What You Can't See

Chapter 2

Standing on his porch and tapping his foot impatiently, Sam checked the time on his phone again,

"That's five minutes now, we need to get moving, finals are coming I need to be in class on time." Whitley said to him before flinging his bag over his shoulder and starting down the driveway, pulling Sam by the arm to follow him,

"But, Sonya should be here by now, we have a system she should have shown up with Dante and then we'd get Harper."

"Maybe she's sick, Dante didn't meet up with you after school perhaps everyone is leaving you behind." Whitley responded with a snicker as he started to type into the padlock for the gate at the end of the driveway,

"No, Sonya hasn't missed a day of school since the third grade, she prides herself on her immune system and track record.." Sam said in mumbles as he tried sorting out what was going on, he closed the gate behind him,

"A shame really, I really liked that Sonya girl. She knew her place.." Whitley continued on as he slicked his hair back, a lock of it stayed in his face for the aesthetic, Sam looked at him in disgust as he sighed and tried to come to terms figuring how it wasn't totally impossible for Sonya to catch strep throat or something. Moments later, footsteps.

"Hey, hey! Sorry, I was waiting at Dante's forever he never came outside but I didn't want to leave him... I saw you walking and figured he just wasn't coming.." It was Sonya, her voice was still rather quiet as she ran up next to them. Panting once she was able to walk with them, Whitley had his lip curled and walked ahead of them as usual, clearly in a less comedic mood already. Walking behind them Sonya and Sam started rambling on,

"So there's no Dante?" Sam asked as he kept his voice a little hushed,

"Yeah.."

"Why'd you wait so long, he's probably caught something going around in his school?"

"Unlikely." Sonya paused as she fumbled with her hands, "You see, whenever Dante's sick he usually waves at me from his window to let me I know I need to keep going. That didn't happen so I figured he was just taking a little longer to get ready." Sam nodded along with her words before looking up a bit and whistling,

"That certainly is odd, you think he was just too sick to get up?"

"I mean, maybe.." Sonya said, her voice full of uncertainty as she shrugged and followed Sam in looking up towards the sky, it was a rather sunny today which made Sonya squint her eyes. She found that exceptionally odd after all her father had warned her of rain before she left the house and it was still rather early in the morning. Shaking her head to clear her mind she felt herself bump into Whitley. "Oh sorry." She said quietly as she took a step back before realizing that Whitley had stopped to wait for Harper, who was running from her house, her string purse attached to her book bag. Unlike usual, her dog wasn't running out with her and the sound of her mother wishing her a good day didn't accompany her as she left the house,

"Keep walking." She said as she stopped to unlock the gate and then lock it once more behind her, slow at first but the three other students kept walking. Harper followed behind them at a steady pace, now up close you could see the bags under her eyes and how pale her face was, despite her cheeks which were bright red due to nerves,

"Harper, what's with the rush?" Sam asked her as he sidestepped so that she could have some room on the sidewalk, Sonya's hand swayed at her side for a few moments before the girl pulled it back,

"Dante, he's in trouble." She said quickly as she opened her purse and rooted around in it,

"Well yeah, that kid doesn't know how to behave himself." Whitley muttered Harper shot him a glare before she pulled from her purse, the battery at twenty-seven percent,

"Harper, what are you even talking about?" Sam asked, his voice a little annoyed after Whitley's remark, "Did you even sleep last night?"

"I tried to sleep I really did but, I just couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong!" She pressed as she tried to support herself, "Anyway, sometime last night, around two thirty.."

"Two Thirty?" Sonya interrupted, "What could have possibly been doing at that hour?"

"I was in my bed and I had sent another text to Dante, he didn't return any of the other ones that I had sent but, I needed to know why he never showed up." Harper spoke as she avoided answering Sonya directly, the two hadn't made eye contact since Harper started to ramble, "Then, this happened." Her voice dawned seriously as she showed the group her phone screen, it was open to her conversations with Dante, several messages that read,

"Where R U"

"Yo"

"We left"

"Answer me"

"What are you doing"

"Hey What's up"

"Are you even gonna respond"

Where above the message that would have been a response from Dante, Sam had taken the phone and him and Sonya were looking at the screen, both exchanged glances on Harpers spam before looking at the response message,

"Sorry but this phone has been disabled, please call or notify 605-475-6968 if you have any issues or questions you would like answered. Thank you."

"So?" Sonya asked as she took the phone from Sam's hand and scrolled up to read a conversation, Harper pulled her phone from Sonya's hand before she could actually read anything,

"Somebody disabled his phone!" She stressed,

"Maybe he got grounded." Sam said as he leaned in past Sonya, "Or sold his phone, you know he was saving up for a car next year when he could take the drivers test again." Sam said reasonably as they all stopped at the crosswalk before school. Without thought, the girls separated to either side of the two boys though the conversation carried on, which was fairly odd.

"Wait, what number was it?" Whitley asked, surprisingly he was taking interest in the conversation.

"Oh uh, 605-475-6968." Harper recited from memory, glad that at least someone was taking her seriously. Whitley spoke the number a few times in a hushed whisper as he adjusted his backpack,

"Just as I thought, that's Dad's work phone number."

"Well, why would Dad shut down Dante's phone?" Sam said butting in, "You probably have it wrong."

"I do not have the number wrong, Dad works for the government after all, though he's in charge of research-"

"No wonder your family has so much money." Sonya said pulling her hair from behind her ears to cover the parts of her face she was self-conscious about,

"Nevermind." Whitley said, clearly a little ticked, "For you Harper, I'll check through my father's things tonight but, I only have an hour or so to do this when he's out sporting and it takes time to get through the firewall. Just a heads up, you'll owe me after this and I will only be risking my status of the favorite child once. If I find nothing I won't be looking again." Harper's eyes lit up as she thanked Whitley for what had to be about a hundred times before the four of them reached the school. Throughout it all Sam held a solemn face.

He knew for a fact that owing his brother something was just overall a terrible position to be stuck in and on the other hand, he couldn't see Whitely going out of his way too much in order to hold up his end of the deal. He shot a glance over to Sonya, who was at his right-hand side, she had her eyes fixated on the ground and her expression was hard to see through all of her hair. It was quite obvious that she had taken her self-restricted and quiet persona that she often assumed once within the school that way she could avoid any and all attention focussed on her.

The group once more split up as they often did, and they continued with their lives at school, Harper had found herself sleeping through Honors Trigonometry II due to her lack of sleep the night before and Whitley had somehow grown to be even more of a self-imposed prick once he joined his group of two or three other kids that had a status such as his. Despite the school day being relatively average, Sam just couldn't shake the feeling in his stomach that maybe Harper was right and that his brother was not the man to trust.

Around One Twenty Three, it rained.