what happened after unlocked

chapter two ~ grilling keefe's dad

Sophie was sitting on her bed the next day, waiting for the sun to set so that she could sleep again. And for all of her problems to disappear.

"How are you feeling?" Linh's voice said from the doorway.

All Sophie could look at was her shoes, because her head was bowed down in sorrow.

Sophie's head lifted when she heard Biana's voice somewhere behind Linh. "You don't have to talk to us if you don't want to. But we're here anyway."

Her friends moved closer to Sophie, and she gave a sad smile. "Thank you."

Linh and Biana plonked themselves down next to Sophie.

"Would it make you feel better if we all helped you search for clues of where Keefe could be?" Biana whispered, her hand gently stroking Sophie's hair.

Linh formed several small hearts out of the moisture in the air. "Honestly, we'd do anything to help you through this."

Sophie sighed and half-heartedly shrugged. "That is a good idea."

"Well, we can make it happen. And you don't have to do anything, if you don't want to. We know this must be...pretty difficult."

Biana looked across at Linh with a look that Sophie couldn't quite decipher.

Sophie hesitated before she answered. "It is hard. And I don't really want to do anything. But at the same time, I really want Keefe to come back. And he's not going to come back if we don't do anything."

Biana and Linh both nodded.

Sophie took a deep breath and looked up at them. "I think I'm going to have to be brave and actually try something."

Linh held up a finger. "Wait, can't you just transmit something to Keefe? And try and convince him to come back?"

Biana fiddled with one of the jeweled barrettes in her hair and bit her lip.

"It's not that easy," Sophie said, readying herself to explain this to her friends.

"Really...?" Linh said, raising an eyebrow.

"I can't really do that in the state I'm in. There's something wrong with me, and if I tried to reach out to Keefe then I'd probably pass out again and be weakened even further. And plus, I don't think Keefe would listen to me or anyone else anyway. His letter said it all."

Sophie felt her heart sinking.

Biana took one of her hands. "Would it help if we read the letter?"

Before her heart sunk to the pit of her stomach, Sophie felt it begin to beat much faster. "Um..."

It might have helped if her friends did read Keefe's letter, because they might understand her intentions more, if they did. But Sophie didn't want that to turn into a fight...or worse, her friends thinking that there was something...between her and Keefe.

And there definitely wasn't.

Her thoughts ended up spiraling in hundreds of different directions, each one reaching out to a new possibility, possibilities that worried her and excited her and scared her all at the same time.

Biana was the one to bring her out of her mental chaos. "We won't judge you or anything. And if it helps, we'll be the only ones to read it. Oh, and I won't tell Fitz about what's in the letter."

Fitz was pretty much the furthest thing from Sophie's mind, but now that Biana mentioned him, it would be kind of disastrous if Biana told him what was written in the letter.