Untitled Story.

Chapter 2:

Veronica POV 

Over the course of the next 2 months every possible lead was looked into. Friends and family questioned. Search parties sent out and missing posters hung up around Manhattan. News was broadcasted of his face asking for information. Alerts sent out all over and yet for 2 months there was no news. During the initial search of Xavier's room they missed a pair of gloves, they believe they were used to wipe down the room. The kidnapping theory was rebuffed as security cameras found the teen entering and leaving the apartment of his own volition. 

As Hope began to dwindle so did the attention the case received. School had once again started, though it wasn't the same. A gap was left that was yet to be filled, if it ever could be. Peers talked about it, the missing teen as I walked down the halls of Spence school where Xavier was also due to attend. Nick St. Claire wasn't afraid to speak his mind on the matter towards me, often insulting Zay. Despite our feelings towards Xavier as his departure being entirely opposite ends of the spectrum we grew closer within that first month and a half of freshmen year, often found partying into the early hours. 

The next break in the Wallis case came on a damp day in early October. The night before it had been raining but the sun was shining brightly and the breeze was minimal. I'd gotten home from a short walk to a patisserie to grab some deserts for me and my mother, both of us craving something sweet when my father had gotten the call from Helen and Arnold, Xavier's grandparents. 

Early this morning as a bar on the lower east side was cleaning the mess of last night patrons a bag covered in blood was found outside by the garbage. Not touching the bag the employee of the bar, called The Fat Hen, phones the police who searched the scene. The officers on the case were non other than those originally placed on the Wallis case. Searching the bag they found the belongings of Xavier Wallis. 

Once returned to the precinct the blood was tested and found to be Xavier's, and only one persons finger print was found on the bag. The officers were under the impression that Xavier was wearing gloves so as to not leave any evidence behind. Though they considered the option that it was Xavier's finger prints found and both options held merit, apparently. 

The assumptions they made were far fetched and heinous to think about. 

They believed Xavier was kidnapped for real, the blood on the bag from a struggle. Or that Xavier had been killed and his body disposed of. 

No matches were found for the fingerprint but they were treated as the prime suspect. 

Over the course of the next 2 months leading into December pressure grew around the case until eventually the 2 officers working the case were fired. The case went to people they believed to be more qualified, a missing persons unit. Who then claimed it was a cold case. 

It was late December. December 28th when Senator Westen-Wallis announced he wanted the case closed, he claimed the heartache was too great on his family. And despite not even a year passing since his initial disappearance Xavier Wallis was supposedly laid to rest. An empty casket lowered into the ground besides his mother, Sophia Hardy. 

In the next months no more information was found on the case, it remained cold. 

My mind wondered often to what could have happened to him. His picture always present on my nightstand, a picture I'd taken the winter before his disappearance whilst we were ice skating, and on my phones lockscreen. 

His grandparents subsequently retired, though they had always planned to retire. They still owned their business, now due to their other grandson unless Xavier turns up alive and well, and hired a replacement CEO. 

Soon my thoughts were no longer on the Wallis' but instead focused on my own family issues as my father was arrested for fraud and embezzlement. Me and my mother struggled through the expected, but no less hurtful, media slander and without our usual riches to tide us over our usual expenses had to be cut. 

Eventually the social ridicule became too much and my mother made plans to have us moved to a small town of Riverdale, the place where she and my father grew up. 

I thought here I would be able to walked down the school halls without hearing whispers about me and my 'tragedy'. Though instead of hearing of my misfortune of losing my best friend, my brother for all it mattered, it was instead whispers of my father and his crimes. 

And that I believed was the last I would think of Xavier Wallis I thought. My friends didn't know him and I made a point to never bring him up, my life began a hectic spiral leaving me without a spare second even in my own head to conjure a memory of him. 

And so Xavier Wallis was laid to rest. His memory a distant dream. And that was that.