Missing

Chapter 21

My jaw drops at the message. Things start clicking in my head. No wonder Richelle is so mad, her crush is dead. How does she know?

I look around the small police office. Not many people are around although I see Amanda sitting in an old stained chair, reading a magazine.

The clock on the wall says it is 10:45 but each second seems to last about a minute so I doubt the time is shown correctly.

"Emily." Amanda puts down her magazine and walk over to me.

"How come you were in there for so long?" She asks once she reaches my side.

"I gave them a hard time." I admit.

"Do you want to go back to school?" Amanda asks.

"Well, I have skipped two days of school already, what's one more day?" I shrug then I lead my new partner out of the police station. The air outside is frosty and I pull my hands into my sleeves to shield them from the cold. The bus stop is right across the street from the small police station. Once Amanda and I cross the road, we wait in complete silence for the bus to pick us up. Amanda stares at the ground.

"Are you okay?" I ask her.

"Yeah, I'm fine, are you?"

"Me?" I try to understand what the question means, then I realize I'm shaking. "Oh, yeah, I'm just cold."

Amanda gives me a look but shrugs it off.

"How do you think Richelle is?" Amanda asks.

"I bet she's not in the mood to talk." I mutter.

Amanda faces me.

"I saw her walk out of the interrogation room, she seemed...happy." Amanda informs.

"Wow." I respond.

"Yeah."

There is a moment of silence as we both wait for the bus to pick us up.

"Hey, um...where are we going to go?" Amanda breaks the silence.

"9th and Elm Street." I say.

"Why there?"

"Because we are going to pay Richelle a visit."

"Wait. Why? I thought you said you didn't want to talk to her."

"No, I said she wouldn't want to talk to me."

"Oh."
Then silence continues until the bus rolls around.
~~~~
"This is it?" Amanda says in awe as she stares at Richelle's large property.

"Yeah, it is. Are you going to come in or not?" I ask Amanda.

"Nah, I'll just wander around." She responds.
As Amanda leaves, I start up towards Richelle's house. The long driveway will take me at least ten minutes to limp up and then the flight of stairs that awaits me are going to take double that time.

Finally I make it up. Before I can even knock on the door, it opens by itself.

"What are you doing here?" Richelle asks. She has a lot of makeup pressed on her face, it makes her look like a ghost. I assume this is only part of the reason why she didn't just get thrown into a mental institution.

"I wanted to talk to you." I answer nervously.
Richelle thinks about it then she sticks her head behind her.

"Is anyone with you?" She hisses.

"Um, no." I lie.

She looks behind me, luckily Amanda isn't there.

"Come in, but you can't go rogue on me." She opens the door wider so I can slip through.
She closes the door softly behind me then pushes me towards the stairs.

"Okay, what do you want?" Richelle says when we get into her bedroom.

"Why did you lie?" I want to be straight foward, I don't care if she flips out on me. If she does kill me, maybe I'll wake up from my crazy nightmare.

"The same reason you did." Her answer is reasonable.

"I lied so I could protect you, why did you lie?"

"You don't get it. I don't need to be protected."

"Yeah, what you need are restraints."

"Very funny."

"Can we be real?"

"Gladly."

I take a deep breath and start.

"What do you think I did?" I ask.

"I thought of a lot of things."

"What did you think I did?" I repeat.

"I thought you were the one that killed everybody."

"Why?" I ask.

"Never mind that." Richelle waves, "What is your actual question? You couldn't have come all the way here just to ask me about why I lied." The girl seems surprisingly calm.

"What do you know?" I stutter.

Richelle's face turns white then she rushes over to shut her window.

"I can tell you a lot, Emily, but just so it's clear," She leans in and whispers as if she is afraid someone will hear, "the more you know, the more danger you'll have. The question isn't how much I can tell you, it's how much do you want to know."

What does that mean?

"I want to know everything." I decide.

"I can't do that to you." Richelle shakes her head in disapproval.

"Why not?" I plead.

"If you know everything I know, you might as well join Michelle in the grave." She mutters.
We stand in silence then she jumps onto her king sized bed and flips open a magazine.

"Hey, how well did you know Camille?" I ask, maybe I can ease into her boyfriend.
She doesn't look at me.

"She was someone at dance, one of my best friends. We would never really hang out afterwards but at the studio, we were inseperable. She goes to my school though." She says with no expression.

"Huh." I feel horrible, what she told me the day Michelle was found dead is true. She has this harder than I do. I haven't even met these poor kids that are being held hostage and I can't even recall Michelle's last name.

I wait for another minute before asking her my next question.

"What about Noah?" I blurt.

She turns around on her bed to face me.

"How do you know about Noah?" Then her eyes glaze over as if she is watching a show in her mind. Richelle looks horrified then tears start to well up in her eyes. I want to give her a hug but she snaps out of it before I can move a finger.

"Don't. Talk. About. Noah!" She hisses.
I back off.

"I think you should go." Richelle seems to regain control again but I have a feeling it won't last.

I nod and quietly walk out of Richelle's room.
Back outside I hear talking. I can't make out the words. The two people are standing behind the west wall of Richelle's house. I can see the back of one person but the other is out of my eyesight.

One of them turns around and walks towards the front of the house.

"Emily." The person says.

"Amanda?" I gasp.