Chapter 9 Soundtrack:

Adele – Hometown Glory

Damien Rice – Cold Water

Linkin Park – Leave Out All the Rest

Susanne Sundfør – White Foxes

CHAPTER 9: MISSING

Two months later.

I was driving down the familiar roads, surrounded by the green forest on each side; in the town I'd once called home – a word I rarely used.

Forks. It still looked just as it had when I'd left it, only now it was painted white and red with the old and worn posters that made my dead heart burn with pain and desperation. The red had started to fade in the words "MISSING PERSON" written above a picture of Bella Swan. Thinking about what the fading of the color meant made me speed up.

I thought back to the events that had made me come back there, to a place I'd promised my brother I'd never return to.

I had been in Denali, visiting the coven that lived there. I'd been out in the snow with Jasper, enjoying the great sight of the stars on the black sky. I hadn't tried to see into Bella's future since we'd left, as promised. Sometimes I would get involuntary glimpses of her running in a forest or driving to school, but it was never anything significant. A small part of me almost wished I'd see something that would give me a reason to go back… until the day came when exactly that happened.

I had decided to cheat. What harm will it do to just check in on her, make sure she's okay, I'd thought to myself. I closed my eyes and focused in on her, waiting for a vision. Nothing came. I concentrated harder, something I rarely had to do, but still nothing came. "What's wrong?" Jasper had asked me, looking at me with concerned eyes as he took in my expression. "I can't see Bella's future." He had sighed with a stated expression. "Alice, you promised you wouldn't look into her future anymore."

"You don't get it, I can't see her future," I said, my voice panicked. "I can't see anything." He furrowed his brows in worry as he grasped the meaning of my words. "Try Charlie," he said. I closed my eyes and concentrated again.

The visions came, one by one. Charlie in the grocery store, buying pizza. Charlie at home, watching TV and falling asleep on the couch. Charlie on his way to work, tears filling his eyes and his face twisted in sadness as he drove past… My eyes shot open and the air escaped my lungs with a whoosh. "Alice? What did you see?" But I just shook my head, trying to will it not to be true. Jasper's hands were holding my shoulders and giving me support, something my strong body had never needed before. "Missing person-posters. I saw missing person-posters."

And so I was back in Forks. I didn't know exactly for what, maybe to help Charlie look for her or to console him somehow, although I doubted my presence would be any comfort to him. I thought about Edward and wondered what to say to him. I'd have to tell him. He would find out the moment he got a chance to hear my thoughts anyways, and he'd be angry with me for not telling him sooner.

He'll spend the rest of his existence looking for her. My heart ached in pain.

I turned into the familiar driveway and stopped the car. I saw Charlie's face peek out the window, and his eyes widened in surprise. I tried to compose my face as I listened to his footsteps walking towards the front door. I got out of the car as he opened it, and when he saw my face his features relaxed and became friendlier. Ah, you thought it was Edward.

The anguish I felt was almost unbearable as I looked into his blood-shot and dead eyes. I walked over to him and wrapped my arms around his body, much thinner than it had been the last time I'd seen him. "I saw the posters," I whispered. He hugged me back then, and his face fell down on my shoulders. I felt him slightly shake, silently crying.

After a moment he sniffed and pulled back, looking down on the ground and using his sleeve to dry away the tears. Then he stepped back and motioned for me to come inside.

I went into the kitchen and sat down by the table. I could just barely smell her familiar scent, but it was starting to fade away. My insides felt like they were burning. "How long?" I asked when he sat down in the chair opposite mine. He took a while to answer, swallowing a few times. "Two months," he whispered. My stomach twisted as his words added more to the pain that was already tearing me apart. We never should have left, I thought and closed my eyes, trying not to break down. I needed to be strong for Charlie.

"Where was she last seen?" I asked, hoping my questions weren't too hard for him to bear. "I was the last one who saw her… She was here," he said, looking out the window. "We were in the driveway, I had just come home from work and she was on her way to her truck." He swallowed again, and I could hear the lump in his throat in the way he slightly choked on the words. "Do you know where she was going?" I asked. I was sure that he'd already answered these questions a hundred times before, but I needed to hear the answers. "She was just going for a run. She said something about a trail she'd found, in the woods." It sounded weird to me that Bella would go running in the forest. I remembered the involuntary visions I'd had of her, doing exactly that, but in none of the real memories I had of her had she said anything about running. I'd always seen her as an indoor-person.

"Was that normal for her, to look for trails and go running?" I asked. "Yeah, I think it was some sort of therapy for her," Charlie answered, his voice a bit steadier now that we weren't talking about something directly connected to her disappearance. Therapy, I thought to myself. I had hoped Bella would recover fast from the breakup, but if she needed therapy then maybe my prayers hadn't been answered. "Was she very upset after we left, Charlie?" I asked, fearing his answer. He nodded and his eyes filled with tears again. "I'm sorry…" I whispered, feeling impossibly worse. "It's not your fault," he said, obviously blaming someone else. "Edward was very sorry to leave Bella," I started, but he looked up at me then, his eyes fierce, and I didn't need to read minds to know what he was thinking. His eyes said it very clearly: don't you even dare… I shut my mouth and nodded.

"Are there any clues at all?" I asked after letting him calm down. "Some hikers found her truck. We searched the forests nearby for days, but we never found anything." No leads, I thought to myself, feeling just as desperate as Charlie looked.

"There's another… lead," his voice grew angry on the latter word, " but I'm not buying it."

"What lead?" I asked, feeling hopeful for the first time. "Bella and Jacob, a boy who lives down in La Push, were close friends. She was doing a lot better after they started hanging out," I felt my stomach twist a little when I realized what that meant, that she hadn't been doing very good up until then, "and apparently he ran away from home the same day Bella went missing." I felt the hope expand in my chest. If I'd had a pulse, it would've sped up. "Billy, that's his father, says that Bella probably went with him, but… when I ask him questions about it, he seems… almost secretive. I can't make sense of it." I tried to imagine Bella running away with a friend, leaving Charlie behind with no answers. I couldn't make sense of it either.

"And she was in her running tights. She didn't have a bag with her or anything. She just looked like she was going for a run, like she did every day." He sounded so lost, like he'd been thinking it through over and over again for two months, which I guessed that he had, trying to come up with answers. "Is anything missing from her room, or…?" He shook his head. "No. Even her toothbrush is still in its usual spot. I checked her bank account too, but there have been no withdrawals." I nodded and felt the hope drain away.

I looked at Charlie's face, with his dark and sad eyes. He looked exhausted. Bella would never leave him like this, not the Bella I knew. I thought about the boy from La Push, Jacob, and what Charlie had said about his father seeming secretive. I tried to come up with a possible explanation, but I couldn't. I tried very hard not to think the torturing thought that would make all speculation futile, but I couldn't hold it back for long. And on top of that, I can't see her future anymore. I knew very well that there was more to it than just teenage rebellion.

"We will find out what happened. I'll do everything I can to help you find her." I lent over the table and grabbed his hand, hoping my cold and hard one could offer him some comfort. He didn't even seem to notice.

We sat like that in silence for a while. His eyes were distant as he looked out the window. I tried very hard not to imagine what might have happened to her in that forest, but the possibilities still ran through my mind, and I felt like I grew colder with each one.

Kidnapped. Murdered. Raped and murdered. Attacked by a bear. Fell down and hit her head.

All the possibilities I could imagine ended in her death.

I stayed with Charlie, trying to help him cope with the loss and pain, and then sometimes speculating with him, going through all the details over and over again, depending on his mood. I was probably trying to postpone the inevitable conversation with Edward. For the very first time, I was glad that he rarely called.

He made up the couch for me; something he didn't know was completely pointless. Neither of us suggested that I sleep in Bella's room.

The first night staying there, I snuck into her room after Charlie had fallen asleep. It was unusually tidy, and I wondered if Charlie had cleaned it. I thin layer of dust covered the floor, and there were no footsteps in it, so I came to the conclusion that he probably hadn't been in there in weeks.

I breathed in, and her scent still lingered. It was stronger there than in the rest of the house. "Bella," I whispered as I closed my eyes, picturing her face and breathing in her scent as I tried to force a vision of her to appear. Nothing came.

I looked through all of her stuff, putting everything back exactly where I had found it, trying to find something that could give me answers. When I sat down on her bed, the air that blew up around my face made me wrinkle my nose. It was Bella's scent mixed with something else… like the smell of wet dog, only worse. I furrowed my brows, trying to make sense of it. I thought about asking Charlie if they'd had a dog in the house, maybe watching it for a neighbor on vacation, but thought better of it. He would wonder why I'd asked, and I couldn't think of any reasonable explanation.

I stayed on her bed as I dialed Jasper's number. I needed to hear his voice. I told him every detail of what had happened since I got there, including everything Charlie had told me. He didn't have any possible explanations either.

A few days later I asked Charlie to give me directions to where Bella's truck had been found. "Alice, you're not going to go looking for clues there, are you? I don't want you running around in that forest." I had read in a newspaper earlier that people were reporting to the police about seeing big bears in the woods, so I knew what he was thinking. Neither of us had spoken the possibility that that might have been what happened to Bella. It was painful enough just thinking it. "No, of course not. I'm just wondering in case it's nearby something else. Maybe she never went into the forest at all," I lied. "They found her truck in a parking lot just below the trailhead where the one-ten ends. There's nothing around there in a walking distance but the trails," he said in a dead voice.

He wasn't in the mood for my questions today.

Some days he would desperately be going through every detail of the days before she went missing, trying to think of something that could be a clue, and then other days he would surrender to his grief and go into a depressed and non-responsive state. I was no different.

But that day I was determined to keep looking for answers. I wanted to be active, because the opposite felt like giving up, and giving up meant accepting that she was just gone. When he fell asleep later in the evening, I snuck out of the house and ran the directions he'd given me, afraid the engine of the car might wake him up.

I spent 7 hours running through one forest after another, again and again, but there was nothing there to be found, smelled or heard. I hunted down some deer before I started the run back, killing two birds with one stone.

When I got to Charlie's house, I heard him breathing and slightly shifting his weight on a chair in the kitchen. Damn it. I quickly made up an excuse and walked in.

"Charlie?" I asked in a low voice as I passed the kitchen door, pretending that I'd just spotted him there. He still jumped up with wide eyes, and I heard his heartbeat speed up. "Alice? Where were you! I woke up, and you were gone, I –" I quickly interrupted him, "I was just outside talking on the phone. My dad called to check in on me, and I didn't want to wake you by talking inside the house, so I stepped outside." I walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Calm down, Charlie, everything's okay." I saw his jaw tighten and he nodded stiffly and sat back down, looking exhausted as usual.

I was feeling guiltier and guiltier for not calling Edward, and a couple of days later I was working myself up to make the call when I heard Charlie gasp outside the house. I ran to the front door at full speed. "What's wrong?" I asked, panicked. He was on his knees by the mailbox with his back to me, holding something in his hands. I walked slowly over to him; scared of what I would see when I peeked over his shoulder. As soon as the letter in his hand became visible, it felt like my heart swelled up and was about to explode with all the emotions I felt.

Dad,

I am so sorry, you can't imagine how sorry, for what I've put you through. Please believe me when I say that I never wanted to leave you.

I probably shouldn't have sent you this letter, as I can't explain to you why I had to disappear, but I couldn't live with the guilt of leaving you without any answers. I will never forgive myself for putting you through this.

Something happened, and I can't tell you what, but I had to leave. Jacob came with me. Please believe me when I say that I didn't have a choice. I'm trying to be as honest as I can, but I realize it must seem like I'm doing the opposite.

I promise you that this won't be my last letter.

I just want you to know that I'm safe and that I love you. I miss you terribly, dad.

Love, Bella.

I read the letter twice, even though it was pointless. My memory was flawlessly eidetic. I crouched down next to Charlie and placed my hand on his shoulder. He was still reading the letter, probably for the third time, with a shocked expression. "This is good news, Charlie. She's safe." He leaned back on his heels and let his hands fall into his lap, his eyes distant. "She's safe," he mouthed, unable to find his voice. Then his face suddenly twisted, and he started crying. It was tears of relief.

A few hours later, when the shock had worn off, we were sitting in the living room, back to speculating. "What could she possibly have gotten herself into that made her think she had to leave?" Charlie asked, his voice tired and worn. "I don't know… Maybe she's lying to cover up for Jacob? Maybe he got into trouble, and he doesn't want his father to know about it, or…" But it stopped there. I didn't really believe it. Bella was definitely the kind of person who would put herself on line to protect someone she loved, but never if it would hurt Charlie this way. She must really have meant what she said… But what could possibly have happened to her that required her to stay away…

When Charlie finally fell asleep in the early morning hours, I knew what I had to do.

I dialed Edward's number, hoping he wouldn't pick up. Of course, I wasn't that lucky. "Hello." His voice was impatient, but otherwise emotionless. No use beating around the bush, I thought. "Edward you need to come back to Forks." I felt my face twist in pain, but tried to push it back. He was silent for half a second. "What? Alice, where are you?" I hated myself for being the one who had to tell him. "Edward, Bella's missing." Silence. Then I heard something made of glass smash into a surface and land on a floor in a thousand little pieces. I mentally winced as I waited for his response.

"Tell me everything," he said, his voice fierce and almost animalistic. I could hear footsteps and doors opening and closing. He was already on his way. I explained everything, so fast it would've been inaudible for human ears. When I was done, I could hear the sound of a car engine in the background. "See you soon," he said, and then he hung up.

I sat completely still for hours, waiting for Charlie to wake up. I heard his alarm go off at 7 in the morning, then his groan as he woke up, probably still exhausted. When he came down the stairs I pretended to still be asleep on the couch. I couldn't face him, I didn't know if I'd be able to keep my face from showing the pain and dread I felt.

I listened to him as he drank his coffee and ate his breakfast, went up to shower and brush his teeth, and then as he changed into his uniform and left the house to go to work. When I heard him pull out of the driveway, I stayed motionless. There wasn't really anything to do but wait.

37 minutes later, I heard the sound of an engine roaring in protest as it was pushed to its limits, and then tires squealing as the car turned up the driveway and came to a sudden stop.

Time stopped. Everything went quiet.

I got up and walked slowly towards the front door, and when I opened it all I saw was my brother's face through the windshield, his eyes burning in pain as he looked up at the big white house.