I lost my football game today. I was out there on the field and when I looked to the stands, she wasn't there. There wasn't a beautiful blonde girl wearing my jersey number and my team colors cheering for me. I kept looking and looking and looking. She wasn't there.

I was the last person to see her. It was two days ago. There's posters up all over town, every other broadcast on the news is about her. Almost every period at school, someone on the intercom says something about it. Sophie going missing was the biggest thing to happen in Eternalia in a while.

On the day Sophie went missing, I had talked to Dex to ask if he knew why she broke up with me. Also if he knew she was going to do it. He didn't know anything, just what everyone else knew. Something had been going on with her, probably something bad. She was constantly pale and tired, she wasn't talking, it was like she completely flipped a switch.

Her bedroom was always messy, but Dex said it was completely destroyed a few days before. But it was already like that before she went missing, so nobody even knows if she got abducted from her room or not. Nobody even knows if she got kidnapped or just ran away.

I didn't know which fate would be worse. If she ran away, she didn't have any supplies or anything, plus it meant she wanted to leave us. If she got kidnapped, who knew what was happening to her. Either way, she could be getting hurt. She might even be dead.

Search parties were sent out, it took a whole day to find her car. It was just parked on the side of the road, no obvious reasons why. We got some dogs to track or whatever, they led to a cave. There was nothing there though, her tracks ended. No sign of where she went. Even her phone can't be tracked, it either being dead or destroyed. There was no way to find her, none at all.

My parents didn't make me go to school, mainly my mom comforting me. I had told her about Sophie being my girlfriend, and while she said she didn't approve of my choices, she knew I had to be hurting.

My mom had always been better than my father. While she wished I acted more 'princely,' she still loved me. I knew my father loved me too, somewhere deep down, but he would never ever show it. Nothing I ever did was good enough, not being the top of my class, the best on my football team, or getting the best girlfriend in the world. Which is exactly why I didn't tell him about the last part.

I knew it was because of how his parents treated him as a kid, they didn't pay any attention to him no matter what he accomplished, so he started paying too much attention to what I haven't accomplished. It's his own twisted way of caring, but I couldn't help appreciating the fact that he does care and he does pay attention.

He was wanting me to marry off to some other royalty type girl, so I couldn't tell him about Sophie. He just knew we were good friends. And that's all he would know unless I decided that Sophie was the one I wanted to spend forever with. If that happens when we're older, we'll just tell him she's a famous singer. He wouldn't be able to complain then, it'd still be good publicity plus then I'd be happy.

Wait no. Sophie's gone. I need to stop talking like she's still here. She might never come back. She might be dead. The last thing she did before disappearing was break up with me.

Maybe it was part of her plan. She wanted to break up with me so then I wouldn't care about her going missing and I wouldn't try to look for her. But, that wasn't like Sophie at all. She wouldn't hurt me, even if it would keep attention away from her. Granted, it wasn't like Sophie to run away in the first place.

I should've paid better attention. When she started acting differently I should've pestered her more. I shouldn't have let her just walk away after breaking up with me.

I felt so guilty. She told me she was being harassed by other girls just because we were dating. It was because of me. But I also don't think that was the main reason she wanted to end things. She left right after, there had to be something else going on. Something we didn't know about.

I should've fought harder. I should've known something was going on. My fault. I could've saved her, I could've stopped all of it. She could be here, right now, with me. If I tried harder, I could've been with her at that very moment.

I could've asked her more questions about what was going on, I could've told her I knew it was something more than no sleep. I could've done anything more to help her, but I didn't. And she's gone.

I went over to Everglen (the Vacker estate) for a group hang out. It was more or less just to talk about Sophie, but still. I went over about two hours earlier than planned, wanting to talk to Fitz. I hadn't talked to him, us by ourselves, in a long time.

We had been growing apart for a while. I hated it. He has been my best friend since we were babies. I don't know why we stopped hanging out as much, it just started happening. It felt like eventually I was just reaching out to no response. Maybe this could be what brings us back together. A traumatic experience!

"Hey Fitzy." I greeted him when he opened the door. Ro trailed behind me, forced to follow me everywhere after Sophie's disappearance. If she really was kidnapped, my parents didn't want to take any chances.

"Keefe." Wonderboy seemed shocked, quickly pulling out his phone to check the time. "You're a little early."

"Yeah well I wanted to talk. Y'know, some bro-time. Like in the good 'ole days." He looked at me suspiciously.

"Okay... about what?" I gave him my best 'you're dumb' look.

"Who do ya think?"

"Okay, no need to get pissy. I was just wondering if it was something else since you came early." He held his hands up in defense. I sighed, running my hands through my immaculate hair.

"Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just really..." I wanted to say I was scared. It was on the tip on my tongue, begging to be let out. "...stressed." Frick you, princey-pants. Just say what you're feeling, it's really not that hard.

Fitz nodded his head, and his eyes told me he understood everything that was unsaid. I was surprised when he opened his arms, but also I couldn't have accepted the hug any faster. I gripped him tight, the most unmanly hug in existence. I couldn't have cared less, even when I started crying. It did make me feel better when he started too.

Fitz and Sophie's friendship was never the closest, in fact he was the person she was the least close to, but he still missed her. We all did. I didn't even remember what our friend group was like before her and Dex moved here, and that was only around four months ago.

Four months.

That's all it took to meet my beautiful Foster, lose her to some dumb guy, help her break up with said dumb guy, then start dating her myself. All in four months.

"We'll get her back." Fitz told me, patting my back and ending the hug. He wiped his eyes and I did the same while walking over to his sitting room and plopping on his couch.

"I know, that's all anyone ever says to me. 'We'll find her eventually!' 'She'll come back!' 'Any ransom, it'll get paid!' I just... What if she can't be found? Or, she doesn't want to be found?" My friend sat down right next to me with too much eye contact.

"I might not know Sophie as well as you, but I do know her. She's not the type to run away and stay away. She'll come back. And if someone did take her, she'll annoy them until they let her go." I chuckled lightly.

"Yeah, she does tend to do that."

We continued to talk until everyone else showed up. We all sat quietly, not knowing what to say. I could feel gazes on me and I knew the rest of them were looking at Dex. He's where I kept looking.

I expected to see some sort of emotion from Dex, after all his cousin and best friend was missing. Instead, he was blank. He stared at the ground in the center of our little circle, eyes emotionless. He looked dead, his face pale and not moving. He didn't cry, he didn't yell, nothing. Just silence.

The person closest to his reaction was Tam, but anyone could see the anger radiating off of him, even if he didn't show it. Most of everyone else was crying or shaking or showing some other form of worry.

"Do you guys really think she ran away?" Linh was the first to speak up with a soft and wobbly voice. Dex shook his head, his first movement since arriving.

"No. She wouldn't have. She was really, really happy. Like, even happier than she had been in California. She loves you guys, she loves her family, she wouldn't just leave without saying anything. Not after what happened to Jolie."

"Jolie?" Biana's sniffling slowed long enough to say the single name.

"Grady and Edaline's daughter. She died after Sophie was adopted. It really took a toll on the entire family, but obviously the most on my aunt and uncle. They loved both of them so much. Sophie would never run away and risk causing them the pain of losing a daughter again."

"Okay, so she was kidnapped then?" Marella asked. "I'm sorry, but I really can't see her being kidnapped. She would fight them off and definitely leave some kind of evidence behind. The police said there was nothing around her car, in the woods, or in the cave."

"It could've gotten cleaned up." Linh suggested.

"Okay so what? Someone follows Sophie wherever she's going, they both end up at the cave, she gets kidnapped, then they clean everything up? I don't know about you guys, but I'd only put in that much work if I was kidnapping someone for a specific reason, like a grudge or whatever." Tam told us. I hated to admit it, but he was right.

"That can't be right." Biana said. "No one could possibly hate Sophie that bad, or have anything against her that would make them kidnap her. It has to be something else. Was there anything going on the days leading up to it?"

"Yeah." Dex replied. "She started acting weird halfway through break. Her room was completely trashed, she was constantly tired and pale, she was on her phone. Not to mention the silence, she would hardly say a thing. She didn't even pay attention to me until she noticed... something so I don't know. It seems like she could've been about to run away. But there was no good reason for her to."

"And then she broke up with me right before she left." I added. "She said it was because she was getting harassed by girls at school who want to date me, but by the way she was acting I definitely feel like it has something to do with all this."

"The girl who ran to your house to confess her feelings for you dumped you less than two weeks later and you didn't see anything wrong with that?" Fitz asked, his voice raising. I didn't know why he was getting mad at me, especially after our talk earlier.

"She got in her car before I could stop her. There was nothing I could do."

"Well there should've been something that somebody could do! You guys said she was acting weird for a few days, you could've figured something out."

"There was nothing to figure out!" Dex was more angry than Fitz at that point, standing up so he could look down on him. "When she shuts people out, there's nothing you can do. Usually she ends up opening up. This time she went missing. Nobody knew it was gonna happen so you can just chill out, okay? You didn't even know her that well anyway." Didn't. Dex said Fitz didn't know her that well. Past tense. Dex could've said 'you don't know her well,' but instead he said didn't.

Wait if the last time I'll ever get to see her was when she broke up with me? She could be dead, she could be permanently gone. None of us would've gotten to say goodbye.

The others were talking more but I drowned it out, until Dex's phone started ringing. He looked like he was about to decline until he saw the name, answering and walking over to the other side of the room, away from us.

She's... not really a filler bc it's part of the plot or whatever but basically she's a tiny little lead along to the next part of the story. Hope you guys enjoyed Keefe's pov, along with some fitzy redemption turned into anger issues. tbh i like fitz's character bc he's so real and not perfect, but also i feel like he was ruined for the sake of sokeefe. so i'm trying to keep him book accurate without making him some minor villain type dude. hope y'all enjoyed the chapter!

Avery, out ->

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