[a/n: a massive thanks everyone who's still reading this. honestly. i'm overwhelmed with all the support and comments this is getting, hence, the (relatively) early update. :)

this is a bit of a filler chapter, but it's somewhat necessary to keep the pace manageable and to set up the coming chapter, where, i think, the story takes a 180 degree turn. i'm not sure if i can promise regular updates since i'm still trying to juggle writing along with, you know, the rest of my life, but i'll try.

this is unedited (hahahaha what's new) so um yeah sorry about that.

love,

sam xoxo]

Chapter 22

By the time we pulled into the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour convenience store by sixth street, the gnawing feeling in my stomach had escalated into more than just a knot of nerves. I couldn't sit still, nor could I think straight, and Austin had been mostly quiet in an attempt, I assumed, not to stress me out even further.

Sometimes I would catch him sending me furtive glances, almost as though he was worried about me, but we didn't talk much.

In the little time that had passed after Austin's first phone call with Lewis, the two of us had circled around all the way back to my street. We had driven to my house to check if Tori had gone home, but my car was nowhere in sight, so decided to check her house as well.

She wasn't there.

She was, for the second time tonight, missing, and unlike the worry I felt earlier, this time was worse. Earlier, I hadn't been worried so much as I'd been irritated, and the more I got to know Austin, the more I felt safer with the thought of Tori spending time with Lewis. They weren't necessarily bad people, I knew that now, and to some extent, I must have been subconsciously relying on Lewis to keep Tori from doing something she'd regret.

Now, though, with Tori out all on her own, the worry was back in fearful waves washing over me. I had hoped to find her back home, but she hadn't been there, and now the possibilities kept running over and over in my head.

We had agreed to meet up with Lewis here, and as soon as the car stopped moving, I had immediately begun to fidget. It felt as though every passing second could change everything. Five seconds could mean one more shot of tequila, or a spur of the moment decision to get into the backseat of some stranger's car, or, even, a miscalculated step that could lead into a concussion.

Every minute seemed to evolve into hours, and as much as I didn't want to fret, the same feeling I'd had the night of the incident was beginning to take over. The dread, the guilt and the never-ending worry were all familiar, and I just wanted to rid myself of them.

I just wanted to find her—all other things be damned.

"Stop it."

I felt a hand on my own, snapping me back to reality, where I realized that I'd been absentmindedly picking at the fraying leather seats of the car. I stopped, and Austin let go almost a fraction of a second too late.

"You're going to drive yourself crazy if you keep this up," he told me.

There was no condescension in his voice. In fact, he seemed almost amused, one corner of his lips lifting to an almost imperceptible smile. How he could possibly be amused when I was obviously freaking out was beyond me, but I did appreciate the fact that he was calm, and his placidity was keeping me anchored by the shore; from drifting away too far out the water.

Any other time, I could have ignored the amusement glinting in his eyes, but the stress was taking its toll on me and I couldn't stop myself from fixing him with a vehement glare. "If I could help it, don't you think I would have done so already?"

"I'm serious, though." He put up both hands in surrender. "You need to calm down. Breathe, for fuck's sake."

"I can't fucking calm down, okay? You don't know how it feels like to think that your best friend could be lying in ditch somewhere all because you had been careless enough to let her get of your sight, so just back the hell off and get off my fucking case because you don't' know anything."

"I do know!" he suddenly snapped, his jaw and shoulders suddenly taut.

I'd come to an abrupt halt and so did he, looking almost as though he was more surprised than I was. In a split second, it was over. He looked away, eyes guarded, and didn't say more. His words seem to echo in the confines of the small car, and before I knew it, my curiosity had overtaken my worry and I couldn't take my eyes off him, searching for a window that would give me a glimpse of what, exactly, he had meant by that.

After a while, however, it became clear that he wasn't going to say anything more, if he was going to speak at all, and the two of us just settled into an uncomfortable silence that neither us seemed to want to acknowledge.

Fortunately, that was the time Lewis chose to arrive, tapping Austin's window so abruptly that the two of us jumped a little at the sound. Lewis had apparently arrived in a bike. Austin got out of the car and I followed suit, walking over to the other side to get closer to the two of them.

"Hey," Lewis said, looking sheepishly at me.

I figured Tori must have told him about her running off partly to set me up with his cousin, but as much as I wanted to yell at the two of them for doing something as idiotic as that, I simply couldn't find it in me to do so.

"What's wrong?" Lewis looked at the two of us expectantly, his brows drawing in confusing.

Austin and I exchanged glances, then I looked back at Lewis, trying to suppress the urge to yell at him for letting Tori out of his sight.

"Did Tori tell you where she was going?"

He frowned, his brows creasing even further. "Yeah."

I felt hope flutter in my chest at the word. "Where?"

"She told me she was going home."

It died out abruptly. I exhaled, slumping back against Georgina as the energy drained right out of me. "Fuck."

"What's wrong?" Lewis asked us, looking, apparently, even more confused than he had earlier. "Is everything all right?"

I caught Austin sending me an almost reassuring look, like he was telling me it was okay to tell Lewis. I didn't want to, but I knew I needed to, else he wouldn't understand why, exactly, I was acting this way.

"A year ago. Tori went off on her own to meet up with some people she met online," I said. "She wanted me to come with her, but I didn't." Raising my gaze to his, I took a deep breath and continued, "She almost got raped."

For the second time that night, I found myself talking about the night of the incident, detailing about the way Tori often behaved. I told him about all her often ill-planned adventures that almost always resulted to her getting into trouble and about me going along for the ride to watch out for her to make sure nothing like that ever happened again.

I told him everything as quickly as I could, and by the time I was finished, I was sure he finally begun to feel what, exactly, I'd been feeling over the course of the night.

"Shit." Lewis shook his head, almost as though he was trying to clear his head. "Shit. Shit."

Austin had been mostly quiet for the rest of the conversation, but he promptly pushed himself off Georgina, tapping the car door twice as he looked over at the two of us. "If that's the case," he said, "then we better start looking."

* * *

I wasn't sure why exactly Austin had chosen to help out when he could have already gone home and rid himself of me. Lewis, who obviously had the hots for Tori, was at least being reasonable when he decided to help look for her. Austin, however, had already found what he was looking for, and it didn't make sense for him to stay when he could have already gone home.

Nevertheless, I wasn't complaining because as much as I hated to admit it, I had grown somewhat comfortable in his presence, and seeing him driving calmly while I was pretty much doing everything I can to keep myself from freaking out was reassuring.

We were, once again, back to square one as we drove around town, hoping to find my car as we tried to figure out where she could have gone. We had checked my house and hers again, but there was still no sign of her, and I'd tried dialing my phone again, hoping the battery hadn't died out, wishing she'd pick up, please, just this once, but she never did.

"After that," Lewis was saying from the backseat as he filled us in on where he and Tori had gone, "we headed to this bar, but then we saw—oh, right! Can you believe that I saw Peter tonight?"

"Actually, we met him too," Austin replied, sending me a quick sideways glance.

I wasn't sure what the look he gave me meant, but in a split-second, he had looked away, letting his eyes fall back on the dark road looming ahead of us.

I looked away too, unable to stop myself from remembering what Peter had told me just an hour ago. As Austin and Lewis fell into a conversation about each other's impression of this new Peter they'd seen tonight, I was thinking to what he'd told me earlier. He had been through a lot, he said, looking at Austin with a fond expression.

Then I found myself thinking back to his little outburst when I accused him of not knowing how it felt like to be me right before Lewis had arrived. It had surprised me, him suddenly offering this information before shutting off just like that just as quickly as he'd talked, putting his walls back up as though he was afraid I might trespass on his past if he didn't.

And, the truth was, I wanted to, but he'd already set up the electric chain-link fence around himself, and I knew I'd only be electrocuted if I tried to come any closer than I already had.

We continued to drive around for a while as Lewis finished telling us about the places he and Tori had gone to. I listened, somewhat irritated to hear that Austin and I had been so close to finding them tonight as we followed their trail, moving place to place to look for new leads, and it was frustrating to know now that we could've caught up with them at some point in the night.

"And then she said she remembered that there was something she needed to do," Lewis said, voice falling from spirited to somewhat serious. "So she dropped me off, told me she'll call me, and drove off."

"Are you sure she wasn't just blowing you off?"

"Dude," Lewis said, shooting his cousin a sour look.

"She wasn't," I found myself saying. "Tori would never say she'd call you if she didn't plan to."

At this, Lewis released a deep breath, one that almost seemed as though he'd been holding his breath all this time, worried that Tori could have driven off in search of some other guy.

"Do you maybe have an idea where else she could have gone?" I asked him, twisting from the front so I could look at Lewis. "Did she tell you what she needed to do?"

"I didn't ask." He sounded apologetic, and I knew he really was, but I felt the disappointment weigh me down nonetheless.

Tori had always been forgetful, but running off just because she remembered that there was something she needed to do didn't seem like her at all. Normally, she would have dragged whoever was with her to whatever it was she needed to go to, like that party of hippie people she remember she'd read online about, or that little boutique in the shopping district to buy new pairs of underwear (which she once did when she was out on a first date with some guy she met at a relative's wedding).

She was an unfortunate mix of shameless and inconsiderate, but what's worse was that she was somewhat clueless about it, and she was naturally sweet and affectionate, which, I guess to some people, balanced it out pretty well.

To me, I see all these sides of her in close proximity, almost as though I was using a magnifying glass that I couldn't disable because I'd known her for a long time and these were the things that defined our friendship, and, truthfully, if she were so horrible, I could have walked away a long time ago.

But I hadn't, even though I'd seen her chinks and cracks under that magnifying lens, because even though she was shameless and inconsiderate and somewhat naïve, she was also protective and thoughtful when it comes to the things that do matter. She could forget to bring her house keys on her way to my birthday, but she wouldn't forget my present; she could care less about what people thought about her, but she would care more than I do about what people thought of me; she could be clueless about the things I wanted to talk to her about, but she knew everything I didn't want to talk about.

She had never once forced me to tell her about the problems I was having with my father, but she understood all the same, and while I usually kept these problems to myself, I knew, somehow, that she could see right through me.

She could be careless enough to leave out an entire page of an exam just because she forgot to check the back of the test paper, but she could never be careless enough to forget about the things I'm allergic to, or the secrets I'd told her or even the small things like how I prefer my sandwiches and coffee.

Tori Matsunaga was damn well far from perfect: she was a walking recipe for disaster, and there were times when I seriously questioned my love-hate relationship with her, but she had never—and I mean never—gone off to any of her adventures without asking me to go to her.

She believed, of course, that going alone is never even half as fun as going with someone, and that "someone" always happened to be me, and going off alone without telling me first was just so drastically uncharacteristic of her.

Which, truth be told, was what I worried about the most.

* * *

"That's it," Austin said, pulling abruptly on the side of the road. He parked the car, removed his seatbelt and twisted on his seat to face both me and Lewis. "We've circled the town three times already, and, clearly, this isn't getting us anywhere."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Are you saying we should stop?"

"I'm saying," he said, "that we should try to figure out where she could possibly go at past two in the morning instead of blindly driving around."

He was right, I knew, but it was nearly impossible to come up with anything when we'd pretty much checked the whole town, especially the places she usually frequented. I was hoping, of course, that she hadn't driven out of town because if she did, then I wasn't sure we could ever find her.

Austin was staring at me, but he must have known I was drawing up a blank because he turned to his cousin instead. "Are you sure she didn't mention anything to you? Anything at all?"

With a sigh, he shook his head. "I don't think so."

"Are you sure? Maybe she told you about, I don't know, some food she wanted to eat? Or something she wanted to see?"

"We already ate some pastries from Coffee Overdose, and she said she wanted to see the Eiffel tower at least once in her life, but obviously, she can't be in Paris."

"What about a band she wanted to hear?"

Almost as though Austin had just flicked on a light switch in his brain, Lewis brightened and said, "There was this one band she might have mentioned."

Riveted, both Austin and I looked at him expectantly. His mouth was turned down into a slight frown, his eyes trained upwards as though he expected to find the name of the name on the car ceiling. Then, with a snap of his finger, he said, "The Sweet Potatoes!"

The name clicked at the back of my mind. A memory of her telling me about local indie band she found online resurfaced. "The drummer's a childhood friend of mine," I remember her telling me, but I was too busy wondering why on earth somebody would name a band The Sweet Potatoes to actually listen to her ramble on about them.

I tried to recall as much as I can, hoping I'd remember if she ever mentioned where and when they played, or the band members' names, or—

With a disappointed sigh, I slumped back in my seat. "They don't play here anymore," I told them. "Some agent found them or something and they moved to New York."

"There's got to be something," Austin said, growing frustrated. "Maybe there's someone she wanted to find, or something she wanted to do."

I was already losing hope, half-convinced that we won't ever find her no matter how hard we searched because if she wanted to be found, she would have been found hours ago. I was this close to giving up, trying, for once, to trust her when she said she told me she'd be back, to believe that she'd stay safe even without anyone to look after her, but I knew I'd never be able to sleep this off, so I might as well try.

From the backseat, Lewis let out a groan. "Fuck this. If only I was psychic or something."

The word psychic made me freeze. It snagged on my mind, sticking itself there as a realization dawned on me.

"It's a bit of a stretch," I said, "but I think I know some place."

* * *

"Are you sure about this?" Austin asked me as the car slowed to a stop just a few yards away from where we'd been just an hour or so ago.

I eyed the purple and gold sign hanging overhead. "No," I said, "but it's worth a try."

Without another word, I opened the door and stepped out of the car, heading, for the second time tonight, to the ornately carved door. On both counts, I knew it was a bad idea, and the last time I'd stormed out of this same doorway, I hadn't been too happy.

But it sort of made sense. (Sort of.) But even if it didn't, it was better than nothing, and it wasn't like we were going to lose anything anyway.

Unlike earlier, the door did not open on its own. I heard some shuffling behind me, and I found Austin coming up behind me when I looked over my shoulder.

"Lewis says he'll try calling her again," he told me, "but honestly, I think he's just scared of the psychic."

I laughed a little, shaking my head as I turned back to the door. Then, without hesitation, I rang the doorbell.

Austin stepped closer to me, leaning a little to whisper, "Okay. This place is seriously giving me the creeps."

I snorted, trying to ignore the warmth of his breath fanning against my skin. "Wait until you see her."

Almost as if on cue, the door opened, revealing, I assumed, Madame Aurelie. She was still in her ridiculous getup, and the same spooky aura still radiated from her. When she spotted me, her red-rimmed lips stretched into a joker-esque smile.

"I knew you would come back," she said, then her eyes slid over to Austin. "And I see you've found what you're looking for."

I rolled my eyes. "Look," I said. "We're not here as your customers or whatever, so spare us the bullshit. Have you or have you not seen an Asian girl sometime tonight? She's about this height."

Her heavily-lined eyes hardened a little, her shoulders growing stiff at my rudeness. "What I am doing is divine."

"Then divine it is!" I snapped. "Whatever it is, we don't need it. Just answer us."

By then, her eyes had grown icy and her mouth thinned down. "She was here."

My heart jumped to my throat. It had been a long shot, and I hadn't expected myself to be right. "What did she ask you? What did you tell her?"

"That is between her and me," she told me, and, without hesitation, slammed the door on our faces.

I heard the click of the lock, then the sign overhead flicked off, plunging Austin and I in darkness. I cursed under my breath, ringing the doorbell furiously, again and again and again, until I felt Austin's hand shooting out to grab mine.

"Leave it," he said.

"But she might give us a clue," I protested.

"Maybe she might have if, you know, you hadn't yelled at her."

Once again, we'd been so close. We missed her by minutes, and as if that wasn't frustrating enough, we were once again back to being completely clueless. Irritated, I let out a groan and turned around, pulling my arm out of Austin's grip.

"Chill out," he called behind me. "At least we know she's still in town. Or that she isn't lying in ditch somewhere."

I stopped walking, realizing he was right. "But we still don't know where exactly she could be."

"Maybe," he said, "we need to figure out why, exactly, she wanted to see a psychic in the first place."

"Easy." I crossed my arms over my chest, fighting the urge to say duh. "She wanted to know if she'd found her soul-mate in Lewis."

In the dim glow of the streetlight across the street, I saw him raise an eyebrow. "Do you really think she'd go to a 'psychic' and ask about nothing but her soul-mate? She wouldn't have wasted the opportunity to ask about, I don't know, the other stuff she cares about."

"But she's got everything figured out," I told him.

Despite her childishness, or maybe because of it, she'd found what she wanted to do for the rest of her life the day we came across a bird whose wing was broken five years ago. "I want to take care of animals," she had told me, and she'd held on to that dream since then.

She was a complicated person, but she was simple-minded, and this was her general outlook in life. If she wanted to do it, she'd do it, the consequences be damned, so unlike the rest of us who still struggled to find our places in the world, she'd already marked hers.

She was all set for the future.

"That's bullshit," Austin said, taking in a sharp breath. "Nobody has it all figured out at eighteen. Or twenty-five, or even forty. There's got to be something that's still bothering her."

And then it hit me.

It hit me with such force that I felt as though I was so stupid for not seeing it earlier; for ignoring the signs even though I'd seen them for weeks now. It was in the way she started spending more time in our house, or the fact that we'd never once hung out at hers this past month. I'd seen it in her persistence for us to watch Rom-Coms together and, ultimately, in the way she'd forced me to go along with tonight's adventure.

It was like she was afraid there wouldn't be enough time to do everything she wanted to do, and I should know have known it long ago.

She didn't want to leave for Japan.

Finally, I looked up at Austin and said, "I know where she is."