So Much More

Chapter 26: Luka

I'm getting ready to leave for Wren's when Sam bursts through my bedroom door. He's clutching his phone in his right hand, waving it frantically in the air.

"It's on, it's on!" he yells, walking right up to me until he's directly in front of my face. His clothes are dirty and messy, a rip in the shoulder of the shirt he's wearing, and he looks like he hasn't slept in days. "It's on," he says again for the third time.

"Yeah, I got that. What's on?" I ask, sitting down on the bed and pulling on my shoes.

"Kit's phone." I stop what I'm doing and sit up. "I've been checking that find my friends app since he disappeared, and his name finally popped up." He fiddles with his phone and then turns it so that I can see the screen. "Do you recognise this address? It says that he's here, or at least his phone is." I glance at the address on the screen but it's not one that I know.

I start to shake my head. "No, I've never seen it before."

"What should we do?"

Sam's watching me, waiting for an answer. I run my hands down my face, exasperated. I know that we have to go and find him. I grab my car keys and tuck them into my pocket. "Let's go."

I type a quick message to Wren as I'm walking outside, telling her that somethings come up, then shove the phone into my hoodie. I drive us towards the address and Sam talks the entire way, trying to fill all the nervous silence with chatter. I don't blame him.

"Should we have called the police?" he asks me.

"What for?"

"I don't know. What if something happened to him?"

"They wouldn't care."

"They're the police."

"What would we have said to them exactly? That our friend, who's an alcoholic and a drug addict, has been missing for less than a week. Oh, and it's not the first time that he's done this? They would've thought it was a fucking joke."

"I don't care what they would've thought Luka!" His voice is loud as he bites back at me, and I can see his hands shaking as he grips the fabric on his tracksuits.

"Hey," I say, lowering my voice. "We'll find him, okay?" Sam gives me a look, and I know he's thinking the same thing I am. Kit's been gone for six days now. Even if we do find him, who knows if we're going to find him alive.

When we pull up at the address I park my ute on the street and we get out. I step onto the sidewalk to see that we're stopped outside a run-down looking house, and the bad feeling inside my chest starts to grow. The windows at the front of the house are smashed in, one of the front pillars holding up the awning has a huge crack in it. It looks like it could break at any minute and cause the entire front of the house to collapse.

"Let's go," I say.

There's no noise coming from inside the house as we walk across the lawn towards the front door. The grass is long, reaching just below my knees, and I can hear glass crunching under our feet as we walk through it. When we get to the door, Sam looks around nervously, but I don't bother knocking as I push my way inside. The first thing that hits me is the smell. It's disgusting, like rubbish and cigarette smoke has baked itself into the walls.

The overhead lights are dull, the lightbulbs on their last legs and it makes it hard to see inside. There's an open room to the left that's completely empty, and the one to the right looks like some sort of lounge room, complete with a tattered blue couch and a television that's had its screen smashed in. Sam trails closely behind me as we walk from the lounge and into the kitchen. I recoil when I see the dirty dishes spilling out of the sink, mouldy food covering every inch of them. There's a fold out bench set up in the kitchen, and I'm filled with dread when I see it.