I really wanted to keep updating today, so here you go!


"OH MY GOD I'M CALLING 911!" Maia's mom practically screamed. She whipped out her cellphone and starting dialing the number.

"No!" Markus grabbed the phone from her and hit the cancel button. "No. Maia said not to come after her, so what would calling the police do? Mom, you stay here in case she comes back, and some of us will go looking for her, okay? I think I might know where she is, anyway."

I didn't sit down, just stood where I was at the foot of the stairs. "I'll go with you," I said. Mark nodded, then looked at everybody else.

"You guys stay here. Mom needs to be taken care of, or I swear to god she'll lose it." When their mother started protesting, Mark shut her up. "No, you will. Look, it'll be dad all over again, and we can't let that happen. She's probably alone, and scared, and if everybody comes at once, Maia'll just keep running."

With everything decided, I pulled on my jacket and Markus and I got into my car.

"Where to?" I asked.

Markus gave me the directions to some town North of where we were. "We used to live there," he explained as I drove through the dark streets, my headlights gently lighting up the area in front of is in a strange, unnatural orange light. It had started raining about an hour and a half ago, which was convenient since I couldn't see half a yard in front of me as it was! "I'd explain to you what this is all about, but I think Maia'd rather do it. It effected her way more than it did anyone else in our family, because she had more in common with him. I'm going to shut-up now. When we find her, we'll need to have thought of something to tell her."

We drove along in silence for about half an hour, the windshield wipers making a steady beat. A steady rythym in the background of the orchestra that was life. The rain pounded gently on the roof of my car, and Markus stared out the window, probably looking for his sister. I felt as though something huge had filled up my gut, and then realized it was worry and sadness at the same time. Sad that Maaia never wanted to see us again. Worred because she was probably lost, and alone, and terrified.

"Stop." Markus finally said the magic word, and I pulled over to the curb, pulling my hood up and stepping lightly out of the car. We were on a long street with resteraunts and shops lining the edges. An apartment building rose up between a cute little bakery and a book shop. It looked beautiful, but in the rain, everything was dyed a different shade of gray. The sight left me feeling somewhat depressed.

Markus and I walked along the street a little ways, looking for anybody who might have seen Maia. Too bad everybody was inside right now. After about fifteen minutes of walking, we finally came to a bridge. A soft sniffling sound could be heard just over the light sound of rain hitting the pavement. Somebody was singing.

It sounded like they were singing happy birthday to themself. I squinted through the rain and, looking beneath the bridge, saw a little figure huddled near the other end. It was shaking, and I walked gingerly over.

Maia's hair was soaking wet and plastered to her face with tears. She was muddy and wet, and looked as though she'd been splashed by a few cars. She didn't even look up when I approached, but her singing ceased and she started crying a little harder into her knees. I sat down next to her, my back pressed against the cold concrete of the bridge, and put my arm around the poor, shaking girl. Maia still didn't look up. Not until I spoke.

"Maia, are you alright?"

She lifted her head slowly to look at me, her brown eyes big with fat tears welling up in them. She shook her head, no.

"Well, can you tell me what's wrong?"

At this, the tears broke free from Maia's eyes and rolled down her cheeks, and her body started shaking again. She leaned in to me and rested her head on my shoulder, crying into my jacket. "I'm sorry," she choked out, her words barely audible, even less so than a whisper. "Mitch, I am so, so sorry."

I wrapped my other arm around her and held her close to me as another car sped by. The person in the passenger seat rolled his eyes at us as though we were homeless people, so I flipped him off. Some people just didn't understand.

After a minute of us just hugging, Maia finally spoke again. "It started when I was nine." Her voice was shaky, and she was still crying, but it was her voice. "He loved us so much. He would take us everywhere, my father would. Got us everything we ever wanted. And then one day my mom got a phone call. He'd gone to the hospital for a check-up, and they'd given him a scan, and they'd found really progressed cancer in his lungs. We had no idea why we hadn't noticed anything going on with his lungs. Maybe the signs were there. Now, I just don't know. We tried everything, the doctors did their best, but in the end, he lost the fight. That's why I came here. He died here, Mitch. My father died here, and my mother moved away so she didn't have to deal with the pain.

"When I turned fifteen, I don't really remember what happened, just that my mom had rushed me to the hospital, and they found out I had a problem. The doctors told me we could try everything to keep me alive. I've been doing great so far, but breast cancer is really hard to live with, you know? That's what Liz and Mark call my disability. It's also why nobody talks about death around me. They act as though it'll kill me or something. Ironic, am I right? But anyways, tonight, I just couldn't take it anymore. I've spent my entire life facing everything - every problem, every sickness, every death - head-on and dealing with it unlke other people. Noow it was my turn to run away from my problems. I just wanted to be able to do that. Just once. I didn't mean to hurt anybody. I didn't know what I was saying. I guess I thought after I ran away you guys'd never want to speak to me again."

At this, Maia broke down into even more sobs, and finally, Markus came over and sat down on the other side of his sister. "We need to go in someplace," he told us. "It's dark, and who knows who's out this late at night? Come on, Maia, we don't have to go home. Just inside, okay?"

Maia nodded, and I helped her stand up. Then we managed to walk into a little cafe. The owner looked at us suspiciously, but didn't object when we sat down at a table. Maia and I sat in one booth, her head still buried in my shoulder, Markus across from us. He ordered us three coffees, decaf for us and black for Maia, who looked like she needed it. "Let's play a game," I told her. "I'll tell you a day, and you tell me awesome things about it, okay?"

She nodded numbly. "MineCon."

"I met you guys," she whispered, her voice still shaking. By now Maia was hiccuping. "We played truth or dare. 100 Questions."

"That's good," I told her gently. "Okay, how about today?"

She laughed a little bit, then hiccuped. "Clar climbed in through the window," she told me. "20 Questions was fun. I got to show off my Eddsworld book to Sarah."

"See, you're getting the hang of it! How about the day we all went to the waterpark?"

"I screamed my head off on that watercoaster," she said quietly. "And I had a lot of fun playing tag in the wave-pool. Quentin was so funny." She said something else, but I didn't quite catch it. Something about me in her driveway. Though I hadn't heard Maia's entire thought, I was pretty sure what she was reffering to, but I asked anyway.

"Hmm?"

"I said, you kissed me."

Both of us were silent. The owner brought us our coffees, and Markus paid him. "Free for the girl," he said. "Looks like she's been through a lot." And with that, the owner went back to cleaning off his countertop the way they always do in diners in the movies.

Maia took a sip of her coffee, still leaning into my shoulder. "I want to go home," she whispered.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay," Maia responded.

"Okay," I echoed.

"You read the book."

"Yeah. And I cried my eyes out, too. Like Quentin said, it was like a twelve for me. You know what else I leanred?"

"What?"

"That 'some infinities are bigger than other infinities' and that my love for you right now is a pretty big infinity."

She just stared down at her coffee, silent. "I want to see his grave."

We left the coffee shop as she storm was clearing up. The sky was clear now, revealing a dark night sky. Stars twinkled in and out of existence as we walked down a street and through a gate into the cemetery. I followed Maia, since she knew where she was going, until we came across a small headstone with the name Rufus Reynolds Hamperton carved into it. Maia knelt down on the soil in front of his and just stared. Then she reached into her jacket pocket, produced a piece of folded up paper, and dug a small hold with her hands, burying the note inside. Before she stood up, I thought I heard Maia whisper, 'I love you, daddy,' but I wasn't entirely sure.

We stood there for another good few minutes before Maia took my hand and leaned into my shoulder. "Let's go home."

I said okay, and we walked back to my car. Maia lay down in the back seat, still buckled, and closed her eyes. Markus rode shotgun with me as the driver, and we set off back to Maia's house. When I pulled pu into the driveway, Maia shook her head.

"I can't face my mom," she whispered. "Not yet."

So Markus and I drove Maia back to the LA house where nobody else was because they'd all decided to stay at Maia's with her mom and help her. For some reason, Markus always had a bag of pajamas and extra clothes on him, but since Maia didn't, I just gave her a pair of my boxers and on old t-shirt that was too big for her to wear. Then I got her a nice pillow and some fluffy blankets, and she crashed on the couch. She was out within a few minutes. Markus slept on another couch.

Before I went to bed myself, I bent down and kissed Maia's forehead. "I love you," I whispered.

As I walked back to my room, I thought I heard a muffle 'I love you, too.'