Um, here we go again with too much laughing for this to be a suspense story. Anyway, if you're curious about how much time has passed, the time passes however long you want it to. This chapter could be a week after the last, or just a day or two. This is your story, pretty much. Feel free to insert people you know as Calix or Mara or Varda or Dawn.
Chapter III: Slipped Away
"Well, well, well, Dawn Reid," Calix Bell teased. He had that irresistible smirk on, the one that caused Dawn to break up with her last boyfriend, Alagan Connors, for.
"Hello Mr. Bell," Dawn attempted formality in hopes that it would cover up the fact that her heart was knocking against her ribs.
He frowned, making Dawn give an inward cheer. Then he leaned forward. "I think Mara's gonna try to cook. Wanna watch the crying and cursing?"
Dawn laughed suddenly. Mara was born to be a knockout, both out and inside the kitchen. Unfortunately, the latter involved knocking herself out with the cheese grater.
"All those vivid and bewitching good looks, would it kill her to make an omelet?" Ken would say if he could.
Dawn choked up suddenly. "It would kill us," she would say. "Who else would we laugh at then?"
"You," Calix replied, eyes shining with some unreadable emotion.
"Did I say that out loud?" Dawn wasn't too surprised. When one is a klutz, they learn to expect the unexpected. Although, if one expects the unexpected, wouldn't that make the unexpected expected? "Wait, why me?"
"Who else can cook up a house fire with thanksgiving dinner?" Calix's eyes said it all…Dawn was an open book.
"At least I didn't have to have surgery on my nose after snorting gravel up a nostril on a dare," was all Dawn could return with. Calix's nostrils flared, making it more apparent that one was smaller than the other.
"Really? Well who, while playing with her now-ex-boyfriend's wheelchair, landed on Highway I-86 and caused traffic to be stopped for a day, making state headlines?" Calix shot back.
"Hey, guys, please tell me that this is still salvageable," Mara brought a completely black turkey out from the oven in a tray.
"Is that you, Mara Bennett, cooking? I could smell it," Edmund Michaels, a 14-year old with eyes like glowing brandy and golden-blond hair, who had once had a (very obvious) crush on Dawn and now moved on to Mara, entered with two shiny packages. "And Dawn, you're getting too lovely for a single lady."
"My favorite book! You remembered!" Dawn flipped her soft strawberry-blonde curls behind her ears. "Do I get one?" she pointed to the packages. She meant to sound flirty, but it just came out whiny.
Edmund handed her a grey box with an attractively delicate silver dress. "Straight from Juji."
"Juji? Juji-the-entrepreneur-from-Rwanda? That Juji?" Calix looked at the dress. A month ago, Dawn had loaned Juji the money she needed to start her own business, and now it looked like she was paid in full.
Before Edmund could confirm or deny (or show what was in the other box) Dawn remembered the question that had been burning in her brain.
"Mara, what happened with the caster?"
"The caster said that she'd get Callia to play Callie and 'my services were no longer needed.' But she couldn't find Callia to tell her, so she found me instead," Mara said, almost upset.
It occurred to Dawn that she had not seen Callia for hours. Days.
"Eddie, can you do me a favor and check room 232 at the Marriott across the street?" Dawn held up a key.
"Sure," Eddie took the car key and left. An hour later, he was back with a ripped note in his hand that had chicken scratch on it. Dawn, having the messiest handwriting in the world, could read just about anything if she could read her own cursive.
"'Justice will always find evil,'" Dawn read. "What the heck? Makes no sense," she screamed, walking out onto the street and suddenly finding herself blinking up at the sky.
"Sorry about my dog. He's a little too excited," an attractive and tall girl with shiny blue-black hair and an expressive oval face spoke like she was keeping back laughs. She looked more studiously serious than seriously sorry, pissing Dawn off immediately.
"You should see my cats. They leave furballs everywhere. I once found on in my neighbor's Rolls Royce. Boy, did that take time to explain," Dawn said.
"Are you a native Indianananan…nan?" the girl stumbled. "Are you from Indiana?" she said finally.
"Who do I look like?" Dawn recited a line from her more famous movie. "Cairo? Isn't that some kinda syrup? Maybe?"
The girl's eyes widened. "Oh, my gosh! Dawn Reid! Oh, gee! I-I'm Angelica Mei," she said almost loudly. "Hey, can you call me and make my friends think I'm cool?"
"I guess. And I'd introduce myself, but you clearly know me, so I'll just exit," Dawn walked gracefully past the sign for the dog park before she tripped flat on her face. ****
"Where is that Varda?" director Rushil Stone was even more pissed.
"What?" Dawn entered the breakfast room in her pink chenille robe. "Varda's gone too?"
"What do you mean by 'gone too?'?" Rushil quoted with a confused look.
"I mean my sis-Callia is gone too. Probably Varda's just sleeping in again. She's not a morning person, you know," Dawn walked to Varda's room, hoping the closed—never locked—door proved her right. "Whoa," she turned the knob and quickly put her cocoa on the ground before she dropped it.
"I don't think she disappeared," Rushil said, playing Captain Obvious.
The room was covered with what used to be mahogany furniture and faux-leather cushions, a painted white bookcase filled with books had been knocked over, a few good pictures which used to beautify the bare whitewashed walls had been flung randomly, torn icy white muslin frills fluttered in vagrant breezes, and the purple matting on the floor was wet from a shattered vase and the wilted martagon that used to fill it (Dawn and Varda had this ting for fresh flowers.) The low bed that had a bedspread with chubby Cupids and gold grapes hanging off the corners was the only thing still standing.
"Don't say it. Don't say it," Rushil chanted. "Don't—"
"She was kidnapped," Dawn rarely sugarcoated the truth when there was business to be done.
"I'll call 911," Rushil left.
Dawn didn't say anything. Rushil assumed she wanted to be alone when she felt for her friend. But all Dawn did was pick up the pale green index card off the ground. It was clearly not Varda's—she only liked neon yellow note cards.
"Magickal powers will drive away the tyrant," it said.
Dawn pocketed the note. She didn't want anyone to get their hands on this.
"Officer Walden?" Dawn looked up in surprise and frustration.
"Dawn," John greeted, diminished.
"Who's that," Pearlie asked a nearby nurse, pointing to the man sprawled across a bed, looking like death warmed over.
"Officer John Walden. He was badly stabbed," the nurse said absently. She whirled around as she saw a doctor wheel a patient by and went to help.
Pearlie stood there, 8 years old, waiting for the nurse to come back and tell her that her father, a worker in the World Trade Center (96th floor), and her mother, who was bringing him his lunch after hearing he wouldn't be back (from who else but Cailean?). Other than Callie's going-away several years ago, nothing bad had ever happened. Sitting next to Officer Walden, however, she let herself feel fear, let herself understand that she might not live a charmed life.
"Belle?" he raised his head weakly.
"Pearlie," Pearlie identified herself. "I don't like hospitals."
"Got a place to stay?" he asked.
"No."
"Do you want to stay with me?"
Pearlie shrugged. A broken cop and a doll-sized girl could fall through the cracks pretty easily. Nobody said a word as he took the girl to his cramped apartment. He treated her well until Pearlie saw Callia across the street and ran to her.
Walden didn't stop her. Nor did he turn her away after she appeared on his doorstep in November after Bill's body had been found. She needed to talk to someone who wouldn't yell at her if she cried.
Ever since she turned to Walden for comfort, she had found someone who wouldn't ever demand anything from her except that she lives in a way that didn't hurt anyone else. The two knew each other very well by now. It was Walden whom Dawn called after Varda's drug bust went bad, when Dawn found that Ken and Hanna were being abused, when Dawn was finally got a phone during her abduction. Now, here he was, in her life again.
"Welcome to Rainbow Valley," Dawn half-shrugged. "I ain't too happy to see you," she looked up at him from her chair.
"My heart is broken," Walden joked.
"You're such a disaster angel. If trouble's there, so are you. It just makes you associated with disaster. Sure, you're a comfort angel too, but…comfort angels only come to you with their troubles. I guess what I'm saying is that trouble precedes comfort, you know," Dawn said awkwardly. She wanted to say something, but she couldn't.
Walden looked at her briefly. "You're getting close," he said before getting really to walk away.
"Getting close to…" Dawn gestured for Walden to continue.
"It's your job to find it."
"Can you tell me what I'm supposed to find?"
"No, or you won't be able to find it."
Dawn laughed. Surely, finding this would be easy. She had enough money and connections to move mountains. And a reputation to protect.
"You're like a scared Barbie doll," Eddie said at lunch. "Always looking good, but never fighting back or standing up to anyone."
"If someone hurts me, it has to be because something terrible happened to them to make them want to do something terrible. The idea is to heal, not punish," Dawn replied shortly.
"Anybody seen Mara," Calix entered, looking both flustered and frantic. He had clearly been extremely busy, or he would have checked the mirror and seen how he looked like Einstein. But this was neither the time nor place for Eddie and Dawn to point the fact out.
"No," Dawn put down her cheese pizza. "But people have been vanishing off this set ever since…oh, ever since the volcano! Did you find anything in her room, a note, maybe?"
"Yeah, this," Calix took out a crumpled ball of paper. "An unnatural judge will combat unnatural corruption."
"I can't see anything," Eddie said, peering at the card closely.
"These cards don't make sense," Dawn frowned and said the same thing she had been repeating for an hour.
"Neither does you face," Calix snarled.
Walden glared at the boy. "Calix, Mara is the third person to disappear. I think the seriousness of the situation goes beyond common name-calling."
"It's all puzzle pieces," Dawn recalled aloud.
Calix thought of Mara's disappearance, which led him to recall Ken's most recent running away. "Ken disappeared too, didn't he?"
Dawn gasped. "Mr. Walden, can you look at the Ken Tully disappearance?" she approached the man. She was, apparently, the only one who did not fear Walden and his uniform.
"What do you want to know?"
"Was there an index card found at the scene?"
"A blank neon yellow card," Walden replied.
Oh, and in case you were wondering about the songs, "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" is by Rod Stewart, "Shattered" is by Of A Revolution, "Fields of Gold" is by Sting, and "Slipped Away" is by Avril Lavigne. I'm not saying you have to listen to them, I'm just saying that I like them and recommend them to anyone.