The Calling (DrTrollinski & Zhai)

[Zhai]

Carl's laughter at the question was less than assuring that he didn't have ill intentions with the newly acquired firearm. As well, the way he whipped it around nonchalantly and comfortably was just as unnerving as the thought of him having it tucked in the small of his back. Watching him spin the barrel and shift the weight of the gun in his hand, and the way he exposed the 'safe' gun to her - all of it made Mia's spine stiffen; and as much as her legs wanted to step back from the gun's space, she stood there staring at Carl's hand and shaking her head. "I'm good.." She mumbled, raising her hands in protest agaisnt touching the damn thing.


After her brother passed her - even though the weapon was on 'safe' and he wasn't going to use it anytime soon - Mia shivered in place and exhaled a lung full of air she didn't even know she'd been holding. She couldn't even remember taking a deep breath, but then again she couldn't remember if she was breathing the whole time the gun was out. Damn, it's the little things that send people over the edge, right? Mia was scared of few things but she'd considered them common fears: drowning, catching fire, being murdered, and spiders. Oh, and choking. Choking was definitely on the top of the list.


The fear of being around a weapon - especially loaded or with ammo near - never occured to her; maybe because she'd never been around a weapon, loaded or not. The after effect of the weapon's presence was eeire and it took Mia several seconds before she even turned out of the WIC and into the office space again. For at least a minute she watched and listened to Carl talk and move back and forth through the room, each time with a fresh pile of folders, papers, and binders.


The things he was stocking up to go through, she'd already stalked those pages for several minutes and didn't find anything unorthodox from the beginning. Numbers. Letters. Codes. Signatures. That's it. Oh, and the scribble scrabble out of highlighter or ink. "I've already been through these." Mia's fingers stroked the edges of the folders, her nails catching the corners of pages that were sticking out from any folder. "I didn't find anything. It's all jibberish."


Disregarding what she did or didn't find earlier, Mia started filling her arms with folders and binders to drop them near Carl's new pile. If he says he needs to look through them - then who was she to deny him that lovely job? The more folders Carl picked up, the more folders Mia carried to his space. It was apparent Carl knew what he was looking for. Mia didn't.


Mia stopped carting folders to Carl after she saw his hands go up in surrender and that exasperated expression on his face. It was the same overwhelming expression Mia had when she was in the closet, leaned against the wall with a binder that weighed as much as her mother's marble vase downstairs. "Right, well..." Her eyes traced around the room at the mess of paperwork. "...breakfast."

 

[DrTrollinski]

"Breakfast." He smiled, and then took the binder in her hands and tossed it onto the bed. "Before I have to age by thirty years to dig through paperwork, let's eat." He chuckled. "And before you say anything about it, my dear sister, today, I will make you breakfast, eh?" He chuckled, and then slowly lead her out of the room and down the hallway whilst wiping his forehead with his arm. Ah, all of that was rather tiring, and the task of simply looking through it all was going to be rather dull, but was also going to be a lot easier than any of that. He had his money, a gun, some ammo, and a objective - Find whatever the fuck he could before they set off for the mountain resort in New Hampshire.


Sure, New Hampshire was quite some miles away from where they were now, but that didn't matter. They had plenty of opportunities and ways to get there, and Carl knew just the way he was going to do it. It was just going to take some effort to find out a suitable vendor that he could do it with. It probably wasn't going to be easy, but it was going to have to be something, or it was going to be really awkward in general. He had to be careful, though, because what he had planned was quite a dangerous job. Who could he call about it, though? His friend. His older brother probably knew someone who could help him out. Well, his older brother was a little bit shady, but that didn't matter. If he knew that Carl was a friend of his little bro, he'd probably be nice about it.


"I owe you at least that after last night. You did a lot for me - Hell, you've done me a lot of favors over the past while, and while I haven't exactly been... stable, you've still always been there for me." He smiled and patted her shoulder. It was true. She'd done a lot for him, and the least he could do right now was show that he appreciated the effort she'd put into making him feel safe, and making sure that he knew he wasn't alone in the whole fight. He owed her at least some food, didn't he? So, what he did was this - He walked her down to the kitchen and made her take a seat, and then he put three cartons of juice and two glasses out on the table. The juices were the following: Orange, apple, and pineapple.


Following this, he got out a cutting board and a variety of fruit. He sliced up some bananas, some honeydew melon, an orange, and some peaches, too - He took the skin off of all of the fruit, obviously, and then plated it up and placed it down on the center of the table. He knew that Mia liked having the plates of fruit for breakfast that Missus Greene usually set up for them, so he figured he should give her a taste of home and do this for her, just this one time. It was probably going to be the last morning they spent at home, anyway, after that it was going to be all about fast food as breakfast, and so on, so they were going to have to savor this morning - He wanted to tell her about where they were going, but he had something else to do first. While leaving her with the plate of fruit, he went and got a glass jug out of the cupboard and filled it with cold milk, and then retrieved some cereal from the cupboard (the only in-date cereal there was cornflakes) and filled two bowls with them. He carried the milk and cereal over to the table, and then got the pot of sugar and a spoon from the side and also took that over.


He knew that sometimes they liked to have sugar with their cornflakes, so he figured he may as well put it there to give them the option. As soon as he poured the milk over his cereal, though, the first thing he did was pour a couple of spoons of sugar over it, and then ate a few pieces of melon before looking up at her. "I hope you enjoy it." He smiled. They still needed to talk about where they were going to, though, and that would be something he could talk about once they'd eaten and chilled out a little bit.

 

[Zhai]

Having breakfast - or any meal, for that matter - made by someone else is too good to deny. Even Carl couldn't mess up breakfast. His baking had improved since this whole mess began with their parents going missing and Jenna's issues. The cookies he made for Connor were actually good and Mia had confidence that if Carl made cookies for breakfast - they would be edible and taste good, and she could avoid sniffing the edge of the cookie and nibbling safely at the crust. So when Carl suggested making breakfast, Mia smiled and obliged her brother; if she said no, he'd just force her. Even though she wasn't hungry, Mia followed Carl out of the office, through the house, and into the kitchen.


Watching Carl in the kitchen - moving around like he was some expert cook - gave Mia the opportunity to quietly reflect at the counter's edge. Her chin rested in the palms of her hands, and she focused on swishing saliva from one side of her cheek, forcing it through her teeth to the other side, and back. When it built up - she swallowed and started again; all the while thinking of what had just happened in the office and what was to come, both in and out of this house. Carl was still dead set on some vital information being stashed away cleverly in the contents of those endless mounds of paper. Again, Mia swallowed her mouthful of spit and bit into the corner of her lip, still frustrated - well, more exhausted - with not knowing what the hell they were searching for and feeling like Carl was holding back on the scoop.


Then again she wasn't against sitting back and watching Carl get a few paper cuts of his own while he went thumbing through the same tired pages she'd been through. Honestly, if Dad was going to hide something either within that closet was by far the besting damn place to hide it or maybe Dad didn't really hide whatever Carl was thinking he hid in those pages.


And now there is the issue of this gun and money.


Why was that in there? And more importantly Mia was still trying to figure out in what universe her brother thought it was alright to take the gun with them to wherever they were going. Yeah, it could provide protection. Sure, it could scare off some potential danger; but in all honesty they'd escaped a possibly abusive Foster mother, ran through the woods, survived a night at some sketchy rest area, once again survived a night in some strange fucking place, made it home, and now here they were - all without even pulling a knife or threatening to punch someone in the face.


The click of the bowl being set in front of her and Carl's version of 'enjoy my kind of cooking' snapped Mia would of her thoughts; and she quickly leaned back against her chair, dropping her hands around the bowl and pulling it closer. "It looks great." Mia smiled, dipping her spoon it and out of the cereal. "I'd order it." She smiled again at her minor compliment to her brother's 'cooking' breakfast, taking a spoonful of the cereal into her mouth.


It took her longer than ever - forever - to finish chewing the spoonful of cereal, swallow it, and start again; but she didn't keep eating immediately after each bite. She wasn't hungry, as usual, and was just interested in picking Carl's mind. "So, where are we going?"

 

[DrTrollinski]

"Where are we going..." He sighed a little and then reached down with his spoon, carefully lifting a spoonful of cereal into his mouth and chewing on it, slowly. Once he'd done that, he reached out and plucked another piece of melon off of the plate and shoved it into his mouth with the half-chewed cereal. Nothing wrong with that, was there? People had fruit and cereal all the time. It was meant to be some sort of healthy thing you could do, but I don't know if you're meant to have half a pot of sugar with it when you do, though. Ah well, freedom of choice, right? Plus, Carl had more important things on his mind. He had to make some phone calls, visit a couple of people, spend some money here and there, get some things taken care of, organize a proper plan...


Oh, and get a car, but I'll get to that part later on. It'll be legal, mostly.


"About that. This is going to sound a little crazy, but... We're going to be going to New Hampshire." He said, and then scooped some more cereal into his mouth. "If I don't find anything else in those documents, of course. If I do, well... Let's just say we could either have a longer one, a shorter one, or one of the same distance. It depends, really. I personally don't want to go somewhere so cold, but it's out parents on the line here, Mia. I'm sure you agree with me when I say that we should take whatever chance we have of finding them." He smiled at her, not in a sarcastic manner, and then ate a bit more of his food. He was dreading New Hampshire, but at the same time, he was quite looking forward to going there with her. It'd be a nice little break away from Georgia for them, and generally, it'd be pretty good to do a bit of adventuring, even if some of his ways of doing it were very slightly illegal - Illegal and possibly dangerous, depending on how he carried it out, but that could all be dealt with in due time, couldn't it? It's not like he was going to be reckless about it.


Like I said, I'll get to that part later.


"Obviously, it's not definite, and we can be here for maybe a couple more days before we make a move, but you know, it's wherever things decide to take us, you know what I mean?" He smiled and shrugged as he shoved one heaped spoon of cereal dripping with milk into his mouth. Ah, refreshing. He was more than happy with this little breakfast he'd set up - I mean, he wasn't bad with food like he used to be, and he was a little bit more responsible about it now than he was a few years ago, obviously. It's not like mom ever taught him to cook, though. He was too busy spending time learning about 'cooler things' with his dad, which, at the time, was really fucking cool to him. Learning all about how computers worked would be pretty appealing to most boys when they're younger, aside from the odd few. Some boys were more into art, music (he still wants to learn guitar), some were into writing (which he loved, don't get me wrong), others books, and some, quite a few, were into the art of food. Carl always dreamed of being a big TV Chef one day, but... After some things he heard from other boys when he expressed that dream to them, after some nasty words he heard from them, that dream just became dust in the wind.


Carl had an open mind, we all know that, but you know - Things could have been a little different for the poor guy. I mean, you can only really feel sorry for him in some senses - He had a great life, good enough friends, a nice family, a girlfriend, a younger... cousin, I guess you could consider Connor, who now thought the world of him, and things were going well. But he'd been through some things with people, he'd had some experiences, and there you have it. He was quite a broken person on the inside. He let people crush his dreams, but not the ones that he knew meant something. It still hurt, though, obviously.


Just one of those things, I guess. But Carl was a smart guy, he knew what he was doing, even if it didn't seem like it. He knew a lot more than people gave him credit for, and that's something that I don't think was fair on him. He had potential, he just didn't know many ways to show it. He was showing it now, though. He had an eye for detail, and with a mountain of paperwork, that's exactly what they needed.

 

[Zhai]

Nearly all of the once crunchy cereal flakes turned to soggy mush by the time Mia made three spoon's worth of a dent in the cereal. The milk was warm, the sugar had deposited into a thick coating at the bottom, and everytime the spoon dipped into the bowl the flakes broke apart into small debris in the milk. Since the cereal was becoming less deseriable - and the fact that Mia wasn't hungry to begin with - she quietly listened to Carl, still swirling the spoon in bowl and now intentionally sabotaging what whole flakes remained. Damn; when was the last time she ate something? Like, really ate a whole meal and didn't pick through it or stop after a few bites. When memory didn't serve her the answer, she chewed the inside of her lip and kept stirring the spoon into the milk, now all of the flakes broken down and creating a poluted brown mess that was making the milk thick.


Until the milk was impossible to easily stir through and had turned into a thick mush, Mia had only been briefly paying attention to Carl's words. The thought of when she ate continued to rise and fall from her foremost thoughts, not to mention mentally dreading having to go back into that office, sit on her ass, and sort through more paper. More folders. More binders. More stuff she didn't understand and not to mention more papercuts, on top of the ones that were already sprinkled randomly on her hands.


But when Carl said something about not only leaving home but leaving the state - well, that got her attention. Mia's hand froze, spoon still between her fingers, and her head whipped up so fast that she almost looked past Carl and up towards the ceiling. "I understand taking whatever leads we can but leaving the state is...crazy. That's just..way too far from.." Home? What was 'home' anymore? That saying about home being where the heart is - well, she discredited that phrase the moment they woke up to missing parents, being taken into custody by the state, and running through the woods pretending to be abused children. Home was not where the heart was. Home was where the house was, and the house was not in New Hampshire.


"How are we even supposed to get there? You can't drive. You don't have a license." None of that was said to be a stab at Carl missing essential stuff to get them to New Hampshire, but more of a reminder that he didn't have any of that stuff. No hard feelings. It was just the truth. Taking a bus all the way to New Hampshire would be expensive, long, and not to mention one hell of a ride there and back. So they'd found ten thousand? - Did that mean blowing it all on a trip to maybe find their parents who may or may not even be there?


Mia smiled, giving Carl an expectant look for his comeback to that and mentally giving Carl a tally mark. She had to give the guy credit - he was always planning but it never seemed to be planned out enough. Just like in the woods when he basically smashed himself in the face; long before he did that, she had thought of all the things that could go way fucked up with that plan. Infections, smashing himself too hard in the face and passing out, using a rock too sharp and really injuring himself, and even the worst one - killing himself by hitting himself.


This plan seemed okay but the edges were rough - super rough - and Mia was just helping him smooth them out.

 

[DrTrollinski]

"Don't you worry about that. I've already thought about all of that, alright? Just give me a while to figure it out, and I promise you, things will be fine." He smiled at her across the table and then shoved some more fruit into his mouth. He was done here. What did he want to do now, you ask? Well, he wanted to get to work. He had people to see, numerous people - First, he wanted to go and see his friend so that he could see his brother, and then after he was all done there, doing what he had to do, then he could go and visit the person that he loved so so much, or the two people that he was really close with - Jenna and Connor. Connor was new, as you can probably see. He was very... He was a nice kid, and he knew that by now, Connor would have been told about his daddy and what was wrong with him, and that was depressing. Carl was going to have to go and see them both, just to make sure they'd both be okay while he was gone.


They would have had their mother there for them, but their mother would be spending so much time looking after their father, that she wouldn't be able to find much time for them. Carl felt bad for them - they didn't even know if their parents were dead or not, but that wasn't the point. There was the chance that their parents were alive, and that was it. They didn't know, their parents weren't definitely dead, and if their parents were alive - they were alive. If they were dying - they were dying, and there'd be nothing that Mia and Carl could do. That was the situation that Jenna and her brother were in, and that was a really depressing thought. Carl would be driven into the ground, thrown into a pit of depression, if he found out his parents were dying and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, he'd end up getting so depressed that he couldn't cope with life anymore. It was a horrible thought.


He reached out and squeezed her hand for a few seconds. "I've got it all in the bag, Mia. I've got some calls to make, some people to visit, and some documents to go through." He winked and pulled his hand away to look at her for a few moments, and then smiled and stood up from the table. He needed coffee. He walked to the counter and poured himself some, and instantly sipped on it a few times before walking to the glass door at the back of the kitchen and staring out across the lawn and the pool that rested in the center of the patio area. A nice pool, a big one. Birthday parties were great, because they could just have pool parties when they were kids. There were fond memories surrounding this, when Mia and Carl were just kids and they'd spend all day just having fun in the pool with their parents (whenever they had the time) - Missus Greene could watch them from the kitchen and make sure they were safe, obviously, and she'd come diving in to help out if anything bad ever happened (not that it ever did).


"Okay. Time for me to get to work." He said. "Mia... You just hang on, okay? I need to go through everything, analyze anything that could be relevant, even if it's just a word." He said as he stepped towards the doorway of the kitchen. He was about to walk out of it, but he decided against that and turned back to face her. "Do me a favor... Look through the phone book, the one mom and dad share, and write down any numbers of people that we don't know, or we know that we've never met, you know what I mean?" He said, and then took a deep breath. "Just write 'em all down and we can call 'em later on, y'know what I mean?" He asked. "I need to call up some friends of mine, too, because I know someone that will be able to help us out - Not any of my friends, but a friend's brother. Decent guy, I can get him to help me out with something that'll really help us with all of this. I've thought this all out, you see." He winked at her and smiled.


"Best of luck. Call me if you find anything worth checking into, alright? Instead of calling the numbers, I'll try and find them online. It'll probably be safer that way." He smiled at her. "I'll be upstairs in dad's office, looking over the documents. Just call if you need anything, alright? It's probably gonna' take me a while." He said, and then vanished out of the room and quickly drifted off up the stairs. He went to dad's office and went to the desk and placed the coffee down, and then went to the bedroom and picked up the files and folders from the bed, a whole stack of them, and then carried them through to set them on his desk. He made two or three journeys, and when he had a mountain of paperwork, he realized that it was time to get started. He dug through the drawers of the desk until he found a pen and paper, and then opened up the first folder. The ones under the bed were still under the bed, lost and forgotten. He'd remember those later, though.


Time to get started. He was dreading this. First folder of many - He hoped Mia might be able to find something useful.

 

[Zhai]

Well, okay Mr. Jackson - and should your calls be forwarded or held?, Mia tried not to think that thought but it swelled up in her mind from the moment Carl started talking. He sounded like some important business man or something, giving her tasks to do while he was out or about to get busy with some business related work. Mia even imagined herself in some stiff blouse and suit, stuck behind a smallish desk just outside of his fake office; all with her fake secretary stuff spread across her desk, notepad and pen in her hand while she took down her brother's tall order of do-this-do-that. "Sure." The reply she gave Carl in real life wasn't the one she said to him in her mind but both were acceptance. Look through the phone book. Take down numbers. Hold tight for Carl to reveal his ultimate find from the folders upstairs.


Got it. Simple. Too easy, boss.


Several minutes had past by after Carl left the kitchen before Mia even moved her legs from beneath the table, and then several more quiet moments were gone by the time she realized that she was just sitting there. After one moment more escaped, she leaned forward and out of the chair, taking her bowl into the kitchen and slowly scooping the thick cereal out of the bowl and into the trash. Washing, rinsing, and drying the bowl was a slow task that she relished only because it didn't have anything to do with staring into the depths of their parents' phone address book, looking for numbers and people she didn't know. That would be the easy and challenging part, because half the people their parents knew - Mia didn't know or didn't care to remember. On several occasions she could remember dropping the ball of memory when it came to meeting people who were as simple as past classmates to the important folks she was meant to remember, like relatives. Damn, who was her mother's sister? That name didn't even register until after Mia had put the dried bowl into the cupboard and stood there for at least two minutes with the door open, thinking about it. The face was there but the name wasn't.


Hell, she couldn't even remember her biological aunt's name! This whole looking through the address book for unknown people was going to be useless. Carl was probably going to narrow down her list in less than a minute from twenty to two or three real people they didn't know.


"Okay, who do we know?" Mia spoke quietly to herself, turning the medium sized address book in her hands. Mom kept it right beside the phone in the downstairs foyer. The right place to keep a book full of addresses and phone numbers, she supposed; and the book moved only from the downstairs phone in the foyer to the kitchen phone. It never went upstairs. Mom had a separate book upstairs that was practically empty, since she was usually downstairs answering the phone and taking the notes.


On the outside of the book there weren't words but a picture of a letter and a phone with little scripture around them and patterns - address and phone. Simple. The book felt heavy and it was thick with pages that held an abundance of information that Mia knew maybe one percent about, not to mention a pen had been wedge in the folds of the book towards the back pages. Hm, book was probably almost used up. It would probably send Mom over the edge if Mia brought her a new one to use when this one was done with. Rain check on that, just until Mom actually gets back to use an address book again.


Mia didn't remove the pen to lessen the awkward bulk of the book but instead started on the very first page, skipping it only because it was a self entry of their own address and phone numbers. The second page was a little smudged from the use of pencil but still legible, and Mia started reading while she slowly backtracked into the kitchen to get comfortable.


This was going to take some time. A lot of time, actually.

 

[DrTrollinski]

Carl's job was a little bit more difficult, because he soon realized that everything he had to go through was rather... Daunting and long. How many 14-year-old boys can you name that like to go through their dad's paperwork all day? I can't name any. Hell, I can't name anyone that would want to go through their dad's paperwork all day, unless, of course, it was to find their father who was missing, which is exactly what Carl was trying to do. He didn't like the fact that there was so much of it, hundreds upon hundreds of pages that were already highlighted in some places with dad's favorite highlighting color - Yellow. For years, Carl had always asked his dad why he never used the other colors he had, and he simply said that 'yellow was the most visible' - He was right, really, it was much more of a visible color, and Carl knew that his dad's favorite highlighting color was also his favorite highlighting color.


He had to use a different one. That was torture.


He picked up the green one instead - This was the second most-visible, in dad's opinion, so Carl'd use this one. He didn't have a problem with using a different, one, but you know what they say. Like father like son, and all that. Carl started off on the first sheet from the first folder he laid eyes on, being the 'Contracts' folder. He looked at it, and it was dated way back to just after Mia and Carl turned ten. It was worth a look, because there may have been something on it that lead to somewhere, or something. He couldn't chance just leaving it and saying nothing and hoping that he'd find something else in one of the other documents, I'm afraid that it just doesn't work like that. You can't leave out potential evidence, because let me tell you right now, that if someone does that, they're an utter fucking idiot who honestly shouldn't be analyzing evidence at all - There's been murders solved from evidence that was sometimes older than the murder itself, and that's what you call good investigation skills.


It's also what you call having a good state of mind - a great one, even. If you have the mental capacity to stay put on a task and not give up, and still have the ability to look for every single detail no matter how tired you are, then I'll tell you this - you should be working with the police and getting paid one fuck-tonne of money. Take Carl, for instance. He ain't exactly anything special, just a teenage boy who does everything a usual teenage boy does - The only difference is, he's attentive, he's specific to detail, and better yet - He likes achieving things. He loves it. He loves finding the smallest thing that no one else noticed, because it makes him feel good about himself, and also, I'll let you in on a little secret: It's going to help model his future, but that's a little thing that we'll leave untouched for now. The only future for them currently is trying to find their parents. Fun times, right? Ah, well, back to work.


Little Italy, Main Street.





Okay. Are you sure he doesn't have something to do with the Italian Mafia? Heh, probably not. He dealt with business and many other things, so let's just wait and see, shall we? He noted that down, seeing as it was a local business. They could stop there, or, he could stop there. He was planning on going out extra early tomorrow morning, just so he could get around to all of the places that he might find tonight. If he got any that were out of State, he'd make sure that he noted them down and chose a plausible route to get there. If they were in Texas and Nevada and all those other states that were miles away, then no, he probably wouldn't go there. To start off, he'd stay local, or to neighboring States. If that failed, then before he gave up, he'd go across the country with Mia if it meant that they'd be able to see their parents again.


God, if they found them, they better fucking give them some decent allowance money for being pure smart-asses.


He looked down at the paper, and highlighted the address and the manager's name. Francesco Lorenzo. Hm.


He looked at the rest of the papers.


This was going to be a long day.

 

[Zhai]

"Don't know you." Next entry. "Don't know you." Next. "Don't know you." Last entry on the page. "Annndd don't...know...you." Next page.


Great. The past two hours had been dedicated to marking next to people she didn't know or recognize, and fifty percent through the address book had proved that Mia didn't know hardly any one of the entries. Aunt Sarah - that was their mother's sister and she finally remembered the damn woman's name!; but Sarah's address and phone number hadn't even come up in the book but she would be sure to remember she know the woman when it was time to mark the entry or not. Other numbers that didn't get marked included their school, their Dad's work number, their cell phone numbers, and the usual chain of delivery they frequented. Other than that - nearly every entry since the second page of the book was marked with a red star to symbolize they were foreign to her.


This book must be old, anyways.


The first handful of pages were smudged from faded pencil or fresh ink in Mom's hand writing, and Mia had to practically press her eyes against the pages to make out the information under the names. Plus there was still the number for their Grandmother who had passed away before they were even five if she remembered right. Maybe it was a year or two around that time. Whatever. There were also random sticky notes on every other page that had old notes fading against the little piece of paper. It didn't look like there were any pages missing and she had been carefully reading each entry and looking at the crevice of the book for evidence of a stolen page.


Nothing.


Again - with the page turned to a new one, Mia leaned forward against the counter's edge, skimming each line read with the tip of the pen as a guide: "Don't know you.." Mark it, next entry. "You don't know us." Mark it, next entry. "Us don't know you." Mark it. Mia started switching up how many ways she could use the same handful of words to say the same thing as her eyes glided down the medium sized page, all the way to the end and then over to the page beside it. She started over from the top, marking the unknown person and doing the same for the next after she finished reading the entry twice.


Ugh, this task was boring as hell and she groaned into the pages of the book, pressing her forehead against the pages she had forsaken reading any more. "I don't know any of these fucking people." Those words were for the mental Carl, who was in her mind cheering her on to keep reading and find the gold in the pages of their parents' address book. There isn't any gold. There isn't anything out of the usual and if there was Mia wouldn't catch it! If she didn't know the first one hundred entries, its likely the next one hundred would be the same.


"I'm breaking up with you..." Mia pretended to stab into the crevice of the book, only setting the pen down to keep her page and leave the kitchen. Up the stairs and into their Dad's study, she peeked in to see no Carl and a smaller spread of paperwork around the room. Hm, must be somewhere else. Mia checked the bathroom, just curious if Carl would be going through folders from his porcelain throne, but no brother in there. Next was the most likely place and when she opened his bedroom door, there he was. Dragging her feet into his room and slowly falling across his bed, she groaned and make a hand motion of a gun going off against her temple.


"I can't do this any longer. It's been two hours, Carl..." She whined, realizing she sounded more muffled than she'd thought before since her face was rolled more into his comforter than not. "I haven't found anything. I don't know anyone. I've realized I don't know anyone. I'm a like that piece of pasta in the pasta bag that doesn't...doesn't look like the other pasta." Whatever that means.

 

[DrTrollinski]

"But Mia, my dear sister..." He said, he had a fuck load of paperwork at his side now. He had a few addresses, all of which were local, but there was one up in West Virginia that he'd noted down - it was a recent document, and he'd got a load of names written down, too. Or, he'd got them highlighted on the stacks of documents that he'd been through over the last two hours. He'd actually made quite a lot of progress in the time that he was doing this, just sitting there uncomfortably on the chair at his desk and going through them. His arms were aching, his head was pounding, his eyes felt like they were about to explode, and worst of all...


He'd needed to shit for the past thirty minutes, but he could take care of that in a little while. He couldn't stop working, not yet. "A piece of pasta looks the same as the others when it's in with the sauce." He finally finished his sentence and spun around on the office chair. He's done well over a hundred pages, but he was nowhere close to done. He had a lot of work to do, but he could live with it. He didn't exactly have a problem with it, or anything like that. It was just really boring. Like, really boring. If Mia thought looking through a book of contacts was bad, then she should try doing this for a while. Literally, a lot of it was a load of old shit, and out of the near two hundred pages that Carl had gone through, he'd found maybe five or six things that might not even be helpful. Who was in the most pain here? The guy refusing to leave his seat and use the bathroom because he was so engulfed by this, or the girl that had found nothing in a book?


Maybe they were equal, but I think that the odds were leaning a little bit towards Carl on this one. He wasn't exactly having such a great time, but he was getting there. "Alright... It's no problem. If there's people we don't know, that's fine, but if there's hundreds of them... Fucking hell, that'll take some time to go through. I'm sorry for that, sis, but you know, every detail can be important, and all that. It can take time, shit, I don't know how long this is going to take me, I've gone through just about two folders and I've still got about eight more to go, so don't worry, I'm suffering, too... I know what I'm doing, though, I've found a few things that might be helpful. Plus all of the back-referencing and research I'm going to have to do on all of this, I'm looking at about six hours of work, no doubt." He sighed, but then placed his pen down on the surface of the desk and quickly spun himself around on the chair. Ah, swivel chairs, so awesome. Anyway, there was no time to let the mind drift, but he could tell that Mia had had enough, and now, ever so slowly, it was beginning to creep into the late afternoon, but not by far. He was wondering what they could do, because I think that they both needed a break right about now. Carl needed a bathroom break, especially, so if he took his phone with him when he did, he could probably look up some of the stuff he'd found while he was there - Time efficiency, and all. It was funny how he hadn't heard any whispers today. Was it because they wanted him to find the files? Did his answer honestly lie there? Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but he knew what he was looking for, and Mia had already been through half of these once, so he knew that she wouldn't want to do it all over again. He was more than happy to do it, as long as he didn't get too many paper cuts.


"Let's take a break, eh?" He said, leaning back in his chair. "I've found some things, you know. We got that weird-ass phone number that I found in the safe, I've got a few addresses of local businesses, and stuff like that. Some of the documents are quite recent, too, so our best bet might be to look there and see what we can find. Maybe we'll be able to go out for an Italian dinner, because dad had some sort of contract work with... Little Italy, or something. I think we've all eaten there before, when you and I were younger. Like, really young. I vaguely remember some old guy that dad stepped away from the table to talk to, they shook each other's hands, smiled, all that bullshit." He shrugged simply and gave yet another sigh.


Let's face it. It was either more paperwork, or it was going out for a walk and seeing if they could find anything.


"What should we do, then? I'm going to be dreaming in text if I read any more of dad's documents, so... Shall we sit and watch TV for a while, make a phone call, or go into town and take a look around some of the places that I found out about? It'd be nice to get out and get some fresh air and all, so it's up to you. One thing's for definite, though: We're taking a break from paperwork." He said.

 

[Zhai]

"I don't think we should be roaming around..." Not Carl's best suggestion - openly lurking around town, asking questions and having dinner - but he had had worse ideas, like bringing Jenna over to the house. All while they were supposed to be tucked in the house, away from the public eye, and lying low until something came up. That "something" was a couple of contacts Carl had found in Dad's stuff but it didn't seem like a good enough reason to dress up and go have a candle lit Italian cuisine. Especially if these weird contacts were the people who may or may not have information about their parents - good or bad. Hell, that name and phone number could belong to the killer himself! "We should probably just stay in the house."


In that moment Mia had not only decided that Carl was too adventurous for his own good but also that she would not even consider any kind of private detective or investigating bullshit. None of this snooping around, finding a clue, and following up on it; bad things happened to good people who went searching in the wrong place. Good intentions didn't serve as a 'pass-go' ticket to bypass murder, being shot, or kidnapped. There was this gut feeling that this lead Carl was so focused on was going to turn out to be exactly the opposite of what they should have been looking for, or it would lead to some deep dark part of their parents' lives they weren't meant to be let into.


Between the suggestions Carl made - taking a break from paperwork and not leaving the house were the most appealing, but Mia knew that her brother wanted to pounce on whatever leads he had found. It was probably burning a hole inside of him with absolute need to call whatever numbers he found and pick the brains of whoever was unfortunate to answer on the opposing line.


Okay... "You can make the phone calls." Mia did a half-assed crunch until her body slowly folded up until she was sat upright on the edge of the bed. "You know I hate talking on the phone." Ain't that the truth?! When Carl asked her to call for pizza when Connor was here, it took everything she had not to ask Carl to do it or even go as far as ordering online. Phone calls and Mia didn't mix, and talking to some stranger whose number and name they found scratched into a piece of paper by their Dad didn't seem any easier.


"I've gotta pee.." Pushing from the bed to stand and leaving Carl's room, she found herself thinking of the most random thought on the way to the bathroom. It was a thought she figured she'd forgotten about; thought it had been killed and buried back when they were running through the woods from that suspected abuser and her freakish son. And it was strongest when passing her room - homework.


With the bathroom door locked and herself comfortably sat on the cold toilet, the homework thought returned followed by thinking of school and beyond. Damn, they hadn't been to school in...how long had it been? It had been less than a month but more than a week. Okay, great. That was a good window of time to work with, but that didn't narrow down how long they'd been MIA from school or how much longer it would go on. Mia bit at the edge of her thumb nail, trying to focus on balancing her elbow on her knee and still narrowing down how long they'd been hiding.


"This is hard.." Whoa. That probably sounded weird from outside the bathroom but inside the bathroom, it was only referring to thinking and balancing her arm at the same time. Mia plucked one sheet of toilet paper and started folding it, still thinking about how long they'd be doing....this; looking for their parents, scouring for information, and generally, just hiding all the dame time.

 

[DrTrollinski]

Make the phone calls, right. He could do that easily, he was sure. Yeah, so, what did he do first? Bathroom or phone? Well, Mia was in one of the bathrooms, so I suppose he would have had a minute alone to get to his own bathroom, lock the door, and so on, but at the same time, he didn't want to go back into his bedroom. He wanted to wait to use the main bathroom that Mia had occupied, just because he'd feel more comfortable without having to go into his own room once more. After what he'd experienced there before, he was more than certain that he'd be using the guest bedroom until things got sorted out, because being in his own room was just far too scary. There were so many bad memories in there, of which had been produced over the course of just a couple of days. He was just glad that it didn't rub off on Connor and Jenna - I would say Mia, but it kind of had impacted her a little bit.


Still, though, would you be able to forgive yourself if you ended up hurting a five-year-old boy, potentially killing him? I know for a fact that I wouldn't be able to cope with that. It would be horrifying it that happened. Carl wouldn't be able to forgive himself either, so for now, he was going to just take all of that off his mind, go to the phone downstairs, and once he was done there and Mia was out of the bathroom, he'd go in there and take care of business himself. Simple stuff, right? Yeah. Simple enough, simple as you can get when you're calling an unknown number and not knowing what to expect. In all honesty, Carl was just as excited about it as he was scared - Playing detective was something he'd loved doing ever since he was young and wrote down the computer password on his wall behind his bed. It was great like that, and he loved it. When he thought about it, he'd gladly go and work with the police as a... I don't know, chief investigator (with time) or something, you know, one of the guys that was big on criminology and was great with dealing with people that needed to be questioned and so on.


He loved that idea, and he loved it a lot. He always wanted to do something like that and have his own TV show - the thing is, he was a dreamer. That was another thing, though, you're supposed to be a dreamer because it helps in the long run. If you dream and put the effort in, then the sky is not the limit in the slightest, you push, you work hard, and you end up being exactly what you want to be. It's great, don't you think? It's why parents should never tell their kids that they can't get anywhere with something, they should never tell them that one of their dreams is pointless, all because it stops them from even trying. Carl and Mia's parents were good, they never told them that they couldn't pursue something - they encouraged them as much as they could.


Take Carl with his little league soccer and all that. He still had all the soccer jerseys from it, and why? Well, a long time ago, his dad told him that if he wanted to do sport - he should. That's the best way to approach things, and look where that got Carl. He became one of the best on the team in his younger days before he gave it up before middle school. He was the best at some points, but it was off of his own accord that he gave up on it, and he didn't regret a minute of the sport he did, simply because it was fun. There was never really much for Carl to complain about with his soccer games - There were never any bathroom/locker room bullies, he was friends with the whole team, he helped set trends, and generally, he was in a great mood after it - When he was younger and his parents and Mia got to come out on Sundays and watch his game, he'd still talk about it on the whole way home if he scored a goal or did something cool in the game, even though they saw it anyway.


It's that sort of dreaming that's important, the type that makes you feel like you can do anything. That's the best type that there is.


Anyway, while he was buried in thought he actually managed to get to the phone without even fully realizing. He figured he may as well make some calls while he was waiting for Mia to get out of the bathroom, even if it was only one phone call. He wasn't exactly desperate, just uncomfortable, so with that, he picked up the phone and dialed the first number he had written down, which wasn't the one he found in the safe, would you believe it.


Save the best til last after all.

 

[Zhai]

Damn - legs are numb.


She must have been sitting here for at least, ten or fifteen minutes?; staring at the folded sheets of toilet paper in her hand and continuously following the same pattern on the surface with her eyes. Hell, she must have counted the same ten flower patterns on the same toilet paper sheet through the entire time she'd been sitting there; and now her legs are so numb that she needed to use the counter for help to get off the seat. The next five minutes are dedicated to struggling to pull her pants from around her ankles while at the same time trying not to lean off the edge of the counter, the only thing supporting her numb limbs and keeping her from falling into the bathroom tile. "Damn it.." More struggling and cursing under her breath, until right when her pants are up and the numbness subsided in her legs.


In the middle of washing her hands, a thought floats forward in her mind: how lucky I am to have capable limbs, especially my hands and arms; because if she didn't, pulling her pants up would have been a hell of a lot harder!


Bathroom break finally complete.


Outside of the bathroom, there's a silence that suggests Carl isn't up here anymore. Downstairs, maybe, making those phone calls; or finishing up the tasks of skimming through Mom's endless address book to look for someone unfamiliar in the midst of several unfamiliar people. The impossible task.


She was about to call for Carl but caught a glimpse from over the railing, moving past the staircase and disappearing. Or if that wasn't Carl, then it was some serial killer that surely looked like him. Inhaling deeply and exhaling quietly, she made the short, slow walk down each step of the staircase; deliberately making sure both feet briefly stop on each step from the top until the last step. On that last step, she didn't step off; only stand there, leaning against the banister and listening to Carl dial into the phone. Waiting for whoever he was calling to answer and ready to listen to their conversation, via Carl's response to whatever the other person says.


I sure hope he finds whatever he thinks - or knows - he's looking for.

 

[DrTrollinski]

Discomfort. That was the main thing.


He felt nothing but sheer discomfort and it honestly was rather painful to put up with. He wanted to sit down so that the urge could sort of be a little bit more neutralized. But no, it wasn't. He was stood there and trying to resist the urge to kind of... Not shit his pants, if that made sense. Understandable, right? I mean, what did Carl have wrong with him, exactly? Let's make a little list for things and see what we can do with it, because I know that there's more than just what we've been over already. Let's see...


1. Weak bladder.


2. Anger issues.


3. Unstable emotions.


4. Hearing voices (fucking creepy).


5. Weak bowel control(?)





There's a high possibility that that could be something that was wrong with him, but hey, he wasn't complaining. The one thing that he was complaining about, however, was how Mia had taken a whole fifteen minutes so far to just 'pee' - He was calling bullshit on that for some odd reason, but was he going to call her out on it? Of course not. That's one thing you don't do. If a teenage girl spends a long time in the bathroom, commonly, it's best to avoid embarrassment and conflict by just going with it. Plus, if Carl really needed to go, he could have just used the bathroom in his bedroom, or he could have used Mia's.


But he didn't. Why?


Because in his room. he was scared of the voices, and in Mia's room... Well, they might have used each other's en suite bathrooms before they were teenagers and not really gave a damn, as long as they sprayed some fragrance or deodorant to freshen the place up after, but now... It was just new grounds. He doubted that Mia would use his bathroom for anything other than washing her hands and/or face. I mean, let's be honest, we all sort of know what Carl gets up to in that bathroom, so sitting on the toilet could (apparently) be a bad idea, but hey, it happens, right?


"Hello?" Carl said, as soon as he heard the phone get picked up. He put it on speaker, actually, because he went over with the phone book and phone and sat down against the wall so that he could take the weight off of his legs. He felt a little bit better now.


"Yeah?" A voice called back. American, Southern (no shit, they're in Georgia) - Not heavily accented, but heavily enough.


"I'm calling in regards to a Mister and Missus Jackson... Michael and Alexandra, to be exact." He said. "I was wondering if you'd seen them at all recently."


"You're callin' the wrooooooooong number, buddeh' - Ain't seem them around this place for a good few years now... Last time we saw 'em, they had these two snot-nosed little kids runnin' around causin' a riot." He said. Snot-nosed? Oh, this son of a bitch.


"Alright. Thanks." He replied, quickly hanging up. "Prick." He said once he was sure the call had ended (let's be honest. No one wanted an angry redneck pounding down their door) and sighed. He looked at the phone book again, and he decided that it was a safer bet to call the Little Italy restaurant. He rang the number, waited, and waited, and waited, but before he could even say anything after the phone had been picked up, a bold Italian voice (all Italian voices were bold, really) spoke up.


"Ey', how ya' doin'?"


"Uh--.. Hi, am I speaking to an employee of Little Italy?"


"In the flesh."


"Great, I'm calling in regards to a Mister and Missus Jackson. Michael and Alexandra, to narrow it down. I was actually wondering if you'd seen them around in the recent while."


There was a long, long silence, but the sound of the man breathing into the phone was evident for the whole time that the silence was there. Carl felt more and more nervous with every passing second, and even more so when he heard the man's next question:


"Why?"


".. Because... Well, sir... They've been missing for some time now. Quite a while." He said. "Probably around a week or so." He added, quickly. There was another long silence.


"Missing? They're missing? As in, completely gone missing, eh?"


"Yes... Completely gone." He replied.


"Shit." Was the last word the man spoke. He sounded worried. Well, it was probably a friend of their parents, so of course he was going to sound worried. He hung up after that, and left Carl sitting there rubbing his forehead in disbelief. It was time to look up some more of these phone numbers, though, but he could do that while he was taking care of business. He stood up again, went to the table where the pot of pens, the phone book, and the phone were kept, then placed the phone back in the correct place before swiping up a cheap ballpoint pen from the table, along with a little notebook.


He had his cellphone on him, so with that, he quickly spun himself around and walked off towards the stairs. Never run if you need to take a crap, that's a life lesson for you, because it only makes it worse. If it's really bad, it can end in an accident. The stairs were going to be hard to climb. When he got around the corner to the stairs, he jumped back suddenly, almost dropping the items in his hand as he did so. He laughed after a while, though, and fixed his eyes upon his sister.


"Christ, Mia. I'm close enough to shitting myself as it is, take it easy on where you hide, eh?" He chuckled and walked forward, patting her on the shoulder as he brushed by. Almost there, Carl. Almost there.

 

[Zhai]

Silence follows the soft dialing tone of the phone, which could mean anything from where Mia was standing. The phone could be ringing with Carl waiting or the line could be disconnected and Carl searching for the next number to dial. Mia figured the number didn't work, and was about to leave her perch on the step, when there was Carl's response to someone on the other end. Hm, who picked up?; a woman or a man, old or young? Did they know their parents - maybe met them briefly, mingled at parties together, or were childhood friends? Hell, she could barely identify anyone in their parents address book so it wouldn't surprise her that she wouldn't know who those people are any better than she knew the lunch lady at school.


Actually, she kind of knew the lunch ladies; probably better than she knew any of her parents' friends. There were just the few that frequented their lives, like the neighbors, for example; and a few women her Mom talked to only because they were mothers to the kids she had school committee meetings with. It was like Mom talked to them because she had to, not because she wanted to. Dad had his circle of friends he met up with outside of the house to wind down with but all those men were also part of the neighborhood, had children in the same school as them, and were familiar faces; they were invited to cook outs, block parties, and even showed up when their parents renewed their vows.


A slideshow of familiar faces was running through her head when she noticed Carl wasn't responding to a one-sided conversation, but that the voice was blurting out of the phone. Probably on speaker or Carl had turned up the volume so high she could pick up the entire conversation, both sides. Mia leaned on the banister again, slowly pulling the zipper on her jacket down a few inches, pulling it back up and back down again, several times through the course of the conversation.


Whoever Carl had called sounded just like the woman who was supposed to be their foster parent - all thick born-and-raised Southern tongue with that familiar drawl of certain words. Most of anyone in this town had that kind of accent attached to their mouths and there were just a few - like their family and one or two neighbors - who only had a slight accent. The kind that you pick up after being in the area for awhile, or just being born here; Mia found herself either sounding like she was out of state, mocking the tone, or like she'd been born and raised on a farm. There was never an inbetween these days, and the older she got, the worse it was.


Anyway, Mia tuned back into the open conversation just in time to hear something about snot-nosed kids. That must be them. There was her brother's parting response, a click, and then his after comment; then there was another series of soft dialing tones. This time there wasn't a voice on speaker, only Carl's responses in between varied pauses. It's hard to even make up what the person on the other end is saying and Carl's short responses aren't helping to piece anything together.


Damn, not knowing what the conversation is about sucks. Mia stopped harrassing her jacket's zipper and was about to come off the stairs to find out what was going on, but Carl was already on his way in this direction. He jumped back first, with nervous laughter accompaning the light sweat on his brow; and she squeezed the banister, sucking in a deep breath and trying not to curse aloud. "Jeez...I almost hit you in the face, Carl." She managed to smile, just a little bit, and exhaled the air that was holed up in her lungs. Mia leaned to the side to let her brother up the stairs, deciding he had either found out some information on the phone or was going back to the office to look for more. After a moment she stepped down into the foyer and towards the phone, flipping through the address book aimlessly skimming the pages and listening to Carl's steps above.

 

[DrTrollinski]

Address book, he was fine with. He could keep that. The phone book was all he was interested in for now, because he had a feeling that there'd be something in there that he could look up while he was in the bathroom, just by Googling it on his phone. It couldn't hurt to do that, but he smiled at Mia as she spoke and shook his head. "You couldn't reach as high as my face, little sister, you know that." He said, even though they were practically the same height with Carl just being an inch or so taller than her. He was just joking, so he did wink at her as he faded up the stairs. He was just thankful that he wasn't going to have to go through his bedroom again. He didn't want to have to go in there without Mia being there, at least. The mere thought of it sent a shiver down his spine that he couldn't even comprehend, so he was avoiding that place for now.


He kept walking until he reached the top; he turned and looked down the hallway, the hallway that he and Mia had chased each other down countless times when they were younger. The hallway still seemed just as happy as it usually did, but there was an odd sense of darkness surrounding the door to Carl's room. He didn't even care. He'd sleep in the lounger in Mia's room again tonight, if he had to, just as long as he could avoid going into his surprisingly pristine teenage boy's bedroom. Those words just don't seem to go together very well, really - I don't know many teenage boys that have clean bedrooms, but hey, everyone's different.


For some reason, he couldn't help but think of a book he read when he thought of his room. It was a Stephen King novel.


“When you're five and you hurt, you make a big noise in the world. At ten you whimper. But by the time you make fifteen you begin to eat the poisoned apples that grow on your own inner tree of pain.”





It's too bad that he wasn't fifteen yet, because he really wanted to be. He wanted to eat from that inner tree of pain instead of calling out to the world to help him out, because that's what he felt like he was doing. It was true, really. When he was ten, he'd whimper if he hurt, both mentally or physically. It's how it works, really. Carl would whimper onto one of his parents' shoulders, and it would eventually end in a few tears. But god, if Mia and Carl got hurt when they were as young as five, it just seemed like they'd never stop crying. Ever.


Ah, well, there were more pressing matters at hand. He walked to the main bathroom and went inside. Ah, nice and clean. Not a spot of dirt on the whole thing. He'd showered in here earlier in the day, and he'd done something else in the shower, but I don't think I'll go into detail on that. No one but him and I have to know that, even though it's not exactly a huge mystery. Yeah, everyone knows, but who cares? Not really anyone, seeing as it's sort of... Natural? Anyway. Moving on. He went in and quickly locked the door, followed by walking over to the porcelain toilet and dropping his pants to sit down on it. Instant relief, right there. The seat was cold, that was the only bad thing.


So, while he was doing his business, he had his knees together in front of him, and the phone book open and rested on his knees while the mobile phone was on and resting in his hands. He was occupied with just about everything now - dealing with bodily needs, researching, reading. Hey, it was all fun and games, right? He was just glad it wasn't in the bathroom attached to his room. I don't think I'll ever be able to emphasize that point enough until you fully realize just how bad it is for Carl to put on a brave face, just to go into that room. Just to open the door, even that.


The numbers. The names.


They said something to him. Could he find a coincidence? Probably not. He just needed some sort of link, and that would be enough for him to get by. For a while, at least. He just searched every single number on Google on his phone, and at the same time, just taking care of the other end of business - It was a good deal, really, and the privacy of their own bathroom was nice. He didn't have to sit in an enclosed motel room with Mia just right next door. It was kind of good, really, even under the given circumstances. He just kept searching those phone numbers, even after he was done on the toilet.


He just sat there, his legs numbing with every passing minute. He looked up every number, and the only real links he could find were across the country.


But one of them. One of them was in New Hampshire. Which was where they were planning to go.


That was all he needed, so he leaned over and tucked his phone into the pocket of his jeans that were at his ankles, then he grabbed some toilet paper and quickly cleaned himself up before standing up. Ah, and then the full numbness hit. That wasn't the point, though. After a flush of a toilet and a spray of some air freshener, he washed his hands and shot off downstairs with the number that had caught his eye covered by his finger.


"Mia." He said. He was only gone ten minutes or so, so she couldn't have gone far. "I've got another number which we can look into. When we get to New Hampshire like we planned, we'll have to check this one out. It might be a coincidence, but I think it could be linked. We need to check out everything, you know what I mean?" He said to her, quickly glancing around. "Like I said, there's more stuff that I need to take care of, but... All in good time." He smiled. "There's a lot of stuff for us both to do, really... I've still got more paperwork stuff to go through, because that number I found is only a stupid little link." He said, then walked over to sit down against the wall with a sigh, tossing the phone book back onto the small table.


"In other discussions... What do you want for dinner tonight? If you want to order take-out Chinese or Indian food, I don't mind paying." He offered, shooting her a friendly smile.