The night before my best friend disappeared, she thrust a crumpled five-dollar bill into my hand with an intensity that didn’t fit her usual quirks. “I owe you. Just take it,” she insisted, forcing a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. I shrugged it off, tossed the bill into my savings jar, and never thought twice about it — until the next morning, when she was gone.
For three agonizing weeks, fear swallowed me whole. Police interviewed everyone, her parents unraveled, and the school halls buzzed with rumors that never aligned with the girl I knew. I had no evidence to counter the stories, no clue to explain her sudden disappearance.
Then, one ordinary Wednesday, I spotted the bill again while cleaning my desk. Something about her odd behavior that night tugged at me. Under the lamp, I noticed faint handwriting squeezed along the edge of the bill. It was her script — sharp, rushed, scared.
Three words: “Find the oak.”
I knew exactly which oak she meant — the giant tree behind the abandoned observatory, our secret refuge during countless summer evenings. Her message wasn’t random. It was intentional.
The next afternoon, I biked there, the bill in my pocket. Everything looked the same, yet charged with dread. That’s when I noticed a patch of bark on the tree’s backside — lighter, recently disturbed. Behind it, hidden in a small hollow, was a folded scrap of paper.
I pulled it out, hands shaking. Her frantic handwriting filled the page.
She hadn’t run away. She’d overheard something dangerous — something involving someone she once trusted. She was scared for her life and didn’t believe anyone would protect her. The note ended with instructions:
“If you find this, come back at sunset on the first clear day.”
The next evening was cloudless.
I returned to the oak, heart pounding. For several minutes, nothing happened. Then a faint whistle echoed from behind the observatory — our childhood signal.
She stepped out of the shadows, exhausted, thin, trembling — but alive.
“I knew you’d find my message,” she whispered before collapsing into a hug that felt like a decade of relief.
As the sun sank behind the trees, she told me everything — the argument she overheard, the threat, the betrayal, the reason she vanished. She’d hidden near the observatory because it was the only place she felt safe, and she used the five-dollar bill because she knew only I would notice the message.
When I asked what she wanted to do next, she whispered, “I don’t know. I just couldn’t stay alone anymore.”
“You’re not,” I told her, and I meant it.
We sat beneath the oak in silence as the stars appeared — the same stars we once believed would watch over us forever. The world was heavier now, but she wasn’t facing it alone.
The message she hid wasn’t just a clue.
It was a cry for help — and I wasn’t letting go.