"Pick up the damn phone," growled Seth as he sped over country roads as fast as his truck could manage.

No answer. Of course.

Seth somehow felt numb, sad, angry, and sick all at once. The tears had never come. He'd expected them to. They didn't. No release. No wave of overwhelming sadness and crushing despair. Just this blend of emotions that somehow translated into a calm anger. The sky was darkening, and lightning flashed on the front edge of the wall cloud rapidly sweeping over the countryside.

Seth redialed and looked around his truck, aware he might be racing into a speed trap. Seth eased up on the accelerator and slowed to a less felony-level speed.

No answer.

"Pick up, dammit." Seth redialed for the tenth time, and after his call to the mystery number was once again not received, he pulled up Spotify and began playing the loudest, angriest metal he had on his playlists, cranking the volume in his stereo to a level the doctor would probably talk to him about someday.

Seth punched the dashboard. "Why? Why? Why?" He punched it again and again, venting his anger on the already banged-up interior of the vehicle.

"Incoming call from..." Siri read off the mystery number.

Seth snatched up the phone, tapped off the Bluetooth connection and held it to his ear. "Hello?" He veritably growled.

"Seth?"

"Who the hell is this?"

"You needed to know, Seth."

"Yeah, but maybe doing this face to face, maybe you giving me some kind of evidence, like, oh, I dunno, a picture of her and Doucheface McScheduledForTheER swapping saliva samples? You saw it and texted me, why the hell didn't you use that handy fucking thing on your phone called a camera--yeah, they have those now, fucking weird right--and take a quick little snapshot? I was going to ignore you until I saw evidence."

"She was going to dump you anyway."

"How do you fucking know that? Is this Sarah? Are you being altruistic for once in your basic-ass life?"

"No, this isn't Sarah." There was a long sigh. "Seth, it's Emma."

"Emma?" Shit. Seth felt bad that he yelled at her. She was a good friend, they just hadn't seen each other all summer. It explained why she was at auditions. Emma was a dyed-in-the-wool theater kid, and really good at it, too. And to be honest, Seth used to have a crush on her back before he and Madeline got together. He could imagine a crushed look in her sky-blue eyes from his tirade. "Emma, I'm sorry. I didn't-"

"No, it's okay, Seth."

There was a long pause. Thunder pealed in the distance. Seth could see where the lightning had impacted the earth seconds before, a single long bolt.

"Where are you?"

"Driving away from the lake house."

"You guys have broken up already then?"

"Yeah."

Seth stared at the wall of rain that was rapidly approaching him. He slowed down to a normal speed as some of the raw emotion began to leave him. Driving on narrow country roads was dangerous enough already without a torrential downpour on top of it.

"You should come over to my place tonight. My brother and I were gonna play Injustice and pig out on pizza. I know you don't like to break your diet and all-"

"Tournament was last weekend. I'll be over in an hour or two."

"Great!" Seth could practically hear Emma's infectious smile through the phone. "What kind of pizza do you want?"

"Meat lovers."

"Okay. See you in a bit, Seth."

"See you." Seth hung up the phone. The rain hit his truck less than a second afterwards. Seth turned his windshield wipers on their highest setting. It was barely enough to see. Seth cursed under his breath and slowed down to 45 with an expression of resignation.

He set his phone on the passenger seat and gave almost his full attention to driving. The portion he didn't give drifted to Emma Crews, the cute blond he'd had a crush on for all of freshman year and had been too nervous to do anything about it despite the fact they'd had three different classes together: PE, English, and AP Biology.

Seth had just left the fatness of his younger days behind and hadn't known how to handle any kind of positive attention from girls. As a result, he'd spent all of freshman year and most of sophomore year in a self-imposed friend zone with Emma. They were good friends, but Seth couldn't bring himself to ask her out, even as he became more comfortable around girls. Then Madeline had caught his eye and the rest was history.

As angry as he was, he was thankful Emma had sent him those texts. He would have overlooked the stuff at the lake house and thought nothing of Madeline's lie if he didn't already have some kind of suspicion. Then Madeline would have played him right up until homecoming and dumped him after that.

There was a blinding flash of light as lightning struck literally a yard from the road. Seth jerked on the wheel as thunder clapped hard enough to vibrate his seat and temporarily deafen him. He hydroplaned. Seth's eyes grew wide with fear as the car did a figure-eight at 45, skidding down the road, unable to get a grip on the asphalt.

Tachypsychia hit Seth again and he swore he saw a person standing down the road in the middle of the downpour as the car continued to skid and slide out of control.

An eternity ended in a few short seconds and the car came to a halt on the edge of the road, unharmed. Seth let out a deep breath and relinquished his grip on the steering wheel. He stared in the direction the car had come from, looking for that person. Nothing. Sheet lightning illuminated the landscape as bright as day. Nothing. Thunder clapped.

Seth sighed, and drove his car onto the road, heading back to town at a grandmotherly 30 miles per hour.

Someone watched.