Unanswered by Liza Mynx (books under 200 pages txt) 📕

called my mom after I turned off the computer. The phone rang five times before her voicemail came on.
“Hello, this is Bethany Jason’s phone. I can’t take your call right now, but if you leave your name and number I will try to get back to you. Thank you for your call and good bye,” I heard my mother’s voice say.
“Hey mom,” I said after the beep. “I need to talk to you, but it’s late so you get your rest and I’ll call you tomorrow before I go to school. There is so much we need to talk about. I love you. Good night. Don’t call back tonight because I want to get to bed. Oh, and don’t worry about me, I’m fine. Bye.”
I put my cell phone on its charger that rests on my night stand. I went out to the living room to clean up my dishes and rinsed them out in the kitchen sink. I walked back into my room and sat down on my window seat.
I used to do this a lot when I was real little, just sit here and read a book on a rainy day. I didn’t watch a lot of T.V., but I read a whole lot. I stopped when I was ten. One day I was reading Things Hoped For and it was right at the end of the book. Gwen was at her Juilliard auditions and she’s talking about how she’s so happy that her dad is there with her. Now, I’m not really the musical type, except for a little piano, but she’s talking about her dad and I realized I’ll never be able to talk to my dad or have him go somewhere with me because I’m nervous. I’ll never be at home and have my dad walk in from work and me say, “Hey, Dad, what’s up?” I realized that I would never have the pleasure of being able to have my dad with me when I went to apply for my favorite college. Never. I threw the book down and never sat there and read again.
Now that I look back, I realize that until now, that was the last time I ever sat here. But, I can’t keep thinking about the past. I need to concentrate on now, but it’s so hard because I keep thinking about Jessica. I can only imagine how she looked when they found her.
Her brown hair all around her face, covering her brown, now lifeless eyes. The lips that were always in the sweetest smile now in a never ending scream, and her neck covered in bruises. Poor Jessica. Never to be sweet and perky in this world again. Never to walk around and shed light onto everyone. Never to even walk again.
The picture in my mind was so vivid, it scared me. I felt like I had actually seen it, like I was actually there when she was killed.
That weird feeling I had felt when I was holding Chris’ engraved box came back. That feeling that my subconscious knew something I didn’t.
For the first time in I don’t know how long, my barrier came down and I cried. I cried and cried and cried. I had so much pain and heartbreak locked up inside of me and this is the first time I’ve dealt with it in a long, long time. I guess that all the pain of my past was attacking at my mental wall and I just needed one more thing for it to fall.

Through all the crying I figured out why I was crying. There was so much death in my life! My dad. Chris. Jessica. How much more could I take?
I cried for my dad, the person I barely new before he was taken away from me so suddenly. I cried for Chris, my best friend who left me unintentionally but who is back. I cried for Jessica, the girl who was willing to go out of her way to make someone, even me, happy. I cried for my mom, the woman who raised me and was now in the hospital because of me. And I cried for me, the girl who lost so many people in her life and who has dealt with so much pain in her life that she doesn’t know how much more she can take before she cracks. I cried and cried and cried until I fell asleep.
I woke to the sound of my phone vibrating. I looked over at my night stand and the big, green numbers said that it was a quarter past six. I walked over to the night stand and took my phone off of the charger. I had stayed asleep on the window seat all night.
“Hello,” I whispered, still groggy from being asleep for awhile.
“Hey, Sweetie, I got your message and figured that you might really need to sleep. Did you just wake up?”
“Yeah. Uh, mom, I don’t want to go to school today.”
“Claire,” she sighed. “You have to go to school. Have you even made up all the work you missed? You need to go to school.”
“Mom, do you remember that girl who I used to tutor? Jessica?”
It took her a minute to think. “Yeah, I do. Sweet girl. What does she have to do with anything?”
“They found her body yesterday in front of the school. She was strangled to death.”
She gasped. “Oh, Claire! I can’t believe...” Her voice trailed off. “Honey, I don’t think you should go to school. I mean, this is just tragic! Poor girl. This is terrible. She was so sweet and precious. I can’t imagine what her parents are going through.”
“Well, I’m just going to get back in bed and I’ll come by to see you later on. I still have more to talk to you about. Love you.”
“Love you too. Get some rest.”
“I will. Bye.”
“Bye.”
I tried to go back to sleep, I really did, but pictures of everyone I knew went through my head. Sammy, Mom, all my teachers, the people I used to hang out with, everyone who was alive. I wondered who would be next, and which one of them did it. Which one of them killed Chris and Jessica.

Mr. Kastone. He didn’t like me, but he didn’t know me last year, so he can’t be it. James, he was the guy I used to go out with, but I broke up with him when I realized I didn’t really like him. He had the motive, but he moved to Chicago a few years ago. Before Chris died.
Sammy. . .I don’t know why, but her name popped up in my head. I know she couldn’t have done it. She was dating Chris when he died and didn’t really know Jessica. Still, she had been acting really weird. . .and she was on a date with Chris the night he died. I haven’t been talking to her, so I don’t know what she did last night. . .Oh! Who am I kidding?! How could I even accuse Sammy! It couldn’t have been her.
I kept thinking of people, but everyone I thought of had an alibi without me even asking them if they did kill my friends! This is hard! I was so not born to be a detective!
I decided to try to go back to sleep and when I was rested enough I would try thinking again later.
6:45. 7:15. 8:00. 8:30. Those are the times I would wake up from my dream and look at the clock. I finally got out of bed at quarter till nine.
Even though I kept waking up, I had this dream.
I was sitting in the middle of a small field with Chris. I was surrounded by soft, green grass and flowers of all types and colors. There were trees on the outside of the field, waving to me and my friend. A stream ran beside me whispering unknown secrets in my ear as it coasted easily over smooth, every color stones that glistened in the afternoon sun.
Chris and I talked and laughed for what seemed like hours, but I know that dreams only last a few minutes, so it was really only seconds. Somewhere in my head I could sense a different presence in the field but it was far back in my brain, so I didn’t really pay attention to that feeling. I was so focused on talking to my best friend. It was like we were kids again, and the fact that he died a year ago wasn’t even known. It was like it never happened, and it was a dream of a dream. I looked up and squinted from the sunlight because I heard a noise. It was a person. They were wearing a black cloak so I couldn’t see who it was or even if it was a boy or girl. The face was covered by some kind of mask and their hands wore red gloves. Their shoes were the same color as the gloves.
All the sudden, the scene changed. We were sitting on the floor of a building. It was a tile floor, and there were many hallways that lead in many different directions. With sudden realization, I knew that we were sitting on the second floor of my high school! We were at the front where the stairs came up to this level, where there was an outlook of the front of the school. There was a railing that we could lean on and look down at all the students and teachers going through the traffic at the front entrance.
The figure walked slowly towards me and my equally confused and scared friend. We both stood up and stepped back until the railing stopped us.
“Why are you doing this,” Chris asked in a panicked voice.
“Because of Claire,” the person said in a voice that was unrecognizable. It was deep, like the voice announcing the release of a new movie.
“What does she have to do with anything?”
I tried to talk, but no sound came out of my mouth.
“Everything.”

The figure came forward and grabbed Chris’s arms. The scariest thing was that I felt its hands around my arms! The gloves were cold, but I could feel heat coming from its hands through the gloves. It held him, or us, firmly and it almost hurt.
“Goodbye.”
With that, they pushed Chris over the rail, and I followed.
I fell forever because the ground kept getting farther and farther away. It finally stopped moving, but that wasn’t good for me.
Wake up! Don’t hit the bottom! I don’t need to die! Wake up! Wake up!
I could actually feel the wind brushing over my body and tangling my hair. I almost hit the floor, but I woke up for the last time.
I was sweating when I finally decided that going back to sleep was not a good idea. I walked out into the living room and turned on the television. My cooking channel was back on.
“I’m sorry Sandra Lee, but I really don’t feel like watching people cook right now,” I said while flipping Semi-Homemade to SpongeBob.
After an hour of that funny little sponge, I went to the kitchen to find something to eat. The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Good morning. I’m calling to inform you that Claire Jason is absent from school today.”
“May I ask who’s speaking,” I asked with my annoyed voice.
“Yes, my apologies. I’m Mrs. Greene, the secretary of Maple High School. May I ask who I’m speaking to?”
“Why, Mrs. Greene, I would have thought that you would recognize my voice. I mean, I’m at the office almost every day.”
She