Revealed

66. Sharon Pierce

My mom is laying on the couch from drinking too much... again. She's completely out. I'm vacuuming the carpet when the strangest thing happens. My mom's face appears on the TV. My eyebrows furrow in confusion. Why is she there?

I turn off the vacuum and bring the volume on the news channel higher just a bit. Now that I have taken time to look at the face, it's a young girl. She seems a little younger than me but looks almost exactly like my mom. I stand watching the screen in awe.

"Solane Royal came home today safe and sound. She told the public that she had in fact not been kidnapped. Some things aren't adding up here. We're yet to find out the whole story. We'll be back about this situation after these few words..."

Then her picture disappears and a commercial for acne treatment replaces it. I gulp. It almost chokes me. My head begins spinning. I'm trying not to get high in my spirits but my body refuses to comply.

There I sit waiting for the news to come back on. I probably looked like a small child waiting for a candy store to open and all the treats to be released from hiding. As soon as the reporter comes back, I quickly grab my phone and record her speaking.

When the girl's picture shows on the screen again, I make sure to take a picture of it. Then, I hold the picture beside my mom's face as she sleeps. The resemblance is astonishing.

Somehow, someway, I'm pretty sure that this girl was who I'm looking for.

Even though I'm extremely desperate to find this girl, I have enough composure to know that I needed to get a background check on her first. I run upstairs to my room and open my laptop so fast that I actually could have broken it.

I type her name in the search bar.

Search:
Solane Royal

I get so many results. She's in so many school clubs and I find a lot of her school achievements. I even see a short essay she wrote about Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. But I'm not looking specific enough, so I try searching something else.

Search:
Solane Royal Kidnapping

Many articles pop up about what had happened to her. I open about three tabs and print out each article after putting my glasses on. It seems like my highlighters are highlighting the useful facts on their own. Soon enough, I find out where she lives, when she was kidnapped, and about how she got home with some guy named Andre. I even find out that she doesn't know who her parents are. What a coincidence!  The only thing I can't find out is where she had been for two weeks and how she met this boy she's with.

I'm supposed to be staying with my mom for the rest of the summer and working and saving my money for college, but after what I just found out, I can't stick to my original schedule.

Some clothes are stuffed into my backpack along with the article papers I printed. This Solane girl isn't too far from where I am.

I know what I'm doing. I need to leave tonight. I need to talk to Solane Royal.