And here is chapter two, which took a ridiculous amount of time to write considering I have the next three chapters pretty much planned out. The writing muses apparently don't like it when I try to be organised.

Disclaimer: yada yada yada

As soon as the police had hung up on her, Casey rushed around to Emily's house, cell phone in hand and dialling her Mom as she ran. Nora picked up just as Casey reached their neighbours' driveway. "Mom? Something's happened." Casey babbled into the phone.

"What is it? Are you okay?" Nora replied immediately, clearly trying to stay calm.

"Derek called me last night because he crashed the car and I hung up on him but I haven't heard from him since and Sam hasn't either and his voicemail said his phone battery was dead and the police won't do anything!" She spoke so fast her words came out garbled and she wasn't sure how much her mother had understood, but it was the best she could do.

"Calm down, Casey, breathe." Nora instructed.

Casey did as she was told, as much as she could at any rate, and repeated her words a little slower. She clutched the phone to her ear as Nora told her to stay on the line and went to get George. She was still frozen in front of the Davison's door when Emily's mom opened it, a puzzled, concerned look on her face.

"Casey? Is everything alright?"

Casey bit her lip and breathed in, forcing back the tears straining at her throat and eyes. Her attention was diverted as George took the phone and Mrs. Davis ushered her in as she explained yet again what had happened.

The line was quiet for a moment. George's voice was cold when he finally answered. "We're on our way back. Call Sam and Ralph, the Davises, anyone you can get ahold of. We'll look for him ourselves."

"I am... I'm at Emily's right now, I thought I should call you and Mom before I called anyone else." Casey's eyes were blurry and her breath was sharp and painful, but at least she had near control of her voice again now. "I'm sorry, George, I am so, so sorry."

George hung up.

At some point Mrs. Davis had fetched Emily, whose arms now wrapped themselves around Casey, soothing shushing noises being murmured into her hair as she folded over to keep from being sick. "It's okay, Casey, it's going to be fine. My Mom is calling the PTA and my Uncle, he used to be a cop. They'll start searching soon and we'll find him." She planted a kiss on her friend's hair and gave her a squeeze. "You know Derek, the police are probably right, he's just sleeping it off in the car somewhere and all this'll be for nothing. You can get to yell at him for worrying you and he can yell at you for hanging up and then it'll all be back to normal."

Casey raised her head, random bits of her conversation with George chiming in her mind. "I have to call Sam and Ralph."

Emily sighed and looked uncertain, but passed her the phone from where she'd laid it down on the coffee table without even realising it.

She didn't even remember what she'd said to the boys after, or what they'd said in reply. Her thoughts were scattered and disjointed, memories and daydreams and conversations real and imagined all joining up and breaking apart in the wrong places. When she looked at the clock on her phone as Ralph let her know he was leaving to start the search, she was surprised how much time had passed without her knowing, yet when she looked again to check if twelve hours had passed so she could call the police again, she was shocked and endlessly frustrated by how slowly the time was going. It was only 7:30 in the morning. The day had really barely begun.

She decided to go and find this 'Beth' person and ask what time Derek had left her house, see if maybe she could work out whereabouts he'd have got to in between then and his calls to the house phone. She was eternally grateful when Emily came with her, already knowing who Beth was and where she lived with that strange school gossip superpower she had, and curbed her crazy, desperate interrogation of the poor girl into something approaching useful.

Beth really didn't have a clue. She gave some vague guess that didn't even set the hour in stone let alone anything else, but by some extraordinary stroke of luck, she had a Grandmother who lived with her and made a point of recording every move Beth or one of her 'little friends' made in minute and accurate detail. It was actually pretty creepy; a fact which Emily observed aloud once they'd left.

Derek had left Beth's at around 9:07 and the house phone had rung barely ten minutes after that, using that and the fact he'd started to say he was off route something-or-other Casey began to whittle down possible locations, reading them off to Emily to convey to the search party as she went. Considering that there weren't any 'route' anythings around and Derek just liked to talk like he was in an American movie when he was drunk, it could have meant anything, but she assumed he was talking about a main road at least and worked from there.

Her theory was confirmed half an hour later as Sam found the Prince on one of the roads she'd suggested. Derek wasn't with the car.

After that Casey had a minor panic attack, picturing him chopped up into little pieces having tried to catch a lift from a serial killer. The only thing that kept her from having a full blown one was Emily's patient and grounded assurances that that was extremely unlikely and a brown paper bag.

She somehow convinced Emily's parents to drive her to the discarded car and sat for what seemed like an eternity staring at the small dent on the side that hadn't been there before Derek had pulled out of the driveway the night before. Eventually her mobile found it's way back into her hands as she called to update her Mom on the search progress. In the end it was George who picked up and she had to hand the phone on to Emily as she found herself unable to face speaking with her step-father again. He was the only one who seemed to recognise what she had right from the beginning.

This was all her fault. If she had just kept on the line, found out where he was, called him a cab, Derek would be sat at home right now irritating the hell out of her with his over dramatic hangover and 'need' for bacon and daytime TV. But she hadn't. Because it was Derek and she always assumed the worst of him and had thought her homework was more important than whatever crisis he was calling about. Because she had no tolerance for her ridiculous step-brother and his slacker, skirt chasing ways.

Because she was as much of a stuck up, self-centered princess as Derek had always claimed.

She wished, oh, how she wished she could say that it would be the same if it had been the other way around, but she couldn't delude herself that much. Derek was always there when it counted. He needled her and teased her and tormented her, but when it came down to it he was the one who was dependable. He was the one people could turn to when things got bad. Even annoying, stuck up step-sisters who he couldn't stand.

And it was her fault he was missing.

She listened half-heartedly to Emily's 'hello, Mr. Venturi, It's Emily' and the gently and optimistically broken news on Derek, trying to get her brain in gear again, because if she could only think she might be able to figure out what to do next. How to find Derek, how to work out what had happened to him, how to make this all right again.

But in the end it didn't matter. Sam found Derek, a few meters away up the road, and Emily's Dad called an ambulance and Casey rode with the Davises to the hospital while Sam sat in the back of the ambulance and told the paramedics all about Derek's allergy to novocaine that Casey had never known about.

Above all was the feeling, six hours later as her Mom and George finally made it to the hospital and gave her a wide berth, not once meeting her eye, that this was never going to be all right again. No matter what she did.