Missing

Chapter 57

I wake up in a hospital. The room is clean and white. I have an oxygen mask on me again. There is a grey pulse oximeter attached to my pointer finger. I am connected to many machines. I have a sling on my left arm and a cast on my right wrist. I have a splint on my rib cage and my left leg seems to be in a cast. My right on is bandaged up pretty tightly. I have stitches on my cheeks and forehead, plus a lot of bruises.

I may be broken, but I'm still alive. Out of everything, I survived it all. Did Riley? Where is she? Hopefully she's okay.

~~~~~

Later that day, the doctors said I won't be leaving here for a few weeks and since I don't have any working limbs or friends that are still alive, it's going to be a very long few weeks.

My only visitors are my Harry Potter books that I have to have someone flip the pages for me, and the press that want front page stories about the bomb in town. I made it onto ten different newspapers and a dozen news networks.

A few police officers pay me some visits just so they can close this case. I don't tell them much - only that I have not murdered anyone. No one has any proof to charge Chloe or Eldon so I leave them out of it. They know who was in that bombing and they are saying that all of them are dead because of the bomb - just they way Chloe wanted it - and I don't say anything.

I haven't seen Riley at all after the bomb. She's is probably just as good as I am, except, she has friends that are still fawning over her.

Daniel got out of holding five days after the warehouse burned down. He visited me and told me his side of the story.

"I dated Chloe and I don't know if it's because I didn't love her or because I loved Riley more, that made me kiss both. I knew both sides of their stories. I knew Chloe's hatried and Riley's game. I didn't like any of it, yet, I got tangled up in it all. By the time I broke Chloe's heart, I already knew everything. She turned to Eldon to help her out. That night at the dance, I knew what was going to happen to Riley; she was going to be kidnapped and you were going to be the next game player. I thought I could have prevented it, but it was inevitable. After everything started happening, Chloe had the power to destroy me - and honestly, I didn't know she would go this far as to try to kill you and my girlfriend. I was happy in jail where I didn't have my life to fight for." Daniel explains. He probably feels worse about this than anyone. He knew everything that was happening - every death every text every time I nearly died - and yet, he did nothing to help.

It turns out, both the middle school that Richelle attended and the highschool I go to, are both shut down. They are completely remodeling it so everybody got split up into different schools for the rest of the semester. The town says it will be finished by next year.

I can't help but too wonder - on my sick days in the hospital - what a normal life will feel like. I'll probably be out of practice.

Riley has gotten out of the hospital before me but she is going to do most of her healing at a mental institution. The whole kidnapping thing has made her wonky so she's spending the next six months there.

After a few weeks, I am able to start walking around. Then I'm able to leave the hospital once and for all - except with a whole bunch of casts and bandages covering me. The whole time I was in the hospital though, I've been tutored or doing online school.

Finally, it came the day when I have healed enough to go to school. I don't know if I'm a legend or a creep. Some people congradualate me and ask me to sit with them at lunch, and others look at me as if I have a tail and devil horns. I don't give much regard to them, just as long as I can go through the rest of the school year without a repeat of the longest three weeks of my life.

The snow falls and this time it stays on the ground. Before long, it's all melted and I can start to see flowers blooming. Then, all of the slush disappears and it's summer. After four more weeks of heated classrooms, it's summer vacation.

The long eight weeks of summer vacation pass in a flash while I catch up on life and do everything I can to make things normal again. I even spend some time with my grandparents - all four of them.

By the time I get back from my trip from Vermont on a visit to my dad's parents, it's time to go back to school. I'm starting twelfth grade.