Static Lives In Paper Worlds

Chapter 4

A few knocks on the front door of the small, simple, white house in the alleyway. It was the ex-librarian's home, but no one replied to knocks.

"Maybe you should, like, ring the bell." Chrissy snorted. Taylor rolled his eyes, but did as he was told. Still no reply.

"What the?" Chrissy asked in frustration. She was getting impatient. "I haven't ditched the last few periods for this. Why doesn't this guy just come and get the door?" She folded her arms towards her chest and rolled her eyes, tapping her foot nervously on the ground.

Chrissy was well known to be an eager person, quite impatient most of the times, but she was a really nice girl other than that. Taylor shrugged.

"Maybe he's not even home." He said.

"He must be, there's a car parked right here." Jeremy pointed out.
"Maybe it's not his car though? Or maybe it doesn't work and he left it here, we can't know for certain." Taylor replied.

"Yeah, or maybe he's just a prick who has no intentions to answer questions about a girl being kidnapped." Chrissy countered, then paused as her face broke into realization. "What if he's the one who kidnapped her?"

Jeremy scoffed and Taylor scrunched his face.

"That's a huge accusation." Taylor snorted.

"Might be true." Chrissy retorted, shrugging. She was so pissed off right now, all she wanted was answers and to have her friend back. Was that too much to ask for?

Jeremy tried to ring the bell again, still nothing.

"Guys, we might as well go. It's no use." Taylor stated. Jeremy sighed and nodded. Chrissy was reluctant too, but the three of them agreed that leaving was for the better. They hesitantly headed for Taylor's house, seeing as his parents weren't home. Nor was his brother, Justin, who was still in the UK to study.

The walk to the house was mostly silent. All of them three simply walked with their eyes fixed on the ground. The only audible noise was their footsteps and the occasional cars passing by.

Until one of them broke the silence for good.

"Maybe she left because she didn't like it anymore here." Taylor mumbled. He kept trying to pick up theories that explained Hayley's disappearance, but nothing would be good enough for the others.

"Hayley? A runaway? No way." Chrissy denied, shaking her head.

"You know how she is, she loves this town." Jeremy sighed. "And she wouldn't leave us with no explanations nor goodbyes."

"Right..." Taylor muttered. He didn't like the tension, it was killing him.

Once they reached the house, they all went upstairs to Taylor's room. There were boxes all over it, meaning that Taylor hadn't unpacked all of his things yet. How could he? Everything that was going around him was so messed up, he couldn't think straight and do things properly. He was too caught in his own thoughts to actually care about unpacking everything.

Taylor plopped down on the bed, Chrissy sat across from him and Jeremy sat on the roller chair at Taylor's desk.

"So..." Jeremy started. "How's your brother?" Taylor shrugged, not caring enough to have a conversation about his brother. But he did catch Jeremy's hopeless attempt to change the topic. They couldn't be so hung up on Hayley, they needed to distract themselves sometimes.

"I think he's good." Taylor said. "He's still in London, will come back in a week I guess."

"Uh yeah that's cool." Jeremy hummed.

"How about your families?" Taylor asked. He didn't exactly care, but it was something that they could talk about and it was better than nothing.

"Always the same." Jeremy sighed. "But they're good."

"My mom is still shocked..." Chrissy whispered, gluing her eyes to her feet. Taylor groaned. He thought they were dropping the subject? Chrissy noticed that Taylor got pushy whenever they talked about it, but she couldn't just suppress her thoughts as if they meant nothing! She looked up at him, Jeremy stayed silent.

"Mom restricted my curfew." Chrissy said, quietly. "She thinks it's not safe anymore out here. I'm... I'm a little scared." It was hard for her to admit that. She thought she was going to be strong, but it wasn't as easy as expected.

"Yeah, for small fragile girlies it is." Taylor shrugged. Chrissy glared slightly at him, disliking the sexist comment. She knew it didn't meant to sound male chauvinist though, and after all she was aware to be a small fragile girl indeed.

Taylor shot her an apologetic look and Chrissy sighed.

"I just wish I could've talked to her before... Before it happened..." Chrissy mumbled, tears already forming in her chocolate eyes.

"What would've you said?" Jeremy asked.

"I would apologize." Chrissy sighed. "We had a stupid fight that day and we never made peace... I don't even remember what it was about." This time, Chrissy didn't hold back tears. She was full on crying, not caring about his friends seeing her. They've seen her crying earlier at school anyway, there was no point in hiding her pain anymore.

"What if she hates me, wherever she is?" Chrissy sobbed. Jeremy stood up and walked over to her, sitting beside her and hugging her. She clutched onto him, sobbing softly onto the collar of his shirt, as Taylor watched the scene. Taylor was in loss for words, it was already rare that Chrissy had a breakdown. But two in one row? That was impressive. The situation must've been even worse than he expected.

No more words were shared in the next minutes.

It was just one person missing, why did everything feel different? As if one single person caused everyone to panic and caused so much disease?

It was kind of the butterfly effect. The flap of a butterfly's wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world.