Come Through The Window

10

We had come to the walkway up to his house. He stopped and finally lifted his face to me. "Tell Vince he can have my Super Nintendo. He don't have one and his mom sure as hell won't buy him one. Richard can have my CD's. I know you guys don't like rap, but he does."

I started to say something, but he turned and walked up to his house. He went inside and closed the door. How I wish I would have went up and knocked. Told him I would have stayed the night. But we were sixteen, and at that age guys didn't do that anymore. So I just went home. I didn't even answer the door for Vince when he came over later. When I went to bed, I didn't sleep well, and I was constantly listening to every creak and groan that the house made, listening for the voices of a multitude of children. I normally slept with the curtains open, but tonight, I closed them tight.

The next day, we learned someone had broken into Mike's house. A police car was there in his driveway, and I about shit a brick when I saw it. Later, my worst fears were confirmed when I learned that it was Mike's bedroom window that had been broken into. He was missing, was all they told us. The cops asked all three of us a ton of questions, and people from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children came and asked us more. I'm sure I looked as guilty as shit, but when I said I didn't know what happened; it was, after all, halfway true. They were looking for some pervert that had abducted Mike. So no matter how hard they grilled me, they couldn't get any information relating to that, of course, so finally they gave up. He was on milk cartons and missing children TV shows, but to this day, his is still an unsolved case.