The Good-For-Nothing Society | Completed

Chapter Twenty

(Elijah's POV)

Two and a half months. Eleven weeks. Seventy-six days. I still haven't found her. I have been to her home. I have met her friends before she came to the school. I have tracked her family lineage as far as it will go, not that there is much to go on.

I still haven't found her.

I have been denied request, after request, to leave the grounds. I have snuck out, done my own reports and searched everywhere. I still have not found her. Most of the facility and students are acting as though Amelia Warbur never blessed us with her presence. It's as if she is a figment of my imagination. If it wasn't for Grace I would probably start to believe them.

"Anything?" I ask Stan.

We are in our family home. We are ordered here every Sunday for a roast dinner. A English tradition marred by our parents need to control us. They don't ask us here to spend time with us. They ask here to assess us. See how much I disappointment them in comparison to my brother. They call us here to ensure we aren't disgracing their legacy.

"No," Stan whispers. "Every avenue I look down I'm stonewalled. Someone very high-up in involved with whatever happened to Amelia. Even Gateshead doesn't have clearance."

My brother is the only member of my family I like, but I am not sure I trust him. When I was four he made me take the blame for breaking dads service badge. When I was ten he stole money and said it was for me. When I was fourteen he told on me for meeting up with a girl who lived in town. Six weeks ago, he told them about my search for Amelia. He is, and has always been, their son before he's my brother.

"That's convenient," I mutter.

He shrugs, "No body knows where she's gone."

I stare at him, hard. "Somebody does."

Mum summons us to sit around the table and we do. They mostly talk to Stan. They ask him how school is? How's work? Any news? Stan runs through his routine of giving them the highlights. They nod along, pleased with whatever they hear. He could tell them he wanted to quit espionage and go backpacking and they would sit, enthralled. I would be disowned for the same decision.

"And him?" Dad grunts, nodding in my direction.

Stan glances at me, "Good. Top of his year. One of the best the school has ever seen."

Dad laughs, "I find that unlikely."

I stab at a potato. I think they had me just so they could have someone to make them feel superior. I know better then to open my mouth. I focus on my food instead, whilst they discuss me as if I am not in the room. We usually spend two hours here. We're twenty-eight minutes in.

"Did you ever find out what happened to your friend?" Mum asks, her voice always sounds as if she's on the verge of tears. Yet, I have never seen her cry.

"No," I grumble. "Apparently, despite the school I go to, despite my family connections, not a single person on this planet has any idea where she vanished to."

"How peculiar," Mum says, then shrugs it off.

It's as simple as that for everyone else. A shrug of the shoulders. An 'oh well'. I go to sleep at night imagining the torture Amelia is enduring, the pain they might be inflicting. I wonder if she's alive. Have they buried her in some hole in the ground? And to everyone else, it's a shrug of the shoulders. An hour and twenty-four minutes before we are due to leave.

"We're taking Elijah's class on a mission tomorrow," Stan tells them. "To London."

"They were the best part of that school," Dad says.

And they're all off, talking as if I don't exist. I sit still and silent. Mentally, I run through my plan for tomorrow. I know Amelia's dad has a safety deposit box in London. He left it for Amelia. I'm going to leave the mission and retrieve it. I'm going to get whatever is inside that lockbox for myself.

When I got to her house four weeks ago, it had been ransacked. But they didn't know Amelia, not like I. Her dad had hidden an entire folder of things in a place only Amelia would look. Fluffy's grave. It was mostly sentimental trinkets, worthless junk. But right at the bottom was his will. He left all his assets to her, one of which is the deposit box.

Spies do not just have safety deposit boxes. Especially not hidden ones. You don't take the time to hide the information in your dead cats grave. Not unless it's important. If I can't find her, the very least I can do is find what they want with her.

"Thank you for dinner," Stan says, "It was lovely."

We've been here one hour and fifty-eight minutes. I got lucky today, they took even less of an interest in me then normal. Stan stands and I follow suit. We say our goodbyes, Stan hugging the both of them. I don't. I barely even say the word goodbye before I'm
out the door and breathing in the fresh air.

We don't speak on our way back to school. We never do. I always hate him after. I hate him for making me go. I hate him for the show he puts on for them.
I hate how they treat him and not me. I hate it all.

He walks me to my dorm. It's been thirty-four minutes since we left our parents. I share a dorm with Will, Grant and Alvin. Will is okay, he can be a good friend. Grant is quiet but he can keep a secret. Alvin is an asshole, but he always has been. His family are even worse then mine. He hates me because I am better than him; at everything.

"Elijah," Stan says, as I turn to enter my room. I stop and wait. Looking down at my feet as I scuff them
off the floor. My hands shoved into my pockets. "I know Amelia is from London, but you're not to do anything stupid tomorrow."

My head snaps up. I glare at him, "You're going to have to define stupid. Because I am the only person looking for her and I don't think it's stupid."

Stan sighs, "Tomorrow is not the day for any antics. You get on with the mission at hand and that's it."

I stare at him for a long while then I shrug, the same way mum had earlier. "Sure. Whatever."

"No, Elijah." Stan's voice warns. "I mean it. You do as your told tomorrow and nothing else."

"You either tell me why, or I'm going to choose to ignore you."

He looks down the hall and back to me. "It's classified."

I am sick of hearing that word, "then I am going to
ignore you."

"Elijah-" Stan starts, but I don't stick around. I open my door and slam it shut, leaving him on the other side.

"Nice family dinner?" Alvin grins. He's
got a knowing, smug look on his smarmy face.

"Better then what I imagine dinner at yours is like," I swipe. I pad across the room and head to grab my toiletries then head out and to the bathroom before he can say anything else.

We leave for London in eight hours. It's a nine-hour coach journey. One hour plane journey. I don't know which one we will be taking. I don't care. It's my first opportunity in London since I went to her house. Just as long as I get there and get to the lockbox, that's all I care about.