In My Mind

Chapter Sixteen - Olivia's POV

When I wake up it's peaceful inside the house. This doesn't surprise me though; Saturday mornings nobody is up early. As I sit up in bed, I feel groggy and tired. "Meow," Whiskers walks in leaning up against the bed frame. I slip out of bed and the air is slightly cold. Whiskers walks over to me and I pick him up. His fur is so soft and silky, and his purrs are loud as a lawnmower. I walk out into the living area and the tiles are cold as ice. As I reach the top half of the house, all is silent, no snoring. I look into the bedroom and Mum is not there. Whisker's jumps out of my arms. I go into the kitchen and look for a note she may have left, but there is not one. I go and get my phone and ring her. The phone rings when suddenly 'Hi, it's Lisa,"

"Mum!" I almost shout at her. There is a break before she replies.

"Just joking, sorry I can't come to the phone right now. Leave a message and I may get back to you, but probably not,"

Agh Mum and her stupid childish ways! She thinks its so funny to do things like that.

"Hi its me Liv, where are you?" I hang up the call. I text her Mum where are you and turn off my phone. "What do I do Whisky, she's never stayed away this long," Whisky sits there with his big eyes staring at me. I decide I'm going to tell Grandma. I text her 'Hey, Mum's been gone for two days now, I don't know where she is' I sit anxiously waiting for a response. How will she react, she always knew Mum was not always there for me but I don't think anyone ever thought she would go this far. The phone dings and I get a response. 'Come and stay with me until she gets back, I don't know where she is but it's going to be ok' I feel like she says that a lot 'it's going to be ok' I know Mum should be there for me but I never really expected her to, she wasn't ever a good parent.

I pack up some of my things to take with me for now, my laptop, chargers, phone, eos lip balm, perfume, clothes, photo of my friends and I, The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Maze Runner book series, my school things and some stuff for Whiskers. I have to take my fish with me so I pack their food too. Soon Grandma arrives and she takes my stuff including Whiskers and the fish. I don't go quite yet, there's just a few things I want to do first.

Once she has left I write a note and leave it out in case Mum comes back. I have to go catch the bus, I am going to the shopping centre with Ellie. Out at the bus stop nobody is around. There is a soft breeze in the air. When I get on the bus I see my cousin Emilia standing there. "Hey what are you doing here?"

She looks up and smiles, "You know just catching a bus,"

I roll my eyes, such a typical response from her, "Of course,"

I sit down next to her and we talk about life, it's been a long time since we last talked. Soon it gets to her stop and she gets off. My eye's follow her and I realise Aria is sitting on the bus. What does she remember about last night? Maybe she doesn't even remember what happened, after all Cara did give her alcohol without her knowing. I get up and go tap her on the shoulder.

"Aria," I whisper.
I sit down beside her and she takes her headphones out.
"About last night..." I start to say.
"It will never be mentioned again."
"Good..." I mumbles.
We sit there quietly. I can see my stop approaching. I turn to her.
"This is my stop," I give half a smile. Should I have done that? I don't know I just get off the bus and don't look back.

It's not long after being at Ellie's house that we leave to go to the shopping centre. We look around in a few stores but lunch creeps up on us quickly. I get a salad from Sumo Salad and so does Ellie. There are a lot of people around in the food court. We manage to get a seat far away from the bins, in the centre of the seating area. We sit there silently eating our salads and checking up on our social networking. I look up and get a glimpse of who looks like Cara, and she's with someone. It's probably not her. When we finish lunch we go looking around some more. All the sales are on and so there are people frantically looking through all the clothes.

We stand in a store looking through a clothes rack facing the wall. I start to turn to my left, "Hey Ell.." I quickly stop and pretend like I am rummaging through the clothes still. "Wha.." I cover her mouth before she can complete her sentence. The figures I see walking into the shop are now looking at a different clothes rack. I grab Ellie's arm and pull her behind another rack just off the wall. "What?" She says pulling her arm away and rubbing it. "Look over there!" I whisper pointing over at the people I saw. She looks over, "Is that Cara?" she quietly whispers back.

"And she's with someone else," We look at them through the clothes.

"Who is that?" Ellie asks.

"I don't know," We keep looking. They turn to each other and laugh. "Oh my god! Is that Ruby?"

"Didn't she go to jail?" Ellie's eyes are in shock.

"Yeah she did, but she must have got out," I can't believe this. I get out my phone and take a picture of them. I look at the picture. Can you tell who it is? "Shh," Ellie whips me around so we are facing the wall rack. "Ruby started looking in this direction," We slowly start to move around like we don't know they are there. I look over and they are not looking in our direction. We make a quick walk out of there without attracting too much attention and leave.

There are so many sales that I get heaps of new clothes, that's a heap of new outfits to wear to school. We get a juice from Boost. It takes forever to get our order. There are fifty billion other people waiting as well. Our order comes and I take a sip. The juice is sweet and delicious. It's getting into the late afternoon and so Ellie and I start to head to the bus stop. When we get near the entrance Cara walks in our direction. "Hey Cara, fancy seeing you here," I say in a sarcastically sweet voice.

"Yeah, what are you doing here, are you by yourself?" Ellie chimes in.

"Surely not," I say looking at Ellie.

Cara replies almost with a smirk, raises her eyebrows and sounds sarcastic too, "Yeah you'd think, but here I am, by myself,"

"Anyway why are you here?" I repeat.

"I just thought I might do some shop lifting again," She answers. Normally I would not be sure if this was a lie or not, but unless she was doing that with Ruby, I highly doubt she was.

"I'd sure hope you didn't, wouldn't want another thing on your record would you?" I say.

"We have to go now anyway, got a bus to catch," Ellie says looking in the direction of the door.

"Yeah,"

"Right," Cara says with no emotion in her voice.

"Ciao Cara," I say as we walk off.