Wow, I'm glad lots of people are reading this still. I'm updating as fast as I can, sorry it takes so long sometimes! I like to keep a few chapters on deck, so I always have a few to post in case I know I won't have a ton of time to write. But this time I'm ahead of myself, so here you go! ;)
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Isabel took a few seconds to regain her composure. “Well, after I got my Dippin’ Dots yesterday I went back to your car, or where I
thought you had parked at least, but you weren’t there. On top of that, I couldn’t find my cell, so I didn’t know what to do.”
“Oh,” Erin interrupted. “Your cell was in my bag … I-I took it to the car with me. That’s where the guys took me; they must have it now.”
“Oh. Well that makes sense then. Damn.” Isabel replied. “Well, I thought I might have left it on the beach, so I went back to look. I looked for like half an hour before giving up. I had to bum some change off some guy to use a pay phone, which are like impossible to find nowadays by the way, but I finally found one on the boardwalk.
“At first I tried calling your cell, but obviously didn’t get an answer. Don’t take this the wrong way, but my best guess was you ran off with some guys you met at the beach or something.”
Erin felt the slightest of smirks cross her face. It was the worst possible time for jokes, but being with a friend after what she had been through over the past day was comforting enough to put her slightly at ease.
“So then I called Emily to see if she had heard from you. Of course she hadn’t, so I asked if she would come pick me up, and she did.”
“Wait—you mean you weren’t kidnapped at the beach?”
“No, Emily took me home. We hung out for a while, then I went to bed. I’m sorry, Erin, I should have known something was wrong, but I really just thought you went out somewhere. I was going to call you tomor—well,
today now—if I hadn’t heard anything. But … oh! Emily knows you were M.I.A., so she might start getting worried! I was supposed to meet her this afternoon.”
“And she might realize something is up and come look for us.” The thought gave Erin a glimmer of hope, but she didn’t let it become anything more. Emily had been a good friend, but she wasn’t nearly as close to her as she was with Isabel. And frankly, though they had had lots of enjoyable times together, Erin really didn’t know Emily all that well on a personal level. She wasn’t convinced Emily would go so far as to search for her: like Isabel had, Emily would likely just suspect Erin had run off with a boy and could take days to return.
But Erin was not willing to crush Isabel’s hope in Emily. “Yeah, maybe she’ll be able to find us, and everything will be okay.”
“I don’t know …” Isabel responded. “I hope so.” She squeezed Erin’s hand tighter as a few more tears rolled down her cheek.
“Come on,” Erin said, “you’ve gotta keep it together. Tell me what happened next—how’d you get here?”
“Okay,” Isabel let out a few short breaths to regain her composure. “So this morning I was starting to get pretty worried because it’s totally not like you to just run off without letting me know, especially when we’re at the beach house.”
This was true: Erin was practically inseparable from Isabel during these summer months. They would spend nearly every day at the beach, then laze around Isabel’s house or Erin’s parents’ beach house, then hit the club scene at night.
“So after a few hours of waiting for you to call, I decided to go back to the beach. I don’t really know why; I mean, why would you go back there and not call me? But I guess I figured it was as good a place to start as any. So I went down by where we were on the beach and walked around a little. It’s cloudy today so there weren’t many people, but of course I didn’t see you anywhere. After a while it started to seem like a waste of time, so I decided to give up. I went back to the boardwalk to get more Dippin’ Dots, then went back to my car.”
“You and your Dippin’ Dots,” Erin interrupted, smiling.
“Hah, yeah, well I was hungry. Anyway, I had some errands to do, so I got in my car—bad idea, I’ll tell you why in a minute—and then I went the gas station and bank and stuff. When I got home. I was still frustrated from not hearing from you, so I hopped in the shower. Come to think of it, I’m glad I did because I was fucking gross. I hadn’t showered since yesterday morning, and we were at the beach all day.”
“Isabel, just tell me what happened!” Erin grabbed Isabel’s hand with her other.
“Sorry, sorry. It was after I got out of the shower: I went to my room and started getting dressed, and I don’t really remember how everything happened, but I heard a man’s voice and then I saw him and oh god …” Isabel began sobbing again.
Erin scooted closer and laid her head on her friend’s pale shoulder, gripping her hand tightly. “Shh, Isabel, it’s okay. You’re with me now; they’re not going to hurt you.”
“H-How do you know?” Isabel cried, “oh god, Erin, look at you!”
For the first time Isabel could see Erin in the light. Erin’s oldest bruises had turned sickly shades of blue and yellow; and the cuts and scrapes all over her arms, legs, and hips were beginning to scab over.