Ivy

   I remember Ivy.
   Everything about her had a kind of, I dunno, special aura about it. Her laugh. Her voice. What she left behind.
   According to various interviews I've completed, Ivy was born and raised in this specific town, having never lived anywhere else. She played softball here, got her first job at a coffee shop here, and left a trail of her "special aura" as one of my subjects said, behind her.
   Everyone in Baltom loved her. You see, she was such a sweet girl, and always tried to leave a little bit of goodness behind her. The residents of Baltom even had a name for her: Baltom's Golden Child. Even her fellow high school classmates, despite being such insolent teenagers as I have experienced, loved her. She was apparently quite popular.

   Then came the week of December 30.

   Ivy's parent's (whose dad is my brother) Maria and Darby McElsing woke up on New Years Day to find Ivy absent from her room at approximately eight o'clock in the morning. This wasn't unusual, as Ivy was an early bird, but when they searched the rest of the house she wasn't to be found.
   Ivy's parents immediately called the parents of Roberta Johnson, who was A good friend of Ivy's. Ivy had supposedly gone to Roberta's for a New Years Eve celebration. Her parents warned her to be back by one o'clock in the morning, and they thought that was that.

   As far as anybody knew, Ivy had never been one to drink, or get drunk, for the matter. She had also never missed curfew before, either. When Maria contacted Roberta's parents, they explained that no alcohol was at the party, and also some bad news.

Ivy was not there.

   Ten minutes later, an amber alert was sounded and a town wide manhunt took place, starting at Roberta's house and circling from there. The town had a population of about 6,000, so it took three hours for the search to reach the forest surrounding Baltom. Frantic and terrified for its Golden Child, the town helped the police with their search, and friends and neighbors worked hard to keep the McElsing's spirits up. Hot chocolate was passed around to weary searchers, and moral was high. By nightfall, however, Ivy was still missing. State police were hauled in, with bloodhounds and German shepherds and giant floodlights for searching in the dark. The mood of the town hung in the air like a dark, dense fog.

   The woods around Baltom were the primary target for the police, as they were the best place for a kidnapper to hide with his victim. More state patrol were stationed strategically, and Baltom was on high alert. Mothers stayed inside with their children and locked the doors, while other men and women packed nothing but a flashlight and a pistol and set off in search of Ivy. As a result of this shared effort, a clue was found of Ivy's last whereabouts at around  1:00 the next morning, in the entrance hallway of Rockefeller High, where Ivy went to school.
   The clue was a large clump of hair and a streak of blood on Locker #1. The color matched Ivy's, and analysis of the blood proved to be Ivy's DNA. A question was posed: what was Ivy doing at school during the break?

   Unfortunately, nobody knew. Roberta Johnson attested she had fallen asleep before midnight on December 31, and the last she had seen of Ivy was in her kitchen, eating ice cream out of the bucket and laughing whilst she was at it. Naturally, lie detector tests were taken, but Roberta passed. Besides, who would've thought Roberta had anything to do with the disappearance? In small towns such as Baltom, no one would even think of accusing someone of such thing.
   After about three more months of fruitless searches, the town began to mourn; however, Maria and Darby McElsing did not. They were firmly fixed to their belief that Ivy was alive and well.

   It almost pains me how shattered their faith was about eight months after Ivy's disappearance.