Chapter 75
Aiden
“Has anyone seen Evie?”
I’m breathless from hurrying down the stairs and into the living room. Four pairs of eyes turn to me as everyone goes silent.
Star is the first to speak. “I hate that you just asked that question.”
Moira’s already on her feet and rushing over to me. She puts a hand on my elbow as she looks at me intently, keeping her voice calm and even to counter the panic that’s clearly rising in my chest.
“Where’s the last place you saw her?” she asks.
“I was just with her up in the loft, like, less than ten minutes ago,” I pant, “She wasn’t on the couch where I left her, but… I thought I just heard people on the stairs so…”
Everyone else is also standing and approaching at this point and Star says, “Yeah, Camila and I were up there just now. We didn’t see her. Figured she was with you, though, so we weren’t looking particularly close.”
“Maybe she’s still up there then?” Diego adds with a furrowed brow.
It feels like there’s a vice squeezing around my heart. It’s true that I didn’t search for very long when I went up and saw the couch was empty. I figured she must have left with someone, for whatever reason. But if that’s not the case, then my mind is jumping to worst case scenarios. If she was still in the loft, why didn’t she call out for me?
“O-okay, I’ll go back up,” I stutter, fighting a wave of dizziness.
Camila frowns and says, “She has to be up there. Can she even get down the stairs?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. At least, not that quickly.”
Diego starts glancing around the room. “We’ll take a look down here just in case she somehow hitched a ride.”
“What, hopped onto one of our shoes? Without us noticing?” Star asks incredulously.
“I dunno, maybe!”
“Why would she do that though…” I mutter, but I don’t linger here to chat about it - I’ve already turned to leave.
Moira’s on my tail. “I’m coming with you.”
“Alright. Um…” I take a pause right as I’m about to head out of sight, looking towards the rest of the group. “Everyone, just… watch your step.”
We hasten back up to the loft, scanning the stairs as we take them two or three at a time. And we begin the search.
Option one. Evie fell and hurt herself.
I look everywhere around the couch first - under it, behind it, circling the perimeter and eventually pulling back cushions. There’s a windowsill right next to the couch, a table alongside that, another window on the other side, and I search the floor diligently under any of these platforms that she could have reached. I even look a little further, around another chair that she miiiight have been able to get to if she jumped far enough. I don’t know why she would even risk that, but I look anyway. Nothing.
I do feel a modicum of relief at this. I was so terrified to find her tiny crumpled form on the floor, unconscious or worse. But her sheer absence is still wildly disconcerting.
Option two. Evie climbed down, possibly to get something.
I take a closer look at the couch to see if there are any loose threads or something that she might have used to get herself to the ground without falling. I don’t notice anything right away, all I find are her little jacket and minuscule socks. I try to remember what else she was wearing - could she have dropped something that bounced away, and then managed to climb down to fetch it? In my agitation my memories of the state of things right before I left her are a bit fuzzy.
This line of thinking widens my search to nearby structures that she’d be able to reach by walking. I call her name a few times as I look, but the futility of that is readily apparent.
She’d asked me to get her lip balm. That’s what had taken me so long, I wasn’t able to find it. Maybe she got tired of waiting for me? Could she have tried to borrow some from Moira, whose bed and belongings are up here? There are several bags close by, it’s not impossible that Evie got trapped in one of them. I let Mo search that while I head into Camila’s room to start searching the bags in there, eventually making it to the bathroom and sifting through some of the toiletries that are accessible from the floor. Nothing.
Option three. Something scared Evie and she’s hiding.
Could an animal have gotten into the house? I quickly decide that the odds of that are fairly slim. It’s dark out and all of the lights are on in the cabin, surely a deterrent for most critters. All the windows are closed downstairs. The only open window is the one that’s stuck open in Camila’s room, since it’s still as busted up as when I was wrenching at it yesterday. There aren’t any trees near that side of the cabin for some oddly behaving squirrel to jump from. I suppose a bird could have tried, but even if something was really determined to get in, the window is barely open at all, I don’t think even a sparrow would be able to squeeze through the gap.
A bug perhaps? While I’m not sure how likely it would be for a spider or roach to crawl in through the second-story window, and the house otherwise seems well sealed as we haven’t seen any insects in the cabin during our stay, I doubt that it’s foolproof. It’s certainly possible that some kind of large bug is lurking in one of these rooms and might have freaked little Evie out.
This gets me to start opening up cabinets and drawers. I get down low and try to imagine the world from her perspective, try to ask myself where I would hide if I was frightened at three inches tall. Within the folds of the shower curtain, inside a cupboard, behind lamp stands, under the beds, on top of luggage. Nothing.
Option four. Evie’s playing a prank on me.
This seems like the least likely of options, but after twenty minutes of nerve-wracking investigation, it briefly passes through my brain nevertheless. If she’s fully conscious, it’s just so weird that she hasn’t said anything. Unless she’s keeping quiet on purpose?
Moira’s downstairs now and I’m doing one last sweep up here before I stop and stand still in the center of the loft.
“Eve, please let this be a joke,” I say to the room desperately. “We always said that you’d be good at hide and seek. You win, okay?”
I wouldn’t even be mad at her if that’s all it took for her to show herself. I try to will her into existence, imagining her popping out from her hiding spot and calling to me with a giggle. But of course… no such luck.
Even though I can’t think of a plausible way she could have made it downstairs, I’m running out of ideas, so I join everyone else and start searching each room in turn. I look under every couch and chair. I search the pantry and kitchen floor for any recently dropped crumb trails. I’m sifting through baskets and bags and boxes. I closely examine her camp on the nightstand, trying to remember how I’d left it, though as far as I can tell it’s untouched.
Everyone else is diligently searching as well, moving cautiously from room to room, tiptoeing as their eyes scan the floor. It’s so bewildering that not only have none of us found her, we haven’t even found any sign of her. It’s like she vanished into thin air.
After over an hour of fruitless searching, I’m alone back up in the loft, feeling beside myself with worry. I take a second to sit down, on a couch opposite to the one that I had left her on. I sit and stare at the armrest where I last saw my precious little girlfriend.
Option five. Evie’s upset with me.
After tearing the place apart, it just makes no sense that none of us have found a single clue. Unless she was actively avoiding us by moving from one hiding place to another?
"Did I do something wrong, babe?” I ask softly into the air. Silence is my only answer.
Has she been suffering over something I wasn’t aware of? Did the Camila-related stresses get to her even more than I realized? Did I not do enough to make sure she felt secure and safe and loved and heard? Should I have insisted that we go straight home this afternoon? Or is it the opposite, did I overreact and it ended up frustrating her? Sometimes she still closes in on herself, sometimes she can still be hard to read, especially with how tiny her expressions are, how weak her voice is - maybe I missed something, maybe it was me. At this point I would rather it be that she’s avoiding me than any of the far worse alternatives.
“Please, Evie. Come back,” I say, my voice breaking. Tears blur up my vision and I drop my head to bury my face in my hands as I quietly sob, "Please, please be okay…”
I cry uncontrollably for the next minute or so, dangerously close to coming completely undone. I just don’t know what to do anymore. All my brain is giving me are new and horrific ideas on what could have happened to her. I’m getting eaten alive by despair.
It’s the sound of the staircase creaking that gets me to go silent. I rub at my eyes and take a deep breath before looking up at whoever’s come up to join me.
It’s Camila. Her posture is meek and tense, her expression hesitant. Her dark eyes meet mine, and she sighs as she walks over.
“Oh, Aiden…” she says quietly, “I’m so sorry. You must be so stressed out…”
I stiffen as she approaches, but I let her hug me. She sits down on top of the armrest right next to me and wraps her arms around my neck. I take in the little comfort I can get from this, silently letting it happen. I don’t feel motivated enough to fight it.
That is, until she slips down onto the couch proper after a minute, so that she’s sitting right at my side. She extends the supportive embrace by taking my arm in hers and leaning her head onto my shoulder. Something about it makes me naturally recoil - it feels too much like last night when she got drunk. And when I glance at her face and notice her expression looking far too serene, a spark of anger flashes inside me. Her advances suddenly don’t feel like they come from someone who’s just trying to comfort a friend… but rather someone who’s trying to take advantage of the situation.
I pull my arm away from her and give her a dark look. “Seriously, Camila? Seriously?”
Her jaw clenches and she stutters, “I-I’m just trying to–”
“Save it,” I snap, getting to my feet. “I can’t deal with you right now. In fact…”
I pause and go still as I glare at her. My exhausted mind starts working. I’ve been desperate and confused ever since my partner’s disappearance. But maybe this should have been obvious from the start. Maybe all of the answers are staring me in the face.
Option six. Someone else is responsible for Evie’s absence.
There’s hardly any emotion in my voice at all as I lock eyes with Camila and confront her. “You were up here, right? Just before she disappeared.”
She holds my gaze for several long seconds and extrapolates from my accusatory look. “You’re implying I have something to do with this?” she asks, eyes narrowing. “You seriously think I would do that?”
I speak quietly, tensely. “You’ve had it out for her from day one. You’ve said things I didn’t know you were capable of saying. I don’t know what you’re capable of anymore.”
She’s the one who ups the volume as she abruptly gets to her feet. “Aiden, that’s ridiculous! I would never do anything to hurt someone.”
“You already have. Can’t you see that?” I say with growing agitation. “How can you not realize how shitty you’ve been to Evie? You can’t blame me for getting suspicious at this point!"
Her shoulders move up and down with her breath as she gets more and more riled up. She’s glaring at me with intensity as a thousand thoughts seem to pass through her mind. Finally she snarls, “I don’t know what she told you, but I didn’t lay a hand on her in the kitchen. I didn’t do anything!”
I fall into stunned silence for a second. “The kitchen?” I ask, “What are you talking about?”
Camila stiffens and doesn’t respond, looking down at her boots. My heart is racing. Did something happen that Evie didn’t tell me about? What the hell is going on?
“What happened, Camila?” I insist, taking a step towards her. “When was this? What did you do?!”
“Nothing!” she protests, “We just… we just had an argument. I didn’t say anything I hadn’t already said.”
I throw my arm out, my voice edging towards unhinged. “Oh, you mean about how you think she’s a freak? A charity case? That I’m better off without her? All of that is ‘nothing’?!”
“See, this is exactly what–” she stops herself, shutting her mouth forcefully. I can see it in her eyes, I know what she was about to get at. The fact that Evie is missing is proving Camila’s point from earlier about my relationship causing me stress. But she has enough wisdom not to say it out loud right now.
“Aiden, I don’t think it was her,” a soft voice interjects. I whip around to see Moira reaching the top of the stairs, looking weary. “She was with us all evening, aside from grabbing something from her room. Star had eyes on Camila the whole time they were up here.”
Star’s coming up behind her, nodding forlornly in confirmation. Diego’s there too, and he doesn’t say anything, looking conflicted about the way I was just accusing his cousin. Moira herself seems uncomfortable in coming to Camila’s defense, but she’s looking at me with pleading eyes.
“Then where is she?!” I exclaim desperately. “For fuck’s sake, she could be dead right now!”
Moira flinches at that, tears springing up from the suggestion. Subconsciously I know I’m just making things worse. I’m too distraught to think properly. Suddenly Diego steps around the two girls, marching right up to me. I reflexively recoil, but he grabs my shoulders.
“Bro. Look at me.” He leans down to make firm eye contact as he turns me to face him, fingers digging into my arms. “We’re gonna find her. Okay?”
I waver on the spot, and he pulls me into a tight hug. At first I’m still incredibly tense. But as I try to catch my breath and the despair seeps back in to replace the anger, I end up letting my head hang, leaning it against his chest. For a moment it’s like I’m seven years old again, crying and being held by my best friend on the school playground after I’d just found out my family dog died. No matter how many years have passed, Diego’s still the same supportive guy.
And the embrace is helping me come back to my senses. Because unlike when I was seven, I’m not surrounded by the other kids from the military base, sniggering and pointing as they tossed out homophobic slurs. Instead I’m with people who care about me. And they care about Evie too. I’m still not completely convinced of Camila’s innocence, but I definitely shouldn’t be lashing out at my friends. I need to pull myself together.
I look up at Diego and give him a grateful nod when he lets go of me. I take one long, shuddering breath in as Moira steps forward too.
“Could she have gotten outside?” she suggests quietly.
I manage to make my tone calmer this time. “I’ve thought about that… God, I hope not, but I guess anything’s possible at this point. But why? And how? All of the doors are locked shut. The only open window is the broken one in Camila’s room. And even if she wanted to, Evie would have had no way to get up to that windowsill.”
Diego’s eyes sweep the room. “Show us exactly where she was when you left.”
With a sigh I walk over to the couch by the wall and point. “Here. Right here. She was sitting on the armrest.”
From my new vantage point, I notice Camila reacting subtly. She had stepped off to the side in brooding silence when the other three showed up, hugging her arms around herself as she stared at the floor. But she looks up towards me now, suddenly frowning and growing a shade paler.
“Wait,” she says softly. “That’s the couch you guys were at? By… by that window?”
“Yeah,” I respond, keeping my eyes fixed now as I try to get a read on her. “But again, these windows are shut…”
“Actually… um.” Camila stutters. She’s now locking eyes with Star, who has also gone wide-eyed in sudden realization. “About that…”
I would love to experience what it’s like to be small in a safe setting by exploring my surroundings, and especially just interact with a giant friend. Probably nothing sexual even, just be picked up, carried around, cuddled. A far cry from standard sci fi fare!
