Hope «h.s.»

Thirty-Six.

Chapter 36:

Harry's POV

I had waited a week. A whole week for her. We were off to such a good start and she left just like that. And somehow I knew it wasn't from her own will. There were signs.

The first sign was Rebecca showing up to my house.

The night after I last saw her, she came to my house. Like always, it was late and she knew how to creep around my parents. She knew about the specific stone next to the welcome mat that the key was under because in years past, she used it quite often.

I jolted out of my bed where I was laying when she came in. Piper was not answering any of my phone calls and texts. I even left a fucking voicemail trying to apologize for whatever I though I could have done wrong.

When Rebecca came in, it was almost like she was happy to see me distressed and that made me enraged. She tried to push me back on my bed as I tried to get her to leave.

"A boyfriend should not be treated that way," Rebecca said with her dark eyes roaming my frozen ones.

I wanted to scream at her because she knew something was going on and she must have had something to do with it.

"One last time I am going to ask you to leave," I said, holding my breath.

Rebecca eventually sighed while tracing the hem of my shirt. "Fine," she huffed. " But don't come crawling to me when you don't get what you want."

The second sign was that Piper never worked on our project.

Ever since we were assigned the religion project, I would watch late at night as Piper typed away on our virtual document. Every weeknight she would improve our project somehow on our document no matter if she did not go to school that day. She was dedicated like that.

The third sign was when I showed up where she worked: the music shop or what not.

The guy, her friend, gave me the eye as soon as I walked in.

He was leaning on the register counter, fiddling with a pencil.

"Can I help you?" He tried to say nicely as I steadily walked up to him.

I decided to cut to the chase. "Have you seen Piper recently?"

"I should be asking you that, now shouldn't I?" Scottie said, as I read his name tag.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"The hell I did!" I almost shouted but then tried to cool down. "She has not shown up to school in days and has not been answering my calls by the way."

"Well it's not like she spends much of her time here anymore."

"What's that suppose to mean?"

"Aren't you the one that got her into parties?"

I stood there for a moment. Did I? Did I change Piper to fit my standards? I couldn't have.

"No," I stood strong. If he wanted to fight about who was better for Piper, then SO be it. "She did that all by herself."

"Good for her," he said bitterly.

"Okay. Listen buddy. I'm worried about her. She's my girlfriend. You get that? Girlfriend. And I am just trying to figure out IF she's gone!"

"Well then you should know if she's missing, shouldn't you? I mean you are her boyfriend," Scottie taunted.

"From what I know, Piper is gone and you want to just sit here and blame me? What kind of bloody friend are you?" I shouted and stormed out.

The fourth sign was no sign of her at her house.

It was my last resort. If she was wallowing in her house, I was going to find her and bring her back home.

I snuck through the window of the small bedroom. The broken keyboard was laying out, but there was no sign of Piper.

Worry started to get to me. As I opened the door to the rest of the house, something was off. It was as if I smelled some sort of odd chemical that I had not come in contact with before. It mad me dizzy as I walked closer and closer to the living room.

I shouted her name twice before checking all the other rooms and around the house.

Nothing. She was not there.

Those were the signs that something was definitely wrong.