No signal.

Yeah, that makes sense, most likely no one has cell service right now. Plus being suspended in a dimension of pure conflict, or whatever happened while she was transformed, was probably pretty confusing for her phone. She hopes the flashlight still works?

She'll unlock the door, slip out of the classroom, and try to sneak down the hall without looking like she's doing it. If she runs into anyone, she decides, she'll say she was taking a nap.

The flashlight works, yes, but there's nobody to find on the whole second floor. You can follow the sound of voices downstairs to the cafeteria/gym; that still seems to be where everybody's congregated.

That's a little more public than she'd like. She'll check down the halls first, just in case she can catch them alone.

A couple of people are hanging out in the hallways, but no one you know. Most of the classrooms are still locked, and the few that are open don't have who you're looking for either. People glance up at you, and a couple of folks wave, but nobody shouts "Hey! There's the other missing girl!" or anything like that.

She'll wave back!

This seems pretty promising. If the adults knew she was missing they wouldn't keep it a secret, would they? She'll try and paint a nice sleepy, serene expression on her face, and go peek in the cafeteria.

The tables and chairs are still laid out. In the darkness of the rain and power outage the room is a grotto of little lamps, improvised from cell phone flashlights and glasses of water. It's dim, but by now your eyes are mostly adjusted to not being your own light source, and you spot Joanna across the room just a moment before she spots you.

Oh thank God. She's so relieved she almost falls over even though she's sitting on the floor. She takes a breath to, to, to, she doesn't even know what -

Why's Joanna freaking out all of a - what the hell?

"Don't act surprised!" Carol hisses urgently. "And don't run!"

Joanna stands, smoothly and gracefully, and gives Carol a hand up. Then they can casually walk over to greet their friend, who was in the bathroom and who they definitely didn't leave to die in the woods out of pure cowardice.

Even just watching them stand up is grounding her. She has so so so many problems _{is Otso really OK how does she fix it if he's not how does she rescue Kyle what does she tell Emily if she can't what do they tell Emily if she can am I going to turn into a murder monster again should she tell her parents or not both options suck} but she's not alone.

She feels herself tearing up a little, and doesn't fight it. I really needed this.

It doesn't look like she's mad at them. Of course she's not, she's Sophie. She explained it to Joanna once, how when she understands why someone did something it somehow stops her getting mad at them for it, and she always understands why people do things because, again, she's Sophie. Okay whatever that isn't literally true but she understands Carol and Joanna just fine, she's going to tell them she gets it and everything's all right and screw that.

Carol takes her own advice and does not fling herself on her friend, though once they get into easy flinging distance the temptation is severe. Sophie looks...fine? Happy to see them. Maybe she just hasn't thought it through. "Let's find an empty classroom. They're mostly still locked, but we - "

"There's one on the second floor we can use."

Sophie will lead them to it. In silence, she guesses; there's a lot she wants to say to them but nothing she wants anyone else to overhear. Oh wait, there is one thing. "I'm really glad to see you two."

"Me too." She's not looking forward to this conversation but it's way better than any of the ones they'd be having if she'd stayed missing. She'll take one of Sophie's arms, for both their support.

And Carol will grab the other, for symmetry.

Sure enough, there's an unlocked English classroom on the second floor. It's also got an open window, though no rain seems to have got in.

Whoops.

Joanna holds it together until she hears the lock engage. Then she'll whirl around, grab Sophie in a hug, and bury her head in her shoulder. "Oh my God Sophie I'm so sorry!"

First things first, I'd better go shut that - bwuh?!

Carol will move in and hug her too, a little more deliberately. "We're sorry. We're terrible friends."

"The worst!"

Uh. Uh?

Sophie had a plan for this conversation and she clearly has to change course at least a little but it's hard, all her brain can come up with is FRIENDS GOOD LOVE FRIENDS.

She'll just hug them back, as tightly as she can. They're definitely wrong but she doesn't know why, so she doesn't know what to say.

Joanna does not have that problem! She has thought a lot about what happened, and about their whole relationship, and now her only challenge is getting it to come out in order instead of all at once.

"We take you for granted! I tell myself we rely on you, and you like being relied on, and that's true but it's still wrong. Like the thing at breakfast this morning! You helped me with my problem and then I was congratulating myself for cheering you up! I told you about that so you'd feel better and it worked but it was still all about me, I could have just asked you what was wrong!"

She takes a ragged breath. "I guess I always told myself we were supporting you by letting you support us? But I just realized today how shitty that is." Nope that's not true, try again Joanna. "Or I guess I sort of always knew but I figured it was fine because if you ever did need anything we'd be there, no matter what! And then what you needed was for us to be brave and tell people you were missing even though we'd get in trouble for not telling anyone earlier and we couldn't do it."

"I lied to your dad," Carol adds dully. She already felt terrible about all this but hearing Joanna lay it out is making things so much worse. "The rain had just started and we were getting worried, we didn't know what was happening, and he came around asking where you were. If I'd told him the truth he'd've freaked, so...I didn't. I said you were having girl problems, and we were taking care of it." Boring lies are the best lies; this is what Joanna always gets wrong. Boring and kinda unpleasant, so the person you're lying to doesn't want to think too hard.