Safe and Sound

Vic had been missing for two days; Mike hadn’t slept in two days. The younger of the Fuentes brothers felt as if the world was caving in on him, crushing his ribs and piercing his heart. He couldn’t sleep until he knew where his brother was, and that he was okay. From his spot on the couch in the living room that usually felt so welcoming, but now felt all too quiet and cold, Mike could hear his father crying, and his mother whispering quiet words of reassurance into his ears, her voice low in an obvious attempt to keep her words from her younger son; she didn’t want to worry him any more than he already was. But Mike couldn’t help but hear, and it terrified him that his parent’s roles were reversed. His father never cried, and his mother always had a hard time controlling her emotions.

Mike sat there, listening to his mother telling his pops that Vic would be okay, and he let a few of his own tears escape. He didn’t think he could cry any more than he already had, but every time his eyes seemed to run dry, more tears formed in his tear ducts and streaked down his cheeks. He should be out looking for his big brother, not sat at home in their living room in the warmth while Vic could be god knows where, in God knows what kind of state. He could be… No, Mike shook the thought away. Vic would be fine. Vic would walk through the door any second and explain everything away. Mike had been telling himself that for two days, and it started to lose its believability after the first day.

The lanky sixteen year old looked out of the window, onto the street where the path was barely visible beneath dim street lamps. He felt sick at the thought of his brother out there alone in the dark, the early morning’s air chilling to a point where, if Mike so desire to go outside, goose bumps would cover his arms and his teeth would chatter. Vic could be catching pneumonia.

“What if someone has him?” Mike wanted to clap his hands over his ears, so that he couldn’t hear his mother’s teary speculations from the kitchen, but he couldn’t. He was frozen in place; stuck in the need to know where Vic was, even though there was no real way that listening to his parent’s thoughts was going to shed any light on the situation. Mike wanted to scream, especially when his father began contributing to the conversation, “I don’t think anyone has him. You know how sad he’s been lately, I think he ran away. That’s got to be it; he would have called if he wanted us to find him.”

Mike didn’t believe either of his parent’s theories were true. Vic wouldn’t run away; Mike knew him almost as well as he knew himself, and he just knew that he wouldn’t run away. So maybe someone had taken him on his way home from school, but that wouldn’t explain why Vic’s phone was upstairs in his bedroom, left on the centre of his bed when Vic was never usually seen without it. Mike believed something different all together; he didn’t know what, and he didn’t know why, but something in his heart told him that Vic was out there alone, and he was in trouble.

Mike at there for hours, crying silently on the couch as his parents sat there in the kitchen, supporting each other and forgetting all about the fact that Mike was even there. Mike would have been offended, but he understood that their minds were wrapped up in fear and concern for Vic; his own mind was a mess of concern for his big brother.

When the first light of the morning began to break over the line of houses across from the Fuentes’s home, shrouded by a torrential downpour of rain that was uncharacteristic for San Diego, Mike pushed up from the couch and marched into the kitchen. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, observing the way his parents were still in the same positions they’d been in the night before. They looked up at him and smiled weakly, and he cleared his throat, “I’m going to go look for Vic.”

“Mikey, not on your own.” His mother shook her head and sighed. “And not so early. It’s not even six yet.”

“I don’t care,” Mike rasped out; if Vic was out there, scared and alone, then it was his duty to find him. His dad shot him a warning look, and Mike knew he should just leave it. They were stressed and tired and a whole other spectrum of emotions, but he couldn’t leave it. “I can’t sit there and do nothing. I have to go and look.”

Awaiting no response, he strode out of the room, grabbing his discarded hoodie from where he’d thrown it the night before and shrugging it onto his shoulders. He pulled the hood up over his long hair, and grabbed the large umbrella from the coat stand beside the door. Storming out of the door, Mike realised that he didn’t know where he was going. He was acting on an instinct that told him to walk just out of town, to a place where Vic used to take him when he first got his licence. He didn’t know why he wanted to go there; maybe it was to look for Vic, or maybe it was to try and find comfort in a place he so strongly connected to his big brother.

He walked for fifteen minutes in the rain, his chest burning and his legs aching by the time he got to the top of the hill that led to his destination; a field that, upon reflection, probably wasn’t the best place to come in the rain, but the nagging voice in the back of his head had insisted, and he’d looked everywhere else.

“Vic!” He called out as he walked onto the field, his dark eyes scanning the empty patch of grass for any sign of his brother. He carried on walking, further into the greenery and the bushes, hoping that Vic was there, somewhere, and just couldn’t hear him. Maybe he was asleep. Maybe he was just out of earshot. Mike doubted both possibilities, but he pressed on none the less, too desperate now to find his big brother to allow his attempts to be in vain. He was crying again, as he walked quickly through the grass, no sign of his brother, “Vic!”

“Please be here,” He murmured in a broken voice, a quiet sob clawing up his throat. Vic wasn’t here, and he knew it. It was a stupid idea anyway. He turned around, about to go look someplace else, when something caught his eye a little way off in the distance. He squinted at it, and almost felt his heart explode; it was Vic, sat there under a tree, soaked to the bone but as apathetic as ever. Mike rushed towards him, still calling out his name but this time in recognition, rather than in search. His brother was sat there, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and jeans, dripping wet and expressionless.

“Vic, where have you been?” Mike demanded, looking down on his smaller yet older sibling, tears of relief on his face now. Vic just stared forward, as if he couldn’t even hear his brother’s pleading voice. Mike repeated his brother’s name, and even considered holding his hand out for the smaller Mexican to take, but he considered the task futile; Vic was unresponsive, and that scared Mike even more than his disappearing had.

Awkwardly, Mike removed his hoody and wrapped it around Vic’s shoulders in attempts to keep him warm. He set the umbrella down for a second, then hooked one arm under Vic’s knees, and wrapped the other behind his shoulders. Working tactically, he managed to slot the umbrella between their frames to save Vic from getting any wetter than he already was, and then lifted him off of the ground. Luckily for him, Vic was light, because it looked like he’d be carrying him all the way home.

Looking down at his big brother, Mike feared that he was too late in finding him. His head was lolled back, as if he didn’t have the strength to support it, but his eyes were wide open and still staring. If it hadn’t of been for the stead rising and falling of his chest, Mike would have thought his brother was dead. He had to believe that he’d been in time to save his brother, or he’d never forgive himself.