Chapter 26 It's Cassie
I fiddle with the blanket in between my fingers, listening to him talk about his day. Although I wish we could spend every moment together, many of our days are spent talking on the phone only.
‘You’ve been very quiet. Is everything okay?’
I let out a puff of frustrated air. I can’t hide my emotions from him, ever.
‘I’m okay, Beth, and I are just really freaked out. We can’t find our friend. Her name’s Cassie, and we all hung out several times, and she said she was a camper here too, but now we can’t find her at all.’
He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. ‘Are you sure she was a camper there? Did you ask other people?’
‘Yeah, believe it or not, we asked a counselor who couldn’t find her on the list, we asked the cabin she was supposed to stay in, and we even asked other campers. No one knows her.’
‘That’s really weird. But there isn’t really anything else you guys can do.’
His response takes me back. He’s not being the most supportive boyfriend with that statement. ‘Why does it sound like you think we should just give up?’
He sighs, ‘I didn’t mean it like that, I just was stating the fact that it doesn’t sound like you guys have anywhere else to go.’
His response honestly just pisses me off even more. It feels like he doesn’t think we should continue looking. I voice my frustration.
‘What if something happened to her? Why would we stop looking for a girl that came into our lives?’
He doesn’t say anything. He’s trying to think of a way out of this, but I don’t see how he can at this point. His silence is answer enough. I don’t want to sit on the phone, annoyed with him.
‘Whatever I gotta go I’ll text you later.’ My tone is short. I pull the phone away from my ear, ending the call just as I hear him try to save it.
Gosh, I can’t with his attitude right now. Why would he act like we’re crazy to investigate this?
“Trouble in paradise?” Beth asks from the desk.
“I was telling him about Cassie as you could hear, and he had the audacity to tell me we should give up on looking for her.”
She gives me a weird look. “Why wouldn’t he want us to look for her? Do you think he knows her? What if he murdered her? Or worse, she’s running from him or his friends?” Her mind runs wild with theories.
“I don’t think he murdered her. I highly doubt they even knew each other, but it’s weird for him to respond that way, right?” I ask for her reassurance.
“Are you kidding me? Yes, if he were being a good boyfriend, he should’ve offered to help or at the very least, asked more about her. But no, he shuts you down. Fuck that.” She gets me more fired up with every word.
She’s so right, why would I question myself when his response is weird? “And maybe you need to do some soul searching cause you didn’t even tell him about Kai.” She points it out like it’s a deeper issue.
“No, that isn’t some big thing I would’ve probably said something had he not shut me down with her.”
“Fine, whatever you say. But what do we do now about her?”
I feel like all I’ve done since finding out Cassie is basically a ghost is sigh constantly. “I really don’t know.”
She looks back at the art project on her desk. “Should we go walk around in the forest?”
I give her a look. “And find what? Do you think she has a fort built out there?”
She looks at me with a very serious face. “What if she’s dead out there? Maybe the wolf you saw got her or a person.”
My expression sombered immediately. She isn’t wrong. Maybe we should go looking in the woods.
“We can stop by your husband's house while we’re there if you want.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not in the mood to see him.”
“Whatever you say, but I’m not having you go to bed tonight crying yourself to sleep because you’re fighting.”
I won’t say it outloud but she’s not wrong. We both change into jeans, knowing we might be going through bushes and trees rather than staying on the path. I grab a flashlight and the phone Alec gave me, just in case. Even though we’re fighting, I know he’ll come if something happens. I give her my pepper spray.
We head out; it’s still midday, so hopefully we’ll be back before it gets dark. I lead her to the path I always take to get to Alec.
“So which way should we go first?” I ask making her be the decision maker since it was her idea in the first place.
“Let's go to the right.”
So we end up walking at least twenty minutes on this path, looking in and around all the bushes, desperate to see any sign of a person, but there is nothing.
“How about we go back and down the left side instead?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, lead the way.”
We then spend an hour retracing our steps and going down the new path.
My phone has been vibrating on and off for the past fifteen minutes, making her glare at me every time we hear it in the quiet woods.
“Just answer him already.”
“No, we’re going by his house anyway, so I’ll talk to him then. I want him to realize how much he pissed me off.” She stops looking into another bushy area. All that we see around us is green and brown.
“You know what you’re right, let him stress out over his own rudeness.”
We walk another ten minutes but, of course, find nothing. As we start the walk back to his house, we go over the pros and cons.
“I guess this is good, at least we didn’t find her dead.”
“But it sucks to be even further set back.”
“Maybe when we see him, I’ll quiz him just to ensure he doesn’t know anything.” She offers.
“Be my guest.” I giggle at the thought of her interrogating him. We make it to his house.
At the front door, I knock loudly, multiple times. We hear rustling and a few voices before the door opens.
It’s Cassie.
She opened the door to Alec’s house.