Emerald's Awakening

Chapter Six

2 weeks later:

Nothing very new has happened. We've been on the news. The police have sent out an Amber alert. Same thing for every missing child.

I'm walking home from school with Emmett. Teachers at school have been asking how I am, trying to help. Other students have been asking how I am too. But here's how I feel about that. Don't come up to me just because my sister is missing. Just because you think I'm in distress. If you have never talked to me once in a blue moon, I don't want to hear your bullshit. If you simply say I'm sorry or "I'll try to look for her," then I don't really give a damn. But the second you start trying to be my BFF, back off because I don't care about you.

Emmett and I are pretty much just small-talking.

"How was your test today?" he asks me.

"Oh my God you're so bad at conversation," I say with a snicker.

"I'm just trying to make you feel better."

There is a silent pause. We keep on walking.

"I don't know. It's just-. I don't know a lot of things anymore." I glance into alleyway next to us out of the corner of my eye as we walk past. Then something peculiar happens. A memory is triggered in the back of my mind. I turn my head to look again and there it is. There SHE is. Emerald. In the same pajamas as she left in. Tied to a chair, but relaxed. I wonder how long she's been there.

"Emmy!" I gasp.

She's startled. She turns her head to me and her eyes get as big as deer's in headlights. "Sophia!" she replies. I'm running toward her, as fast as I can. I can hear Emmett's footsteps behind me. Running equally as fast as I am.

I stop at her feet and kneel on the ground, looking up into her eyes. She's panicking, I can tell.

I can't cry. I can't. Don't.

I try untying the complex knots at her feet and I can see Emmett going for her hands at the back of the chair. Then a sharp pain hits me in the back of my head. I put my hand over spot and look for the source. There is a man holding a broken lamp post in the air. He brings it down on my head again, harder. I wheeze a grunt in pain. I feel it one more time. Then nothing.

EMMETT'S POV

The two men cut Emmy free from the chair with a butcher knife and lift her up.

"Sophia!" She screams out over their shoulder.

The two men toss her into the back of the red pick up truck. I assume it's the same one that they picked her up in. I look at the license plate. My heart is beating so fast and I have so much adrenaline in me that I keep repeating the code. I rummage through my back pack now on the ground from me throwing it. I find my black Sharpie and scribble the number on my arm.

U4N-2SV

I put the cap back on and throw it in my bag. Then I get my barrings. I see Sophia lying on the ground in a heap, her bag a few feet from her against the wall from when it flew off her arm when she was running.

I have so much strength in me right now I scoop her up, cradling her in my arms, her bag hanging off my arm underneath her legs. She weighs practically nothing, it might be just how panicked I am right now. I run to my house, not very far away.

---

"It's Sophia!" I call when I walk through the door.

"Bring her here," Mom replies. The benefit of being the offspring of a nurse, I think to myself. I lay her on the couch. I tell Mom about what happened, with Emmy.

"She has a blow wound to the head, but nothing major," she informs me as she wipes the blood away with a wet washcloth.

---

Soph wakes up just about ten minutes later. Confused, alarmed, and defensive. I'm sitting by her feet on the couch when she does so.

"Hey," she says, with the faintest remark of a question. "How long...hm?" she stutters.

"About twenty minutes," I answer her slight question. "I've been here the whole time.

"What's that?" she gestures to the writing on my arm.

"That, my friend, is the licence plate number of the car Emmy left in," I say with a triumphant smile.

Her face goes pale. She gasps and sits up straighter. I ever-so-slightly grab her shoulder in case she wasn't so stable. But she's solid as a brick.

She stares down at the black ink. Then her determined eyes look up into mine, they are full of millions of questions so clear from her expression, the need no words said.

"Of course," I answer her non-verbal question, "tomorrow."

The satisfied look on her face as I say that makes my heart pound even faster. Her satisfaction satisfies me in more ways than humanly possible. And I absolutely adore her.

+++++

I'm back😏😏😏