Top 3 Quotes of the Day:
1: "WOOOOOT! GO SHAY! or.... serena? or maybe SHAY-RENA! ;D im a genius.. i just have this waaay with words... well enough praising me, it time to pick our next lucky winner! THEFLAMINGPOPSICLE *dingdingdingding diiiiing*
this was an AWESOME chapter! me and shay must be like SOUL SISTERS or something... you are an awesome writer!! WOOOP WOOOOOP! you rock president obama's boxers off! not that i know he wears boxers or anything... YEAAAAAAAAAHHH! okay, too much sugar... anyways, UPLOAD SOON OR THE SMURFS WILL STEAL ALL YOUR LEFT SOCKS! muahahahahha"- xoxogossipgirl
2: "AHHH!!!! I just fell more in love with Forrest!!!! Tell him I love him, yes? Oh and Shay had me ROFLMFAO sooooo many times. AHHH again!!!! She called herself his girlfriend!!!! That's step numbero uno in the *some number* plan!!! AHHH for the third time!!!! I've read this like three times already!!!! Update within a week or imma get my killer carebears to eat you aliiiiive!!! Love you!!! (not in that pedophile way, just in that way most people would say to someone they've never met before). ;DDDD" EdwardLover7
3: "LOL POST MORE I AM DYING HERE WAITING FOR YOUR POSTS!!!!!!!!!!! HURRY THE HELL UP WOMAN!
or I could go about this a whole nother way. I'll tell you what. When you post the next chappie of this book, i'll post a new upload whatever story you want. ANYTHING. So please, fo rmy sanity, get back withme and nd consider it!" -justgrace
[A/N: Okay, (justgrace) if you're reading this, I'll take your offer! My favorite story is "When Your Mom Marries Your Ex-Boyfriend" so an update of that would be freaking awesome! :)]
***
They Say Love Hides Behind Every Corner. I Must Be Walking in Circles.
Chapter 16
“Oh, God,” Jasmine breathed.
“So you’re saying that you, Serena Magnus, are really my sister?” Ceci asked in disbelief.
“Pretty much,” I sang, spinning in circles for no apparent reason. I stopped when I got so dizzy I nearly collapsed.
“Wow, you really are drunk,” Ceci said after a moment.
“Wait…” I held up a hand, thinking hard. There was something I had to say… but what was it? Oh, I know what it is now! “You don’t believe me?”
She snorted. “Why would I? My sister is missing. And you’re just a retard who’s trying to pull a fast one on me. Not gonna happen. Maddie, Jasmine, can we leave now?”
Jasmine and Maddie gave me weak smiles. Ceci stomped out of the room. They started after her.
“Hey, Shay, are we gonna finish our song?” Forrest asked me suddenly. “We were doing so awesomely!”
Jasmine and Maddie stopped walking. “You… you told FORREST?!” Jasmine shrieked.
“Uh-huh,” I chirped. “I mean, it was sort of an accident, but after that, I was like, whatever, I’ll just tell him, so that’s what I did, and that’s why we’re here, well, not really, but that kind of led to it, if I hadn’t accidentally told him, well, I didn’t accidentally tell him, I just accidentally made it obvious, I think, anyways… wait, what was I talking about again?”
“Sh— Serena, don’t you realize how dangerous it is if so many people know?” Maddie asked, sighing and running a hand through her blond hair.
“Pfft, relax! Forrest is my fake boyfriend! He wouldn’t tell on ME!”
“Okay, we’ll talk about this later, when you’re, er, well, sane.” Jasmine pointed a finger at me. “You’ve been warned.”
I gave them a dopey grin. “No, problemo, I’ll bring the beer!”
“No, no, no!” Jasmine held up a hand. “No beer!”
My face fell. No beer?
Jasmine shook her head at me, laughing a little, and she and Maddie left.
“Duude!” Forrest said. “Let’s party like a rock star!”
“WHOO-HOO!” I hollered.
&&&
“Ow, my head,” I muttered as I tried to sit up. Man, I have got to get it together. These little night out’s are gonna be the death of me, I swear. But once again, I didn’t recognize my surroundings; at least, I didn’t at the beginning. After looking around, I realized I was in Forrest’s living room. I was on a mattress on the floor, and Forrest was crashed out on the couch.
I looked down, and (thank the Lord) I had all of my clothes on. I looked at the clock next, and it was already nearly noon. Oh, God. Liv was going to skin me alive for this. I stumbled up, holding my head from the sharp pain, and prodded Forrest’s shoulder. “Dude,” I whispered. “Wake up.”
He didn’t even shift his position. “Forrest,” I said a little louder. “Wake up.”
"You’re gonna have to be way louder than that,” Paul said with a snort as he walked in the living room. “He sleeps like a rock.”
“Alrighty then,” I agreed. “FORREST!” I bellowed. “WAKE THE FUCK UP!”
He suddenly stirred and threw his hands up. “I surrender!” He quickly sat up.
I snorted. “Dork.”
He glared at me and I just shrugged. Then I remembered why I had woken him up in the first place. “Dude, you have to take me home, Liv is probably freaking out.”
“Oh, shit,” Paul said. “You didn’t tell Liv you were staying out?”
"No,” I replied. “I didn’t think I would stay out this long!”
“Well, Forrest is still hungover.” Paul glanced over at the now snoring Forrest.
I rolled my eyes. “Can you drive me, then?”
“That’d be best,” Paul agreed.
I nodded, took Forrest’s watch from his wrist so I wouldn’t be late anymore, and left. Paul snickered. I just shrugged.
&&&
“Serena!” Liv barked. “Where have you been?”
“I was at a friend’s house,” I replied coolly.
“You were at a friend’s house? I called Bethany, and she said you weren’t with her,” Liv retorted. “Which friend?”
“My new friend Maddie, she was new to our school and I befriended her. I saw her at the mall and she invited me over. I wasn’t about to be rude and say no.”
Liv eyed me warily before giving me the green light. I sighed in relief. My head still hurt, though. Ouch. “Oh, yeah, I had a few questions, you know, about me.”
“Yeah, sure, sweetie.” She turned to face me.
“If I could go anywhere in the US, where would it be?” I asked.
“Probably Chicago,” Liv answered. “You were always fascinated by it, for some reason. That’s where you’ve always wanted to live when you get out of college.”
“What did I want to study?”
“You either wanted to go into professional volleyball or the law,” Liv answered. “Maybe a lawyer, maybe FBI, or maybe one of those CSI people.”
Wow, I had just said that to Emily to get her to talk, but apparently it was true.
“So…” I trailed off. “Chicago, huh?”
&&&
“Whoop!” Maddie cheered. “Road trip!”
“Yeah!” I cheered along with her. “Let’s party!”
“No beer,” Jasmine reminded us. “That’s enough getting drunk for this month. What was yesterday, like, three times this month?”
“I think so,” I answered. “It might’ve been four.”
Jasmine rolled her eyes at me. I just grinned. “Come on! Get pumped! It’s just us girls now, finally!”
I wished Ceci could be here to roll her eyes and sigh at us for this whole trip, but Jasmine and Maddie told me there was no way in hell she would ever believe me. My “disappearance” affected her the most, and that’s what stung.
“You’re right, I guess, let’s just go,” Jasmine said. “The sooner we get there, the better. We need to get this done with.”
“Like, this week,” I agreed. “Now come on!”
Jasmine sighed, smiled and climbed in Maddie’s car.
Whoop!
&&&
“39 bottles of beer on the wall, 39 bottles of beer! You take one down, pass it around, 38 bottles of beer on the wall! 38 bottles of beer on the wall! 38 bottles of beer! You take one down, pass it around, 37 bottles of beer on the wall! 37 bottles of pop on the wall! 37 bottles of beer! You take one down, pass it around, 36 bottles of beer on the wall,” Maddie and I wailed at the top of our lungs.
Jasmine groaned loudly. “Ugh, shut up!”
“What?” I asked. “Why?”
“Because you guys have been singing that from 100 beers on the wall,” Jasmine replied.
We just shrugged. “Can we keep singing?” I asked after a moment.
“No!”
I nodded.
“We’re here now, anyways,” Maddie stated, pulling into a large apartment building.
“Finally,” Jasmine muttered.
I slapped her across the head.
“Ow, what the hell was that for?” she asked angrily.
“For not appreciating our singing,” I replied.
“You guys sing awful.”
We gasped. “We do not!”
"Mmm-hmm.”
Glaring, we climbed out of the car. I looked around and distinctly smelled dog poo. I wrinkled my nose in disgust and ran to the door.
“What the?” Jasmine asked as she ran after me. Maddie followed. “Why’d you run?”
“I smelled dog poo.”
Maddie laughed and Jasmine rolled her eyes. I just shrugged. I opened the door to the apartment building and looked inside. The walls were a creamy color, the floors were carpeted with white carpet, and my eyes hurt from the overly-bright lighting in the building. There were no real plants, only artificial ones. Cheapskates, I figured.
“So why are we here, specifically, anyways?” I asked, peering around the bright hallway.
“Because my cousin, Gabriel, is a total tech savvy and he said he’s sure he could find who we’re looking for.”
“So what, he’s like Garcia from Criminal Minds?” I peeked my head inside an open apartment door and shuddered. There was a chubby man doing aerobic exercises inside. “Okay, then.”
“I guess so,” Maddie replied. “Come on, his apartment’s upstairs.”
I sighed and followed her to the stairs. I looked up at the huge stairwell, and looked around for an elevator. Jasmine and Maddie were already halfway up. I ran to the elevator that had just opened, clicked on the number two, and waited. I felt my stomach elevate and then drop. “Oof,” I muttered.
The elevator dinged and opened once more. I stepped out, and heard huffing and puffing coming from the stairwell. “Hey…” Jasmine muttered. “Where’d Shay go?”
I peeked over to them and saw Maddie turn around, looking for me. “Um, right here,” I said, waving my arms frantically.
“How’d you get up here so fast?” Maddie complained.
I probably should have told them there was an elevator, but I decided against it. “I just got ahead of you, remember?”
“Wha…?” Maddie squeaked.
“Oh, God, you guys are losing your memories already?” I faked. “But you’re not even old yet!”
Maddie and Jasmine looked at each other, spluttered, and looked back over at me. I just shrugged.
“Okay, let’s just go,” Maddie said as she reached the top. Jasmine, with one last puff, followed.
Maddie walked to apartment B6 and knocked on the door. A tall and lanky guy opened the door. He had messy light blond hair that wasn’t purposely styled that way, I could tell, because behind him, there was a bed and it was all ruffled. He had just woken up. He looked a lot like Maddie, actually.
“Dude, you could’ve called before just waltzing in here,” Gabriel muttered angrily at Maddie.
“This couldn’t wait,” Maddie retorted. “So you might as well start waking up. We need your help.”
“Alright, fine,” he gave in. He walked over to a room and we followed him.
“Holy shit,” I said loudly. “This is like a nerd cave!”
Gabriel glared at me.
“Sorry,” I whispered apologetically. “Sometimes I don’t think, I just do or say, in this case, I get, and then I just start rambling or something and end up sounding even stupider than I had before, and is that even a word? Is it stupider or more stupid? God, I knew I should’ve paid more attention in English class, but passing notes seemed like a good idea then, but I guess it wasn’t so good. And it’s not like I’m gonna be a writer or something, but I guess English is an important subject that I’m going to use for most of my life and I think I’ll just shut up now.”
He gave me an odd look, and sat down in the spinny chair. “Dude,” I shrieked happily. “Do you have any more of those?”
He looked over, and when he saw how happy the chair made me, got up and offered me the chair. “You can have this one, I guess. I’ll go grab one out of the kitchen.”
“Yes!” I cheered, plopping down on the seat. I scooted the chair over to make room for his chair. Jasmine and Maddie went with him to grab chairs. They came back, each holding a chair. Gabriel put his chair in the middle, Maddie put her’s next to Gabriel’s on his right, and Jasmine put her’s by me on my left.
“Okay, this shouldn’t take that long. What’s the name of the girl?”
“Shay,” I answered. “Shay Barron.”
It felt weird saying that, when I saw sitting right there.
Gabriel opened up these weird tabs and started searching for Shay Barron.
“Alrighty, Shay Barron,” he began. “She just turned sixteen this past December. Her parents are businessman Jack Barron and society girl Pamela Barron. She goes to East Ridge High, she’s a sophomore. She lives in Brookville, Indiana, and she has a sister, Cecilia Barron.”
"Okay, what was her recent activity?” I asked, impatient.
"Recent activity…” he mumbled to himself. “Ah. She recently moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, and bought an apartment. That’s all… what? How is that possible? That was a week ago.”
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Wait a sec…”
He started typing very fast, closing tabs, opening new ones, and everything was going on so fast I couldn’t keep track. “Ah-ha. That’s why I couldn’t find anything on Shay Barron anymore. She changed her name to Lisette Ramona.”
“Then look up Lisette Ramona!” I snapped.
“Geez,” he muttered. “Alright. Lisette Ramona. What the heck? This isn’t a new name… this is like, a case of stolen identity… Lisette Ramona was born August 5th, 1991. She grew up in Bloomfield, Wisconsin. Her parents are Janet Ramona and Lance Ramona. She recently applied to her local college, but didn’t show up for her first class last week.”
“This is getting weird,” Maddie muttered.
“I know. What does Lisette Ramona have to do with anything?”
“I dunno,” Jasmine whispered. “Maybe everything.”
I shook my head. I never asked for this. What the heck?
“Okay, well what’s Shay’s new address?” Maddie inquired.
“Um, it’s the apartment building on Delaware street, in northern Indianapolis. She’s on the second floor, in apartment 2B.”
I took a deep breath and stood up. This was it. We knew where to find Serena now.
This was my only shot at my life back.
Holy shit.