Finding You

Chapter 12

The scream shakes me to my core at the thought of it being Sophie's scream. James and I rush out of the car and run down the road side-by-side, hoping to find where the origin of the scream came from.

We search every speck of the neighborhood, shouting and calling for Soph. James even tries peering through people's windows to find any unusual activity but there wasn't any. Eventually, after running around basically the entire neighborhood, I start getting tired and decide to walk. James also stops and falls into step with me.

"Ally, maybe we should just stop," James stops abruptly after a few minutes of walking. I turn around to stare at him with a confused expression on my face. He stares back with a blank one.

"What? Do you even hear what's coming out of your mouth right now? It's your sister, it's my friend. We're not stopping until we find her," I turn back around and start walking again.

I only manage to make it a few steps before having to turn around when he starts speaking again. "We don't even know if she's still here. She or whoever could've just trashed her phone and left it here for all we know. We should get the cops involved instead, maybe they'll have a better shot at finding her than us," James tries to reason with me, but it doesn't make sense to me.

James, of all people, would be the one to search for his sister to the very depths of the ocean, so why is he giving up so soon? We've only been looking for her for about an hour at most.

"What is going on with you? Why are you not wanting to try so hard?" I take a few steps closer to him.

"I'm trying, Ally! I'm just trying to be reasonable. She might not even be here, we could be wasting our time. That might not even have been her scream. She might not even still be al..." James' voice trails before he can finish his sentence and I catch his eyes glistening from the street lamp above us before he looks down at his feet.

By now, I'm standing right in front of him, looking up and watching his face. I put my right hand on his shoulder and my other hand finds his chest. As he looks at me, I see his eyes brimming with tears, looking fragile and ready to break down at any second. When he blinks, the tears that were sitting on the surface of his lids fall down his cheeks one-by-one and meet his jawline. I remove my hand from his shoulder and wipe his his right cheek from the tears, leaving my hand to rest on his jawline.

"I'm worried too," I frown as I quietly speak, "But Sophie's out there somewhere and no-one else is gonna care more about her than you and me at the moment. She's probably fucking scared out of her mind right now and we need to help her. The cops won't do anything until tomorrow probably and we might not have that kind of time. Even if it takes the whole night, even if she doesn't even end up being here and we have to search the next neighborhood, we'll find her. I promise."

James stares at me for a few moments as he closes his eyes and frowns. When he opens his eyes, he sighs heavily and nods. I smile faintly in a gesture of hope and reassurance. It doesn't seem to ease his concern but he smiles back nevertheless.

James removes my hand from his face and intertwines our fingers, squeezing them once before untangling them again. We carry on walking in complete silence, but I notice how much closer we're walking next to each other now. When we were searching earlier, James was a good 2 feet away. Now, he's walking beside me, our shoulders mere inches away from touching and I like it, if I have to admit.

I'm enjoying the walk slightly. Granted, the circumstances are anything but good, but as James and I continue walking with cautious eyes, I find myself starting to feel somewhat relaxed eventually. I take in my surroundings, and close my eyes when a gust of wind brushes against my face. When I open my eyes again, I look up to the sky and catch Orion's Belt looking down at me. It was such a beautiful night.