Saving Andrew

03. Out of Home

Dylan O'brien as Alexander Walsh

◆ A L E X A N D E R ◆

HE PACED BACK AND FORTH, worrying for his best friend's safety. He wouldn't know what to answer if an officer suddenly came banging on his door, and he didn't plan to get caught. What he did know was that for sure an officer would be checking up on Andrew, and if they discovered that he wasn't home, for sure he'll be made fugitive.

He had tried calling Andrew a handful of times, but to no avail. It had been six days, almost one whole week since he had last seen or heard from him. He had always tried to push the bad thoughts to the back of his mind, struggling to deal with them later, and think about the important things.

Lying would be one of the few things he's good at, but keeping a secret? If it was a little one like the colour of Andrew's underwear, he could possibly manage to keep it in his head, but the secret he's currently trying to refrain from telling was so big that he didn't think it was possible.

But he kept one promise; anything for Andrew's safety. And he wasn't planning to break it soon.

Just as he was about to settle down and have a drink to soothe his worry, one thing that he had been expecting since Andrew stepped out of their house occurred. One knock, two knocks, three knocks. Over and over again until he shakily opened the door, revealing two officers, dressed from head to toe in police uniforms.

"May I help you, sir?" He asked, feigning a confused expression. He hid his shaky fist behind the door, one hand still holding the knob. He wanted to make sure that the officers fell for his oblivious act, he wanted to make sure that they consumed every ounce of lie he's feeding. And for that, his voice didn't waver the slightest.

One officer cleared his throat. "Good evening, Mr..." the officer trailed off, wondering who Alex was. "Alex," he half heartedly answered, nodding his head and smiling the most innocent smile he could muster.

The officer nodded. "Mr. Alex. We're here to check up on Mr. Andrew Williams, since he's currently our responsibility for now," the officer stated, slipping his hands in the pockets of his dark blue sweater, visibly craning his head over Alex's shoulder like an ostrich.

Inside Alex's head, there was a jumble of words climbing their ways to the tip of his tongue. He shook the truer words off the back of his head, and he came out with the final answer that would leave the officers restless.

"I don't know where he is," he tried not to stutter, and like gold, he was relieved that he sounded worried instead of scared. If he could, he would've recorded himself and put it on a mixtape, maybe even send it to some filming agency, since he sounded so purely, genuinely confused.

Secretly, his hand was still shaking while holding the doorknob, and he prayed to good Lord so that his sweat glands won't give away proof of his lies. If he sweats a drop, or lose eye contact, or if his voice wavered just above an octave, for sure it would be obvious enough that he wasn't telling the truth.

The officers looked at each other in pure confusion. It was like those blockbuster moments when the typical donut-eating police acts all smart by questioning, "are you sure you don't know where he is?" And like the silverscreen star that Alex temporarily was, he shook his head. "No," he replied. "He hasn't come home since, like, yesterday."

By then the officer was already pulling out his 90's cellphone, the one you can flip and play 'catch' with, and was already dialling some numbers. He can visibly see him clutching the godamned phone, which looked like it survived a plane crash with its cellophaned screen, and pressing the buttons that made a similar sound to a bubble wrap.

Alex was alarmed. It was chaos in front of his doorstep.

"Alert the rest," the officer commanded to the other one, stuffing his hand in his pocket and pulling out a car key. "We've got a gunman on the lose."

Alex wanted to retort, "you and your whole crew of blue are gunmen, sir," but he knew that with him being unarmed, it would be in his best interests to just shut up.

"You," the officer with the car key pointed his finger towards Alex. Alex's attention snapped to him, and almost immediately he replied with a lost 'yeah'.

Then the other officer threw a stack of papers with yellow, sticker backings into Alex's unprepared arms, causing it to hit Alex square in the chest and landing in front of his feet. "I knew it!" The officer who threw the stack said. "I knew we shouldn't have let that darned kid off!"

"Well what was I supposed to do?" The other officer yelled, angered. "I didn't know he was that bloody smart, you bastard!"

While they were arguing, Alex glanced at the stack of papers which no longer looked like a stack. On the paper, out came a mugshot of Andrew, the guy he's been missing since last night, and by then he knew that the police came prepared.

He kneeled down and took one, pinching the side of the paper so hard that it crumpled a bit. When he dropped the paper, he can see the pressure that his thumb had caused upon the small section of paper almost ripped it apart.

"Pass 'em around, kid," one of the officers ordered. "I'm counting on you."

Alex almost glared at the officer, as he mumbled under his breath, "I'm not a calculator that you can count on." But, he feigned a trustworthy nod, picking the papers up and stacking them back together.

And as the police car drove away, Alex took his phone out and dialed the number that he had given to Andrew.

"Alexander, what happened?" Andrew knew perfectly enough that Alex wouldn't call for just any reason.

"They found out," and Alex could hear the distant beeping of the line being cut off.