She took Addison by the arm.
“What do you have in your hand?” she asked.
Addison yelped like she’d been burned and wrenched free
from Verity’s grasp. As she did, Verity saw a button pop out of
her hand, land on the path, and bounce into the underbrush.
At once, Addison fell to her knees and began combing through
the brush without regard for any poisonous spiders, snakes, or
thorns she might find there.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” she said, tossing handfuls
of dead leaves over her shoulders. “Where is it? Where did
it go?”
Verity dropped down next to her on the path.
“I’ll help you look,” she said, reaching into the brush.
Addison slapped her hand away and shouted, “No!”
“I’m sorry,” Verity said, clutching her stinging knuckles.
“I didn’t mean to make you drop it.”
Addison sat down on the path, suddenly looking exhausted.
She leaned back on her elbows, then actually lay down flat on
her back right there in the dirt.
“It’s not that,” Addison said, her voice scarcely a whisper.
“If you see it, don’t pick it up. Don’t even touch it.”
It was then that Verity realized Annika, Alix, and Amber
should have caught up with them by now. She looked back the
way they’d come, but the path was perfectly empty. She called
out to them, but the woods were perfectly silent. It was as if the
other three girls had been lifted right off the path.
A Note from the Narrator: It is perhaps more accurate to say
they had been diverted by the stagehands.
201
