Katie went through the same routine all week long. Same rejection from Keith. Lance and Hunk helped with the tracker. Coran taught 5 of her seven classed. Everything was the same. It was Friday afternoon, homeroom when it all changed.
Pidge and Hunk sat in homeroom, working on the tracker again. They were almost finished when the end of school bell rang.
"Ughhh," Katie groaned. "We were getting so close!"
"Yeah, hey! We could meet up at Kalenecker park this weekend! I could get Lance and we could finish it! It is also close to the woods!" Hunk said.
"Yeah! I'll see you there!" Katie said and she headed home. (Time Skip to when they have all met up at the park.)
"One more tweak...and there!" Katie said. "Finished! Now let's test it out on a dead phone!"
Lance, Katie, and Hunk looked all over the park to try and find someone with a dead phone. Katie looked around, not paying attention to what was in front of her and she bumped into a stranger.
"Oh, I am so sorry, that was my bad," Katie told the stranger. He turned around and it was Keith. "Oh, hi Keith, I-I'm just going to go over there..." Katie ran over to where Hunk and Lance were.
"Any luck?" Hunk asked. Lance shook his head.
"Would turning one of our phones off work?" Lance asked.
"Yeah, that should work, let's try it," Hunk said, taking his phone out and shutting it down. "Okay now Pidge you hide it, and Lance and I will use the app to find it. We will close our eyes too," Hunk said, then he and Lance turned around and closed their eyes.
Katie ran over to the playset and hide it in the abandon slide. Then she ran over to the bench on the other side of the sidewalk and texted Hunk to go. She watched as Hunk and Lance slowly made their way to the playset.
"What are you guys doing?" Someone asked. Katie looked up to see that Keith was looking down at her.
"Um-were testing the-uh phone tracker we made," Katie said, and Keith looked utterly confused.
"PIDGE!! IT WORKED! IT FLIPPING WORKED!!!" Lance yelled holding up Hunk's phone and running over to her. Lance and Hunk were talking excitedly and Katie stood up and took the tracker.
"Matt..." She whispered as she frantically typed in his phone number. The tracker beeped and Katie's eye's widened as it found the phone. Tears in her eyes she ran passed Keith, Lance, Hunk and bolted into the forest.
"KATIE WAIT!!!" Hunk yelled after her. Katie ignored him and tore through the underbrush. Deeper and deeper into the forest she ran, tears streaming down her face. She looked down at the phone to check if she was getting close.
Faster and faster she went until she reached a wide-open clearing. She checked to phone and walked a few feet further into the clearing. She looked around for her brother because the tracker said she was right on top of him---oh.
Katie bent so and pulled a phone out of a clump of grass. She connected her phone and the one she had found. She turned it on to see the home screen was a picture of her and her brother in front of a NASA rocket.
Katie's knees buckled and she fell to the forest floor. Tears drenched her face and she looked down at the phone. Her brother's phone. He's was here, I got so close. Am I too late.
"Katie! Katie!" Lance shouted from a ways away. She could here Hunk's voice too, but what surprised her the most was the hand that she felt on her shoulder.
"Katie?" Keith said as he knelt down next to her. "Are you okay? What happened?"
"Why would you care!" Katie spat, turning away from him.
"Look, I know I was rude to you before. I know that I was putting my anger in false blame. But I also worry when a close friend to my family starts running off into the woods for no reason." Keith said.
"It wasn't for no reason..." Katie mumbled as she looked down at her lap.
"What?" Keith asked.
"I said it wasn't for no reason," Katie said holding up her brother's phone.
"Is that-?" Keith asked holding the phone.
"My brother's phone. He kept it on him w-when the a-accident h-happened and---" Katie said, breaking into sobs. She tried to finish her sentence and to stop crying but she couldn't.
"Hey, hey. It's okay. We will find them, it's going to be okay," Keith said, bringing Katie into his arms. Lance and Hunk came through the clearing and after seeing Katie in tears, rushing over and tried to comfort her as well.
"My goodness, Matt leaves his stuff all over the place, now where did he leave his dang phone." Someone said. The group looked up to see Shiro talking to himself on the other side of the clearing, looking for Matt's phone.
"Shiro?" Keith said. Shiro looked up, his eyes shocked. "Shiro!" Keith let go of Katie and ran towards his brother, enveloping him in a hug. "I thought you were gone!" The brothers held onto one another tightly, but Katie was left behind, tears coming back all over again. Why this isn't fair! How come Keith's brother, Keith the guy who blamed me, who didn't even try to find his brother, how come he finds his family. How is this fair at all?
"Keith, I am so happy to see you, but how did you find me?" Shiro asked, hugging Keith back.
"I didn't, Katie made a tracker on-wait Katie, where's Matt?" Keith said.
"He's back at camp, I can take you guys to him if you'd like," Shiro said, Keith nodded and he and his brother walked over to the others. Katie was still crying, looking down at the phone on her lap. Shiro knelt down in front of her. "Hey, you found Matt's phone, he's been looking for it everywhere, we should probably get it back to him. Shouldn't we."
Katie looked up, she was still mad at him, at Keith, at everything that she was boiling.
"Is he even alive, or are you just playing with me." Katie snapped. She looked at Shiro with anger and sadness in her eyes, and even Shiro himself looked taken aback.
"Katie, he is alive. He is at camp in that direction. Why would I lie to you?" Shiro said. Katie stood up and walked in the direction that Shiro had pointed in.
"I don't know. Why would you lie to me." Katie fired. She stomped over in the direction of the camp and the others quickly followed suit.
Katie finally got to the camp, which was a small cave with the plane ruins scattered and a fire pit just outside of the opening. Matt stood there, tending to the fire, not looking up.
"I don't know why we need my phone, Shiro. It's pointless, but did you find it anyway?" Matt asked without looking up. Katie stomped up to him.
"MATTEW HOLT HOW DARE YOU LEAVE ME LIKE THAT!" Katie shouted at him. Matt looked up at her with happiness, shock, fear, and a jumble of many other emotions. "YOU COULD HAVE AT LEAST SENT ME A MESSAGE THAT YOU WERE OKAY! BUT NO! I GOT NOTHING! I DO'T EVEN HAVE MOM ANYMORE! SHE TRIED TO KILL HERSELF OVER THIS AND HAD TO BE TAKEN TO THE HOSPITAL!!"
"K-Katie?" Matt stuttered, now backing away from her. At this point, the others had caught up with and they silently watched the fray.
"I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD YOU IDOIT!" Katie shouted. "I thought I-I h-had l-lost you!" Katie broke into tears and tackled Matt, burying her face into his chest.
"Katie, I am so sorry. I missed you so so much. I thought I'd never see you again." Matt said holding his sister. "Dad will be back in camp soon. So what happened to Mom?"
"S-she tried to kill herself a couple of times. After the second they took her to the home for the depressed." Katie said. Keith's eye's widened. I treated her like that, after all she had been through. She lost her whole family.
"Katie?" Samuel said. He rushed and hugged his daughter tight. "I missed you so much!"
"Dad, Katie said mom tried to kill herself," Matt said. Samuel looked at Katie who nodded and both Samuel and Katie cried in one another's arms.
"How did you find us!" Matt asked.
"Hunk, Lance, I made a phone tracker that would work on dead phones so I tracked Matt's phone. I found it in the meadow, that's when Shiro appeared." Katie said. The group talked as they left the forest. It was evening now and while Matt, Samuel, and Shiro said goodbye, Keith walked up to Katie.
"Katie I am so sorry, I had no idea what had happened to you and I let my anger got out of hand and--," Keith stopped short, looking down at Katie was wrapped around his torso.
"I forgive you. I'd forgive you a thousand times over." Katie said. Keith smiled and hugged her back, the world feeling almost right.