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When I was ten, I played a late night game of flashlight tag with a bunch of neighborhood kids. If you don't know what flashlight tag is, it's the same as tag, but you play it in the dark, the person who's "it" gets a flashlight, and they have to yell the name of the person they see with it in order to "tag" them. It was really cloudy that night, and most people had their curtains drawn, so it was the perfect level of darkness for hiding in.The side of the street my house was on was skirted by a broad length of woods. That was basically the boundary for our side of the game. You could run through any yard, even go across the street and run through their yards, but you weren't allowed to hide in the woods, because it was too difficult to find anyone in there, and it was very easy to trip over tree limbs or end up with poison oak. Of course, this rule was frequently and flagrantly ignored when people got too close to being caught. They'd duck off into the bushes for a few seconds, or run behind a group of trees to evade capture.I don't remember who was it at the time, but I was hiding in a backyard two houses down from my house. The family that lived there had a little playhouse for their daughter, a swing set and a doghouse but no dog. I would periodically duck into the doghouse whenever I saw the flashlight's searching beam approaching. Those of us trying to hide from the "it" person liked to spook each other in the dark by jumping out of nowhere and making each other scream, giving away our positions.I thought I knew where the "it" guy was, but I got comfortable hanging out on the swing set. Suddenly, a person with a flashlight came around the corner of the house and angled it almost directly at me. I jumped and ran for the edge of the woods. When I got there, I hovered in case they saw me and were going to yell at me for cheating. The beam of light seemed to explore the swing set where I was, then came in my direction, but there was no sense of hurry at all to it, and I wondered for a second if maybe I'd attracted the attention of the homeowner. Most people on the block knew we were out playing flashlight tag, but you never can be sure that someone won't get nervous if you stay in their yard too long. So I crouched down in the grass and waited to see who it was.They shined the light right in my face and I tried to cover it with my hand to avoid identification. The creepy thing was, they never said anything, just shined that light on me."You got me!" I exclaimed, hoping that if it was a homeowner, they'd realize I thought they were the flashlight tagger. Then I realized that two houses down, people were yelling and there was the "it" guy's flashlight beam chasing them around.I stood up and tried to see who was shining the light on me. They just stood there, not moving, not saying anything. I felt a little freaked out."If you don't want us playin' in your yard, I'll go tell them it's off limits, okay?"The person started walking toward me. I didn't feel right, so I started walking toward the edge of the yard. The person just kept shining the light on me and coming toward me.So I ran.When I looked back, the person with the flashlight was running too, and they were an adult, much bigger and much faster than me. I felt scared now, not sure why this person was chasing me. I was running toward where the other kids had been, but they were gone now. It just seemed to be me and the person with the flashlight. So I turned right and ducked into the woods. I dropped to the ground, shaking bushes and stuff to try to confuse the person, then shimmied under a ring of thick bushes and curled up. I could see the flashlight in the woods with me, looking around. I could hear the person's footsteps breaking sticks and crunching on pine needles. I didn't know what the was going on, and I just wanted to get back to all the other kids. Eventually, the flashlight wandered deeper into the woods and I crawled quiet as a mouse back to the edge of the trees and then got up and ran toward the street.I was immediately caught by the person who was "it", but I didn't care. He yelled loud that I was now "it" and I tried to tell him that there was someone else with a flashlight wandering around in the woods, but he took off into the dark yelling about "no tag backs"."Don't go in the woods!" I yelled, but nobody responded. Of course, any who heard me would just assume I was talking about not cheating at the game, but I was sincerely worried about that person wandering around in them. Of course, now I had a flashlight of my own, so I thought, I should go and see if I can find out who that was, just to make myself feel better.I went back behind the house I'd come from and a bunch of laughing shadows scampered out of sight into neighboring yards. I ignored them and headed straight for the trees. I couldn't see any other light in there, so I thought, maybe he went home. I didn't know if it was a man or a woman, but I didn't imagine any women trudging through the woods at night.So I went about playing the game again, albeit anxious because of the lingering thought that there was someone wandering in the woods who didn't seem to be playing the game with us. I ran across the street and chased people through the backyards there, but after a while I found the lots empty and realized that they must have gone back across the street. I ran back over and was exploring the Beeches' backyard. Mrs. Beeche had a clothesline with a bunch of drying sheets on it, and her daughter Charlotte liked to hide among the linens and stay close to home in case she got too scared of the dark. She was only a year younger than me.I thought I heard something at the tree line, so I went over and was waving the flashlight around into the woods."Stay outta the woods!" I remember yelling. I waved the flashlight back and forth a couple more passes, then saw someone off in the distance. I held the light on whoever it was. They were about half a job into the woods, hard to make out, but it looked to me like Charlotte. Charlotte had brown hair that her mother insisted on keeping shoulder length. We always dressed dark for flashlight tag, and Charlotte liked to wear this deep purple sweatshirt, so it was usually easy to tell when you had found her."Charlotte I see you!" I yelled. She just stood there. I continued to hold the light on her and call her name, but she didn't seem to move. She stood there partially obscured by a tree and looked at me. The distance between us was enough that I couldn't see if she was blinking or not, but she had her head propped at an angle like she was looking around the trunk at me with her mouth hanging slightly open. Every now and then she sorta twitched or squirmed. It was a real freaky kinda movement."Charlotte! Come out of there!" I yelled. "Everybody! Charlotte's it, but she won't come out of the woods!" Some kids including my friend Dustin appeared behind me and started joining in my yell for Charlotte to come out."Do you see her?" I asked."Yeah, she's over behind that tree. Charlotte, get over here!" Dustin said. But she wouldn't come. "Charlotte, are you okay? Get over here, dummy!"Charlotte seemed to stand up straighter and then disappear behind the tree. We could hear movement, but it seemed to be going away rather than toward us. Dustin started shouting Charlotte's name again and trudging into the woods after her, but I grabbed him and gave him the flashlight to take with him. I was scared again, because this all seemed surreal. I went to Charlotte's house and knocked until her father answered."Mr. Beeche, Charlotte won't come out of the woods, and I'm worried about her," I told him. I wasn't sure if he'd take me seriously, but he rolled up his newspaper and disappeared into the closet behind the door for a moment before returning with a huge flashlight strapped to a car battery."Show me where she is," he told me, so I lead him to the woods and pointed to where I'd seen her."She was right there," I said, "by a tree, but she wouldn't come out and she was acting like she was sick or something." A bunch of the other kids kept calling Charlotte, Charlotte and I could see Dustin's flashlight beam moving around through the trees. Mr. Beeche went in after him.They explored the woods for a good fifteen to twenty minutes, and Mr. Beeche started getting real angry. We could hear him yelling very loudly for Charlotte, threatening her with all sorts of punishments if she didn't get her ass back in the backyard that instant. The game was over by now, and we kids just stood there in the Beeches' back yard among the linens and watched. Dustin came running back out of the bushes with a dead flashlight. Eventually, Mr. Beeche came back out of the woods."Game over, kids," he said, "Get inside. Ask your folks if they can help me and to bring flashlights."We all ran back home. My dad went out with three different flashlights. My mother went and turned on all the lights in the back rooms and opened the curtains and shades to help illuminate the back yard. I sat on the couch all upset and she eventually came back and hugged me and sat with me while I told her about the person with the flashlight chasing me and how I thought maybe Charlotte had run into him.Mr. Beeche had gone inside and called them to report a missing child. They brought huge lights and did a march through the woods checking very thoroughly, but didn't find her. My mother told my dad what I'd told her, he told an officer and I ended up giving a statement. They went to the house three doors down and knocked, but the folks that lived there had been asleep and didn't know who would have been in their backyard. The police asked all up and down the neighborhood, but nobody claimed to know anything.The other end of the woods came to a back road mainly used by logging trucks. They found Charlotte two days later, on the other side of the logging road, down an embankment that ended at a stream, stuffed into a drain pipe. Her neck had been broken and she was apparently stabbed multiple times afterward. My parents wouldn't tell me about it, they thought it would upset me, but Dustin told me all the details at school the next day.It was the most awful thing our town had ever had happen. The police blocked off the logging road and spent months tracking down loggers and truckers who frequently used it. There was a curfew for months and we were told not to play flashlight tag anymore. We didn't argue.What leaves me shaking to this day is the memory of Charlotte's face, hanging out from behind the tree, looking at me. Sometimes I wonder if at that moment, I had been witnessing her death. And I wonder if that had almost been me.
I always wanted a little sister. I would beg my parents, "Please? Pleeeeaasssee?" and they'd roll their eyes and tell me that it wasn't as simple as I thought. That didn't stop me from talking about it every chance I got though.When they brought Sarah home, it was the happiest day of my life. She was so cute! I couldn't wait to share my toys with her. I started going through them, deciding which ones were hers and which ones were mine. I borrowed my daddy's label maker and started putting our names on each thing so we wouldn't get them confused.She cried a lot at first. I'd ask my parents why she cried so much and they told me it was natural. They said when she got used to us and our house she would calm down and not cry all the time. Sometimes though, she'd cry so loud that Daddy would have to take her into the basement where it was sound-proof so the neighbors wouldn't complain.She slept in Mommy and Daddy's bed for the first month. Sometimes I'd try to join them but they'd always lock their door. Mommy said their bed wasn't big enough for all of us to sleep in. I was patient. I knew the new bed with the bars that they'd set up in my room would eventually be hers.When they felt it was safe to let her sleep on her own, they started putting her in it. She wasn't crying so much anymore by then, and I would lie in my bed and watch her sleep from across the room. They'd take her into their bedroom first and lay with her until she fell asleep, then move her to our room. Some nights after she was moved, I'd see her lying there with her eyes open, just staring at the ceiling, so I'd go over and give her toys through the bars. A lot of the time she'd just throw the toy and then start crying and I'd have to hide under my covers before Daddy came in to deal with her.Eventually, they started letting Sarah sit with me in the playroom. I was told that I wasn't allowed to give her anything too small or sharp that she could hurt herself with. I was soooo happy! I would sit behind her and brush her hair and tell her she was the best little sister in the world. I showed her which toys were hers and which were mine, but she didn't seem to care. Sometimes we'd sit on the windowseat and she'd bang on the window while I drew on it with special crayons.School started back up at Sugar Creek Elementary, and I went but Sarah had to stay home. Mommy said she wasn't ready for school yet. I'd come home and tell Sarah all the stuff I'd learned. I drew pictures of us playing together. When I showed them to Daddy he'd tell me thank you and take them to keep in his office.Then came the really bad day. I'll never forget it. I came home from school and Mommy was just sitting at the table smoking. She looked real sad. I went to play with Sarah but couldn't find her. When I went to ask Mommy where she was, she started crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said that Sarah was gone. I didn't understand totally, but I started crying too and told her "We need to find her!" She just shook her head and said she was gone somewhere we couldn't go.Daddy took her bed apart. He threw away all my drawings with her in them. He took my nametags off all the toys. Sometimes I'd find one he'd missed and it'd make me cry. I started collecting them and hiding them, but he found where I hid them one day by accident and got really mad. We weren't allowed to talk about her. It was like she never existed. I didn't think it was fair. I told Mommy that Daddy was mean to make us not talk about Sarah, but she said it was better that way and I would understand when I was older.I saw Sarah again.It was just one time, but I'll never forget it. I was with Mommy doing some errands. We went grocery shopping then went to a fabric store in Thorntown so Mommy could look at material to make some new curtains out of. She remembered that she had letters to mail, so we stopped at the post office to buy some stamps. I was humming to myself and reading posters while Mommy talked to the lady behind the counter and that's when I saw Sarah. She was as cute as I remembered. I walked over and looked at the poster with her picture, but they'd gotten her name wrong. Somebody had written her name down as Shannon.I rushed over to Mommy and tugged on her sleeve and told her that Sarah was up on the wall with the other pictures of children, but she got all flustered and apologized to the lady before dragging me out of the post office. I had to shout because she kept trying to talk over me instead of listening."I saw Sarah! They got her picture on the wall in there!"Finally Mommy slapped me and told me it wasn't Sarah and that it may have looked like Sarah but I was mistaken and if I didn't stop I'd get in real trouble with Daddy when he got home. I cried and promised to be good, but even after I promised I wasn't allowed to have dinner and had to sit in my room that night. I heard Mommy and Daddy talking in the kitchen and they got kinda loud. Somebody started banging open the kitchen drawers and then Daddy's feet stomped up the stairs but I heard Mommy scream "Don't you dare!" and he stopped outside my room then went back downstairs.We never went back to that post office and I never saw Sarah again. This is the first time I've talked about Sarah since that day.
ive got one.SCHOOL.the end.honestly ive got nothing that hasnt been shared already.