Missing [ST]

Nineteen

"Okay...but the real question is why would you not choose invisibility? I mean, you could get away with anything!"

Leah refused to go back on her choice. "Teleportation can get you out of situations you don't want to be in-"

"Yeah! And you can disappear from them if you choose to have an invisibility power, and- AND, still be in the same room!"

"What?" she laughed. "So you want to spy on people?"

"Wha-no! Not like that." Joey disapproved with a firm scrunch of his brow, reaching up to brush a tree branch they were passing underneath. "Look, I will respect your superpower choice, even though it's wrong. How's that?"

"Mm, yeah so much for wanting to 'get to know me.'"

"I've learned plenty, poor superpower choice...included."

Joey's smile was fading, teasing tone to his voice following a similar fate. He was turning his head in the direction of the farmhouse, clearly rattled by something.

Leah was about to say something, considering it was an abrupt end to their conversation, but she couldn't even open her mouth.

"Shit! That's the van!" Joey exclaimed, blue eyes wide and riddled with panic when he faced her again. He took her wrist, "I'm sorry, I gotta get you inside."

Instinctively, Leah tugged against him.

"Can't you just figure something out?"

"It doesn't-" Joey stopped himself, a delay in which he didn't take his eyes off her. "Give me time Leah, I promise-"

"But what if I don't want to anymore?"

"Please, don't do this."

"Do what Joey?" Leah countered, keeping her voice steady. "You promised four days ago that you would find a way. Four days!"

"And a promise is a promise," Joey asserted, gently squeezing her elbow that had previously begun to slip. "I haven't had the opportunity to talk to them, and until then, I don't want to put you in any danger."

Leah's frustration remained, despite falling into silence. She was tired of being dragged along, but realistically, she wouldn't know where to start. She hated confrontation, especially when the odds weren't in her favour.

"Okay," she agreed dismissively.

"Okay," Joey repeated, and ghosted a hand behind her back to get her moving. "C'mon."

They rushed across the lawn, grateful that they weren't on the other side of the gardens and that one of them had sharp hearing.

"TOM! They're back!" Joey yelled, closing the back doors behind them.

"What?" came an equally loud reply from the next room.

Leah slipped off shoes that were about four sizes too big because they were not her own, impressed that she had made it back without them falling off.

"The van's here which means-"

Tom appeared, a further explanation not needed. He looked them over once, realised, and scurried away to yell for Brad at the foot of the stairs.

Leah was led back to her room, because it really just belonged to her at this point, but she caught a glimpse of a figure approaching out of the frosted pane.

"Soon," was all Joey said.

It was accepted because she was too lazy to start a fight, and when Leah heard someone struggling with the lock and incoherent male voices, she knew it was them.

<>

That was an hour ago, or somewhere along those lines.

It was strange being locked away during the day because the past four days had been the complete opposite. Free roam, three meals a day, and with some fresh air.

Leah was always accompanied in case she ran away, which, although they didn't say was the reason, she figured everyone had some trust issues, her included.

It was since the day she had passed out on the sofa, that had given Leah the desire to find out what she could. Spending time with Joey, Brad and Tom was supposed to help her jaded memories, but they gave nothing up about the subject she was so desperate to remember. They were uptight, and supplied the same 'it's complicated' response to her, making it feel like she was going round in circles.

But the nagging, which was really just basic questions about the whats and whys, did eventually pay off.

"You want some truth?" Brad looked her right in the eye. "We don't either. We don't know what is going on here anymore. You were not part of the plan, whatever the plan was. We are not kidnappers and we don't hurt people, but for some reason...that's exactly what we've become."

And that, whenever Leah was alone, was what she had been left to figure out.

Being caught in the middle of something had been right, but what that something was, still a blank.

After Brad had set himself straight, Leah did become more subdued and kept her thoughts mostly to herself. She was happy to watch tv, happy to stay out of the way, but equally content when Tom took it upon himself to make himself a friend. In turn, she learned that he and the others resided in Boston, Massachusetts, corresponding with the twinge in their accents, and it explained their intonation on certain words.

Tom was also the first to take her outside, his excuse being that he hadn't actually seen the place properly for himself, but Leah knew he was just being nice. He was kind and funny, especially when he tried to explain things that he wasn't greatly familiar with, or latch onto something he didn't really understand.

Brad was usually quiet and humble in his own way asking how she felt, but apart from that, their interaction was mostly minimal.

Out of the three though, it was Joey Leah had the deepest connection with. Since his promise, they had talked more and more, played games of ping pong after finding an old table, and she probably enjoyed his company the most.

There was still a lot she didn't know about him, and in any other circumstance she wouldn't mind getting to know, but Leah had to remember where to draw the line.

When the arguing and shouting began, she definitely heard Joey pick his poison, but there was that one voice that seemed to overpower them all.

She could take a confident guess who it belonged to, and everything about his lack of presence had been a curiosity charger, especially when his name hadn't been mentioned by his friends.

A loud thump followed by his voice again, screaming his heart out, actually scared Leah, and she wasn't in the same room to experience the full brunt of his rage.

She shivered, and the hoodie that she had snuggled into was no longer warm enough.

His shouting grew, as did her uneasiness, and with the safety of her pillow under her head, she was anticipating a lapse of her own memory, fighting its way to the surface to drag her under.

When it did, the moment she had been waiting for, a trigger she had been trying to find, it was like she was re-living the past, in a realism she couldn't quite describe.

<>