The next afternoon I biked to the observatory, the bill tucked safely in my pocket. The building looked even more weathered than before, its dome rusted like a forgotten relic. The oak stood tall beside it, branches stretched out like tired arms. At first, I saw nothing unusual. But when I circled the trunk, I noticed a strip of bark that looked cleaner than the rest—as if it had been peeled back recently. I pressed my fingers along the edge, and the bark shifted, revealing a shallow hollow someone had carved. Inside was a folded scrap of notebook paper, the corner torn jaggedly like it had been ripped out in a hurry. My hands trembled as I opened it. Her handwriting filled the page this time—messier, frantic. She wrote that she hadn’t run away. She’d overheard something she wasn’t supposed to, something involving someone she trusted, and she feared for her safety. She didn’t want to disappear, but she had to hide until she knew what to do.
I felt an ache in my chest—fear, relief, confusion tangled together. She ended the message with instructions: “If you find this, don’t tell anyone yet. Come back at sunset on the first clear day.” My mind raced. That was tomorrow. I barely slept that night, imagining every possibility—maybe she was safe, maybe she needed help, maybe she regretted trusting me. Maybe the danger she mentioned was real. When the next evening came, the sky glowed amber, cloudless and calm, as though nature itself had aligned for her signal. I returned to the oak, heart thudding. For a moment, I thought I had imagined everything. Then a faint whistle drifted from behind the observatory—our childhood signal, the one we used when playing hide-and-seek
