How I Missed You.

I made my way to Isabella’s house with Jamie, where Julie was waiting for us unsure if she should call the police or not.

“They won’t accept her as a missing person unless she’s been gone for more than 48 hours,” Jamie sighed.

“But she’s missing now!” I groaned.

“Why would she run away?” Julie muttered from her spot on the couch.

“She didn’t run away,” I tried to reassure her.

“So what did happen, James?” Jamie snapped.

“I-I don’t know,” I stammered, unable to put what I was thinking into a positive light. Isabella was missing, and that could never be a good thing so I settled with, “I’m going to call my mum, maybe we can put together a search?”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Julie attempted a smile.

I grabbed my phone and walked into the hallway dialing my mother’s cell phone number incase she was out. She answered on the third ring.

“Hey mum?”

“Yeah James?” she yawned.

“I’ve got some bad news,” I cringed; telling her about Isabella would mean telling her about skipping school.

“What?” her voice grew sharper at my tone of voice.

“Isabella’s missing,” I looked back to the lounge room where Julie’s eyes glistened from un-fallen tears and Jamie stood awkwardly against the wall, not entirely comfortable being alone with Julie.

There was a pause and then, “I’ll be right over.”

Right over meant as fast as my mum could weave in and out of the traffic to get to Julie’s house. We waited patiently, thinking of places we might find Isabella if she had run away (though I refused to believe such nonsense) and calling up people who might be willing to help search.

“Sharon!” Julie cried when my mother’s car pulled up in the driveway where we were waiting.

“Julie! I’m so sorry. Don’t worry, we’ll find her,” said my mother, hugging Julie and rubbing her back as her tears continued to flow.

Another ten minutes went by and soon enough Julie had calmed down enough to speak and everyone willing to help had arrived.

Taking charged I sat at the head of the dinning table and assigned people the locations they were to visit. Isabella had told me about all her favourite places and Jamie knew places she visited often. I really hoped we would find her.

~~~~~

“Let’s go to the park,” Jamie said.

Everyone but the two of us had already left to go searching for Isabella. Most were confident we would find her before the night’s end but I was almost certain this was more than a teenage girl running away from home.

“Yeah, then we can circle the block. You don’t think she would have gotten on a bus do you?” Or someone dragged her on one, I added silently.

“I hope not, or else we might never find her,” Jamie answered. I shuddered at the thought.

We ran down the street, gasping for breath as if, somehow, rushing would ensure the finding of Isabella.

“I’ll check the trees over on the right, you check the playground,” Jamie told me. I nodded, not even getting annoyed at him acting like an Isabella expert.

“If you see her, try and sneak up. You’ll probably scare the crap out of her, but if she did run away who’s to say she won’t do it again?”

“Right,” Jamie agreed and quietly ran off into the trees.
As I made my way over to gigantic playground I felt the buzz of my phone in my pocket. My heart picked up speed as I realised it might be Isabella calling, but when I flipped the cover over to reveal an unknown number, my heart sank.

Lifting the phone to my right ear I muttered hello.

“I know you, but you don’t know me. And unless I get $200,000 by this time next week your little friend won’t see the sun shine no mores,” a rough voice answered.

With a sharp intake of breath the phone dropped to the ground and something of a squawk called Jamie over to my side.