It Was Just a Dare

The Call

[20 August, 2008]

"9-1-1, what's your emergency?" The woman on the opposite end asked in a rushed voice to get straight to the point.

Adrianna was mortified. She took a deep breath and exhaled, "My best friends daughter was just abducted in her backyard. We need to get her back now! It's her birthday, how-how can someone do this to a child?!"

"Ma'am, calm down—" the operator insisted in order to get the address out of her.

"Please don't say that," Adrianna whispered into the phone, "she's a little girl, she needs our help. She needs your help."

She looked out the sliding doors to see Karen still collapsed in her husbands arms, the twins standing a foot away in absolute confusion and her son just walking in the kitchen.

"Can I have your name and descriptions of the child?" The working man asked.

Adrianna nodded and repeated the following into the white telephone, "I'm Adrianna Russo. The little girls name is Angelina Thorne but she only goes by Anna. She has blonde hair that goes down to her shoulders, uh, brown eyes, and pale skin. She just turned seven today."

"Can you tell me what exactly happened?" The voice listed another question, "Was it a family member, you think? Or were you sure it was a real abduction?"

Scott's mom rolled her eyes, "Listen to me! She was abducted, my son witnessed the whole thing and will be scarred for life if she doesn't return home safe and sound." She turns to her son and asks his for the full description of the man that took Anna.

Scott said aloud what he could remembered while his mom repeated everything into the phone to the operator, "He was a male teenager with black or dark brown hair and brown eyes. His face was beat up with scratches and bruises with a gash just below the eye, there was at least two or three people that drove a red car, no further description, but the car was local."

"Alright, ma'am, a police car is on the way just sit tight. They'll find her, don't worry." He says and then hangs the phone up just to answer another directly after.

Adrianna took the phone away from her pierced ear and hung it back up on the wall, the silence that came from the house was deafening.

Scott ran into his mom's arms, "I'm sorry,"

"Sorry for what?" The worried mother asked her crying child.

"It's my fault," he muttered, "I told her to play by the tree, she knew it was too far from the house and I still made her go. They took her because of me."

Unsure of what to say to bring her son back to his beaming smile she pulled him close to her and coddled him as if he were an infant once again.

•   •   •

"The first forty-eight hours are crucial in finding this little girl," the head detective stated to the other detectives to hear and the family and friends who listened in that sat at the table, "because after that it will be extremely difficult to find the girl alive."

Karen took in a gulf of air as she felt her heart internally shatter from the third of the heart where her daughter belonged to. She remained silent, gripping her husbands hand firmly and watched as Adam and Alec remained in confusion as they were trying to place a puzzle piece in the wrong spot.

The detective was dressed in a navy blue blazer and pants that she rocked that her medium colored orange hair went well with. Karen stood from her seat and wobbled over to the woman, "Excuse me, detective—"

The orange haired woman turned to Anna's mom and gave her a serious look, "Ma'am, you can call me Linda Price, know what is it?"

She wiped her watery eyes, "My daughter, you and your team will be able to find her, right? She's my baby, I can't let anything bad happen to her, nonetheless, on her birthday."

Detective Price nodded, "We've got every local police officer searching the woods, an amber alert was sent out, but won't be much use since we weren't given a license plate. All you can do now is be patient and hope for the best while we do our jobs."

Karen, in defeat, nodded her head, her blonde hair now in a wavy-knotted-mess, "Isn't there something else we can do?" She asked referring to her husband and friend.

"You can ask your neighbors and the community to start their own search party but I can't force anyone to do anything. I can set a police officer or two just outside your house keeping a watchful eye for anything suspicious so if anything comes up we may have a clue as to where she may be."

Robert stood from his chair and stood by his wife's side, "We'll fine her, Kar, she'll be fine." But deep down in his heart he had a feeling that today was going to be the last day he was going to see his daughter; that she was already too far gone and most likely dumped in a ditch, her skin pale and cold, eyes wide open in horror.

Karen felt the warm touch of her husbands hand on her upper back which comforted her more now than ever, "I know."

903 | unedited