Guys, I updated! It didn't take me a year to write another chapter!
Jesse didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to react. His sister was running. For reasons he didn't know or could not explain, his little sister felt the need to run away from him and from their family. He was completely baffled by this, standing on the sidewalk of a New York City street.
He was slow to react, pulling out his phone from his pocket and dialing his older brother. He couldn't call his father, since he was driving and would put it on speaker phone, and he couldn't call Marley or Jonathan because they would freak out.
"Where did you go?" James asked upon answering the phone. "We don't see you guys anywhere."
"James." He panted into the phone. "I'm going to tell you something, and I need you to not freak out."
His older brother could sense the tension in his voice because he coughed, clearing his throat. "Yeah, what man?" He said into the phone, trying to keep it casual for the other listeners in the car. Jonathan had one earbud in, and Marley was spacing out, but that was bound to change in the near future.
"Rachel ran off. She took off in a sprint. And I lost her. I'm standing in front of Mom's theatre. She ran right past it."
There was a brief silence on the other side of the line that was soon followed by James's breathing. "You should go find her, and I will stick with Dad."
"Mom'll freak out, though." Jesse immediately replied, thinking of the times when he had seen his mother upset. So many times had he, as a young child, walked into a room to find his mother staring into the space, or crying silently. He would always ask her what was wrong, and she would always respond that it was nothing. But it was never nothing. If they lost Rachel, if god forbid that something happened to Rachel, then what would they do with themselves? What would Jesse do? This was all his fault...
"Why would she run, though? That doesn't make sense." James seemed to be saying, although Jesse was only half listening by that point. He muttered something along the lines of 'I'm going to see Mom.' before ending the call
Jesse ran across the street, avoiding oncoming traffic, towards the stage door. The crowds were crazy, pestering the actors. If it had been any other time, Jesse would probably be fan-girling madly. He spotted his mother smiling at a younger fan and taking a selfie with them. He tried to cross the gate, but security stopped him.
"That's my mother!" Jesse screamed as a big burly man held him back.
"Yeah, heard that one before." he chuckled, as Shelby and the others made their way back into the theater.
"Mom!" Jesse screamed. Shelby immediately turned around at the sound of her son's voice. She spotted him in the grasp of the man and said to put him down. "Told you she was my mother." He muttered, fixing his shirt. His mother, on the hand, immediately ran over to him.
"Jesse! What are you doing here?" She was clearly surprised by his appearance, as he looked winded. He panted, not being able to make out the words. She ushered him inside and into her dressing room. "Are you alright?"
At that exact moment, Jesse's father busted through the door. He looked mildly shocked. The two men exchanged eye contact, and Shelby's eyes darted from her husband to her son, not understanding what the two of them were communicating.
"Will someone please tell me what is going on?" Shelby growled.
"She doesn't know?" Tim questioned. Jesse shook his head.
"I don't know what?" She screamed.
"Rachel is gone." Jesse spit out before turning his head away from his mother in shame. "She started running... and I couldn't stay with her."
"What?" Shelby let out. "Do you think this is funny?" She looked from one to another. "After all that we've been through you think that this is appropriate? I raised you better than this."
"Shel, he's telling the truth. We haven't seen in her in little over twenty minutes. She has no phone, and she has no idea where she's going, or at least that's what we think."
"Have you called the police?"
"Not yet."
Shelby, still in shock over the situation at hand, sat down in one of her chairs. She stared down at the floor. Tim eyeballed his wife's phone sitting on the dressing room table and picked it up, using the emergency dial. He spoke to the dispatch, but Shelby couldn't hear him. She couldn't pay attention. How did she lose her child for a second time? How did they keep getting into this exact situation?
Why couldn't they be happy?
...
Marley and Jonathan had been sitting in the car with the heat on for as long as Tim had been in the theater. They had noticed the minimal whispering and the sudden urge to park in a staff spot (Corcoran permitted parking passes apply). James got out of the car as soon as he saw that his father had disappeared into the building. That left the second and third youngest staring at each other. They always seemed to be the last two in the loop.
Jonathan didn't really care though, seeing as he was still playing on his portable video game machinery. Marley was humming, trying to figure out what was going on. She wasn't surprised that she wasn't in the loop, what she didn't understand was why Jonathan wasn't in the loop. He was a member of this family, was he not? Was he too young?
"Do you think it's something serious?" Marley pondered out loud, hoping she would get some sort of response from her cousin that would indicate that she was no longer alone.
"Who knows... and who cares? Marley, it's always something with them. And whatever it is, it always resolves itself in the end."
Marley shook her head, realizing that he would need to look up in order to see that. "I don't think so. Did you see your father's face? Something is very wrong. And James knows what it is and he won't tell us. I don't even know where he went..."
"Marley, play some music. Sing something. Relax." Jonathan continued. Marley let out a breath, looking out the window. It was almost midnight, and New York was desolate apart from the lights that showered the sides of buildings.
She just hoped she would get to experience it.
...
Rachel ran and ran and ran. She ran for as long as she could, ignoring the pain in her throat and in her stomach. If she hadn't been running for her life, she supposed she might had considered it a calling to join the cross country team at school.
She didn't know what she was going to do with herself. She didn't have a plan. It just came over her that she needed to start running at that exact moment for reasons that at the time seemed legit. They still seemed legit at this point in time as well.
For all of her life, she had wanted a mother. It was all she had ever wanted since day one. So once she got one, her dream came true. She gotten her dream. But one note had threatened that person that had changed her life. And Rachel knew that she could not look her mother in the eye without telling her everything. So she had to leave before she saw her mother.
Maybe that was selfish, trying to save herself from that pain. Maybe that would cause her mother more pain than it would have had she gotten the chance to give her mother a hug and tell her that she loved her.
Rachel didn't know; all she knew was that she had run away and could never go back.
But where did she go from there? Where did she go in a crazy big city where there were scary homeless people on every corner? Where did she go? What would she become? Would she even live long enough to make the decision?
She continued walking down the dark desolate streets, hoping that no cars would see her and stop her. She didn't know what she would say.
"The sun'll come out, tomorrow..." she whispered. "Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow... there'll be sun..."
...
"Ma'am, you need to calm down. The NYPD is doing everything they can to find your daughter. You need to let them do their jobs. Don't take this into your own hands."
"What does that even mean?" Shelby screamed at the cop. "You've been standing her not finding my daughter!"
The cop took a deep breath. "I kniw you're upset-"
"You're damn right I'm upset! My daughter is missing. She's out there in the cold, all alone, and..."
Shelby put her head in her hands.
...
It had been a restless night. Of course it had. Shelby and Tim had sat in Shelby's waiting room all night, talking to cops that they felt were not helping much with the situation. Jesse and James had taken Jonathan and Marley to their hotel room, and they themselves had sat awake, unable to move, unable to think. The four of them laid in the living room, Marley laying on the couch with a bed sheet thrown over her, Jonathan in the lounge chair, and Jesse and James on the floor, with bed sheets stolen off of the bedroom beds. They figured they all wanted to be together at this point in time. It wasn't as if they were unsafe, but they wanted the proximity to feel just a little more comfortable with their parents and sibling gone.
The two of them had laid there, occasionally turning to look at each other. They had so many thoughts to process, to let flow through their minds, that they could not speak. It was Jesse that broke the silence first.
"If they don't find her, Mom is going to be a mess again. I mean, she'll be there for us, but she won't be there for us. She'll be detached. Part of me feels like for a while there we did have the detached mother. It wasn't her fault though. She did the best she could to move on with her life." He swallowed hardly. "But this, this will break her. It'll break her all over again, and we'll be left to pick up the pieces."
James turned to look at his younger brother. "She did this for some reason in her mind. Some justifiable reason. She wouldn't walk away if there wasn't something telling her to."
"But what? She was finally happy. Were you not there when she said she loved us? Coming from her, coming from a child with severe abandonment issues and abuse, that's all you can hope for. She wasn't running away from us, she was running away from something else."
James was about to answer when another two voices decided to join the mix. Jonathan let out a cough, and Marley cleared her throat, as if to declare her presence. "So, um..." she started. "What do we do to help our- your- parents?" She left out the part that required the most saying. Rachel had again ruined something for her. This trip was probably the one time she would get to go to New York. She wouldn't be able to afford it otherwise. Her aunt didn't deserve this grief. She deserved so much better.
"We do what we can. We'll help them look. We will get through this like a family. This is what families do. They support each other and stick together, no matter what drama, hardship comes our way."
"Is this the part where we all hug?" Jonathan growled. He was not too happy with the situation at hand. He missed Rach, yes, but seeing his mom like that again... he couldn't do it again.
"Yes of course!" Jesse exclaimed, and the four of them mushed together into Jonathan, much to his (fake) dismay.
...
Rachel woke up to the sound of the trash cans she had been hiding behind being clanged. Loudly. She got up slowly, realizing she had no method of self protection against whatever it was that was going to attack her from inside that trash can.
She needed something to protect herself. Did she need to protect herself? Was it even worth it at that point? She was in the streets, her jeans and hoodie were a mess, and her hair was sticking up in a million different directions.
It took her a second to remember why she had done this. She was so stupid! She wanted to smack herself; she had given up the best family she had ever had. Why would she do that?
Because they threatened to kill her...
She held her breath, whoever it was was going to show themselves at any second.
...
She was not expecting that.
In front of her stood a girl no older than thirteen years old. Her hair was braided in a million different braids, probably to keep her hair out of her face, and she was wearing a faded black hoodie, ripped jeans, and combat boats. Her face was stern, yet at the sight of Rachel, her figures softened. Her stern facial expression turned into a laugh. She was laughing at Rachel!
"What are you laughing at?" Rachel snapped, no longer afraid of this mystery attacker.
The girl didn't stop. "Your hair! Your clothes! Are you like, a rich kid, who ran away from Mommy and Daddy because they weren't letting you date your poorer lower level boyfriend? I mean, you look young, but you also look so clueless as to how life on the streets works. Even when I started, I never hid behind trash cans..."
Rachel stepped out of her hiding space, standing in the alley in front of the girl. She wanted to look tough, but at the mention of her Mommy and Daddy her breath took a hitch.
"I ran away because there were people threatening... my family. And I had to leave to protect them. I'm not a rich kid; I grew up in an abusive home with people who stole me from my family." She defended herself. Part of her thought it was weird that she was sharing all of this personal information with this girl when the girl didn't even know her name, and she didn't know Rachel's. Was this girl going to help her out?
The girl nodded in approval. "I have to say, I've never heard that one before. I liked the rich kid story better. It made me pity you less."
Rachel was slightly offended, but chose to ignore it in spite of this girl probably being her only option to surviving on the streets. "Who are you?"
"I'm Liv." The girl shook out her slightly dirty hand. "Judging by the look on your face, you're scared out of your mind, right? I have one question for you: who are you?"
"Rachel Berry," the eleven year old muttered.
"No, no, that's who you were. If you want to do this, if you want to live on the streets, you can't belong to anyone. You have to belong to yourself. That name was given to you by someone. As long as you carry it around, you'll never be your own person. My old name was given to me by someone who I never want to think about again. So now I'm Liv. Who do you want to be?"
Rachel thought about it. How did she get here? How did this happen? How did she end up in the position to change her name and forget her old life? How did she manage to find someone willing to help her do it?
"Juliette," She muttered.
"That's a weird name. I don't really like it. How about... Trash Can?"
"Seriously?" Rachel bit, "What kind of a name is trash can? I have more self respect than that."
"Well, now you live on the streets, you're going to have to lose a lot of it. C'mon Trash Can, let's go find something to eat, and then I'll introduce you to the others." Liv began walking in the other direction, and Rachel trailed behind her. She was not going to be called Trash Can for the rest of her life. She may have given up everything, but she still had some respect for herself. She was going to stick it out for a while, until her family forgot about her and went back to Lima, and then she was going to start auditioning for shows, winning hearts out as the homeless girl with no voice.
That was a solid plan, as long as no one who couldn't find her found her.
Ah well, they had time to worry about that.
"Fanny." Rachel stuttered. Liv turned around.
"What?"
"Fanny. That's the name I want to be called. It's my favorite character. I mean, I feel like little orphan Annie right now, but that girl had way too much optimism for the future. Fanny Brice... she's amazing. She's the person I want to be someday."
Liv nodded. "I'm going to call you Fatty, not because you're fat, because I need a mean nickname, so the others don't think I've gone soft. Kay, Fatty?"
...
"I don't understand, Tim. I thought she was happy. I thought that we were finally going to get the opportunity to be a real family after all this time. Why?"
Shelby had been sobbing nonstop for the last six hours. Tim was upset, his girl was gone, but he wasn't going to get all mushy about it. He had begun forming the verses to the next song he was going to write in his head and was debating how Shelby would react if he sat down to write them down.
He wanted to drive around the city for as long as he could until he found her. But the police said it was almost impossible to find them at night, and that they would have a better chance searching during the day. They didn't seem to understand that it was their child's life on the line, that every hour they wasted sitting here was not going to help her appear into thin air. It was almost morning, and he would leave as soon as he could get Shelby to stop crying. For as long as he had known her, he had always been able to calm her down. He could hold her, or sing to her, but none of that seemed plausible at this point. How do you calm your wife over your not dead child that chose to run away?
"Tim." Her voice hitched. "I can't stop crying. I can't move. I can't breathe. She's gone. I knew I shouldn't have left home. This is my fault. What if we don't find her? What if we don't find her, and I never see her again?"
Tim was relieved that she had finally calmed down. "We are going to find her, Shel. We're going to figure out why she ran, and we're going to save our girl."
Shelby nodded, finally rising out of the chair. She took a deep breath.
"Let's go find our girl."
And there they go! For you guys that leave a review, tell me what you want to happen! Who wrote the letter? Are the bad guys going to find Rachel before Shelby? (yes they are!) and who is Liv? Is there more to her than meets the eye?
xoxo