Reel or Real

Chapter 27

The day after that, after filling our other friends about the things we've talked about with Amanda, we searched everywhere to find Austin. Amanda came with us, like she had said, and we've searched every corner of every place but came up with nothing.

But we didn't stop there, each day that's what we would be doing. It was like we were finding a needle on a haystack, no matter how hard we find we just couldn't.

When Monday rolled, it was Amanda who tried to see who the man that was picking up Austin's school works and also dropping it off. She had stayed at the school parking lot all day but still came up empty, she had also tried to talk to the school principal to try and find out that man is but the principal only know him as 'the man who picks up Austin's school works'. Apparently, the man also didn't come today, much to all of our frustration.

Now we're at the mall again, seated inside a restaurant that Amanda favors. It's only Amanda, Jace, Rachel and I today, Ethan had some meeting to attend to while Michael and Sandy had some deliveries to make so couldn't come with us today.

All of us were seating dejectedly, staring at our food blankly without touching it.

I could feel the questioning and judging looks other people were giving us, but none of us could care. We are once again losing hope, only having a thin thread of it left, and we still haven't found Austin or even a single clue to at least know that he's fine.

We've relentlessly called him and left messages, all of which he still hasn't responded to.

It's also frustrating how Amanda is obviously hiding something from us. What if that information that she's hiding from us are what could actually lead us to where Austin is? I wanted to tell her that, but I couldn't risk getting on her bad side right now. Even if she's hiding something from us, she's still our only chance at finding Austin.

So I bit my tongue and stayed quiet.

"What are we going to do now?" Rachel was the one to break the silence hanging heavily over us. "We've been searching for 3 days now and still nothing" she's practically voicing out our thoughts and worries.

"Can't we, like, report him as missing to the police?" Jace suggested.

Amanda was quick to shoot the suggestion down with a shake of her head. "Dad won't like it because then the public will know and the media will begin to swarm us".

"Doesn't Mr. Moore know anything about this?" I asked, and Amanda mumbled something underneath her breath but none of us was able to catch it.

"What was that?" Jace asked, but she refused to repeat herself louder for us to hear.

"There are some people that can track phones, right?" Rachel spoke again. "You probably know some people, you have a lot of connections" she said, looking at Amanda who has a thoughtful look on her face.

"I think I do, but I need to make some calls first"

With another surge of hope filling our bodies, we have left the restaurant with barely touched food. Amanda didn't want to go back to their house so we decided to go over at mine's again, all of them knew about my parents' divorce, anyway.

Jace, Rachel and I still have class tomorrow, but we thought little of it as we waited for Amanda to finish making her calls and waiting for the person she called after.

It was a little over ten when she came, we were quite tired from all the walk we did that day but we were still insistent on staying up.

The woman, who is named Anna, didn't waste any time and had set up her laptop immediately. She was explaining what she will be doing and how she will be doing it, but she was using jargon that I barely understood what she was saying, all I know is that she will be tracking down Austin's phone and that's all I needed to know.