I don't know yet???

nine

Cole went missing two months after he went to his new foster home. Charlotte thought she knew why.

    It had started on a lazy Saturday morning, with Charlotte sprawled out across a torn-up red recliner chair. And then the phone rang. She got up, sighing, and then trudged against the greyish-white linoleum floor to answer it, abruptly cutting off the synthesisers' rendition of Vivaldi's Four Seasons (she was pretty sure it was Spring, but Charlotte wasn't all that familiar with classical music, or music of any sort, really).

    With a yawn, Charlotte uttered, "Hello?" stretching out her arms.

The other end was Eleanor, sobbing and on the brink of hyperventilation. "Charlotte?" she said, voice cracking distinctly.

Charlotte's eyes widened instantly. "Eleanor? What's going on?" she asked. Eleanor hadn't been sad for a second since she moved in with the Martels. She had friends and family and a home, and she never stopped smiling.

    "Cole's missin'."

    "How do you know?" Charlotte uttered. "You're forty minutes away from where he lives." Of course she was. They were all in different places: Charlotte in a poor, friendly little farm town, Eleanor up in the richer rural area filled with mansions and fancy business parties, and Cole in a little crime-filled lower-class version of the suburbs.

    "He hasn' answered any calls in two weeks," Eleanor explained.

    "Maybe he has homework? Or he's grounded," Charlotte suggested. "I wouldn't be surprised if he was grounded." She thought about tacking a laugh onto the end of that statement, just to lighten the mood, but decided she'd just make Eleanor angry.

    "I have a feelin', though," Eleanor sighed. "I feel it. Somethin' happened over there."

    Charlotte scoffed. "Feeling isn't knowing, Eleanor," she said. "It's probably fine. You're just overreacting."

    "'M not, Charlotte," Eleanor said. "Somethin' happened. This kind of thing happens all the time to kids like us."

    The kids like us hurt Charlotte a little. What were kids like them? Unloved, tossed aside, forgotten, pushed around. The awful thing was it made sense that Cole would go missing. He wasn't happy wherever he was, and that meant his siblings weren't happy. And if they weren't happy, then he would try and find something better for them all at any cost.

    "It happens all the time to irresponsible people. Is Cole irresponsible?"

    "Well, yes," Eleanor said, "sometimes."

    "That's not irresponsibility, that'sㅡ" Charlotte cut herself off.

    "That's what, Charlotte?"

    "Problems with authority..." Charlotte uttered. She hadn't wanted to say it. Eleanor would just get even more upset.

    "Exactly!" Eleanor exclaimed. "Problems with adults! You know he'd run away! You know somethin' like this could happen, easily! An' I'm tellin' ya, it did!"

    "Eleanor, Eleanor," Charlotte said frantically. "It's alright. I'm sure someone will report him missing. Someone will find him."

    "Are you sure?"

    "Of course I'm sure. You trust adults, don't you?"

    "Yeah, I do, I guess."

    "Then it will be fine. Someone will take care of this, just you wait. The adults will find him. I'm sure he just got mad because his foster parents were being strict or something and ran away for a few days. He'll come back when he gets cold. Besides, it's winter, anyway. He's not spiteful enough to last outside in the snow."

    "Are you sure?" Eleanor asked.

    "Yes. One-hundred percent sure," Charlotte confirmed, nodding slightly.

    "Thank you," Eleanor said. "I have t' go. G'bye."

    "Goodbye," Charlotte replied. She sighed, and then hung up, placing the phone back on its charger block, watching the yellow light on top blink and then go steady. Charlotte exhaled, and then went to go sit back down in front of the cooking segment on The Today Show. She reached over to the grey Jansport backpack sitting next to her chair and pulled out a worn black notebook, starting on the weekend's math assignment.

    Charlotte lost herself in the numbers, in the rhythmic repetitive scratches of graphite on cream-colored college-lined paper. She liked the numbers. They never changed. Day after day, the remained stable, like ocean waves or heartbeats, except without the small little chance of going away.

    Charlotte couldn't trust people. She tightened her grip on the yellow pencil, listening to the wood slowly crack. She couldn't trust people. They were not like numbers. Not at all. They changed from day to day, and even worse, they lied.

    Her pencil snapped, some of the light colored wood lodging itself a layer or so into her skin. She pulled the slivers out slowly, thinking, This is people. They get under your skin and they hurt you and then they're hard to get out. They break too easily.

    Cole lied to her. The most infuriating thing anyone could do, and there it was, right in front of her, coming from someone she called a friend. He told her he was okay. He told her he liked his new house. She should've seen, should've known, but above all, he should've told her the truth when he had the chance. 

    Charlotte always valued her promises. They were her duties, her responsibilities. She promised that she would always take care of her siblings, and that was what she did. She promised she would always try her best on her schoolwork, and she did. But everyone else always broke their promises. Nobody could trust them.

    Charlotte scowled, pulling out the last sliver from her hand with a grunt of pain. People were just liabilities, and at that, ones Charlotte couldn't risk having.