Call Me Twice

Chapter 9: Leave a light on

Link

The night goes by in a blur. The neighbors do let us in and Lia calls the police. Then we take them to the site of the bike. Then they pack us into a squad car and take us back to the station to give statements. Despite my usual apprehension around cops, they care very little about me. They take our story that we were walking his path hoping to find him (which is true) and don't care much beyond calling our parents/guardians. I am an ass and give them the prison phone number but they don't find that funny nor do I get to talk to my dad out of it, and then they call my grandparents. They don't even caution us not to go out at night. We're old enough in their eyes to be out, and they aren't too concerned.
The officers and coroner confirm what I already suspected. The amount of blood at the scene is incongruous with Harper's survival. Unless some isn't his, which wouldn't follow as there is no sign of struggle. Harper's body is nowhere to be found in the surrounding woods, the police comb the nearby area, there's nothing.
Lia's parents show up to be disapproving. My grandparents show up to be horrified; apparently they genuinely did not know I had left the house. They are very very upset and apologize way more times than necessary. Then we get to spend the entire ride home chastising me.
"In my defense, you never told me I COULDN"T go for a walk on a moonless night with a young lady in the forest," I say, holding up my hands, as we walk into the well lit house.
"It's a part of the house rules," My grandmother says.
"What house rules? Where?" I ask, folding my arms, "Where is that written?"
My grandfather points to a very long document pinned to the fridge.
"I'm not reading all that," I say, immediately.
My grandmother immediately starts crying.
"You—just—that's what Sebastian would have said," my grandfather says, quietly.
"I'm sorry. My father has an entire binder devoted to explaining how genetically, the bitchy little personality is NOT linked to any amount of DNA coding and should not be inherited. Honestly, you're lucky the nice polite queer Eastern European one raised me. I could be worse, according to everyone I know my dad would have found my smart mouth funny," I say, leaning against the counter, folding my arms.
"Sebastian would always sneak out," my grandmother says.
"I'm sorry. I will tell you next time I genuinely didn't think you'd care," I knew they'd care.
"What were you doing? With that girl?" My grandfather asks.
"Looking for her boyfriend, we're all friends from school," I say. Could I use Lia to establish my heterosexuality? Yes. Am I going I to? Absolutely not. I have nothing to prove to anyone. "That's all. He was missing I offered to help, safer both of us walking around at night."
"In future, curfew is at seven. And we will need to know wherever you're going," my grandfather says, firmly.
"Understood," do not plan on obeying but understand.
"I miss him, you know. I don't know what—I even miss him arguing with me," my grandmother says.
I nod a little.
"It's for your own good, Link. It's not safe to be out at night. And as she said your father always used to sneak out. It never did him any good."
"He had a Ph.D. And drove a Benz and lived in a beach house with his life partner and a cat and two very expensive fish. He was okay, I'm gonna—I'm gonna go with he did okay, sneaking out aside—- what was he sneaking out to do I'm investigating something for personal reasons did his classmates also go missing?" I ask.
"Your father led a very—unconventional and often dangerous life style. I wouldn't want you to do the same," my grandfather says, diplomatically.
"Okay, I'm not being funny or smart here I'm genuinely curious: when you say lifestyle are you talking about the gay thing or is there another part that you consider dangerous?" I ask, holding up my hands.
"Your father didn't choose friends wisely. He was sacrilegious and became involved at one point in devil worship. We did our best to guide him, however while he did return to church he was never able to resist the homosexual lifestyle."
"That's—so—okay, yeah, um, thanks, good to learn more about him. Won't read the house rules, understand the curfew, night, I've got school so, I should have been in bed hours ago, value my education, bye," I back up the stairs. They let me go. All right. Do we think he did devil worship or do we think they don't know what drag shows are? Second one, definitely.
But I've still got his hidden map to look at. That should be something to take my mind off tonight's carnage.
I go into my room, locking the door behind me oh it doesn't lock, cute, that's what furniture is for. I push a dresser in front of the door and flop down on the bed. I'm disturbed by what I saw tonight. Please let the cops handle it? Maybe they'll find something. We did what we could. Likely he was killed. I'm going to guess by that gang related? But why no footprints? And why take the body? No that is weird.
And those homophobic DNA givers downstairs just brought up devil worship here in Pine Hollow? Oh how sinister is this about to get?
I pull out the map.
"Buried treasure, Sebastian?" I mutter, unfolding it. it's a map of Washington state on one side. And on the other, it's just Pine Hollow. That's useful. But why hide it? Huh maybe they're against maps.
Around the edge of the map he has runes. Hm. Interesting. He was definitely coding it which seems odd then meet the people he lived with. Then across the map he's sketched perfectly straight lines, fanning out across it then some cross cross.
I flip it over. Only two lines through Pine Hollow which intersect.
"Okay, where are we—where's Mullholland—oh no, no you don't," I say, quietly.
What are the odds that the place where we found the bike is along one of the lines?