TW: i'm pretty sure just cussing and threats and stuff, idk though so lemme know!

"Mr. Forkle?" I whispered into my phone as soon as I was far enough away from my friends. "Did you hear what happened?"

"No!" His crusty old voice glitched through the phone speaker. "I have not heard of anything that has happened in the recent days. I was calling to ask about, uh, new songs! Is Sophie nearby?"

Okay his tone was just straight up weird. Why did he sound excited when he said 'no'? He never gets excited about anything. He's probably just getting too old. He was like, one hundred the last time I checked.

"Uh, no... she went missing. Two days ago." About three seconds later the older man gasped in shock.

"Well what do you mean by that, my dear boy?" That's even weirder. He would never, ever, call me 'dear boy.' Oh well, he's probably getting dementia.

"We don't know. She's just gone. There was no evidence for what happened, no sign of where she went. We don't even know if she left willingly or was kidnapped." Mr. Forkle gasped again.

"Oh no! This is not good. Whatever shall we do? She could've been taken because someone found out she was Moonlark! See this is the problem with you kids are your stupid masks, no one knows who you are so we can't give you the proper protection." His gruff voice came back at the very end. It was like he flipped a switch, a complete personality change. He quickly shifted back to his weird personality. "You should talk to the police about this."

My phone beeped, the signal that Mr. Forkle hung up. It's really too bad that the dementia got him in its grips now. He was a good manager.

Yeah no, he sucked and was no help at all. He didn't even show concern for Sophie! We always thought of him like a grandpa, then she goes missing and all he can say is "oof that sucks. Maybe go talk to the exact people who told you that there was nothing else they could do to find her?"

Why did no one care?

I threw my phone into the wall on the other side of the Vacker's living room, yelling as it flew. All my friends turned to stare at me but I didn't care. I didn't care if my phone was broken, if it dented the wall, if my friends threw me in some insane asylum.

I just wanted my cousin back.

I kicked the wall next to me, then again, and again. Harder and harder and harder.

Come back.

I threw my fist into the wall, feeling the skin on my knuckles break open instantly.

Come back.

I punched the wall again. Over and over. Kept punching and punching and punching and punching and kicking and hitting.

Come back.

When I try to swing again, my arm is being held back. I struggled and thrash against whoever is holding me still, but they still don't let go.

"It's okay, Dex! It's okay. It'll be okay. Settle down, take deep breaths. It's going to be okay." I sink to the floor in his arms, hardly even trying to get out anymore.

"It's not! It's not okay! It's never going to be okay!" I cried, gripping onto his arm. I turned to see Fitz's face. He looked worried, almost scared. "She could be dead. She could be dead and I never even got to say goodbye. I never got to tell her how much she means to me. The last nice moment we had was when she made that portrait of me!"

"She made a portrait of you?" Marella asked, yelping afterwards as if she got hit.

"Yeah, it was incredible." I cried out, sniffling to try and suck all the snot back into my nose.

"Dex, I can guarantee that she knew how much you cared about her." Fitz told me, changing the topic back. "You were always there for her, even right before she went missing, when she was super moody. She knows."

"But what if she doesn't? What if that's why she left? She just thought that I didn't care about her." Linh walked over and knelt down in front of me. She gently held both my hands, looking me in the eyes.

"If she thought that only one person cared about her, it would've been you. Because if she thought that you didn't care about her, then she must've thought that we all hated her. She's your best friend, might as well have been your sister. She's always so happy around you, you make her happy. Don't ever think that she didn't know how much you loved her, even her oblivious self had to have been able to see it. This isn't your fault. We don't know what happened, and until we do, stop blaming yourself. If she did run away, I have to think that when she thought of us, it would've been a reason to stay. I mean, her and Keefe had just gotten together, she knew he at least liked her."

"I just want her to come back." I whispered, my voice croaky and uneven.

"She will." Linh promised. " She'll come back or we'll get her back. She's not gone." I let go of Fitz and scooted over to her, hugging her tight. Eventually, everyone else joined in. It was nice.

"Hey." Keefe spoke up after we broke apart. "You're really techie, right?" I nodded, wondering where he was going with that. "Is there some way that you could maybe see everything on Sophie's phone, even though we don't have it? There has to be something on it, some sort of clue." I perked up immediately, wondering how I didn't think of that sooner.

"Yeah! I installed this app on her phone when she wasn't paying attention. It was just supposed to be for pranks and stuff, but it gives me full access to everything that was on her phone. Her apps, pictures, messages, everything. I just need my computer."

We all drive over to my house, practically stampeding up the stairs to get to my bedroom. I stuck my hand between the wall and my bed, grabbing my computer from its hiding spot. I've had to get really creative with a few hiding places, having those nosy triplets in the same house as me.

I opened it up, clicking on the app linked to Sophie's phone. A new screen popped up, exactly resembling my cousin's home screen. I turned to my friends.

"Messages first?" I asked. They all nodded their heads so I opened up her texts. All of us had texted her after we got news she was missing, so I had to scroll down a bit to get past the, "Where are you? Please come home," texts.

And boom, right under those was a message chain with Unknown. I clicked on it then scrolled up to the top. Everyone crowded behind where I was sitting on my bed so they could read, too.

Unknown: Do you want to disappear?

There was a knife emoji at the end of the message, and no reply from Sophie. It dated back to early December, around the time she and Noah started dating. I scrolled down to the next one.

Unknown: I'm going to kill you.

That one was right after Sophie broke up with Noah. Could he have done something with her? Did he kidnap or murder her? If he did, I would kill him.

Unknown: Notice how quiet they get after you talk? They were just waiting for you to shut up.

That one was from a day we all hung out together. I remembered the exact moment she got that, she had looked at her phone then gotten quieter for the rest of the day. She'd claimed she was just tired... I couldn't believe they were doing that to her, tearing her apart.

I continued on, the next few were all from during spring break.

Unknown: I know where you live. Watch your back.

I'm coming for you.

Just wait.

Count your days.

You can't hide from us.

Us implied that there was more than one person, but I didn't care about that. I'd kill them all for hurting her. I didn't know whether it could still be Noah or not, but I felt like the text after they broke up was too much to just be coincidence.

It still didn't show that Sophie had responded to any of the messages, so maybe she didn't think it was real, or maybe she just didn't want to dignify them with a response. The next messages were from the day I broke up with Tanner and her room got trashed.

Unknown: What's so interesting on that phone?

There was a picture of her sitting on her bed, looking at her phone. It looked like it had been taken from outside her window, the one that wasn't across from mine.

"That bastard was stalking her." It was the first words anyone had said since we started looking, and they came from Keefe. "She was getting stalked and didn't tell any of us. We didn't know she was going through that." Biana wrapped an arm around him comfortingly.

"There's no way we could've known unless she told us. Even if we had asked and pried about it, she wouldn't have told us unless she wanted to." He nodded understandingly, gesturing for me to keep going through the texts.

Unknown: Shut the curtains? Did you finally realize this isn't your pathetic little ex?

I felt sick to my stomach. They were watching her constantly, it looked like. I didn't want to acknowledge the part about it not being Noah. If it wasn't Noah, it had to be someone a lot more dangerous. No one else had any grudges they would kidnap Sophie for. If had to have been someone who took her for some other reason.

Unknown: Don't move another inch. If you tell anybody about this, I'll kill them.

I couldn't even imagine how my cousin was feeling when getting those texts.

"The texts before said she shut the curtains... how'd they know she was moving?" Fitz asked. Realization hit me like the car that hit my cousin.

"They had a camera in her room somewhere, or at least she thought they did. That's why her room was torn apart. That message got sent a little while before I jumped through her window, so it makes sense. She looked through everything in her room to find a camera." The next message proved what I was saying.

Unknown: whatcha looking for

"See?" I asked. They all nodded their heads.

"Wait." Tam stopped me from scrolling further. "The other messages had proper grammar, this one doesn't. It had to be different people typing." We all noticed what he was pointing out. It was different, more like how Sophie and I text, the previous ones being like Fitz and Tam.

"They said 'us' in one of the texts, they must've switched who was messaging her." Biana suggested. I agreed with her.

Unknown: I know what you're trying to do. They won't notice. They don't care about you.

That one came from a couple hours later, probably around the time I'd left her room. She was trying to tell me something was wrong. I just hadn't noticed. I wished she would've said something more obvious, rather than Pepsi nightmares...

"Wait." They all turned to look at me. I just kept looking at my computer. "We don't have Pepsi in our houses, we haven't since moving here."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Marella asked. I turned my full body to face her.

"When I went to talk to her, right before that message was sent, I'd asked her if she got any sleep. She said no because she had Pepsi, which always puts her right to sleep with nightmares. But she hasn't had any Pepsi since we moved here. She was trying to tell me that something was wrong, I just hadn't been listening." I felt the tears coming back to my eyes. Linh hugged me from behind, rubbing my arms gently.

"There's no way you could've known. None of us expected her to be in any kind of danger like this, so why would anyone be trying to pick apart her words, looking for clues. What she told you was really obscure, you couldn't have been expected to know. Don't blame yourself, it's still not your fault. Let's just keep going, we might be able to figure something else out." I nodded, scrolling again. It was onto the first day back at school.

Unknown: break up with ur bf

Me: why?

Unknown: do it or i'll kill him and that little cousin of yours

isn't her name bex

she adores you

imagine if you were the reason she died

Me: why are you doing this to me?

Unknown: You'll find out soon enough.

"That psycho!" Keefe shouted. "I knew it, I knew that wasn't why she wanted to break up, they were forcing her!" Biana tried to calm him down but it was too late for that. He punched my pillow, then picked it up and slammed it into my bed.

"Okay but why would they want you two to break up?" I asked. "It could've been to make her go off alone, but why risk you figuring out when she tried to break up with you. There had to have been an easier way to get her off alone." I scrolled onto the next one, looking for answers.

Unknown: i'll kill that little bitch if you want

Me: no, don't kill her. don't kill anyone.

"Who was that one about?" Biana asked. I looked at the time.

"That was forty minutes before school started, and she left early that day to be at school really early. Someone must've come up to her at school and said something." I explained.

"Maybe it was someone who harassed her about being with me. That was her excuse when we broke up, she probably used it so she wouldn't be lying. But if it was some girl getting mad at her, why would that person be offering to kill her?" Keefe wondered. None of us had an answer for him. The entire situation was just weird.

Unknown: do it

Unknown: break up with him

Me: not right now, give me more time

The rest of the messages were somewhere along those lines, up until the end of the day. There were no hints, no clues, nothing. This all strongly suggested she was kidnapped, but we still had no strong evidence, no way to know for sure what happened.

"We need to take this to the police." Fitz said. "It's proof of foul play, they'd have to continue the investigation. It's a solid lead, they might be able to find something we can't." Keefe nodded, agreeing to tell his parents about it.

As everyone left, I continued to go through Sophie's phone. I was renewed with hope, that maybe, just maybe, we'd actually be able to find her.

y'all do not understand how bad i wanna write romance rn, specifically sokeefe. like it physically hurts that i can't write it. i could write about one of the many other characters, but that's no fun soooo. I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter, and i hope you're excited for the next one! Bye!

Avery, out ->

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