Among Us (boyxboy) [ON HOLD]

Chapter 29 - Loss

"Wait. you write your name with a 'C'?" Although her name had always struck me as quite peculiar, for lack of a better word, I had never once even thought about how it'd be written.

"Oh well. If you must know." She sighed, clearly quite eager to share the story.

"When I was in grade school, people decided that Caitlyn could be shortened to Cat, right? They kept calling me that nickname, so I kept it. Once I changed school, someone realised that, funny enough, there was this one popular animal that shared that name. So, they started calling me the cute version of that animal - Kitty. I guess you know how it is, right? As soon as you get that one ridiculous nickname, you never get rid of it. So I at least wanted to decide how to freaking write my own name. So I wrote it with a 'C'. That's it, not that special really." She shrugged after ending her little story.

I only looked at her like a deer caught in the headlights.

"Right." I managed to say after a bit. "Totally makes sense." Not. But who was I to her to tell her that?

I wasn't sure why this particular memory just flashed before my eyes the exact moment Mrs Davids told me that her daughter was apparently gone. It had been a couple of weeks after we'd first met. She'd been begging to exchange phone numbers and up until then, I had blatantly refused her every single time. But then I just gave up and agreed. When she typed in her name was when I asked her about the way she wrote it.

I still hadn't quite registered what her mother had said, so I just stood there, staring at her with wide eyes, not able to even ask her about it.

"She's gone."

The second time she told me I could hear a sob at the end, then her trembling hand came up to her face, covering her mouth in a futile attempt to keep her whimpers in.

Her tears flew freely now, spilling out of her already puffy eyes. Her face scrunched up in pain and she had to steady herself on the doorframe for fear of falling.

"Linda? Linda, who's at the door?" Her husband's worried, but tired voice called from the inside of the house.

When he rounded the corner, probably to check why his wife was still standing at the front door, he halted in his step. He stared in my eyes over Mrs Davids' slender form, that was quite a bit smaller than both his and mine.

"Duncan." He let my name trail out and I didn't know what to make of it. Frankly, I wasn't even bothered at that moment. The sheer sadness in his eyes when he realised it was his daughter's newest friend at the door left me feeling absolutely empty. He had just repeated his wife's words without ever uttering more than my name.

Before his tears could spill as well he stepped forward and hugged his wife to his chest.

"She- she went out Monday night and- She- She- Sh-"

His eyes found the ceiling while he drew a deep breath, trying to keep the tears in.

"When she came back from shopping, she decided to head out again." This time, it was Mrs Davids speaking, her voice still sad and quivering, but she was trying hard to hold on. Both of them were, I could tell.

"She never came back home. Her phone doesn't work either. We don't know where to look any more." She fell silent again.

It occurred to me that her parents had no idea she had a boyfriend, who she'd probably tried to visit on Monday.

"I - I don't... What can I do?" I tried to keep my voice strong, I really did, but it still shook. The girl had grown on me so much over the past year. She'd helped me in so many ways without her ever knowing.