NIKKI & JOE, CASUALLY |

64: to do: burn everything

            'Are you sure you don't want me to come back?' Caleb asks for what must be the millionth time. 'I don't mind. Honestly.'

'No.' My voice is hoarse. Each word is a thistle scraped through my vocal cords. 'You should practice your show, it's important.'

There's a beat of silence; I can see Caleb's grateful smile. 'They'll come home soon.'

I want to believe him but Cece's been gone for sixty-seven hours and forty-one minutes and there's no sign of them. There's been no message from Bobbi that he arrived back at Oak Shaw, no texts from any of the other people—which is to say, everyone I know—who I've asked to keep an eye out.

Caleb has been here with me since the first call I made to him on Tuesday but he has his practice show for London Drag Expo at Spectrum tonight, and though I know it would be relatively easy to reschedule it, there's nowt much else he can do for me after the five-hundredth cup of tea he already brewed.

Eilidh has driven me around every corner of Manchester every day with Caleb as an extra lookout in the backseat. Rishi is borrowing my car to look right now. After the first night, I even asked Diwa if she knows any place they might go and she told me about an abandoned factory building off the motorway to Wigan but, save for about a million butane lighters littering the floor and the graffiti covering the walls, it were empty too.

There's nowt else I can do. I can't phone the police; even if we were lucky enough to get a few good apples on the case, Cece would punch them in the face the second they got close.

There's nowt else I can do but wait and plead and rot and whimper like a wounded dog.

'They–' Caleb hesitates, which he rarely does. 'They've been on the street before. I'm sure they know some... tricks.'

The word comes out like acid reflux. It's a nauseating thought that Cece has "tricks" for how to survive on the street overnight. It is true. But this is different—they've gone missing before but he packed up his whole room. I've never seen a goodbye clearer than that.

'I'm sure they're coming back soon.'

'Will you pray about it again?'

'Of course. Of course, I will, Nikki.'

'Tha–'

I snatch the phone from the table. Hang up. My pulse throbs in my neck.

I send Caleb a green heart so he knows I'll phone him back later. My whole body goes stiff as I listen to the front door being eased shut so slowly that the click is only audible if I concentrate every cell on it. It's as if the carpet in the corridor is a live organism connected to my brain; I can feel Cece's Vans press into it more than hear it.

Holding my breath, I wait until they're deep enough in the house that they can't run right back out before I emerge from the kitchen. They still try, lurching for the door only to back up with a laugh when I block them from it. Cece lifts his arms in surrender, holding a yoghurt tub in one hand.

'Where've you been?'

'Ain't ya meant to be at work?'

Neither of us answers.

'Got you this.' He thrusts the tub at me and I accept it as a reflex because I'm definitely not in the mood for any fucking gifts.

'Where– Cece, what the fuck?' A common frog sits in the container, camouflaged into the slimy pondweed at the bottom. It looks up at me through the transparent lid poked with air holes.