Chapter 15: Connection Pains

Sept. 18th, 2015

Rick stared at the ceiling, feeling a bit hollow inside.

This was all unreal.

He kept thinking that Cadi was going to suddenly burst into his room, showing him some new thing she discovered, or trying to tease him or something.

But the exhaustion from the lack of sleep that he had had was only proof that it wasn’t going to happen. His little sister was gone, and for some reason, he felt like it was partially his fault, even though his parents kept saying over and over again that it wasn’t.

After he had finally gotten up from the punch in the face the night before, he had been almost hysterical when he made it back to Jessica and Juno, who were very confused and had no idea what was going on. After he got out what happened, they of course had called the cops, but when questioned about who the kidnappers were, Rick couldn’t help but see the image of Emille holding the syringe up to his sister’s neck.

“It was kind of dark…” he had lied, unsure of what to do.

His parents were of course panicked and devastated. The rest of the night was such a blur and he wished it was all just some sort of bad dream.

But it wasn’t.

Knock knock.

“Come in.”

Hesitantly, his mother opened the door and then sat on his bed.

“How are you feeling today?” she asked, her eyes a little red.

“Like crap.”

“Me too. You don’t have to go to school today if you don’t want to.”

“Thanks Mom.”

“It wasn’t your fault. You did everything you could.”

“I know…”

The two of them sat in silence for a moment, but it was kind of a nice silence. His mother put a hand on his arm.

“How’s Juno taking it?” he asked quietly.

“Pretty hard.”

“I figured.”

“Why don’t you come into the kitchen so I can look at that cut.” she told him gently.

Oh yeah.

He had kind of forgotten about his bruised jaw and cut lip from last night.

Drudgingly, he stood up and followed her into the kitchen. However, on the way there, he suddenly got a horrible pain in his head which caused him to gasp. He stopped in the hallway and clutched his head, barely aware that his mother was saying his name in concern. It felt like someone was sending icepicks through his temples-or-.

And then, without warning, the pain went away, leaving him with a dull ache.

“Rick? Rick are you ok?” his mother asked fearfully.

Rick felt something dripping from his nose, and reached up to see that he had a nosebleed. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but somehow, he knew this was related to Cadi. What was happening to her? What was she trying to do?

He felt tears burn his eyes, and his mother threw her arms around him as he sobbed on her shoulder.

Cadi…

Where could she be?

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Rick did not go to school for the next few days. Some news station wanted to talk to him, but he didn’t feel like it. Cadi went up on one of those amber alerts, but he couldn’t help but feel hopeless. Finally, he decided to get out of the house and go back to school.

“Hey Rick.” Jessica smiled pityingly as he walked into his first block class, which was ceramics. “How are you holding up?”

“Meh…” Rick mumbled, plopping down in his chair.

“Is-is there anything I can do?” she asked.

“I honestly don’t know Jessica…”

“Alright class.” their teacher, Mr. West Johnston interrupted. “We’re going to continue working on our slab projects today, so go ahead and get started. Rick, may I speak to you for a minute?”

Feeling a bit confused, Rick followed him back to his office, which was this little closed off room near the back of the class. Mr. Johnston quietly shut the door behind them.

“So I heard about your sister.”

“Yeah…”

“I also heard that it was too dark to see?”

Rick paused.

“Y...yes.”

Mr. Johnston gave him a good long look.

“Now is that the truth, or did they threaten you?”

Angrily, Rick wiped the tears out of his eyes.

“They-they said they would hurt her.”

Mr. Johnston gave him a good long look again, and then walked over to his desk. He picked up a photo frame and looked at it for a moment, and then held it up to him.

“Are these the people who took your sister?” he asked. “Don’t worry. This can be just between us. I won’t go to the cops.”

Rick took a moment to look at the picture. Sure enough, there was Harry and Emille, smiling back up at him, standing with Mr. Johnston and holding up some fish they just caught.

He silently nodded.

Mr. Johnston’s face hardened.

“Damn it Harry!” he muttered, putting the picture back down on his desk. “I’m sorry for the language Rick, I really am, but you see, I’m friends with them. I’ll go over there today and see what I can do. They aren’t bad people, they’re just…”

“Seemed pretty bad to me…” Rick mumbled bitterly. Mr. Johnston scowled.

“Ok. So here’s what I’m going to do-.”

Rick never got to hear what Mr. Johnston was going to do, because time suddenly stopped. The teenager froze, and then slowly backed out of his teacher’s office. He stood there for a moment, and then listened hard to the silence.

“Riiiiick!” a far away voice called.

He wanted to run towards her right away, but then he remembered Mr. Johnston. So he ran back into the office and wrote a little message on a sticky note.

If I’m not here, they probably got me too.

Then, Rick ran out of the office and started running down the hallway.

“CADI!” he called out desperately.

Wait.

Should he grab a weapon or something?

He slid to a stop as he noticed a fire extinguisher on the wall.

SMASH!

Guess it would have to do.

He soon found himself in one of the hallway conjunctions.

He stood in the middle, holding up the fire extinguisher, straining to hear anything else.

“Hi there Rick.” a woman’s voice breathed behind him. Rick stiffened as he felt something jut into his back. Something he assumed to be a gun.

“Drop the fire extinguisher.”

The boy did as he was told.

“Where’s my sister?” he demanded, holding his hands up.

“Oh calm down. She’s right here.”

Rick slowly turned to see that Harry was standing there, holding his sister by the arm. Her hair was a bit tangled like it hadn’t been brushed in a while, and her eyes were red and puffy like she had been crying, but other than that, she looked ok from what he could gather. He felt a wave of relief flood through him as he saw her.

“I’m-I’m sorry Rick…” she hiccuped, sniffing. “I’m-I’m sorry…”

Sorry for what?

It was then that he noticed something on her ankle. It almost looked like one of those ankle bracelets that you put on someone when they were on house arrest.

“You can have a reunion later. Do as we say, and no one gets hurt.” Emille told him, grabbing him by the arm, keeping the gun pointed at his back.

“What’s on her ankle?” he asked, starting to get worried all over again.

Emille simply smiled.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”