The Day Hope was Murdered

12. Searching for a Needle in a Haystack

// Chapter 12: Searching for a Needle in a Haystack \\

"Hey mom! I'm home!" I yell as soon as I walk through the door. I'm surprised to find her sitting on the couch right in front of me.

She looks up from her laptop. "Hey honey. How was support group?" she asks.

I walk further into the room and sit next to her on the couch. Closing her laptop, my mom turns to face me.

"It was good. I made a friend." It's hard for me to contain the jubilation I feel from meeting Tiffany.

"Oh really? That's wonderful! What's her name? Why is she at support group? Is she goo--"

I interrupt her string of questions. "Mom, one question at a time please. Her name is Tiffany. She'd a really nice girl who is just going through a rough patch as we all do." I downplay Tiffany's reason for attending support group, not wanting the knowledge of her loss to affect my mother's actions towards her when she picks me up tonight. That is, if my mom lets me hang out with her in the first place. I continue. "Anyways, we were wondering, well, I was wondering if I could hang out with her tonight? We were thinking of going to that new bowling alley in town, and it might be nice to hang out with someone other than Amanda, you know?"

My mom looks hurt. "What's wrong with Amanda? Are you still friends?" she asks. Amanda has always been like a second daughter to my mom so I can understand where she's coming from.

"Oh, nothing. We're still close. I just—" I pause, afraid of continuing. "I just think it'd be nice to be with someone who doesn't constantly remind me of Hope." I swallow my fear and continue, knowing the likelihood of my mom saying yes will increase if I show vulnerability. "Not that I don't want to be reminded of Hope. I do. But the events that happened to her playing on constant replay in my head is taking its toll on me. I regret not doing anything to save her with every ounce of my being and for one night, I just don't want to feel that way."

My mother reaches over the couch and pulls me into an embrace. "I'm sorry. No one, especially a teenager should feel that way. Go ahead. Enjoy a night out. Just be home by eleven o'clock."

I mock salute at her as I struggle to conceal my joy. "Will do, ma'am. And not a second later."

My mom's eyes crinkle and as a stand up to leave, she reaches over to open her laptop. Having a thought, I turn back to her. She snaps her laptop shut once again. I question "Hey . . . what are you always doing on your laptop? You're always on it nowadays and you used to never go on it. Didn't you even say that laptops are stupid and a waste of time?"

My mom looks down at her hands on her laptop and replies "You know, with being out of work, I have to find some way to occupy my time. It turns out a laptop isn't such a waste of time; it's actually a great piece of machinery."

I press the issue even further. "You still didn't answer my question. What are you always doing on it?"

"Oh, you know . . . stuff" she trails off. "It honestly depends on the day. I do a whole bunch of different things."

Deciding to respect her right to not answer, I just leave it at that. "Okay then," I say.

And with that, I start to leave the room and head up the stairs to my bedroom. As I do, I think about my mom. She seems a lot happier these days. Back when the incident with Hope first happened, she would hole herself up in her bedroom and sometimes multiple days passed before I would see her face. At nights, it would be hard for me to fall asleep due to the sound of her wailing. But now . . . it's as if she's a different person. She's always downstairs in the living room. At first, I thought it was just so she could keep me on lockdown and so I wouldn't leave the house. But she still does it after all that's done and good. It's nice that she's getting over Hope's death, but I can't help but wonder what she does with her time on that stupid laptop.

I've reached my bedroom door and so I twist the doorknob and push it open. In front of me lies something I had forgotten about all morning, due to the lovely distractions of support group: my trunk. I completely discard all thoughts about my mom and immediately head to it. The reality that it is under lock and key slips my mind as I attempt to open it. I groan in frustration.

Walking over to my bedside table drawer, I open it to take out the key that will unlock my trunk and help me save the world, only to find it missing. Like those sunglasses that you left on your head and forgot about, it's missing and I panic. Thinking maybe it got moved around in the drawer, I rifle through everything, take it all out and then put it all back in and still, nothing.

Frantically, I pull at the ends of my hair, knowing that not finding this key could mean the end of my communications with Oliver and the end of my chances at finding Hope.

"Crap," I mutter.

I then proceed to pull all the covers and sheets off of my bed, in search of the smaller-than-my-thumb key.

Nothing.

So I pick up all the clothes off of my floor, and search through those as I throw them in my dirty-clothes hamper.

Still nothing.

I bring those down to the laundry room and as I toss them in the washer, I search through the dirty clothes that hadn't been searched through already.

Yet again, nothing.

I walk back up the stairs and clear the rest of the junk off of my floor, putting everything in their respectable places.

Nothing.

I search under the bed and through the closet. I drag my hand along the edges of my room, trying to feel that cool metal. I take out all my dresser drawers, dump all the clothes out, and search their pockets and folds before I refold them all and place them back in the drawers.

And what did I find? Oh yeah, you guessed it.

Absolutely nothing.

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Eeeepp! I actually did it and updated two days in a row. Two more days to goXD  

Scale of one to ten, what do you guys think of the new cover? I made it and I'm so proud of myself because I really really like it.

<3 ash