Chapter 11 - I'm starting to trip, I'm losing my grip

"Why don't I feel sad, Phil?" Keely asked, lying on Phil's bed, watching him throw the Wizrd up in the air for the hundredth time.

Phil looked over at his best friend. He couldn't tell her the answer. He couldn't feel what she was going through. "Keels…"

"I mean, my dad's just died. I should feel sad right? I should be at home, with my mom, crying. I shouldn't be here. But I want to be here. In fact, I'd rather be here than anywhere else right now. But that doesn't explain why I'm not sad. Most people would be in mourning. Not round at their best friends house, watching him play with a gadget that won't be invented for another hundred years or so," Keely rambled, trying to make sense of the many thoughts her brain was processing all at once.

"Well, if you don't feel sad, then how do you feel?"

Keely propped herself up on her elbow and looked into the eyes of the one person she knew actually cared. "I don't know. I mean, part of me feels like it's the end of the world. But, and I know it sounds horrible, the bigger part of me doesn't care. No, that came out wrong. It cares, but it feels…"

"Feels like it didn't make that much of an impact?" Phil guessed.

"Yeah. I mean, I saw my dad once every year. Spoke to him a couple of times on the phone. But there were never any pictures of him around the house. Never any conversation about him. Not even when grandma came. She would never once mention her son. Which was weird. I know it's really awful and all, but how can you miss someone you didn't actually know that well?" Keely asked, sitting up.

Phil looked into her eyes. "Do you remember the second day that I met you? And you came and sat, and had lunch with me? But them Pim came, and told us that it was time to go home, all the way home?"

Keely nodded, wondering where this was leading.

"Well I missed you. I hated the thought of not being able to see you again," Phil said. "And I hardly knew you."

The bedroom was silent for a few moments, as Keely processed this bit of information. What did it mean? "But that was different. You had already seen me. Christmas? Remember?"

"And I missed you then as well. The point is, you can miss someone you don't know all that well. It's whether or not you choose to spend your whole life missing them, or just think about them, everyday. Thinking is different to missing. And I'm sure your dad would have preferred you thinking about him, as opposed to missing him constantly," Phil explained.

Keely looked up at the ceiling. He was right. He usually was. But it never bugged her. She nodded slowly. "How do you always know the right thing to say?"

"I don't. I make it up as I go along!" Phil admitted, smiling.

Keely laughed. "Well you do a great job for someone who's completely playing it by ear. I don't know what I'd do without you."

"So you'd miss me?" Phil asked.

Keely nodded. "Each and every second of the life I had left."

They both looked at each other, neither one of them wanting to admit what was on their minds. Not yet. But both were hoping the other would.

Keely's cell phone cut through the silence, making them both jump. She flipped it open, and looked at the screen. "It's mom. Just a second."

"Okay," Phil smiled, as Keely answered the phone.

"Hey mom," Keely said, trying not to sound too cheerful.

Mandy Teslow was hysterical. "Keely, can you come home? Now?"

"Um…why?" Keely asked, confused. This wasn't like her mom.

"I have something important to talk to you about," Mandy said, trying to disguise the frantic tone of her voice, but she failed.

Keely tried to think about all of the possibilities. "Um…sure. Okay, I'll ask Phil to bring me home."

"Okay," Mandy sighed. "And Keely?"

Keely nodded. "Yeah?"

"Please take care. Make sure Phil is with you at all times."

Ending the phone call, Keely sat down on Phil's bed again, worried.

"What was all that about?" Phil asked, oblivious to her mother's side of the conversation.

Keely looked at him. "I don't know. But it sounded bad. It sounded really bad. Phil, I've been told that you have to walk me home. Apparently I have to take care."

"Sure I will," Phil said, getting up. "I'll walk back after that."

Keely shook her head frantically. "No. If I've been told to take care, I'm making sure you're getting cared for too. You can stay at mine, and then…"

She trailed off, and looked at her fingers, worried.

"We'll sort it out when we get to your house."

Keely nodded. "Okay. But we need to hurry."

Phil grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair, while Keely picked up her bag. Just as they were going out of the door, Keely grabbed his arm. He looked up at her, half expecting someone to be climbing through the window with a gun.

"Thanks Phil," she smiled weakly.

Phil looked into her frightened eyes. "No problem."

---

The walk home was deliberately made noisy. Why, they had no idea, but if they were silent, they'd become more frightened and worried. That was the intention anyway.

"So, are you going to the car wash thing?" Keely asked Phil, just saying the first thing that popped into her head.

Phil shrugged. "We have to. Attendance is mandatory."

"Well, at least I'll have a chance to get you back, for thing you did to get me back, for the thing I did get you back, for the thing you did to me before," Keely said, carefully counting her 'backs'.

Phil counted the 'backs' as well, and for a few minutes, the walk was silent.

"Yeah, okay," Phil said, finishing the counting.

When they approached the Teslow house, they hesitated.

"Phil, what if someone has come in, and murdered her? She sounded hysteric on the phone," Keely gulped, thinking of the worst possible scenarios.

Phil shook his head trying to convince both Keely, and himself that there was nothing bad inside the house. "I'm sure you're overreacting. Shall we just open the door. I mean, she's probably fine…"

"Probably isn't certain though, is it?" Keely said, but fished her keys out of her bag anyway.

She unlocked the door, and pushed it open, staying behind the doorframe so it was easier to run. No robber, wearing black and holding a knife was there to greet her, so she walked cautiously inside. "Mom?"

"Keely!" Mandy appeared from the living room, and hugged her daughter so tightly, Keely had to lift her head right up in the air to be able to breathe. "Phil! Come in!"

Phil hesitated. "Actually, I might just walk…"

Mandy shook her head fiercely. "No. You can't. If they saw you with Keely they may come after you. And I don't want that to happen."

"Mom, who will come after him?" Keely asked, her voice shaking.

Mandy ignored her though, and ushered Phil inside, and locked the door. "Keely, Phil. Come through to the living room. There's someone here, who will be able to explain it better than me."

Keely looked at her mother's face, and noticed the tear stains, and the puffy eyes. But she saw something in her mothers eyes, that she had never seen before. Pure, and utter fear.

Mandy led them into the living room, and introduced them to a man who was sitting on the couch. "Keely, Phil. This is Dr. Smith. He's someone who discovers the cause of death. He did a post-mortem on your father."

Keely knew what a post-mortem was, and she sat down heavily on the couch. She looked at Phil, but couldn't quite make out if he knew the definition of a post-mortem, or if he was pretending, but he too had begun to look scared. Keely grabbed his hand, and pulled him over next to her, the familiar tingles not being able to overcome the fear that she felt.

"Hello. You must be Keely," Dr. Smith smiled at her.

Keely nodded. She would have said something sarcastic at this point, but she couldn't think of anything to say. It was like her body was frozen.

"What I'm about to tell you may be very upsetting, but I'm afraid I have to do it," Dr. Smith said, looking her in the eye.

She felt like screaming 'well don't tell me then!' but her tounge wouldn't move. The only comfort she had, was Phil's hand in hers, but he looked just as worried. Whether it was worry for her, or worry for him, Keely didn't know, but she knew she was glad he was here.

"We did a post-mortem examination on your father. According to our results, the cancer wouldn't have killed him for another three weeks at least."

Keely found her tongue had loosened. "So, the cancer didn't kill him?"

"No," Dr. Smith said. "We found, that the cause of death was not the cancerous cells he had in his body."

Phil looked confused. "So how did Mr. Teslow die?"

"We found, that the cause of death was, in fact, suffocation."

I'm really sorry, but I'm seriously thinking about throwing this story away, because this chapter has taken me like, ages to even come up with the idea for it. So unless I get some reviews, and ideas, I may just scrap this story and begin the sequel to Unbelievable.

So give me some reviews and ideas if you want me to keep going. I need inspiration people!