Where Darin Went

03: EMME SWIMS IN DANGEROUS WATERS

        JUNE 9TH, 2014 – 12:00 (SHARP), EASTERN STANDARD TIME

        TYBEE ISLAND, GEORGIA

        THE FOSS RESIDENCE

Spencer is the first one to say it:

“This…is awkward as shit.”

Freddie, Emme, Miles, and Spencer all sit around the Foss’s dining room table, set up meticulously for what Freddie can only deduce Emme had planned as a tea party for two dolls. There’s a pink silk tablecloth, delicate china, and small finger foods placed carefully around the pitcher of tang, propped up in the center.

Emme certainly hadn’t been lying about that and the lemon squares. They were both present.

And after Spencer speaks, his words seem to then make it even more awkward for them and the two boys in their company. Emme sighs, taking a long gulp of her drink before placing it back down carefully on her coaster. “All right, then,” she says. “I think it’s time to discuss exactly how we’ll be executing this operation.”

“Oh! Should we give it a code name? I love code names,” Spencer gushes, excited. “If we get code names, I want to be called Delicious Diablo. It’s slutty, yet refined.”

“Pull yourself together, Birch, we aren’t doing code names,” Emme snaps strictly. From almost nowhere, Emme seems to immediately manifest a large map from underneath her chair which she sprawls open onto the table. Grabbing a few cups and sweets, she weighs the corners down and begins to create a plan.

“All right,” she begins by saying, pointing towards the most northeastern part of Georgia, “We are here”—she drags her finger a long ways across the map, all the way to the center of the coast of California—“And Darin is there.”

“I thought you said he was missing, though,” Miles says, taking a long sip of his drink. “He could be anywhere.”

She narrows her eyes, “All of his letters are postmarked to an address in San Francisco. I’ve looked it up on Google – it’s a small house, on the outskirts of the city. We’ll start there and look for clues if it comes to it,” she says, determined, and Miles is immediately shut up. She smiles, pointing now to the large swath of America that lies between, “Now, obviously there’s a lot of room between where we are now and our destination. The trip is 2,719 miles, or rather, approximately forty hours. But we’ll take longer, accounting rest stops”—her finger now draws a line through the Southern states like a penknife—“If all goes as planned – and it will – the states we’ll be traveling through are Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and then all the way up California to San Francisco.”

Spencer smiles, leaning his elbows on the table, looking off dreamily. “The land of unquestioned acceptance and liberalism, obviously – in fact, I’m planning on buying a new wardrobe for the occasion. All flannel.”

“And what do you have planned for when we get there?” Freddie asks, “In order to find him, I mean.”

Emme pales, looking coy as she purses her lips pensively. “Well…that’s a bit of a gray area right now. But I’m working on a fool-proof plan now to make sure we find him quickly and efficiently.”

Miles and Freddie exchange a quick, slightly skeptical, glance before returning their gaze back at him. Miles puckers his lips, “…Fool-proof, hmm?”

“Yes, fool-proof,” Emme says stiffly. “Please don’t mock my work ethic.”

Miles flushes, “I’m just saying,” he mutters defensively. “And just so you know, you still kind of scare me.”