Earth and Sky

It's been almost a month since your parents disappeared.

One Tuesday, they just didn't come home, and there's been no sign of them since. For the University and the rest of the town, the mystery is beginning to pall. To those people, it's as if Claire and Scott Colborn suddenly stopped existing -- strange and inexplicable, to be sure, but forgettable in the long run.

But for you it's as if the ground beneath your feet stopped existing, and you've been plummeting in freefall ever since. Your brother Austin, though, has been a rock through the whole experience, handling the numbing details, the endless meetings with useless detectives, even sorting through Mom and Dad's lab in hopes of finding an answer. Now you stand outside the lab door, clutching his note, hardly daring to hope that such an answer may have arrived at long last.