RAGE

Chapter Thirteen – Knife Blood Nightmare

"When was the last time you saw him?" I am firing questions.

"Two hours ago," says Jack. "Me and him was sellin' together and then he finished up and said he was gonna go home."

"And?"

"He told me before he left this morning that he'd be back about four hours ago now," says Sarah.

"We came here when he was an hour late," adds Les.

"We thought maybe he was doin' somethin' and he'd come back here, but he didn't," says Jack.

"Les and I even went back home, but he still isn't there," Sarah says.

"So," I say, facing the truth. "So, he's been missing for four hours, and not one of you thought that I might find that to be valuable information?"

"What are you gonna do?" Jack explodes. "Go lookin' for him? Huh?"

"Maybe I just wanted to know!" I scream. "Stop jumpin' to conclusions!"

Darkness is falling around us. "Come on," says Jack. "He can take care of himself. Let's all go get some sleep…"

Uncomfortably we all move back into our beds. It seems that morning was just a few short hours ago and everything was different.

A plan is forming in my head. I will wait until they are all sleeping. Then I will leave through a window, and I will find him.

It takes hours for all of the newsies' breathing to become slow and sleepy. I lay in bed, jumping at every noise, and wait for them all to fall asleep. Then, when I am sure that they have, I creep quietly from my bed and pry open a window.

I swing my feet onto the ledge and jump down. It isn't a long drop. I stand and look around.

It's New York City, so the streets are far from empty but they have cleared from what they are like during the day, and the people that are still flooding it give me a good cover.

The first place I go is the Delancey home. We've all been here quite a few times, and luckily, I know just where the brothers' bedroom window is. Don't ask me how, but I'll tell you that it involved rope and a few dozen rotten eggs.

I use the windowsills to scale the wall to their room and when I reach the window, I peer into it, balancing myself on the sill and making sure that I am unseen.

There are two beds in the room and both the Delancey brothers are in them. Mentally, I retrace my thoughts. So it wasn't the Delanceys, which means that he must have gone somewhere…to do who-knows-what.

I drop back down the wall, this time not using quite as much care and slink into the shadows that surround the house. When I am back on the street I try to think of all the places that he might go.

The Bridge. I break out into a sprint, desperate to get there before something happened. If somebody had dropped himself off of the Brooklyn Bridge, surely we'd have heard about it, right?

The thought strikes me that maybe we wouldn't hear about it until tomorrow's headline. When I am standing at the foot of the Bridge, it looms at me out of the darkness, daunting, as if daring me to creep any closer, to find out what I don't want to know anyway.

I step onto it and begin to walk. It takes me awhile to walk across it on a good day, but now, with my mind clouded with anxiety, each step seems to take me longer. It is as if my own body is turning on me, purposely taking forever to cross the bridge, taking me step by step closer to either the worst realization or the totally wrong direction.

I am about to give up when I see it: the body laying face-down on the side of the Bridge, almost entirely obscured by the veil of darkness and night.

His arms are flung above his head where he lays sprawled and as I approach the figure, every one of my cells is praying that it is nobody I know.

I hit my knees as I come nearer the figure and lay a hand on his back. It is still warm but as I measure his breaths they are shallow and ragged. I will myself not to look at his head but I do anyway.

There are midnight-brown curls surrounded by the halo of sidewalk. His face is turned to the side and his face is absolutely pallid, absolutely ghostly, and absolutely David.

It is then, as I tear my eyes away from his transfixing angel's face, that I notice the blood pooled around his wrist.

~Author's Note:

Thanks for the reviews, lovers! Please continue to R&R.

Cailain Baire Conlon: hehe. Good prediction. mm suspense!

Myst S.: haha. I know how you feel; I definitely love Blink, and part of me wishes she would choose him over Davey…but, alas…

lovelovelove, Julianna.~