Hello again! Thank you so much for how wonderful your reviews were on the last chapter! I hope you enjoy this one!
Frank was nervous. The whole Hardy house had been a hive of nervous activity that morning. It was Joe's first day at school. Everyone wanted it to be perfect. They needed it to be perfect. Fenton, Laura and Frank were desperate for Joe to enjoy school. It was going to be the first full day he would be away from them since he had come to live in Bayport. They wanted him to have a space to be independent.
Frank was in his first lesson of the day, sitting next to Chet.
"How do you think Joe's doing?" Chet whispered as they wrote down exercises from the board.
"He's… Adaptable," Frank told himself.
That was what he kept telling himself, over and over. Joe could adapt. He was smart and charming. Frank tried to reassure himself with the promise that Joe was probably already the favourite of whatever teacher he had ended up with that morning. And Joe had Iola to look out for him. She would stop him from picking fights with the wrong people.
That was when there was a knock at the door. Frank turned sharply, watching as the school receptionist was welcomed into the room by the teacher.
"Everything alright?" the teacher asked.
She scanned the room, her eyes eventually landing on Frank. Immediately he felt a chill pass through him. It was something to do with Joe, Frank could sense it. Joe needed him. He needed help.
"Could I borrow Frank Hardy for a few moments?" the receptionist asked.
Frank was up and out of his seat before his name had even been finished.
"Is Joe okay?"
"How about we talk outside?"
Frank had practically run from the room. He shut the door tightly behind him, asking once more about his younger brother. The receptionist shifted awkwardly.
"Joe never showed up to his first lesson. We were wondering if you would be able to call him, see where he is before…"
Frank knew where that sentence was going. They were hoping he would help them locate Joe before they had to call up their mom and dad and possibly cause a scandal about losing such a notorious child on the first day. Frank knew he should have been angry, furious that the school were putting their reputation above Joe's safety and not immediately calling the police, but he didn't care. Instead, he pulled out his phone and hurriedly called his brother.
He was a little surprised that Joe picked up but he did all he could to hide it.
"Joe, where are you? Everyone is worried sick!"
"I decided school was not for me," Joe replied plainly.
"Then we can discuss other options. You can't just disappear like this. Tell me where you have gone."
There was a pause. Frank waited, praying Joe was going to cooperate, preparing himself to hear the call being cut off.
"The woods," Joe said reluctantly.
"The ones near school?" Frank clarified.
Joe hummed his agreement.
"I'm going to find you," Frank told him.
He hung up the call, going to race down the corridor. He had only just taken his first step when a hand closed around his arm.
"What do you think you're doing?" the receptionist demanded, face tight with a scowl.
"Going to find my brother," Frank replied firmly.
"No. The last thing we need is another Hardy out there running around the woods like some sort of wild thing!" the receptionist snapped.
Frank jolted his arm free.
"He's my brother. I'm going after him."
Frank reached the edge of the wood, circling around the edges. He looked for signs of someone going into the trees. Thankfully the woods were not used that much. They were on the wrong side of the school for them to be used as a cut-through for young people on their way to classes and too dense to be frequented by hikers. He was surprised Joe had decided to go there at all. It felt like miles away from what Joe was used to, very much unlike the urban jungle of New York.
But then Frank had meant what he said. Joe was adaptable.
Thankfully not so adaptable that he had managed to completely hide his trail. Fenton had taught Frank how to do it. He had already lost one son to criminals, he had done all he could to ensure he did not lose a second. Frank had been taught all he would need to know to survive a few days in a forest with no supplies, how to make sure no one could find where he was hiding.
Joe had left shoe prints. He had broken branches. He'd torn the brand new red jumper they'd brought him for the occasion.
It was not hard for Frank to find him and Joe didn't try to run. He was sitting in a clearing, a stack of twigs before him, vainly trying to light a campfire.
"You cold?" Frank asked.
He regretted not grabbing his coat so that he could offer it to Joe. But Joe's coat lay abandoned nearby. If he was cold, he would have put it on. Joe shrugged, still not looking Frank's way.
"I wanted to see if I could start a fire."
Frank nodded. As far as he was concerned, that was a good enough reason. Hardys came with an insatiable curiosity and Joe was no different. If a question came into his mind, he would want to know the answer.
"You've stacked the firewood wrong," Frank told him. "You need it to… Form a kinda tepee shape, have space for air to get underneath."
He knelt down, beginning to rearrange the twigs. He felt Joe's eyes land on him. There was tension in the air. Joe was expecting him to turn around and launch some sort of attack. So Frank kept his focus on the twigs, kept his back to Joe. He wanted his brother to understand that he was not going to be hurt or shouted at.
"You scared me," Frank admitted.
"I never asked you to look out for me," Joe pointed out.
"I know you didn't," Frank said, looking over his shoulder. "But then you never had to ask. You're my brother. And even if you weren't, you are young and vulnerable and you deserve people to look after you."
Joe raised an eyebrow. He looked like he was about to speak before he turned back down to his attempts to begin a fire. Frank recognised the method: rubbing a twig between his palms, trying to build up heat from friction. He guessed Joe was mimicking a method shown in the TV shows and films he had watched. And he was doing a pretty good job. He just needed a few pointers.
Frank finished stacking up the firewood once more before moving over to Joe. He reached out, going to correct the positioning of his hands just like his father would have done for him. Joe lurched backwards, reaching for his pocket out of instinct.
Frank rushed to move back. He knew Joe didn't have a knife on him. The lenience he had been given in his sentencing relied on Joe staying away from criminal activity and they knew he wasn't going to put that at risk by bringing a knife to school. But Frank knew he had startled him. Joe had seen hands moving toward him and clearly was not used to people gently correcting the way he did something.
"You're doing well," Frank told him. "I just… You're not getting the right speed. Can I show you?"
Joe glowered but passed over the stick he had been using. Frank took it with an easy smile. He began to rub it between his hands, grinning as he saw a small amount of smoke beginning to rise.
"I used to run away from school a lot," Frank admitted. "It's not easy being the kid whose brother disappeared."
He passed the tools back to Joe, watching as the blond perfectly mimicked his technique. Within a few moments, Frank was coaxing dry moss into flame and carefully positioning it within the campfire he had constructed.
"Try being the one who disappeared," Joe said, watching as the fire began to spread over the wood.
Frank hummed his agreement, assuring Joe he knew that he was never going to be able to even imagine what Joe had gone through.
"Why did you stop?" Joe asked.
"Stop what?" Frank frowned.
"Running away. You said 'used to'."
Frank nodded, praising Joe for noticing the choice of words. He studied the fire for a little bit.
"I found a reason worth facing everyone for. I needed to stay in school, go to class, because when I was older, I wanted to set up my own detective agency, like Dad's, one that would specialize in the cold cases no one else wanted to take."
"Cases like mine?" Joe asked.
Frank nodded, pointing out that there were hundreds of missing people who never got found. And even if it turned out they were dead, he knew how much closure meant to the families.
"I don't think I'm that noble," Joe pointed out.
"I think you're plenty noble. But you don't have to be. Do it out of spite if that's what it takes. Be better than the people who hurt you because they deserve to be proven wrong. Eventually, you'll figure it out, find the thing you're doing this for that's good. Maybe you'll want to be a detective. Maybe you'll want to be a better person because you meet someone and fall in love. But right now, spite works too."
"Did you have that speech prepared?" Joe questioned.
He smirked at Frank as he prodded at the fire.
"No. Our dad told me that when I told him that the only reason I wanted to investigate disappearances was that I could make the people who cause that sort of pain pay. Doesn't feel very noble when you know deep down you aren't looking to help the victims. But I worked it out. And I learnt that there was more to life than anger and pain. That maybe I could do it because I wanted to honour my brother's memory."
There was a long pause. Frank studied Joe, watching his mind turn over the statement, watching him consider what he had been told. And then the younger teen drew in a long, deep breath. He looked toward Frank.
"Sometimes, I feel like all I am doing is honouring the memory of…"
Joe stopped dead. Frank's heart broke. For a moment it felt like they had been making progress and he wanted to know more, wanted to begin to understand what his brother felt.
But Joe was looking around.
"Someone's coming," Joe hissed. "More than one."
There was a tight panic in his voice. Frank could tell he believed that whoever was coming toward them was a threat. And, as Frank heard the footsteps moving closer, he had to agree. All of their friends were in class and Fenton Hardy would not be making such a racket if he was the one picking his way toward them.
Immediately Frank was thinking of all the people who might want to hurt Joe. Some of Marsden's old allies. The mysterious Mr Mauve. A horrible image flashed through his mind of being helplessly tied to a tree as masked men dragged Joe away, vowing to ensure he was not found a second time.
Frank hurried forward, beginning to heap dirt onto the fire to smother it.
"Be ready to run," Frank whispered to Joe.
His eyes shifted around, looking for a branch he could use as a weapon. Anything to buy Joe some time to get away.
"What about you?" Joe asked.
"I'll distract them," Frank hissed.
"No," Joe said firmly.
Frank looked toward him like he was mad but knew the window for arguing had passed. Any noise they made would be heard. And the best thing they could hope for was that however was approaching didn't find them.
"They've got to be around here somewhere," a voice said from nearby.
A wave of relief passed through Frank. He moved to stand but Joe grabbed his arm, pulling him back into the undergrowth.
"What are you doing?" Joe demanded.
"It's the Mortons," Frank told him.
He squirmed free of Joe's grasp, standing, waving his arms about. Chet and Iola saw him, moving toward him.
"You two are meant to be in lessons," he said.
Joe hesitantly stood, watching as Chet and Iola stumbled through the forest toward them.
"We're skipping. Rumours were going around," Chet said. "People were saying someone took Joe and that you went running off to help."
"No, Joe left on his own accord," Frank said.
Joe studied Chet and Iola.
"So why did you skip? Get bored?"
"Came to help," Iola said, looking straight back at Joe. "I know this might shock you but you're our friend your welfare is important to us. Same goes for Frank too."
"Thanks," Frank asked, sending a knowing glance in Chet's direction.
Chet did not look at all happy about the implications. Still Frank shrugged it off. He rather liked the hunch he had. It was normal and Joe deserved a little normal.
"Are we going back to class today?" Chet questioned.
Frank and Joe glanced toward their still-smouldering fire and then glanced toward each other.
"We're hosting a little bushcraft class of our own."
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