Kyle was never truly himself after that. He loved his father, and was worried that he might never come back. But even if Abraham had disappeared, Kyle could feel that he was still alive and unharmed, and longed to be able to see him again.
And yet, as the days passed, Kyle began to get another strange feeling, as though his dad was still alive and unharmed, but that he was somehow--different. He was not feeling as though Abraham had changed mentally or emotionally, just that he was different in another way. He couldn't explain how he could possibly feel this way, or why he felt like these things were really true. His mother and his friends' mothers dismissed it as a strange feeling associated with a longing to see his father again, but his friends remembered having that same feeling after their fathers left. What's more, Diana was beginning to feel the same thing as well. Wondering what was going on, Kyle and Diana invited their friends over while their moms were out shopping. They had told their own mother that it was to work on homework or something, but that was just an excuse to avoid revealing the true reason. As soon all their friends were inside, Kyle brought them up to his room and sat down at the desk. Diana sat down on the bed with Rachel, while the guys either sat on the floor or stood.
"So, I think we all know why we're here," Kyle said. That actually was true; it was that feeling again.
"Because we all have this strange feeling that out dads our still alive and out there somewhere?" Leo responded.
"Yeah," said Kyle, with a tone that suggested he was a little surprised and weirded out.
"This is definitely weird," Rachel said. "All twelve of us have had this feeling, but it seems that nobody else can relate to it or understand it."
"I wonder if there is something else to it," Ty said.
"Hey, Kyle," Dustin asked. "Justin told me that you pulled out some of your father's hair as he was leaving. Is that true?"
"Yes, but I didn't do it on purpose," Kyle explained.
"I believe that," Ethan said. "But Scott told me that you still have it."
"Is that true?" Luke asked.
"Yes," Kyle answered.
"Would you mind showing us?" Matthew asked.
"Sure," Kyle replied.
He opened a drawer of his desk, the one where he had hidden the hair and dandruff that he had accidentally pulled from his father's head before he vanished. Kyle couldn't bear to look at the hair, for it would remind him of his father. So, Peter looked into the drawer and searched for the hair. Then, Peter stopped, staring at something in the drawer.
"Peter," Justin asked. "What is it?"
"Did you find it?" Scott asked.
"I found...something," Peter replied.
Wondering what his friend meant, Kyle turned back to the desk and looked in the drawer, under the papers and objects that Peter was holding out of the way, and saw...
"What the--?" he asked.
It was exactly where Kyle had placed the hair and dandruff, but something was obviously different. The hair was the same color, but the dandruff seemed completely different. Whatever was there now was now flaky or pale, but rough and purple. Kyle reached his hand in to touch one, and it felt like a scale. But he had not even opened the drawer in days, not since he put the hair in after Abraham vanished. What had happened?
Then Kyle began to remember the bedtime story that his father used to tell him. It seemed too detailed to be a simple bedtime story. And the ending...his mother always made his father stop before he could get beyond that point, but Kyle remembered his father saying that it was "not the end of the story". What did that mean?
Deciding to investigate further, Kyle went down the hall to his parents' room, with his sister and their ten friends following behind him. Kyle remembered an old trunk that his father did not want him to look in until he was older, but that was when he was younger. Kyle reached under the bed, found the handle, and pulled the trunk out. It was locked, but Diana found the key in a drawer of their father's desk. Kyle unlocked the trunk, then opened it. Before their eyes, the group saw mostly pictures and other mementos of their fathers' recent lives, but there was also a book. It looked like a photo album, but it was a bit different from the others. Kyle opened the cover...
...and nearly dropped the book and his jaw when he saw the pictures.