoulders. "I don't know, Bee." She gazed out the window again as everything passed by. She slowly closed her eyes, wanting to try and get some sleep. She wanted to take herself away from all this for awhile if possible. Sleep seemed to help with that.

She spoke to him one last time before drifting off. "You'll keep me level headed, right? You've done a pretty good job at that so far."

She genuinely smiled when she heard his short laughter. "If you say so. I'll keep it up." he told her.

His words warmed her, and it allowed her to slowly drift off.

June 10

Rachel bundled herself up in a blanket on the couch next to the popcorn bowl. She dug in as her friend Elaine turned on the movie. Weekend movie night, and it was a good way to relax after a long week of work.

"I thought you hated scary movies, Elaine." Rachel said, already beginning to stuff her face with some popcorn.

"This isn't supposed to be that scary." she said. She plopped down on the couch beside Rachel and grabbed a handful of popcorn for herself, and just as Rachel was doing, shoving all the popcorn into her mouth at once.

"But is this one good made horror, or laugh my ass off horror?" Rachel asked.

"I'm working my way up to the really scary stuff. This might be baby stuff for you." Elaine said, grabbing the remote on the couch arm and starting the movie.

"You know it's all just fake, right?" Rachel teased her.

Elaine gave her an unpleasant look. "Yeah, well, it's the idea that gets to me. Why do you have to always make me feel like a wuss? I'm trying, aren't I?"

Rachel snickered cheekily, leaning towards Elaine and giving her a nudge with her elbow. "Don't worry, I'll protect ya."

Elaine threw some popcorn at her face. "Screw you."

Half way through the movie, Elaine fell asleep. It made Rachel nod off a few times as well, but she tried her best to stay awake. It was a weird sci-fi horror film. About aliens that ate people. The plot was silly to begin with, it had silly acting, and the aliens weren't very creative. They were just typical green men, but to be fair, that was the fun part in watching those cheesy films. Ironically loving movies was her favorite thing to do.

Rachel had stopped the movie close to the end and started flipping through the channels, trying to find something entertaining while Elaine slept. She left it on a news channel, for once interested in what was going on in the world.

"Is the movie over?" She heard Elaine speak, her voice croaking a bit from exhaustion. Rachel wasn't sure if she was really awake yet or talking in her sleep.

"You were asleep, I thought I'd just turn it off."

Elaine snatched the remote out of her hands, about ready to flip the channel.

"Hey, hey, hey! I was watching that." she was able to stop her just in time.

Supposedly there had been a few intense meteor showers these past few days, making local news go wild in the area. Property damage, fires, all the things you would expect, only nobody found any trace of the meteors that landed. As much damage as they caused, you would believe there would be something remaining there.

The meteor left no debris of any space rock or anything near the site. Witnesses from nearby had seen large masses fall from the sky. It led to all sorts of speculations. Some of which she just found hilarious.

A video clip recorded on a phone was played, you could clearly see an object falling. Soon enough, the reporters came back and showed a couple crash areas, and the remains were a blazing fire or just a crater.

"Oooh, are you scared Rachel? The aliens are going to come out and eat you, Rachel!" Elaine said, laughing sleepily. Elaine was not very awake, fighting with herself to stay awake.

"Only you would believe that after that movie." Rachel snickered, squinting her eyes at her tired friend.

"Maybe you were afraid. That's why you turned off the movie."

"I'm not afraid of goofy dudes in green suits!" she snorted laughing.

"Uh huh, sure you aren't." Elaine fought off her sleepiness, and went to stand and head for her kitchen behind them.

Rachel got to her feet and followed behind her. She made her way towards the fridge to find something to drink.

"You don't really believe in aliens, do you?" Rachel asked.

"The galaxy is big enough. There's room for other things out there. Why not?"

"Tch, I dunno. You'd think we'd have found them by now? And I'm not talking about people making up stories or blurry videos someone made."

"You never know. The universe is huge. There has to be something out there. We just haven't found it yet."

"Maybe."

"What if there are other beings out there?"

"I don't see any proof yet, so I don't really worry about it. Nor do I care."

"Yeah, but there's no hurt in having fun in just belief."

She gave Elaine a strange look.

"Elaine, you do know the truth about Santa Clause, right?" Rachel couldn't hold of her laugh at the end.

Elaine shoved her shoulder and laughed a little. "That's not even close to being the same thing! That's like bigfoot stuff. This is more… sciency- stuff."

"Uh huh, science~" she teased her friend some more, waving the word around like it was magical.

"Well, how about you share some things you believe in at not a lot of others do? Enlighten me!" Elaine sat down at the table and look at Rachel expectantly.

Rachel squinted at her friend. "What, do you expect me to believe in fairies or something?" she laughed lightly, taking a sip of the soda she'd opened up.

"Have you ever heard the stories of memory loss being common among people who claim to have been abducted?" she asked, her voice going low with that over-dramatic mysteriousness to it.

Rachel felt her insides start to churn a bit. Suddenly her stomach didn't feel very well. "I really don't want to talk about that, Elaine." she glanced awkwardly off to the side.

Elaine recoiled a bit, trying to take bad her words. "Sorry. I didn't mean… I didn't know it bugged you so much"

"It's fine." Rachel clarified. "I just don't like to think about it."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Rachel walked back into the tv room, wanting to very quickly change this conversation.

"No."

Rachel drove home, her heart pounding after her evening with Elaine. It wasn't something she could easily forget about unfortunately. Usually whenever that subject was brought up, her mind would start racing with worry and more questions would build up. One of the many reasons she liked it staying out of conversation.

She thought to herself: 'I should have apologized to her. I was being rude. She's only curious.'

Her phone rang and she hesitated, searching for her phone in her bag beside her carefully with her eyes still on the road. She answered to her mother.

"Hi, honey, are you on your way home?"

"On my way back now."

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay... have you looked at the news tonight?"

"Yeah, I saw it."

"You don't sound like you care as much as I do. Those hit close to the city, you know."

"I'm alive and well. You don't need to worry. Hey, I'll even bring home your favorite ice cream, just so you won't freak out."

"As long as you're home safe, that's all I care about. Can you also grab some milk? And not that skim stuff. Please get 2%. We're almost out."

Rachel chuckled softly. " I will. Love you."

Rachel hung up the phone and drove to the nearest grocery store. It was on the way home thankfully so it wouldn't be too out of the way. She quickly stopped at the store to grab the groceries for her mom and was out the door as soon as she could.

Once she was back on the road, she decided it would be faster to take the backroads. The less traffic she had to deal with, the better.

Of course, that seemed to be some other person's idea as well. She got an anxiety when someone liked to drive too close to the tail of her car. Her blood started to boil when headlights were glaring in her rearview mirror. She tried to duck down a little to avoid the bright light. It was night. It was already hard to see.

Why didn't he just go around if it was that big of an issue? Nobody else was around. After a while it started to freak her out a little. Why was he tailing her like his?

She tried her best to ignore it. She decided to take a quick turn down another road, wondering if she was being followed. The car didn't skip a beat, turning on the same road, and was on her tail again.

She was propelled forward, her head almost smacking against her steering wheel. The car had rammed into the back of her. Hard. It was some sort of truck. A lot bigger than her car, so force must have felt like nothing to them. Her mind told her to speed up, and her heart felt like it had gone down into her stomach.

It was then the car rammed her again before she could get too far away. She stepped on the gas and her car tires screeched as sped up. She'd never felt like she'd ever gone this fast before in her car. Fear overtook her more than anything.

She didn't get far enough away as the the driver hit the back of her car again, smashing the windows in the back, causing her to swerve off into a ditch. The last thing she saw was a bright flash of light as her forehead smacked her steering wheel, and then she felt nothing.