"Gary, Gary! Where are you?"

Fourteen-year-old Luan Loud had finally ended up in the attic. It was the last place she had left to look. Raising her arm and pulling back the sleeve of her tuxedo, she peered down at her watch.

"Fifteen minutes…" she thought.

"Gary, are you up here?" she called, her irritation evident in her tone.

"This is not like Gary at all."

"Hey."

"EEP!" Luan jumped about a foot in the air at the sudden and somewhat creepy voice coming to her right.

Looking over, she found her eight-year-old sister Lucy standing there. She was the goth of the large Loud family.

"Funny, she wasn't there a second ago…" she thought, aloud she said. "Have you seen Gary?"

Normally, she would have shot off a quick pun at her sister for startling her, but she had neither the time nor the patience at that moment. She was scheduled to be performing her magic act at a birthday party in fifteen minutes and her white rabbit, Gary, had suddenly gone missing…from the house she was to be performing at.

"No, I have not," Lucy responded, dryly. "I have been up here all day, working on my poetry."

"This is the last place for me to search, could you help me?"

"Of course."

The two girls searched every nook and cranny in the small attic, but there was no sign of the rabbit.

Luan checked her watch again. Ten more minutes until show time. Panic began to twist around in her stomach, threatening to overflow. Tears began welling up in her eyes.

"He-he's never done this before. I don't understa-"

"Luan? Luan are you here?" Came Lincoln's voice from the second floor.

Luan ran down the attic stairs to the second floor hallway.

"I'm here! I'm looking…"

She stopped speaking when she spotted Gary curled up in Lincoln's arms. The boy looked concerned.

"Gary, where on earth have you been," Luan cried, taking the rabbit into her arms. "It's time for the show! Why are you shaking?"

The small rabbit was quaking in her arms and had a terrified look on his cute little face. This was not like him at all.

"I found him by the garage, behind a garbage can," Lincoln said. "It took a lot of coaxing to get him to come out. He was like this when I found him. Do you know what happened?"

"I don't."

Luan explained that she had put him in his carrier and loaded him onto her cart along with the rest of her equipment. He had been present inside the carrier when they had arrived at the party host's house and she had left him in the room that the family had let her use to change. She hadn't noticed him missing until she had finished setting up and was changing into her costume. She hadn't checked on him when she entered the room, she had no reason to at the time.

Once she had found him missing she had searched the whole house, with the help of the family's cleaning ladies and her entire route she had used to get to the birthday house, following it back to her home. Then, she had searched the house from bottom to top, finally ending up in the attic.

"He should have been alone the whole time," she said. "I have to go, I'm gonna be late."

Luan hurried out the front door and back towards the birthday party. Once Gary realized that they were headed back, he began to kick and struggle in an attempt to get away.

"Gary! What has gotten into you? Hey, it's alright!"

She stroked him gently on is head and ears, cradling him to her chest. He stopped struggling.

"Gary, it's alright. We are just doing the same act we always do together. Why are you so scared?"

Gary looked intently at the house the birthday party was being held at. It was a large colonial and in a spendy part of Royal Oaks, but it wasn't that far away from the Loud house. The house was decorated on the frount with balloons and streamers and the faint sound of pop music could be heard wafting from the backyard.

Luan looked from her rabbit to the house and back again.

"Do you not like it at this house?"

Gary looked at her intently and wiggled his nose.

"There's no reason to be afraid. It's just the Cranes. Sure they are a bit hoity-toity, but they seem alright to me. I've already made the commitment to be here, so we'll just have to get it over with, OK?"

Luan stepped up to the front door and walked inside. They were just in time.

"You don't have to worry, Gary. Nothing bad is going to happen."