𝐈 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮

Althea

Gemma was waiting outside my door when I finally finished my extra hour of skating. She was fidgeting anxiously as if she was scared someone would see her. See her with me.
  "Come on, Thea. A cow walks faster than you." She placed a hand on her hip and wiggled the door handle. "This isn't going to open itself."
  I laughed and unlocked the door. She still called me Thea so maybe things weren't that bad, right? Wrong. Gemma burst into my room, words already flowing from her mouth, her hands waving dramatically and I don't think she even stopped for air once.
  "How could you do that to her? After I told you about how much you meant to her? After I shared all of those things about her past? You could have at least kissed her back! I know you probably had your reasons, but were they more important than her? And-"
  I gently took her arm. "Gemma, please, take a deep breath." She looked at me, her eyes wide and nodded. I motioned up with my hand and we inhaled deeply through our nose before lowering my hand. Another string of words flowed out on her exhale.
  "Did you see the video? Of course you must've, and to think she saw it too. Oh, God, I don't even know what I'm supposed to say when we find her." Gemma slapped a hand over her mouth as if she had just shared a deep secret.
  Wait. Find her? Was she missing? I had simply thought she was across the hall, hiding from me. Fear shot through my heart and I dropped onto my bed.
  "Gemma, where is she? When was the last time you saw her?"
  Gemma sat on Jonesy's bed, moving the sheet music to the side so she didn't crumple it. "Well, she's been...uh..."missing" since Friday night. She left after...everything."
  Since Friday? I could feel worry growing inside me and I bit down on the corner of my nail. This was all my fault. Well, that had already been established.
  "No one's seen or heard from her, not even Bela." She added quietly. "That's why no one's reached out to you." I gave her a look of confusion before realization dawned on me.
  They had all been super close before Jonesy had gotten mixed up with me. She had told me once, that they never went a day without talking and to be given the silent treatment wasn't something they did.
  "I'm sorry," was all I could muster out. Gemma didn't reply, she simply gave me a look of pity. If Jonesy was missing, it meant it was my job to go look for her.  Maybe if I found her I would be given the chance to explain my side. If I brought her back, the Gang would forgive me and Daria would go back to giving me semi hateful glares instead of ones that actually made me think she might murder me.
  "We have to go find her." I shot up to my feet and grabbed the duffel bag from under my bed and started throwing in some of Jonesy's clothes. She had been gone since Friday and was probably still wearing the same outfit since then.
  Gemma moved her leg so I could grab the shirt by her foot, a skeptical look on her face. "Uhm...I think the whole reasoning behind her leaving was because she didn't want to see you, she wanted to be alone. Going after her would defeat the whole purpose."
  I scoffed and headed towards the bathroom. I placed her toothbrush in a plastic bag along with a string of floss. "I don't really care; it's my fault she took off like that so I will be the one to bring her back." I grabbed my keys and stared at Gemma who still hadn't left her place on Jonesy's bed.
  "Are you coming with me or what?"
  She scrambled to her feet in a less than graceful manner. "Absolutely."

***

  "Okay, so what tunes should we listen to? Oh! We could go through the entire Hamilton soundtrack!" Gemma exclaimed from the passenger seat.
  I took a left turn and laughed at her. "Gem, this is not a roadtrip; we have to keep an eye out for Jonesy. Now, where did you say you think she might be?"
  She sighed dramatically and I laughed again. "Ellis said that there was this bar she would frequently visit right after Amaiah's death. He said it's right up near Fairmont."
  I nodded, my eyes straining against the blinding snow. Ellis was Jonesy's younger brother and he was more than willing to help us find her. He had said she had left him a very cryptic drunken message Friday night.
  "Fairmont, that's like three hours away." I gripped the steering wheel tightly. Who knows where she could be in three hours.
  "Well, it's a good thing the Hamilton soundtrack is only two and a half hours long." With a sly smile, Gemma pressed play to the first track.
  By the time we reached the Fairmont city limits, the sun was beginning to set and Gemma was fast asleep in the seat beside me. Fairmont was a much larger oceanfront town on the Maryland coast; I had only visited once as a child, but with the busy streets, the ocean, and beaches, it was the kind of place I could see myself living in.
  "Gem." I gently nudged her as I pulled into a gas station. I laughed as she shook herself awake and let out a roaring yawn. "I'm going to go use the bathroom and get more..." I picked up her empty bag of chips gingerly with two fingers. "Dill pickle potato chips."
  She perked up at the sound the bag made and let out a snort at the disgusted look on my face. "Okay, thanks; make sure they're the regular ones, I hate the ruffles." She pulled out her phone, no doubt checking her appearance. "I'm going to call Ellis."
  I grabbed some trash and put it in a separate bag; I couldn't help but notice how the tips of Gemma's ears turned bright red whenever anyone brought up Jonesy's younger brother.
"Okay, you do that," I snickered as she gave me an exasperated sigh and a dramatic groan.
  "Don't give me that, I do not like him that way. I swear."
  I gave her an innocent doe eyed expression. "What ever are you talking about?"
  Gemma narrowed her eyes at me, trying to contain her laugh. "Just go get my chips, Beckett." I laughed and quickly closed the door to avoid getting a stray stale french fry thrown at me.
  The lady at the front register was missing several teeth and had the constant need to always be talking. By the time I had found Gemma's chips, my coffee, and a few other things of beef jerky, she had told three customers about an incident that had happened the night before. Once it was my turn to pay for my items I had almost memorized her entire monologue. I mentally prepared myself to hear it for a fourth time and put on a smile.
  "Don't I know you from somewhere?" The woman squinted at me, chewing her gum on the side of her mouth like a cow.
  I had never seen this woman a day in my life. "No, I don't think so." I twisted the cash in my hand as she continued to scrutinize me.
  After several awkward moments of silence, she finally smiled. "No, I do know you. This girl, at least I think it was a girl; she was as tall as a giant, well over six feet tall." Her face pulled into a tight frown as she tried to recall who she was talking about. "Anyways," she waved her hand and went back to chewing her gum.
  "This girl came in the night before last, maybe it was the night before. She was in real bad shape." She blew out through her mouth, dramatically shaking her head. "Real, real bad shape."
  I stilled. Could she have been talking about Jonesy? I mean, she was a giant. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my phone. Going into my camera roll, I swiped to a picture of her, pain rippling through my chest.
  "Was it her by chance?" I asked nervously. The woman pulled down a pair of glasses I had no idea she had hidden in her hair, and bent down to get a better look at my phone.
  "Well, I be damned. That's her, yupp. Delores doesn't forget a face." Delores must be her name. "She came in here all distraught, pretty sure she had been out drinking; said she had just gotten her heart broken and showed your picture."
  Delores narrowed her eyes at me and I swallowed. "You look like a heartbreaker."
  "Thank you? I think."
  She went back to scanning my items and placing them in a plastic bag. "You know, I used to dabble in all that...homosexuality."
  I did not know that, nor did I necessarily wanted to. "That's...interesting." I didn't care, I just wanted to know if Jonesy had said anything about where she might've been headed next. "Did the girl that came in, this girl, did she say anything about where she was going? Did she say anything weird?"
  Delores scoffed. "Weird? Everything about her was weird. She did say something about going to see her." She wiggled her brows mischievously.
  All I could do was stare at her blankly. What was she doing? I dug my fingernails into my palm, trying to keep my frustration in check. "Who? Who was she going to see? Did she give a location or-or a direction?"
  Delores leaned closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. "The cause of all her problems." She leaned back and handed me my bag. "She was definitely on something, that look in her eyes-"
  I didn't stick around to hear what kind of look had been in Jonesy's eyes. If I stayed another second, I might have actually punched her. I grabbed my plastic bag, my change and bolted out the door.
  Gemma gave me a wide eyed look of surprise as I threw open the driver's side door. "What-"
  "I know where Jonesy went." I was breathless. "Do you know where her mom lives?"