The vanished

ii *plotwist*

Skye Disset tried to cope by being sophisticated and determined. It was all she had left to keep her low emotions in check. If she didn't have a purpose to focus on, she knew she'd scream, go all hysterical, and collapse in tears. And that was something she'd never do. She's made herself that promise as a child, and she wasn't going to break it now, just because it was the end of the world or something.

Waking up all alone had been one of her worst nightmares since she was a baby. He'd never known her father, Mom had simply told Skye that he'd decided that the responsibilities of family life were too much for him, and he was giving up on it. "It," in this case, being Mom and the baby Skye. He'd not come to this decision all alone, apparently, but had been helped by his secretary, who'd abandoned her own life, too. The pair of them had skipped Denver and headed west somewhere. Mom had never been able to find him to try and get child support or anything. Not that Mom had tried too hard.

Mom was all Skye and had had since she was a child. Mom's parents were both dead, and Dad's parents were apparently uninterested in their granddaughter.

Mom was lucky in one sense, because she would work on Wall Street and she would get paid pretty well, even given the rents in the city. And she was good at her work. She knew which stock would rise, and which would fall.

The problem about Mom, was that she had bad instincts when it came to dating . . . None of them lasted very long. They were all bad bets. Losers. And it seemed like Mom-and Skye-always wound up paying the price. It hadn't helped matters that Mom was not technically divorced. She'd never bothered to file-that chased off the few guys that got serious. After all, what was the point hanging around?

And none never did.
The type of guys that would let Mom down were the young hot shots, the kind of men who looked down on Skye as some sort of a vampire sucking blood from his girlfriend. Or else an anchor chaining her mom down.

Occasionally, Skye reluctantly would be included in ski weekends, but mostly she ended up being babysat by Mrs.Lopez across the hall. She spent those nights wondering if her mother would ever bother coming back for her, or if she'd just run off like her Dad.

But mom had always come back.
Until this morning. . . .
Skye tried to clamp down on her feelings, but it was so very difficult. Her insides felt as if someone has messed them up with a dull knife. It hurt clean through her body.

Mom had one out on a date last night with somebody, an she'd come home late-ad not alone, either. Skye had been waiting, restlessly awake, until hours past midnight when she heard her mother fumbling with the key at the door. Even at fifteen-too old for Mrs. Lopez to babysit anymore-she would experience suffocating anxiety attack when left alone. Her relief was shortened. From the muttered conversation Skye realized that mom had brought a boyfriend back with her.

"Great," she sighed. Another L she could carve on her bed post. For loser. She tried to get back go sleep.

Skye hadn't ever had a boyfriend. Not because she wasn't pretty; she was. Everybody said that, and they meant it.

It was because she scared off the guys. Most boys he had den with were just hoping to make out in their new cars or whatever.

She would always ask,"Will you stay with me forever?" That scared off the guys! None of them wanted any commitment of the sort. Sky needed that commitment more than she needed a boyfriend.

Jacob Wesly had even laughed at her. They had taken a walk one evening and Jacob had steered them both down a deserted path to the park near her house. Skye knew that was coming. He made his arm tight around her shoulder. When she asked him, he had actually had a shocked face, as if someone punched him in the gut with the force of air.
"Stay? With you? Not for five minutes, babygirl," he'd replied.