Double Life: Be Well

A/N: The image for this one was so hard to find.... and still, I wish I had one better. 

Like I said in the past one... the beginning of the end...

***

If only this kid had green eyes, I tried to make them that but... Im not good at it... I think this kid looks a bit too young but I like the feeling of this pix, though the more I see it the more I like him like for the character haha

Someone clearing their throat made Josh mess up the song. He had been playing his guitar with his eyes closed, he didn´t think anybody would disturb him there, he was after all skipping Art Club time, it had been eight days since the teacher had inquired about Nichole, he hadn´t asked again but sometimes it seemed like he was about to.

“Joshua, right?” the elegant woman before him asked. He knew she knew his name

“Good afternoon Mrs. Strasberg” he said politely despite himself, she smiled

“Have you seen Nichole…?” she asked, he raised his eyebrows “I thought I´d find her here since this wall seems to be her favorite place in school” she explained

“She´s not here” he stated the obvious

“Do you know where she is?” she asked smiling, it never reached her calculating eyes

“No, I haven’t seen her today” he didn´t feel like saying much, specially to her, he knew she was involved in whatever made the girl ran away and it seemed Nichole had made everything in her power for no one to find out, “not even me” he thought somewhat bitterly.

“Do you think you can give her a call, so that I can talk to her, it´s important and my battery´s dead” she frowned a little

“I don´t have her number” he shrugged

“No?” she seemed surprised, he shook his head ´no´

“If you see her, can you tell her to call me, please” she was going as soon as he nodded “ah, one more thing, could you tell me where you last saw her, maybe she´s still there?”

“I haven´t seen her today” he repeated

“Didn´t you see her in class?”

“I’m sure she wouldn´t be there since classes were over about two hours ago” he said and she frowned

“Ok… thank you. If you see her, tell her…”

“To call you, got it” he interrupted and went back to his guitar, Natasha took a few steps then stopped

“Did you guys fight?” she turned to see him. He huffed not stopping to play. Natasha observed him for a moment, his angry manners, the way his head had turned slightly to the right as he huffed, his upturned lips. It made her sure that had happened. She walked away without an answer.

Once Natasha was out of his line of vision she called the girl, as she´d been doing since the homeroom teacher called her that morning inquiring about Nichole´s health and to tell how worried she was that the girl had missed almost two weeks of classes. This call went to voice mail.

Natasha squeezed her eyes closed and then checked the tracking device, it kept moving, it had shown the girl was at the stone wall but then it disappeared and appeared in the library. Nat was aware now that somehow the girl could alter it and it was no longer useful but she still hoped it worked. She´d checked the records of Nichole´s movements from the last couple of days, before the call from school, it showed the girl had done what she usually did, even the occasional escapade to the woods or to the little towns around the school but she´d learned from the teacher she hadn´t done that, at least she hadn´t gone to classes.  Val had been useless as always, the woman had been fooled by the shower and hadn´t mind not having seen or heard about the girl in the lasts days.

Going to Nichole´s room hadn´t help, everything looked the same as always, even the things in her secret drawer were there, Camille and her mom´s picture, Ash´s letters, Josh´s birthday card, her baby picture… it all was there, all that she cared about. Natasha knew she wouldn´t care for the expensive brand dresses hanging on her closet specially since most of them had been used in some or other mission as well as the jewelry still in the box she´d bought for her.

Natasha looked around in the library, as she already knew, Nichole was not there. She stood in front of one of the girl´s pictures, one that she hadn´t seen but that she knew because of the NEC that the girl signed in all her works, there she heard a notification on her phone, she´d been disappointed to see it was not Nichole, she´d been sure that the lucky encounter with the boy would make her appear but maybe he did know where she was, or so she had thought before she´d seen the hurt expression in his eyes.

The woman checked the mail, it was the bank account report that she´d asked for, it had been denied to her that morning since the girl was now legally an adult but Nat had her ways and had gotten it anyways, up to the past Monday morning two weeks ago no transactions had been made, that was the only strange thing, then before that date, the same amounts had been withdrawn, more on the weekends, more when she was out. This information told Nat two things, one, Nichole had gone away the Monday after she broke her promise which told her it wasn´t about that since in that case she would´ve gone away on Sunday and it told her that the last place she´d been was the town closest to Burgeoys where she last used her card to pay for lunch, this also meant the girl didn´t have money to go far yet something told Nat that she didn´t need her own money, with all that herself, Tilly and Karl and the life they all had forced her to live she didn´t need it, she could easily take it and pass unnoticed, undiscovered but then, there was what Nat hoped would happen, Nichole had always refused and opposed to those things, she hoped for that, only that way she could find the girl in time to avoid Karl´s wrath for not knowing where his most precious asset was or for not knowing she´d planned to run away.

Nat let out her breath through her mouth and walked out of the library, feeling both worried and glad that Karl hadn´t decided to drop one of those impromptu calls on the girl´s phone, she was almost sure Nichole wouldn´t answer, she´d never not answer one of her calls but now, she was gone and not answering. It made Nat scared that Karl might call Nic at any moment and when she didn´t answer Nat would have to do a lot of explaining or who knew what, if she didn´t find the girl, bad things were going to happen, she was in no mood to face that ever.

On the wooded cabin in Woodhills, where Nat had decided to go after Burgeoys, she tried another call, this time she left a message.

“That you´ve fought with Joshua Arlington doesn´t mean you have to run away. Just make it better, you´ll be fine” Nat sighed looking around the cabin where she´d last seen the boy Nichole used to like. She remembered how she´d seen him lying on his bed, dead of a heart attack, she´d been the one to declare him dead to the hospital, she´d found a way to get into the ambulance that had been sent there. “Ah, Nickie…” she sighed as she remembered the desperation in the girl´s eyes, almost a year ago, the images brought an idea to her mind, and she called again.

“If you think Joshua will have Ashley´s fate, you´re wrong, you know yourself better, come back. He misses you a lot” with that she left the cabin and the town, determined to go anywhere she knew Nic had been last, even though she knew the odds were against her.

**

The phone vibrated as soon as Nichole turned it on. She´d turned it off since Josh´s text on Thursday. She had many voicemails and texts. She dismissed the voice mails and saw the texts, many from Nat that ranged from angry to desperate to an attempt to reason with her. “Screw you” Nic muttered. She noticed that since that Thursday she only had two texts from Josh, one from the next day, Friday, telling her he was worried.

“You stopped being worried?” she whispered with a raised eyebrow. The other one was of only a few hours before, she opened it.

Josh

Thu 5:20 pm

Mrs. Strassberg came to look for you. She thought I knew where you were. She asked if we had fought (?)

This information too her aback, that question mark as well, he, too, was wondering the same thing. “Focus, Nichole” she scolded herself through gritted teeth. “Natasha went to him –she sighed- of course, she´d go to him” she muttered as her thoughts started to fill with “I shouldn´t have…”. She wasn’t sure what would be the best course of action. Nat would certainly track her signal and though she was unaware of the number Josh had given her, she´d probably find a way to get Josh´s records or something… that left texts out of the question, it had to be a call, a call that she didn´t want to make.

“Michelle?” Josh answered his phone with some surprise; the girl had stopped calling him since she started dating Brighton

“No, Nichole” he recognized the voice the minute she spoke

“Nic… how…?” he interrupted her

“Listen, I can´t talk much, I just wanted to tell you to be careful, please, don´t talk to Natasha, don´t hang out in places you went with me, don´t hang out alone specially close to the wall and please, don´t call me or text me anymore or she´ll find me faster”

“Nic, where…?”

“Goodbye, Josh” she ended the call

“Be well” he said staring at his phone.

All these days that he´d been ignored he´d been thinking about his friend disappearing like she did… it was not completely unexpected, they´ve talked of her leaving, running away but somewhere in him he´d expected her to let him know about it but then she didn´t and now she was calling to warn him, he didn´t know what to think. However, he still wished he could help her somehow but she´d always seemed reluctant to take his help or even to let him in her life, she´d been allowing it more since the vacation but now she was ending all communication.

“Don´t call me” he repeated her words. People kept asking him about her; it had been a too long absence without a good explanation, if they only stopped asking… If Mrs. Strasberg only stopped whatever she did to the girl… if her father stopped whatever they had done to make her go. He kept wondering, as he´d been doing for a while, if that day in Woodhills, in the park, in the graveyard and then uphill in the woods had been her way of saying goodbye, maybe she´d planned it that way.