Chapter 1: Unknown

Summary: Grace has something cool to show Simon.

AN: Warning for unreality in this chapter.

As soon as Grace heard her mother’s footsteps growing fainter and fainter, she perched at her window sill, waiting for her parents’ car to make its way out of the driveway. She rose, a bag slung over her shoulder as she practically danced down the halls and stairs in her home.

Before she could cross the main door, a tall and burly man blocked her path. She stumbled forward, barely managing to keep her bag from spilling out beneath her.

"A tad late to go and hang out, don't you think, Miss Monroe?" he asked, crossing his arms as he stared her down with a steely gaze. Grace quickly looked around the man to look for any possible outs. There were none.

"Just going to study with Simon, '' she said, smiling. “It’s for a school project for midterms. I’ve gotta get a head start if I want to get a good grade this semester..”

“A group project for a midterm?” The man snorted, earning a glare from Grace. "Listen, I won't tell your parents you tried to sneak out if you head back to your room and stay out of trouble for the rest of the night. Ok? Whatever project you’ve gotta do that’s oh so important can wait until the morning."

Grace considered making a run for it once more, but decided it would be best if she didn’t arouse his suspicions any further. With an exaggerated sigh and an eye roll, she stomped back upstairs to her room and slammed the door. She flopped on her bed and texted Simon.

"Parents come back?" he asked.

"Maurice won't let me leave," she texted back. "He's such a hardass."

"Lol. I'll be over in 10. Open the window for me?"

"Don't keep me waiting too long."

With that, Grace rolled over on her back and propped herself up. She spent the time typing away at her laptop while she waited. Her phone buzzed.

“I’m outside.”

She slung her backpack over her shoulder once more before looking out her window. Simon stood below her on the ground outside. His face and body were completely obscured by the dark-colored clothing he was wearing, but his slouch was unmistakable.

“Hey!” She heard Maurice’s voice yell out from the first floor. Simon took off in the opposite direction, Maurice trailing soon after him. Grace took the opportunity to run as quickly as she could out of the house while Maurice was still dealing with Simon. She got a few blocks away before she decided to text Simon again and tell him where she was.

He ran up to her a few minutes later. Thankfully, Maurice was not pursuing him.

“Finally lost him. I don’t think I’ll be able to wear that same outfit near your house for a while though,” he chuckled breathlessly. “So… our usual activities tonight?”

Grace smiled and shook her head. She led him to the outskirts of town, where the woods began. She walked further and further into the trees until they came across an area sectioned off by police tape.

“I came here last summer while you and your mom were in France,” she said.

“Isn’t this where those kids went missing?” Simon asked pensively, looking around.

“Not here, beyond that,” she said. “Technically, no one’s allowed to go past this point in the woods. So no one goes over to my spot.”

She helps him go over the police tape twice, leading him to a collection of tree stumps.

“Wow… tree stumps!” Simon said. “That’s uh… thanks for showing me this, Grace.”

Grace sighed and kicked the leaves away from one of the stumps, revealing a pile of loose papers. She pulled a book out of her bag

Where'd you find this thing?" Simon asked, scrunching his nose at the wear and tear of the
notebook.

"Relax, I disinfected it before I let it touch anything in my house. I found it stuffed in a tree when I came here the second time. Then I noticed a lot of the pages were ripped out. I’ve been looking around and gathering whatever pages I can, little by little, to put it back together and I can make sense of it."

"Let's see... 'Numbers Train,' huh?" Simon read aloud the title. "I can't make out the author's name... I... I don't know what I'm looking at here."

"Who cares about the author, it's ours now," Grace says. “I’m still missing a few pages from the beginning. But that’s why we’re going to look for it.”

“If you’ve known about this place for presumably months, how come you’re only showing me now?”

“I didn’t want this place to be compromised so easily. If people saw the two of us sneaking into the woods more often we could get followed. Besides, I wanted to be absolutely sure I was right.”

“Right about what?”

Grace placed the book in Simon’s hands, opening to a certain page. She then walked off to search for the final few pages.

"You’ll see! Stay right there! And look at the notes I wrote down!"

She’d gone too far away to understand whatever Simon yelled back. While she kicked around leaves, she kept her eyes peeled for anything that looked out of place. A particularly cold breeze washed over her. She pulled her jacket closer to her body.

The train screeching to a stop startled her. There were no train tracks around to be found, much less in the middle of the woods. She shook her head, wondering if these late night excursions were starting to get to her. The sound of the train screeching along startled her again.

Grace followed the sound further into the thick of the trees. Finding nothing, she sighed and returned to her original position and continued to look around. Her foot hit something solid and she landed hard on the ground. When she turned on her back, what looked to be a small white orb with a black stripe in the middle peaked out from the ground.

She blinked twice before reaching forward. Grace gently wrestled the object out of the dirt for a closer look. This certainly didn’t look like any of the gadgets she’d seen in Simon’s room many times before.

“Are you my mother?” The sudden voice from the orb made Grace yelp and lose her grip on the object.

“What?” She backed up into a nearby tree, breathing heavily. Little legs sprouted from the orb, and he started to crawl closer to Grace.

“Are you my mum?” the orb asked a second time.

“Huh? No! What even are you?” She scrambles to her feet, staring him down uneasily.

“I’m looking for my mum.”

“I… I don’t know where she is, sorry.”

“You’ve come to put me out of my misery, then?” the orb took on a deeper, more depressed tone.

“No…I’m…where did you come from?”

Before he could answer, Simon came running over and punted him away.

“Oh no!” The orb split into two domes and started scampering around.

"Grace!" Simon's voice snapped her attention back to him. She was lying with her back to the trunk of the tree behind her. Her arms felt sore, as though she had fallen hard. Her best friend leaned over her, worry in his face. "Thank god, I thought I was gonna have to go to the police."

"What are you doing here, I told you to stay by the stumps," she said, still shaken by what she had seen.

"That's beside the point. Are you ok? Any serious injuries? Did that thing hurt you?"

"I’m fine," she assured him, wrapping her arms around him gently. "It's sweet that you care about me, though."

Simon seemed unconvinced but hugged her back. "Of course, why wouldn't I care about the girl who saved me from getting attacked by a large dog when we were kids."

"You still remember that?" she snorted. "That was the dumbest and scariest thing I'd ever done in my life."

"And the bravest."

"Oh please. We were like...8. “

"What happened?" He asked.

"I was looking for the rest of the pages when... I heard train noises?"

"I thought trains don't cross this part of town?" he interrupted. “Or in the woods at all.”

"I know! I thought it was weird too! I figured it was just tiredness making me see and hear things that weren't there. But… there was this white ball robot thing I tripped on. It kept asking if I was its mom?"

“Weird. Where did you find it?”

Grace walks over to the hole the orb left behind. Her eyes caught something sticking out and reached out to free it.

“I think these are the last few pages from the notebook!” she exclaims, holding the papers close to her chest. “Come on, we can get out of here now.”

She pulled Simon along in the opposite direction the orb went.

“Wait, wait!” the orb came scampering back towards them in one piece. “What are you going to do with that book?”

“Why do you care?” Simon scoffed, slightly unsettled.

“Is this… your book?” Grace asked. “Are you the one who wrote this book or something?”

“Well no. I’m One-One! But I know where it came from,” the orb insisted. “She’d be really mad if she knew you guys stole her notebook. I know I’d be super pissed if I put a lot of notes together for someone to take it for themselves.”

“Well if she wants it back so bad, where is she?” Grace asked.

“I… I don’t know. I haven't seen her in a while. I just remember a really bright light, someone was holding me in her arms. There were a lot of ripping sounds, a lot of yelling, and then I got stuck in this dirt and buried in the leaves. Then I fell asleep. And then you found me and yelled at me and your friend kicked me.”

“Uh… sorry about that.”

“Well, that’s sad and all but we’re going now,” Simon said dismissively, turning away.

“Please help me find my mum,” One-One pleaded. Then he took on a deeper voice. “I’ll just follow you guys wherever you’re going instead.”

“No, you can’t come with us! How would we even explain that to our families?” Simon said.

“Is my mother with you?”

“...no.”

“I don’t think this guy is gonna leave us alone any time soon. Let’s just take him with us then we’ll get rid of him as soon as we can if he proves to be too much trouble ,” Grace whispered to Simon. He sighed but nodded.

“Fine. You can come with us. But you’ve gotta do exactly what we say,” Simon says.

“And don’t let anyone else but us see you,” Grace added, slipping the little ball in her bag. “Unless we say you can see other people or whatever.”

“Kinda sounds like we’re fostering a toxic environment in this group but ok,” One-One agreed.

The two of them hurried out of the forest, heading back into town.

“I doubt I can use the same trick again to help you sneak back inside,” Simon says, running a hand through his hair. “We can look at the book together at my place if you want.”

“I’d like that.” She smiled..

“Oh are we going to a slumber party?” the chipper voice of One-One returned. “I never get invited to those!”

Grace and Simon shared a look between each other before hurrying back to Simon’s home.

Back in Simon’s room, Grace turned her bag upside down to empty its contents. The notebook, loose papers, and One-One all sprawled out on Simon’s bed. One-One stood on his legs and started crawling around as he looked at the place. Grace could see Simon slightly shudder at the sight.

Soon they had gotten settled, all the pages were dried off and mostly salvaged to put in order. They sat together on the bed, One-One squeezed between them as they pored over the notes. Lots and lots of text accompanied with detailed drawings and captions littered the pages. Sketches of corgis with crowns on, giant pig babies, men made entirely out of metal. Simon chuckled at some of the drawings, as well as some of Grace’s own annotations made on sticky notes.

"The notes mention 4 kids who boarded the train...this entry is dated two years ago..." Simon said quietly. "Do you think they're... talking about the kids who went missing two years ago? Or maybe it’s a coincidence.”

“A train you say?” One-One piped up. I live on one of those!”

"The way each kid is described, it can't possibly be just a coincidence. It's a dead ringer for each of them. That little redhead girl Tulip led the coding club when I was in high school,” Grace said. I saw her at student government meetings. If she’s wherever this notebook came from I bet the others were with her. They all disappeared on the exact same date, in the same area."

"You're saying those kids that the police presumed missing if not…deceased are on this...numbers train that's being written about?"

“Well, assuming they haven't died on the train, I’d say yes. The red-headed girl was the last person I saw before I ended up here.”

“You SAW Tulip? Is she with the others?”

“I think so!”

“Which question are you answering?”

“Not sure!”

The two groaned and returned to the notebook.

“If those kids are still on the train… presuming this is a real thing we’re talking about and not some fucked up prank, what do you want us to do about it? How do we find this train?” Grace asked One-One.

“Well you can’t just find the train. It finds you,” he said.

“Ok, that’s no help at all,” Simon said. “We should start with the last people to see those kids before they ended up on the train.”

“Our old friends Ryan and Min-Gi. They were chaperoning that day for that group.” Simon said.

“They dropped out without graduating soon after that incident. I don't think Min-Gi's left his house all that much. Ryan skipped town a while later. Neither of them have spoken to me at all since.”

“No one has heard from Ryan in a year. Not even his family.”

“I hope he's ok,” Grace lamented. “I'd hate for something to happen to him. We used to be close. Min-Gi too……I wonder if they still think about our band…””

"Whatever went down that day must have rattled them really badly," Simon commented. Grace sat back down and tried to remember when she knew about the two guys.

"They were the last to see the kids, but the police could not link either of them to their disappearance, and were eventually declared innocent... and that what happened was a freak accident," Grace continued.

Ryan and Min-Gi were considered innocent in the eyes of the law. In the eyes of the town, however…

"Lots of people didn't see it that way. I heard they got a lot of shit for it."

“They still do. I see their homes vandalized when I pass by their neighborhood to this day. They've tried getting the police involved but it's pretty ineffective.”

"We can't control the mob, especially when they're still convinced that those two had something to do with the kids being gone."

"Do you think they did?"

"Well... no. Neither of them seem the type to intentionally put kids in harm's way."

"Then they won't mind talking to us about it," Simon said, getting up from his bed to stretch.

"We don't even know where Ryan is!"

"Min Gi might. He's our best option right now. It's really late now, but we can talk about this in the morning and figure out our next steps from there. I’m going to go to sleep on the couch. You can take the bed. Good night, Grace."

He squeezed her shoulder gently and walked out of the room, leaving Grace with One-One on the bed.

“Is this the part where we unpack our most deep seated secrets to each other and forge bonds no other man knows about?” One-one asked. Grace rolled her eyes and turned on her stomach to continue looking through the notebook.

Eventually she grew sleepy and started nodding off to sleep. Just as she closed her eyes, the sound of a train screeching to a stop startled her.

“Not this again…” she groaned, rolling over in bed.

She got up and looked out of her window. Nothing outside. She jumped at the sound of the train again. She turned on One-One.

“I’m not making those sounds! I’m not that good at impressions…yet,” he said.

She spotted green lights flashing under the door. Grace rushed over and swung the door open. The hallway was just as dark and silent as it was before. She sighed and walked back to the bed. She curled up on her bed, holding the notebook close to her as she nodded off once more to the sound of One-One humming to himself.

Grace found herself standing in the middle of nowhere. Simon and One-One were nowhere to be found. Nothing but pitch black surrounded the world around her. She turned around as a bright green light grew closer and closer at an alarming speed. Just as she braced for impact, darkness engulfed her once more, the sound of loud static soon overwhelming her.

“Miss Grace!” She was lying on the wooden floor of Simon’s room. One-One was perched on top of her stomach. “I was about to go get Simon to deal with your corpse in a few minutes.”

“What? What happened?”

“I don’t know, my eyes were closed! I thought this was part of the sleepover. Why are you on the floor?”

“I don’t know?” Grace glared at the little orb, pushing him off of her body. “Maybe you should go keep Simon company.”

“Sure thing, Miss Grace!”

She picks One-One up and places him by Simon’s side, where he is already fast asleep. She went back to the bedroom quickly. She put the notebook under her pillow and curled up in her blankets.