Significance (Completed)

Significance - Chapter Twenty Six

"Where's my dad?" I asked as I sat in the backseat with Caleb and woofed down a to-go bowl of corn chowder his mom had made for me.

"He's at his house. We didn't tell him we'd found you yet. He'd want to come with us and we couldn't let him...you know."

"Yeah, I know."

I felt so much better it was like night and day. I was still tired but felt like I could at least function properly. Caleb hadn't left me at all. He sat right next to me and had a hand on my thigh the entire time I ate.

When he'd walked with me to the car, the energy ribbons and streams followed us, but as soon as he'd placed me in the backseat, losing skin contact, all the energy ribbons fell away and sizzled into the sky as his family looked on in awe. When he climbed in on his side and touched me again, I almost thought the energy burst would return. I worried that every time we touched each other now we'd light up like a Christmas tree, but they didn't come.

"What about Beck? What happened to her and Ralph after the party?"

"I found them and told them that you'd been kidnapped. I didn't know what else to say, so I just told the truth. Beck was freaking out. I called my dad, dropped them off and then had to go tell your dad." He shook his head and swallowed. I saw pieces and glimpses of their conversation in his mind, my dad red faced and yelling. "Man that was not fun."

"I bet," I muttered. "Was he mad at you?"

"Oh, yeah." He chuckled humorlessly. "I haven't been called names that bad since...ever."

"I'm so sorry. He-"

He wrapped an arm around me, pressing my face into his neck.

"He's your dad. I'd think something was off if he hadn't freaked. I had just told him when we left for our date that I'd keep you safe and then had to come and explain that someone had taken you right out from under me."

I looked up to see his face and decided to see for myself what had gone on while I was away.

I didn't have to try hard because we were already in each other's mind, the ascension like Caleb had said, but his memories of his losing me and the withdrawals zoomed to me in a hazy rush. Some parts were normal and others were like they were on fast forward.

I saw him out of his mind with worry and grief on the beach looking for me. He called my name over and over. He knelt in the sand and beat his fist over his heart to make it work, anything to pick up my heartbeat again, to find me. He knew what had happened; the Watsons had taken me somehow. He knew it and he was puzzled as to how they had kept my heart steady to hide me from him.

He ran back to the bonfire, snagged Beck and Ralph and sped the entire way back to Beck's as he talked frantically with his father on the phone. Then he went in to talk to my father without waiting for his, like his dad had told him to. He knew I'd want my father to know as soon as possible and he felt responsible; wanted to meet his punishment head on.

Then I saw glimpses of my dad in Caleb's face yelling. Then all that flew past and I saw Caleb on the couch at Kyle's, sitting, pulling at his hair with his fist as his dad tried to get him to try to sleep.

"You'll be no good to Maggie this way, son," he said but Caleb just pushed off his hand and continued to rock and moan in agony.

"I have to find her. I have to find her," was all he would say.

Then more flashes and glimpses of him sick and in pain, him rolling and groaning on the floor in the guestroom at Kyle's where someone had taken him to rest. Him yelling my name over and over as his father and mother watched, Rachel burying her face in Peter's shoulder to cry loudly for her son.