Never See Them Again by M. William Phelps

instead of competing. So close, in fact, they had made up their own language.
    The family attended church and became involved with many of the programs revolving around the church. They donated a lot of their time, believing that giving back was something anyone blessed with prosperity, such as they were, should do. The girls and their mom joined the theater group at church. They loved it: playing different roles, entertaining churchgoers with big productions. Lelah wrote many of the plays. Rachael acted and directed, but soon became involved with the youth groups, helping the younger girls, serving as church counselor with Lelah, going to summer camp and helping out.
    Life was on a fast track—and much of it was flawless bliss. The Koloroutises were the quintessential American family, enjoying the fruits of their work in the community and from George’s success in his professional life. They gave back. They enjoyed life together.
    Then another side of Rachael emerged, George explained, as she grew from her junior high years into a teenager and entered high school.
    â€œShe liked to party—and that’s how she ended up with that group of friends in Clear Lake she was involved with.”
    Despite a proclivity to go out partying with friends once in a while, Rachael picked up a fondness for, George noted, “police work.” Rachael was from the Law & Order, NCIS, and CSI era of television. She simply had to watch those types of shows every week. It was one of her vices: a dose of crime television. And through that, one would imagine, she developed a fevered passion for going into law enforcement, dreaming of one day becoming a female FBI agent.
    â€œWhenever I’d go to D.C. on business,” George remembered, “I’d bring her back something with the FBI symbol on it, a shirt, jacket, or something. She loved that.”
    Everyone agreed on one thing where it pertained to Rachael: She was a “very soft-spoken, kindhearted girl.” When she was younger, Rachael was the kid who stood beside her dad, grasping his leg, twisting a lock of her hair, not speaking a word. Yet, at the same time, she was watching your every move, sizing you up. “Shy” was what girls like Rachael were sometimes called. But that was a simple explanation for a complicated girl, who was not necessarily cautious or nervous around others more than she was curious and wanting to know you before she allowed you access into her world.
    Then Rachael went through a period where her hair was all over the place, bushy and plain-looking, and her teeth were big and crooked. But George and his wife got their girl braces, and Lelah taught her little sister how to fix her hair, and everything changed. Rachael came out the other end “stunningly beautiful,” George said proudly. She was five feet four inches, and very thin. She was a petite girl, now with a smile that could grace the cover of any magazine. She had the looks and body of a supermodel, a sweet and genteel personality to go with it. Rachael was on her way. She had even met and started to date a popular boy (who had gone off to college the year before she was murdered, according to George) at Clear Lake High School.
    Rachael seemed happy.
    Like most teenagers, Rachael led two lives—the one at home (the churchgoer, family person, responsible young adult getting ready to go off to college) and the one out in the social world of high school and “Teen Land,” where you were judged on everything you did. Not that Rachael was two different people, consciously splitting her personality to satisfy both sides. George pointed out that that was “not at all what” he meant by agreeing his daughter led two separate lives. Rachael was like any other teen who acted one way around friends, another way around family. It’s part of growing up. A rite of passage into the adult world through that sieve of teen intercession. Maybe even a