One By One (editing)

Chapter Nine

"You know the spoons are right there, right?" Mandy pointed at the utensil counter a couple tables away from where we were sitting.

I sat down. "Yeah, I just had to talk to Luke."

"Carter, where'd you disappear to Friday night?" Maggie asked, taking a bite of her sandwich. She was sitting across from Mandy and I, having sat down with Gabbie, Drew, and Brianna while I was gone.

I stuttered, "Oh, uh, Luke and I just had to go back home."

"How come? You looked like you were having fun towards the end," Bri prompted.

I hesitated, "Um that was the night my sister, Sam, went missing. So Luke and I left."

"Wait a second." Gabbie whipped out her phone and unlocked it. After a few taps, she flipped her phone around to show me the glowing screen of a standardized alert about a missing person with the exact description of Sam. She pressed on the screen again and turned her phone back around for me to see another alert with a missing person description of Jack.

"Oh," I murmured. "Why didn't I get those?" Taking out my own phone, I found that my texts had been turned off. When they were, I don't remember, but once I turned them back on I found the alerts plus many other text notifications from friends and family. Suddenly, I had a feeling that maybe those looks I had thrown my way weren't just from the ketchup stain on my shirt, but from the alerts everybody received.

"So what happened with you and Liam?" I asked, changing the subject and shoving my phone back into my pocket to save reading those texts at a later time. I just didn't want to talk about my missing brother and sister that I had a slim chance of ever seeing again. There was a never ending amount of sympathy and anger and confusion always snuck into the words of any conversation that regarded that certain topic.

Mandy opened her mouth but Drew spoke up first. "Ok, Carter. You gotta talk to her. She hasn't broken up with him yet!"

"You, what?" I swiveled in my seat to face Mandy.

"Ugh, you guys," Mandy groaned. "I just don't know how to face him. He's such a disgusting pig that I don't even want to look at him."

"This has been her excuse every single time." Drew pointed a slice of apple at Mandy and rolled her eyes. "It's ridiculous."

"I'll do it at some point. I just have to, you know, figure out how."

"Trust me," Gabbie butt in. We all knew of her previous relationship with another guy who had cheated on her and then ripped her heart to shreds. "Break up with him now instead of later. It'll save your heart."

"I know," Mandy muttered, looking down. The sadness and disappointment in still being Liam's girlfriend radiated off her skin.

"If you don't break up with him, I will," I threatened as the lunch bell rang.

We all stood up and Mandy violently scooped up her wrappers from lunch. She threw them into the garbage can and stomped back over to us, all the while barking, "Just stop trying to tell me what to do. I am allowed to have time to figure out what I'm going to do." With that, she escaped to class.

"Feisty ginger," Drew retorted as she stood up to leave with Maggie and Brianna.

Gabbie walked with me out into the hallway. She hooked her thumbs into the straps of her bag and insisted, "You do know she should do it soon."

"Yeah, yeah I know. I'll do what I can but she's her own person and I can't force her to do anything." Even though I didn't say it, I could tell that at the moment, Gabbie wasn't thinking of my bigger, more-pressing issues such as my missing siblings.