That day had started like any other: Kori and Lydia both bored as shit in a lecture, and Kori convincing Lydia (not that she needed much prodding) to make out with her in the supply closet.
It was there, stealing kisses with a knee lodged between Lydia's thighs, that Lydia produced a bottle of wine from within her oversized blazer, and proposed they snuck out to the woods behind the building.
And Kori loved that idea.
Under tree canopies, passing the bottle of red back and forth, they sat talking until the sunlight started to wane, bathing the forest in warm, hazy orange. Kori complained about not even liking wine, and Lydia became gigglier and gigglier with each swig. Kori watched her with half-lidded eyes, awed - even if it was a stupid fucking situationship, her dumb nineteen-year-old heart was certain that she was destined to spend the rest of her life with this tipsy little goth.
The happy, hazy thoughts were shattered when a shout of their names came pinging between the trees. Oh, fuck. They were gonna get caught.
Both stumbled drunkenly to their feet, and took off running. Crucially, they ran in different directions, too caught up in tipsy panic to coordinate.
The sun slid lower and lower, the shadows got longer and longer, and the warm light became colder and colder. Kori regretted wearing heels as she thundered through the undergrowth, and it was surprising how long she made it before her ankle twisted over a root and she went crashing to the ground.
"Ah, fuck." She grumbled into a mass of dead leaves. She pushed herself up to a sitting position, and as she shook her head to get the twigs out of her hair, she realised that she was worryingly alone.
A worry that only amplified when a scream pierced from somewhere deep in the haze of low light, echoing from afar. Every nerve stood on end.
"Lydia?" Kori shouted into the dark, gripping onto a nearby tree for purchase as she ambled to her feet. "Lydia?"
The woods responded with a few chirping crickets, the patter of nocturnal paws crawling from dens as the moon shone above, and not a word from the voice she so desperately wanted to hear.
She kept shouting, staggering through clearings and ducking under branches as she searched for Lydia, without yield. The girl whose red lipstick still stained Kori's favoured nude shade had vanished without a trace.
She wasn't back by morning. Or the morning after that. Or the morning after that.
