Hey guys. I'm here. Blame my sister. She took me to a write in and i almost cried when i saw all the amazing people reviewing my story. I used the extra few hours to write up a new first chapter. Thank you so much to the people who are still here. I'm leaving the old story behind, removing the author notes, and continuing on from here, as quick as i can with school as it is. This is just what i managed at the write-in, but I hope to write more in the future.

As always, I don't own anything.

(and I'm also so sorry for making you guys wait so long.)

And now, the much anticipated first chapter of Wanderlust, a story formerly called Lost and Found


Chapter 1

Separated


"Where are we going?"

When the initial shock of her father's abrupt announcement had worn off, she had become an endless river of questions, pestering her father constantly.

"Someplace really cool," He smiled, wrapping a large, strong hand on her shoulder, "and it'll be just you and me, 'kay?" She grinned up at him eagerly. Her dad had spent a lot of time with her brother in the weeks before and she hadn't bothered to contain the enthusiasm that it was her turn.

As she had started to get to go, a nagging feeling of wrongness had grown at the bottom of her throat. If they left within the time her father had planned, Jack wouldn't arrive home in time for her to say her goodbyes. Even as the thought formed, she cast it aside in favor of feeling bitter over her brother's apparent evolution from 'kiddo' to 'little man' in her father's eyes. Her jealously would prove to be a source of grim irony that she would mull over for a long time in the future. It may have started when her father had insisted that she stay behind from 'take your child to work day' at the hospital, saying that she was too young to not get in the way of her mother's work. Often would she consider how things would have changed if she had insisted that they wait for her brother to get home.

Eventually, she abandoned her bitter thoughts in favor of her endless curiosity, she imagined all the wonderful things her father might have planned for them to do together. She particularly liked the idea of camping with her father, having never seen trees of that multitude before. As she packed, she entertained countless ideas of what she would be doing, hopping from one to the other with speed only a child could have.

She practically threw her closet in the bag before running down the stairs and to the car. She'd fidgeted with her seatbelt for a moment before her father had come out, thrown his bags into the car and quickly peeled out of the driveway.

Startled by her father's apparently sudden mood shift, she had been struck silent. Though, at the time that this was occuring, it had been two years since the last incident, she still had shuddered to think of the time her father had sudden and intensely violent mood swings. It had lasted for about a year before they stopped, as suddenly and completely as they had come. He promised them he had recovered and that he was very sorry and returned to the kind and caring man he was, even lessening his work hours to spend more time home with his family.

Still, even as she was silent, she fantasized about how wonderful their trip was going to be. Maybe it was even a distraction. Turns out, her father wasn't very talkative at the time either and they spent the next three hours with only the radio keeping the silence from being all consuming. Eventually, desert broke way to cities and then rural areas.

Jack

It was two weeks before Jack would eat anything without his mother's constant prompting and it was five before he could look at the empty bed in his room without crying. He had adamantly refused to let any police into the room, but in the end he couldn't stop them from going through her things for clues about her disappearance. While he had originally refused to accept the theories that his sister and father had left them on their own free will, he had steadily became less aggressivewhenever someone said his father had simply up and left with his sister.

Less aggressive, as in he didn't break any of Vince's bones this time.

Too badly.

Jack barely glanced up at his mother when she had entered the room, phone in hand.

It was going to be a long day.