Palpable | Latent 2

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Sophronia

"This is really boring," Dustin said as he laid down on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. He hadn't been able to do anything fun recently except for watching movie after movie, but even that was getting really boring for him. "I still don't know how you did this for four months. That was even worse, though, because you didn't know me yet."

"Yeah, I know," I said. "You'll get used to it, though. Hopefully it doesn't come up to that point and the police, or someone, will find you soon."

"Yeah, hopefully," Dustin said, sitting up in the bed. "I never understood how hard it actually was for you. You couldn't do anything. You couldn't even eat. That must have been torture. I miss having lemon sorbets."

I gave him a smile. "Don't worry, once you're found, that is the first thing we'll go do."

If he's found...

No, don't think like that. He was going to be found and everything was going to go back to normal. I just had to stay positive about this. Everyone else wasn't being so positive, so it was up to me.

That was a whole lot of pressure.

Dustin sighed and laid back down on the bed. "I hope. If I end up being missing for four months of more, I am not going to like that parallelism. Can't your aunt and uncle be more original?"

"At least you're taking this lightly," I said.

"I'm a taking it lightly kind of guy," Dustin said. "Besides, I have hope. It's small, but it's there."

"Yeah, same here," I said.

There was a sudden knock on the door before it slowly opened. Mom walked in, a worried look written across her face. I furrowed my eyebrows. "Mom, is everything okay?" I asked.

Mom sighed and shook her head. "Not really. Beth called. She told me she got note in the mail telling her that if she ever wants to see Dustin again, she had to pay two-thousand dollars."

I tried my best not to look over at Dustin, because Mom would have seen me looking at nothing for no reason. I couldn't believe it. Two-thousand dollars?

"By when?" I asked.

"Tomorrow," Mom said.

"T-tomorrow?" I asked. "She won't be able to afford that." If there was one thing I knew about Dustin's mom, it was that she was already working hard enough as it is to support her two children without their father in their lives. They barely had enough money to make it by. There was no way she could pay that.

"I know," Mom said. "She's on her way over with Felicity so we could help figure something out. Felicity still doesn't know that Dustin is missing, so if she asks you where she is, just say he went out to get something."

I nodded. "Okay."

"You know, I never had the chance to ask you something," Mom said. "You haven't seemed that upset that Dustin went missing. Did you two get into a fight or something?"

"What? No," I said. "No, it's just... It's kind of obvious Aunt Ally is involved, and now that she's requesting money, it's highly likely that he's okay. He's just held somewhere so she can get something out of it. As long as he's okay, I have high hopes that he'll be found."