Hey Punk, Keep This a Secret

Chapter Two: Carly James

 Danny didn't make an appearance at school that day. She never told me why. There wasn't a text from her saying she was sick, or prior notice that she had an appointment of some kind. Just radio silence.

At first I had figured she told Chance instead, since she seems to care so much more about him than she ever did me. That's okay, that meant that all I had to do was ask Chance the next time I saw him, right? Wrong, because he didn't know shit about where she was either.

"Where's Danny," was the first thing he asked me when he showed up outside of our homeroom class to talk to her.

"Don't ask me." I said, refraining from calling him a dumbass.

I suppose it was better that Chance didn't know, because it leaves me with a little bit of hope that Danny would have told me where she was. But the anxiety started to kick in and I began wondering what could possibly be keeping her out of school that she can't even tell Chance about. Best scenario is she got sick and slept in. In that case she would probably wake up later and be like "sorry CJ I was just sick lol." Worst scenario is that she did something to piss off her parents and now she's locked in the basement again. Both are equally possible, as far as I'm aware.

For the sake of an accurate assumption, I waited until the afternoon to make plans to call the authorities. I didn't want to text her, either, because who knows what her parents would think if they got the idea to look through our message history- or even worse- her and Chance's history. So I kind of just sat around hoping for a text as if it was going to appear out of the blue.

Time ticked by in slow motion all day. The longer that Danny didn't text me, the slower it went. I could even swear on my life that my math teacher was talking much slower than usual. It was starting to piss me off, probably because everything my math teacher does pisses me off.

Later on, I passed Chance in the hallway and I asked if he had heard from Danny yet. After all, with him in the picture I seriously doubt she'd tell me before she told him.

"Nope. I tried texting her and I didn't get anything back," he said.

Great. You'd think Chance of all people would know about Danny's situation and wouldn't be so stupid as to potentially give her parents ideas. That motherfucker. Well, I guess you wouldn't expect someone stupid enough to online date someone 4 years older than him to be smart enough to understand just about anything at all.

"You idiot," I couldn't help but utter under my breath.

"What? What did I do," he asked.

"Whatever." I scuffed and pushed past him. I couldn't have bothered to explain myself, because I was already so pissed off with everything.

"Why are you such a jerk to me?" Chance asked.

I couldn't bother to answer that, either.

There still wasn't a peep from Danny even when I got home. I pictured her body decaying in the basement of her house. An exaggerated thought, really, but it didn't silence the terrifying possibility that my vision would be true in the future. Her parents have done it before. Not for long enough to kill her, but long enough for it to hurt her for sure.

I recalled a time a few years ago where something similar happened. She was gone for weeks, and when she showed up to school again, she was exhausted and unable to eat anything. I had to force her to eat her lunch for her own sake, only to find out she had thrown up most of it later. The only thing that I could get her to stomach was fruit.

This was in early middle school, so you can imagine how traumatic that was for the both of us. On top of it all, it took her an extremely long time to recover. She would complain to me about her grades going down because she wasn't able to focus. Eventually, one of her teachers reported this and she had to go to guidance. As much as I encouraged her to tell the truth (even if the efforts ended up going to waste), she wouldn't out of fear that she'd be hurt again by those whack-jobs that are raising her.

That isn't even mentioning what the other kids thought about it. The "popular" boys were bullying her for dozing off in classes (which is ironic because they did the same) and tripping her in the hallways when she was too tired to notice. That didn't help us one bit. And the memory certainly didn't help me now.

I resisted calling the domestic violence hotline once and for all, because knowing Danny, she wouldn't want that right now. Even if she really was decaying in the basement, what would they do? They'd say, "yeah, but I don't want to fill out paperwork," and they'd leave. That's what they'd do.

Regardless, I can almost guarantee that she's thinking more about Chance than anything right now. Classic Danny Stewart. So, in her honor, I'll document something of my own towards her case.

I knew when I first saw him that he was a victim of something. He has a funny way of playing with his hands. His favorite denim jacket is always perfectly coating his neck so that you can't see shit of it with the naked eye. The most defining factor, however, is that he can't pay attention to anything to save his life. I've seen the bandaids on his fingers. Either he's just clumsy and a nervous wreck by coincidence, or somebody has been abusing the dude.

No wonder Danny is so in love with him. They can relate to each other. I wonder if she would fall for me if I was abused, I thought. I wonder if she'd fall for me if I saved her.

Without another thought, I picked up my phone and dialed the number. I had it completely memorized, to my advantage, so I finished typing it out quickly. I went to press call.

For just a moment my finger stopped, and a wave of anxiety crashed over me.

What was I doing? I lost my train of thought in a fit of fear, and now I was doing something irrational. What were they going to do for her? For the love of god, what had they ever done for anybody? My feelings were too conflicted, so I closed the screen and forgot all about it.

I wasn't sure if that was smart or not.

2.5: Chance Andrews

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't for the life of me convince myself that Danny was just home sick. I was certain she would have spoken to me by now. It's impossible to sleep in until the time you go to bed, no matter how sick you are!

The phone rang one too many times for my liking before somebody picked up and asked me to explain the situation to them.

"I'm calling in for a friend. Yeah- uhm- she has been M.I.A. all day today, and she's said a lot of things about her parents that make me think they have something to do with this. What has she said? Oh god, where do I start-" My voice was shaking with every breath, but I didn't know why. What did I think was going to happen, her parents would come in and kill me? Maybe it was just because I hated phone calls. Hell if I know!

"Take your time," the dispatcher told me, but I didn't take her advice.

"She told me that they had argued outside her door about her many times, and that they sounded intoxicated a lot," I explained. "Like- like- a whole lot. Yeah. Well, I can't be sure it was alcohol exactly, because I haven't seen them before. She told me a story about how they locked her in the basement once! That's pretty terrible, right? Oh my god, this is so much. This is so much, I can't."

I was told to calm down, and that it was going to be okay, but I was already in tears. I was shaking so badly I was almost vibrating like a guitar string. I kept asking myself, what if they didn't do anything? What if this didn't work? And those questions only made me cry more.

She asked where Danny lived, and I answered through the waterfall that I was trapped behind. Then she told me that someone would be sent to investigate, and that it would be okay, but I didn't believe her. I didn't believe her at all. And when she hung up the phone, I cried. I cried out all of the fears I had left in me until I fell asleep on the floor.