Letters to Harry

Chapter Twelve

Louis set the opened envelope on the floor, reaching wordlessly for the next one. He didn't want to think about Harry right now.

Ripping through the paper with ease, Lou pulled out a small slip of paper. Briefly glancing at it, he recognized it as a bill, though the sum was quite startling.

"Eight thousand three hundred and twenty pounds?" the eldest boy shrieked, startling his friends.

"What?" Liam questioned, immediately wondering why Louis would have spent so much when he had barely left the flat.

"There's a bill, in my hand, for eight thousand three hundred and twenty pounds!" Louis exclaimed, still not comprehending why he had received the statement in the first place.

"Read the address, mate. Maybe then you'll find out where it's from." Zayn advised quietly from the floor where he sat next to Niall, who was speechless. Looking down, the Doncaster lad scoured the typed page, looking for any information.

"Oh! Here it says-" Lou started, but Niall, having snapped back to life, jumped on the older boy and wrestled the paper out of his hands.

"NOOOOO!!!" the blonde screamed, running into the kitchen with both the envelop and bill in hand. "ZAYN, LIAM. Get your arses in here! NOW!" He demanded, trying to catch his breath as he held himself up with the refrigerator.

Sharing a quick glance, then looking down at where Louis sat, stunned into silence on the floor, they followed after the crazy Irishman.

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"Niall…" Zayn said cautiously, approaching the petite blonde.

"What the hell, mate?" Liam inquired, extremely confused.

"You ATTACKED Louis!" the Bradford boy added, "Why would you do that?"

"BECAUSE!" Niall flailed, nervous under the continuous scrutiny from his two friends. "Because this is a bill for Harry."

Liam's jaw dropped in understanding, and Zayn's eyes bulged slightly.

"Oh my God, he just had to send the bill to the apartment where Lou would find it, didn't he? He couldn't have sent it to his mum's, or to mine or Zayn's or yours?" Daddy Direction hung his head in disappointment at the youngest member of the band, if they were one anymore.

"Yeah, well either he filled out the billing information without thinking, or the people at North Memorial DAR Centre are daft beyond comprehensibility." Zayn added, obviously annoyed.

"I'm leaning towards the first one, Z. You don't pay almost eight and a half thousand pounds for someone to file your billing incorrectly." Liam reasoned, wanting to believe that Harry had chosen the best place possible to recover.

"Well, we can ask him when he comes back." Niall added, mood brightening substantially. The welcome smiles of the three boys standing in the kitchen lit up the room.

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Louis smiled  as well, grabbing his laptop and running to his room. He'd vowed to find Harry, and now he had somewhere to start.

The rest of the evening was filled with searching the internet for information on North Memorial DAR Centre, which Louis had discovered stood for "Depression and Addiction Rehabilitation Centre."

He tried as hard as he could to think of a plausible reason for Harry to have enrolled himself in the program, and had narrowed it down to three: Drinking, Drugs, or Depression.

The drinking. Louis knew that Harry went out and got shitfaced at the clubs… but they all did. So that wasn’t it. Harry wasn't an alcoholic, he was a social drinker. He didn't have a problem with knowing when to stop.

Drugs? No. Harry had never touched drugs. Ever. Lou knew for a fact, because they had talked about it when they decided to live together. No drugs in the flat. If management found out that they had even smoked weed, they said that they'd drop them from the label. Harry had slept naked in Lou's room most nights, and the Doncaster boy liked to think that with all the hours he spent admiring his sleeping form, he would have noticed track marks on his arms or legs.

So that left depression. Was Harry suicidal? Had Louis done something to provoke the boy's unstable thoughts? The possibilities were endless. The Haz Lou knew was happy and energetic, not lethargic and sad… the older boy thought he would have noticed the warning signs, but when he analyzed the weeks before Curly's abrupt departure, he remembered nothing but broad smiles and laughs from the boy.

Louis had to get to the bottom of the Mystery of Harry Styles, Games in the DARC, as he had affectionately named his valiant plight.  It was past  midnight when Lou finally shut the lid of his laptop, stowing it under Harry's bed for the morning. He'd need to print out the directions before he left. He was going to see his Hazza.