City of Kinetics

THIRTY-THREE ✴ Worried Sick

       It was now pitch-black outside and nearly below freezing, and Mila was beginning to think the worst. Her and Hunter had driven to Leila's friend's house only to find that she wasn't there before driving around the neighborhood and going to nearby stores, hoping to find her in the area.

       They checked around the high school, too, but the school doors were locked, and the campus was empty. As time went by, they were running out of places to look.

       "Can't you call this in?" Mila asked him. "She's technically a missing child, right?"

       Hunter's eyes stayed train on the road, but she didn't miss the way his grip on the steering wheel had considerably tightened.

       "If I do that and they find her, social services will be notified," he said. "Because it'll be the third time they've gotten involved, it's the law that they put her into foster care until they can do a full investigation."

       Mila frowned, her heart dropping.

       "It could take me over a week to get her back, if they'll even accept me as a caretaker," he continued, shaking his head. "But if we can't find Leila on our own in the next hour, I..."

       He trailed off, then, the pain of potentially losing her to the system making its way to his face. Mila but her lip anxiously, wracking her brain trying to come up with other places Leila could have gone.

       "Maybe she had money and took a bus somewhere?" she suggested.

       Hunter shook his head, his eyes trained on the road. "The only bus Leila takes is to school. I don't think she knows her way around the city's transit buses."

       "If she was trying to get away, maybe she didn't care what bus she got on?" Mila tried, reaching for Hunter's phone that he had placed in the front stereo compartment.

       "Check for any routes on Merlin Street," he said. "That's the closest bus stop to her house."

       Mila did a quick Google search, trying to find the city's public transit routes. Thankfully, it didn't take her long to pull up a map of all the different buses. She quickly typed in Leila's street into the search bar and pulled the bus line.

       "It goes east of the city towards Meadowvale," Mila said, zooming on the map.

       "Meadowvale," he repeated, his eyes shooting to hers for a second. "Is there a public library near there?"

       Mila looked around on the map, zooming in further to see the names of different buildings.

       "Yes, the East Nexus Branch Public Library," Mila said, nodding her head.

       All of the sudden, Hunter hit the brakes and made a sharp U-turn on the road, causing Mila to gasp from the sudden move. She had never been more thankful for seatbelts in her life.

       "What is it?" she asked, giving him an wide-eyed look.

       "It's near her school," Hunter said. "She made me get a library card there once so she could borrow some books that weren't in her school's library."

       Her eyebrows furrowed. "Why couldn't she just get her own library card?"

       "You have to be sixteen."

       They drove back towards the school before taking a different route. Mila pulled up the directions on Hunter's phone and guided him so they wouldn't get lost. Within ten minutes, they finally pulled up to the library.