Hidden Abnormality

28. Uriah's New Cat

Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was a week after the incident with the missing patients. A week after Jazabelle and me on our couch, hugging each other. The week had gone by surprisingly fast and I was grateful for it.

  I knocked on Jazabelle's door. It was noon on a Saturday. It wasn't unusual for her to stay in her room. I wanted to take her to Minny's for a treat and then to watch a movie. After knocking twice with no answer, I opened her door.

  She wasn't there.

  I had just been in the living room and she wasn't in there. I searched the entire place. She was nowhere. Before I started to panic, I called her phone.

  I heard it start to ring. I found it on her dresser, plugged into the charger. Needless to say, she didn't have her phone.

  I called anybody who might know next. Mom, dad, Uriah, Minny, or Lauren. None of them knew where she was. I don't think Lauren knew half of what I was talking about anyway. She sounded half alive and only started to comprehend my words the sixth time I shouted through the phone.

  I was starting to get desperate. There was nowhere she could be. Certainly not if one of us weren't with her.

  There was only one thing left to do. One thing I could do. I had to call the police. I know they wouldn't do much until it had been a certain amount of hours of her disappearance, but maybe they could give me something to do. Maybe something else I haven't already tried.

  The phone barely rang before somebody picked up. "I'm terribly sorry, but if this isn't an urgent call could you please hold?"

  What kind of station put you on hold?

  "This is urgent!" I hissed.

  The man on the other end sighed. "We are incredibly busy at the moment and if you are not bleeding out, dying in some other way, nobody around you is dying, or getting robbed with the thief in front of you this is not an urgent call."

  "My sister is missing!" I yelled before he could hang up on me.

  "As are over half the city folk at this very moment. I'm sorry, sir, I can't stay on the line any longer." The line went dead.

  I let it beep at me.

  I didn't know what to do. She was gone, nobody knew where she was, the police wouldn't help me. Why wouldn't they help me? Because apparently everybody else's missing sisters were more important than mine.

  The city folk? Were there more people missing?

  I dropped my arm to my side. What if there were? What would that mean? How could hundreds of people go missing overnight?

  My phone vibrated in my hand. I didn't have the energy to deal with anybody. Only the hope of Jazabelle somehow remembering my number and texting me from some other phone gave me the will to open my phone back up.

  A notification bar appeared on my lock screen wallpaper. Scrawled across Jazabelle's smiling face was a text that said three words. News Channel. Now.

  I had no clue as to why Uriah wanted me to watch the news channel. When had he ever watched the news? I grabbed my remote and flipped through channels until I saw the news.