Carolina Wren

A Report #2

The seconds ticking by while Kota and Nathan waited for the others were excruciating. Kota was pacing back and forth with his eyes closed, lips moving soundless as he counted and smacked his cell phone against his forehead. Luke was across the street, hidden in the bushes around Wren's house as the other two sat helplessly in Kota's bedroom. The calmness of the street was a bitter mockery-- the last text they got from Luke said he could still hear Mrs. Nelson screaming and the youngest kids crying.

Nathan was in the window, eyes trained on the Nelson household, binoculars sitting uselessly next to him. Wren's curtains were closed. The other bedroom's curtains were closed. They already knew she wasn't downstairs and even if she was?

Closed.

"This is stupid," Nathan snarled as he glared out the window. "We should just go over there, there's obviously something wrong."

Kota didn't even open his eyes or slow his pacing. Guilt ate at him for leaving. For not barging in as soon as he heard yelling. For calling Mr. Blackbourne in without any thought to Wren's trust in them, only about her safety at that moment. For thinking of how she would view him afterwards in a time like this. "We can't, Nate. We have no proof of imminent danger. We can't just knock down the door for no evident reason."

Which was why he'd called Mr. Blackbourne in the first place. He wasn't thinking about Wren's secret potentially coming to light, he was worried about doing things the right way so they could get her out and keep her out. Mr. Blackbourne had saved all of them in one way or another and instinct led him back to the man he thought could protect the girl Kota was confident he was falling for.

It was worth the risk of her hating him if the only thing happening was a yelling match between a teenage girl and her mother because the alternative was something he couldn't live with. He would try to protect her secret, but not at the jeopardy of her and her younger siblings' safety.

Nathan turned his glare on his best friend. He knew Kota was beating himself up but couldn't find the energy to console him when his own mind was wrapped up in what was happening across the street. "You said she was nervous when you showed up and then got panicky when she saw her mom's car. That's enough evidence for me."

"We're not the police, Nate," Kota reminded him, frustration clear in his tone. "Even if I had seen her knock Wren across the room, it would be a legal gray area for us to just barge into her house. Doing it when we have no evidence? We could be doing more harm to Wren than good. If she hasn't hit her or if Wren denies it, at a minimum her mother could isolate her from us. At most? I don't want to think about what she could do to her."

Kota doesn't bother to chastise Nathan swearing in response or the way he bangs the open palm of his hand against the wall, rattling the signed and framed copy of a Lord of the Rings movie poster hanging over the bed. His mind is too busy going over everything Wren has ever said, the way she acts, trying to find even the smallest hint that there's more than just verbal abuse happening in her home.

Any excuse to forget about waiting for backup and just go barging into that house and dragging all four of them out of there.

Because he doesn't disagree with Nathan. If he had his way, he would have never left that house at all. Wren had always seemed jumpy but the more clues they got about her life before Sunnyvale Court, the more he suspected something horrible was happening behind closed doors. What he couldn't understand was why a sister who went out of her way to take care of her younger siblings wouldn't reach out for help.

She'd had the opportunity. Mr. Blackbourne, a person she knew only as a teacher and a leader of their group, had been standing right there while she told him about abuse she had suffered from one of her mother's ex boyfriends. Made implications of other exes being of a similar nature. She had said nothing. Everyone in their group had been guilty of the same thing at one time or another, but none of them had been as old as Wren.