Love Begins with You

Missing

"Missing? What do you mean, missing?" I look down the balcony at Lindsey who is crying into her hands. I don't know what to do right now. I want to scream and freak out, but as I look down at Lindsey crying, I am frozen in time.

I manage to snap myself into the reality of what is going on. I run back into my bedroom where Aria is sitting up in the bed, rubbing her eyes. "Aria! Michelle is missing!" I scream over to her, seeing her face grow worried.

"How? What do you mean?" She replies with a shaky voice.

"Lindsey just woke me up freaking out and told me."

I throw on some clothes and grab Aria and we run down the stairs. We make our way to Michelle's room and she is nowhere to be found.

Lindsey is still screaming and crying. I run over to her and wrap her in a tight embrace. "Shhh, everything will be okay, Linds. We will find her. It may just be nothing. Did she leave? Is her car here?" I say, trying to calm my sister down as the woman she is in love with has disappeared.

Aria and I run to the front door and yank it open to see that Michelle's car is still in the long circle driveway.

We begin to walk around the house to make sure she isn't outside in the pool or in the back yard. We cannot find her anywhere.

We all decide that we should call the police. When we do, we are told that we cannot file a missing person's report until someone is missing for at least 24 hours. At this point, we are all worried to death about Michelle.

3 hours has passed and we have still not heard anything. We have tried calling Michelle's phone with no answer. We have reached out to what family Michelle has left. Her aunt and uncle live hundreds of miles away and we cannot get any information. Michelle's aunt and uncle told me that they haven't seen Michelle in 2 years so they are just as clueless as we are. We even went over to our parents' house to see if they had seen or heard anything from Michelle. That's how you know we are desperate. Our parents hate us now. They said that they have no clue about anything and that they don't even care. How thoughtful of them. We ran over to the house across the street from Michelle's. Mr. and Mrs. Crenshaw live there and they have known all of us for years since we grew up on this street. They said that at around 10 AM, Mr. Crenshaw was outside checking the mail and he saw a black Dodge Durango outside the house, but he didn't think anything about it. We need to tell the police about this tomorrow.

Linds and I have been sitting in the living room by the phones waiting for anything. Aria has been feeling really sick so she is laying in bed.

It's now the next morning. Lindsey and I sat up all night waiting for any sound to come from our phone's. There was nothing.

It's now 7 AM and Lindsey is knocking on my bedroom door. I jump out of bed and run to my robe and throw it on. I sling the door open, hoping its good news coming from Linds.

"Good morning, do you want to ride with me to the police department?" Lindsey asks, with the saddest look on her face that I have ever seen.

"Yes, let me get Aria up and we will get dressed and meet you downstairs" I reply, reluctantly.

I run back into my bedroom and wake Aria up and let her know what's going on. We begin to get dressed out of PJs.

Aria and I run down to Lindsey who is waiting for us in the living room. We get in Lindsey's car and drive to the police department to finally file the missing person's report on Michelle. We are hoping all the way there that the police have already heard something, anything.

We get into the police station and sit down with an Officer Davis head of the missing person's cases. We tell the cops everything we know about what happened before and after her disappearance. The police say that this is the first they have heard about anything like his happening in our small town in North Carolina.

We are headed back to the house. We are all talking about good times we have had with Michelle. I feel like I will never see my best friend for 15 years ever again. I am torn up about it and trying to hold back tears in front of Lindsey. She is going through enough. I lean over and hug her and kiss her cheek while she is driving. "We will find her, Linds."

She looks at me and tears fall down her cheeks as she gives me a small smile.

We pull up to the house and get out of Lindsey's car. As we are opening the door, my phone rings and I throw everything down to dig through my purse to find it.

The front screen reads "Unknown". I'm terrified. I slide my right thumb against the screen to the right to answer the phone  and hurry to put it on speaker right away so everyone can hear. The next thing I hear will haunt me for the rest of my life.

"GRACE. HELP ME. PLEASE. HELP GRACE. HE IS GOING TO KILL ME."

It was Michelle. I look over at Lindsey and Aria. They are just as terrified as me. I cannot move. I cannot speak. I am frozen as Michelle's call for help rings through my ears.