Page 54 of Our Moon
We all whip our heads quickly to look at Alex. We know what he means when he says he has a bad feeling. He’s had bad feelings before, once was when Ally fell out of their old treehouse and broke her arm, and the other time was the night she and Blake broke up. In both of those instances, his bad feeling was spot on.
“What kind of bad feeling?” I’m the first to ask.
“I don’t know,” he whispers.
“It’s probably nothing,” Trevor says.
“No,” Alex says quietly. “It’s not nothing. Pull over,” he says quickly, “I’m going to be sick.”
Trevor barely gets the car to the side of the road before Alex has the door open and is out of the car puking on the ground. He’s on my side, so I get out and help him up.
“You alright, man?” I ask, knowing damn well that he’s not okay.
When he looks up at me, I’m stunned to see tears running down his face. “I can’t lose her, Chase. I can’t.” He drops his head and starts sobbing. My eyes widen, and I take a step back as I realize what he’s saying.
He thinks he’s going to lose her?
He can’t lose her.
Ican’t lose her.
We’re supposed to start our life together tomorrow, for real. Tomorrow is supposed to be the best day of our lives. It’s supposed to be a new beginning. What am I supposed to do if she’s not there?
Trevor gets out of the car and gets down on the ground with his brother. “We don’t know that something bad happened. Let’s just go to the restaurant and follow their route home. Maybe they just have a flat tire or something. You know that strip near Martin Road has shoddy cell reception and tons of pot holes.”
Always the voice of reason. It makes me feel a little bit better myself, until I remember that they wouldn’t have taken Martin Road to Lucy’s house. But I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. We all need to hang on to any hope we can.
Trevor helps Alex back into the car and Joey hands him a water bottle from the back seat. Alex rinses his mouth and spits the water out the open car door before shutting it.
“About an hour before I got the text from Lucy,” Alex starts, “I had this sharp pain go straight through my body. It’s the same feeling I had when Ally fell out of the tree, and when she and Blake broke up. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, at any of those times, until after the fact when I realized she’d been in some kind of pain.” He pauses for a moment and the car is completely silent. “I’m scared,” he finally says.
Trevor reaches over and grabs Alex’s hand. “Wewillfind them,” he says. He clearly knows better than to make promises he can’t keep. Yes, we may find them, but will they be okay?
I sit back in my seat and look out the window. The sky is so cloudy, I can’t see the moon.
***
We’ve been driving for about thirty minutes, following the route they would have taken from the restaurant back to the house. Then from the restaurant to Lucy’s house. We don’t see their car at all along the way at all, leaving us completely baffled as to what could have happened.
“Should we call the police?” Alex asks.
“What would we tell them? Our parents and sister are missing, help us find them? It’s not exactly a kidnapping.” Trevor sighs.
Alex nods. “Something just isn’t right. What other way could they have gone?”
“Blanton’s Bridge,” I say quietly.
“What?” Trevor says.
“Blanton’s Bridge,” I say louder. “If there was traffic on the main road, your dad may have looped around to the bridge to enter Lucy’s neighborhood from the back side. Which is very possible with all the graduations at the different schools today. There were probably a lot of people on the road.”
Trevor’s eyes widen as he takes a U-turn and heads back to the street that cuts through the middle of town and will lead us over to Blanton’s Bridge Road. We’re all completely silent as we weave through the dark streets, cautiously racing to the bridge.
My heart is racing, and in my mind and my heart, I’m praying to every deity out there that Ally and her parents are okay. As we round the bend before the bridge comes into view, my stomach sinks to the floorboards of the car.
“No. No, no, no, no!” Alex screams.
Trevor stops the car, and we all get out and run towards the emergency vehicles surrounding the entrance to the bridge.
