But now it's 3AM and I get a call from an unknown number, and in my groggy haze I answer it.
"Look out your window," and it's Sydney's voice. Completely normal, as if it were 12 hours earlier.
I yawn, and I stumble to the bedroom window, and I press my face to it; the glass is freezing. It's snowing - the first snowfall of the season.
"I can't see anything through the snow," I croak.
"The snow," she repeats. "Where do you think he is right now? He's got to be out there somewhere. He must be freezing."
I'm looking out into the black night, my eyes trying to reach beyond the darkness out there and failing. "He's probably okay, Sydney. He has his car with him."
She's breathing into the phone heavily. "I know - I know he's fine. But it's like I can't sleep, Dante. Just knowing he's out there somewhere, knowing that he might never come home - it's driving me crazy, and I don't know who else I can talk to."
"I-" and then there's a knock at the door, and I'm seriously confused. It is 3AM, right?
"Hang on, there's someone at the door," and I mute my phone, putting it down on my nightstand. I stumble downstairs in sweatpants and a bathrobe, still yawning as I flip the light on. I nearly jump back when I see who it is: the police officer who I gave major attitude earlier today (today? yesterday?).
"Believe me," he says gruffly, "you're the last person I want to see tonight - but James' parents wanted to send out a notice to everyone who was involved in his disappearance."
"A notice about what?" Somehow, in the seven seconds it took him to say this, I've woken up.
"James' car." His brow is thick, and frowning, and there's a weird crease in his forehead.
"What about it?" I say.
"It was a 1989 station wagon, red, right?"
"Yeah..." I say, unsure of where he's going with this.
He takes a deep breath. "The car was found this morning 20 miles north of Route 262. It slid off road and crashed into a grove of trees on the side of the road. It's completely totaled."
I don't realize that I'm screaming until it all goes black.
YOU ARE READING
Route 262
Teen FictionJames is tall, captain of the swim team, and dating the meanest girl in the entire school. Dante's been in love with him for years, and it looks like nothing is going to change. But one day, soon after they reconnect, James goes missing, with no one...
