The ways we lost him(completed)

25

I walked to school the next morning anxiously. I had stayed up all night thinking about what I was going to speak about today, for our English project. I had already agreed with Karma about what I would speak about but now I was beginning to regret that. Every draft I wrote just didn't seem right and the mere thought of reading it out made me feel nauseous. Maybe I'd just speak about something else.

Another thing that worried me was the amount of people going missing lately. It was beginning to get recognition in the local news, as my mother had asked me about it. There were three people missing from our school, and altogether twenty from around the state. I knew that not all of them had something to do with Sebastian's disappearance but the way it was seen is that all these missing kids were in someway involved with the same drug traffickers Sebastian had been involved with.

Earlier this morning, my father sat by the fire with the newspaper in his hands, his glasses tipped down onto the bridge of his nose.

"Drug dealers in this town?" My mother asked incredulously as she tidied away the breakfast. My father looked up, a small frown gracing his lips.

"Well, they've been a problem for years, even when I was growing up here. But never to the extent where they were tied in with missing children's cases."

Yes, our town always had a drug problem, nestled into the dark corners away from the eyes of the children. It was the big secret of our town, it wasn't spoken of, until now I guess.

"Who is it, I wonder?" My mother pondered and my father looked up, his eyes hesitant.

"It's the woodlock family, troubled family they are, down by the docks. Everyone knows, but they've always gotten away with it, always stayed under the radar and beneath the nose of the cops. I believe their son is in your class, Dalia?"

I nodded my head slowly and he looked up thoughtfully.

"It's an awful thing you know, imagine the parents that lost those kids, I don't know if the Woodlock has anything to do with those cases but it's made to look like they do." He removed his glasses, setting them down on the red table cloth as he looked over at me.

"You have nothing to do with the likes of them, do you Dalia?"

I quickly shook my head, grabbing my bag to leave for school.

"I can drive you if you want?" My mother asked and I shook my head.

"Luka said she'd pick me up a little down the street." That was a lie, but I needed some time to walk  and think, to clear my mind. My mother nodded absentmindedly as I left, my blue and navy rug-sack over my shoulders.

Now, here I was fretting over what I would do when it rolled around to English. I didn't have a finished essay or even a replacement idea as I entered the school, heading up to my locker. I sighed deeply, slamming my locker door shut.

"What's wrong with you?" Angie asked, as she stopped beside me, opening her locker.

"This damn English project,"

She nodded thoughtfully. "Wasn't karma suppose to pick that out for you?"

"I don't like the one he picked out."

She shrugged. "You can always just wing it,"

-/

Water dropped in the corner of the room, the teacher had left the window open and I could hear it splatter down onto the window sill.

"Okay, I think today was the day we were supposed to be starting on our spoken projects." Our English teacher stood to the front of the room, her hands clasped happily on front of her.