After dialing and receiving several frantic calls, it became clear to Jake that nobody had any idea where Alexa had gone. No one had seen her since the previous night. After hearing that Jake had not the slightest clue regarding her whereabouts, her parents filed a missing persons report.
Nobody had mentioned that Alexa had not left the party alone. Corinne had followed her, having been a close friend of Alexa's for years and knowing that she was going to need somebody to talk to after she had calmed down.
It just so happened that Corinne's parents were away that week at some medical conference in Philadelphia and were completely unaware that their daughter was missing.
Natalie, who was Corinne's neighbor across the street, had noticed that she had not returned home, but did not think of much of it until she heard that Alexa was missing. She had seen the two leave the party, but she was unaware she was innocently involved in the argument.
The next morning, Jake was asked by a police officer for a descriptions of both Alexa and Corrine as well as his knowledge of their final whereabouts as he was one of the last people to have seen the two. From her demeanor, it was obvious that the officer had questioned many a witness many times before.
"So how tall is Alexa?" she asked, pen and paper in hand.
"Uh, about five one-five two," he replied, surprised that he remembered such a precise statistic.
"And Corinne?"
"She's about the same."
"And when was the last time you saw either one of them?"
"I saw them both as they left a party two nights ago," he answered.
"And you haven't heard from either one since?""
"News flash, lady," Jake thought to himself, "If I had heard from either one of them since, we wouldn't be doing this!"
"No," he responded, "no, I haven't heard from either one of them."
She wrote this down, curiously taking at least thirty seconds to down a one word answer.
"We'll do our best to find them," she assured him.
"Thank you," he said, standing up and shaking her outstretched hand.
She left, exiting through the front door. He laid back on the couch, folding his arms over his chest. He was so worried about both Alexa and Corinne.
He tried to remember what the last thing he had said to Alexa had been. Then, it clicked. The last things he had said to her: "you're such a brat" and "I would rather spend an hour with Natalie when she's upset about breaking up with her boyfriend than a few minutes with you!". In the course of a few hours, he had gone from feeling angry to worried to ashamed.
Eventually he dozed off, the silence, once again, lulling him to sleep.