so far from sight and mind

Alex sat on the curb in front of the group home, his leg bouncing impatiently and his heart racing in his ears. Rabbit was gone. Not gone, the social worker he'd spoken to had specified, missing, as if that made any difference at all. He hadn't checked in the night before and no one had seen him at all since a few hours before curfew. The last time Alex had spoken to him was on the phone. They were supposed to go to the drive-in this weekend, catch a double feature they probably weren't going to pay any attention to.

It'd been less than twenty-four hours, but some of the people inside had already mentioned the possibility that Rabbit had run away. Alex didn't believe that, not for a second. He wouldn't just leave.

"Fuck!" Alex ducked down and pushed his hands into his hair, trying to fight down the panic rising up through his chest. Rabbit was gone and Andy was off at college, so the drive back to town was taking him what felt like forever. Alex had been waiting for at least an hour, now. He wanted to go looking. He'd promised Andy he'd wait for him.

When Andy's car finally rolled in, Alex was on his feet and walking towards it before it'd even come to a stop. "Campbell!" He called, stepping up to the passenger door and ducking to peer in through the window. "You took long enough. We still haven't heard anything."

It was the same argument going through his head over and over as he drove. Andy had left his dorm room with a frown and it was still there as he pulled into the parking lot.

Window down, he met Alex's anxiety-ridden stare with a quieter, but still anxious one of his own. "Nothing? I just-" Andy cursed and scrubbed at his face, his expression twisting into full worry. Dropping his hands, he gave the steering wheel a thump and leaned back in his seat. "I don't get it! Where the fuck could he go?" He said, pushing out a stressed laugh. "How do you lose a giant? He's fucking ten feet tall for Christ's sake-" Cutting himself off with a groan, he gave a quick wake-up shake to his head. "C'mon, get in."

"They called the library," Alex answered, finally looking over at Andy. Seeing him was a relief, but he wished he had better news for him. "And I went by the diner on my way over here. I was thinking we try the park, maybe? Or.." He breathed out and leaned back against the seat, wishing he had anything he could grab onto to release the anxious tension in his shoulders. "I think we've gotta try our camping spot. That was where he used to run off to, right?"

As far as he knew, Rabbit had been fairly content. A little anxious about things and scared about what the future held for him, but he didn't seem like he was drowning. He knew what Jon looked like at his worst, and the young man they knew now had taken far strides past that into a better place. In fact, even if ge couldn't say Jon looked completely happy, he could say that the version of him he knew now was closer to it than he'd ever been growing up. No! No, Jon wouldn't run off to the woods and hurt himself. Not, at least, without talking to them first.

"Fuck. Has he mentioned wanting to go anywhere since I left?" He asked, trying to scrape his brain for anything he might've overlooked. "No trips he'd been daydreaming about, or anything? I just-" Andy struggled and cursed at himself, wincing as he bit his thumb a little too hard. "He's been doing so good! I just don't think he'd take off!" He said, "He told me doing something like that might have him facing trial again and prison time. He hated detention-- Why would he risk prison?"

He didn't even want to bother with getting out to look-- Rabbit wouldn't be here, and it would be a big waste of time. He slumped back in his seat. "We were supposed to hang out this weekend," he said, the words soft and short. "We had plans to catch a movie. And just.. hang out. He wouldn't cancel on me." He looked over at Andy, his expression earnest. There wasn't an ounce of doubt in his face on that matter. "Not unless it was big. The campsite.. that place is important to him. It's safe. And if he went there.."

It was maybe an hour or two that he spent in the yard with him, just listening to him chatter on about the garden and the bugs and the books he'd been reading. Despite finding him so broken hearted, Andy remembered the way Jon had smiled when he realized he was sticking around to hang out with him.

"Okay." Andy nodded and scrubbed at his face again. It still sounded... far from plausible to him, but as he and Alex sat here, he couldn't help but imagine Jon now sitting under some tree with big wet eyes, hoping someone might reach out. "Okay. Fuck searching the park, let's go check the campgrounds."

The drive there was spent combing his brain for anything Jack said to him that could point them in any direction. Nothing he'd said during their phone calls or the last meeting they had before he had to drive to school indicated something was wrong. Andy's fingers stung from the biting, the skin raw and wrinkled from being in his mouth. Rabbit had to be somewhere close.

At least the campgrounds were familiar. Alex knew those trails like the back of his hand, and something about the density of the trees as they pulled into the parking area was a comfort. You couldn't actually see all that deep into the woods at a glance. To find anything in there, you had to go in yourself and look for it. Any hope of Rabbit waiting for them couldn't be shattered by a quick scan of the trees. He looked over at Andy and nodded. "Yeah. I know where we're going."

Rabbit had only had to show him the way once. There were plenty of little landmarks to go by once they stepped off of the main trail, and Alex only gave Andy a moment to gather himself after stepping out of the car before he started for the dirt path. He didn't like going out into the woods without anything on him-- he didn't even have his bookbag, in which he always carried a bottle of water and a few snacks inevitably crushed under his other belongings-- but it wasn't too far of a hike, and it wasn't like they were planning on staying long. They just had to get Rabbit and go home.

Alex marched through the underbrush with purpose, far from the usual careful steps he used to navigate through nature. And when he saw the thick gathering of bushes and trees that made up the edge of their clearing, he couldn't help himself in breaking off into a run. "Jack!" He called, trampling over sticks and nearly slipping in a patch of a mud that was still wet from the last rain. "Bunny-- you out here?"

He pushed into the clearing and kept walking, quickly scanning the open space for any sign of life, and then suddenly stopped dead. He looked again, turning around to see it from every angle. It was empty.

The town was small and there were people here who still disliked Rabbit, even if what the Bakers did to him was public knowledge now. Schoolmates, friends of the family-- There were more than Andy could count on his hands.

Wiping his mouth, he looked up at caught the wild look in Alex's eyes. He was almost afraid to pose the possibility of Jon being grabbed to him-- Not because it was outlandish, but because he worried about what it might do to him. "...Prescott." Andy's voice was soft, but the way his face moved was scared. "What if... What if he isn't?" He asked, frowning. "We gotta keep looking, b-but I think it might... We gotta call the cops, man."

"The cops?" Alex repeated. He pulled away from Andy's touch, taking a step back to put a foot of distance between them. "Are you fucking stupid?" He asked, before he could even register that there were words coming out of his mouth. "The cops aren't gonna do shit. If they find him, they might not let him go home!"

Rabbit's name had been cleared and he was innocent in Alex's book, anyway, but he knew what people around here thought of him. A nut case, a lost cause, a ticking time bomb-- take your pick. The local police department would probably be happy with the press they'd get if they found a reason to put him behind bars, now that he was an adult. "We've gotta find him ourselves. He might still be out here, Andy. He might've taken a different route out here. What if he- what if he got hurt? What if fell and cracked his fucking skull open? We've gotta-"

Reaching out again, he grabbed his arm. "Let's go to the staff area. We can grab a-a ranger or whatever and we can have them call." He pleaded, "At least that way we'll have back up." Andy stepped closer; careful, he touched his friend's cheek, his brows knitting. "I know-... Alex, I know." He said, his voice dropping to a whisper. It felt like there were two people in the world that gave a shit that Jaxk was missing-- Both of them standing right here. It was terrifying to think about. But if that was the case, they had to be diligent in getting the help to get him home. "Jonny needs us." He said, "Both of us." Andy frowned and bit at his thumb again, ignoring the metallic taste it was leaving on his tongue. "I want him back too."

Alex turned away from the touch against his cheek, his breath hitching. If he cried, it wasn't from sadness as much as it was pure, hot frustration. He wanted to go looking. He could walk these woods for as long as it would take for them to spit Rabbit back up and let him go home. If there was any chance he was here, he couldn't leave.

Tensing, Alex let himself be pulled into a hug, but it took a long moment before he finally wrapped his arms around Andy in return and squeezed hard. He smelled like sweat and his clothes had the stale quality of something pulled directly off of a bedroom floor or off the top of a laundry basket, but it was familiar because it was Andy, and he finally relaxed against him, just a little bit. When they pulled apart, he met his gaze with a glare, because he was being sensible when all Alex wanted to do was charge into the woods and cut across every path he could until he found Rabbit.

"I know." He said, his voice straining. The color in his face was gone, leaving just the healing sunburn on his cheeks. Andy could feel himself sweating and it made him want to take off into the woods and run until he physically couldn't anymore. "I'm-... I-I'm afraid." He told him, softly. "People around here-... They don't like him." Hands squeezing beside him, he frowned. "I'm afraid that if... If he's not out here, that someone could've hurt him on purpose."

Saying out loud pushed the tears into spilling over. Andy cursed and rubbed at his eyes, his shoulders shaking. It wasn't implausible and that was what killed him. People around here spent Rabbit's whole life shoving him around. Even after doing his time in detention, Alan still went out of his way to--

Alan.

"Andy.." It was a heavy accusation. And it was entirely plausible, Alex knew that first hand. It was possible for the same exact reason that he'd rallied against the idea of calling the cops. People here didn't like Rabbit, barely tolerated him, especially those who'd been close, in some way, to the Baker murders. Someone could have wanted revenge. Or anyone else could have just wanted a reason to be cruel.

"Andy, wait-" Alex reached out to grab him by the shoulder, trying to stop him from just taking off. He tried to meet his gaze and search for whatever conclusion Andy had just come to. "We can't-- we've gotta at least talk to a ranger first, like you said. And they've probably got a phone, anyway. ..You really think someone hurt him?"

Unless he wasn't missing and hurt and he was dead.

The moment his arm was touched, Andy choked. Dead. Rabbit could be dead and they were the only people who actively cared. "Alex..." He managed, his brows knit into a frightened wrinkle. "Who hasn't hurt him? Even-... Even out of the two of us, I've hurt him!" Jaw clenched to try ans hide the wobble in his lip, he shrugged. "And the people here in this fucking-! This backwater hick town care more about the family that held him hostage over the boy that suffered! Of course I think someone hurt him!"

Andy squeezed hard at the hand in his own, his face hot and red from the exertion it was taking to not topple to the ground here. Rabbit was dead. He wasn't out here. He didn't run away. Someone grabbed him and killed him for trying to make a better life for himself.

Dead.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

Andy's head was swimming. Each breath he took was labored, but he managed to push himself into a walk as Alex moved. Wide eyes scanned the forest again like he hoped it'd prove him wrong.

Finding Rabbit wasn't any different than the research he did for his articles, he thought. He'd been trying to land a job or an internship with the local paper, had submitted a few pieces with no luck yet on making it to print, but the feedback he'd recieved had been good. Research was one of his strong suits. He made a list of the questions he wanted answers to and he decided how to pursue them. This was the same, it was just that the question this time was of the whereabouts of his best friend. He would figure out how to answer it.

"We're gonna find him," he said again, looking back at Andy. He still had that scared look on his face, and it made Alex sort of wish he hadn't dragged him all the way out here. He slowed his steps so Andy wouldn't be stumbling along behind him and pressed their shoulders together as they walked. Whether or not someone had hurt Rabbit, they were going to find him.

Once they reached the ranger station, he let Andy do the talking while he borrowed the phone to call the group home. They didn't have any updates for him, and he slammed the phone back onto the reciever with more force than he meant to. When it was clear there was nothing else they could get from the ranger, he followed Andy outside and lingered next to him in front of the door.

Burying his nose in Alex's hair, he took comfort in the smell of warm skin and cheap shampoo. Andy held him close for a long moment before finally letting him go and stepping aside. "...Do you wanna drive?" He asked and pulled the keys from his pocket, quiet. It wasn't that hw couldn't, but that he wasn't sure it was smart to. He was dizzy and it felt like his heart was still trying to escape between his ribs. If he could get a few minutes to breathe, he could find the way back to himself quickly.

"I didn't tell my parents I was coming home." He said and started to walk, shoving his hands in his pockets before he could consume them any further. "It's their weekend to take care of my grandmother though, so they won't be there anyway. Maybe not 'til Monday." Looking over, he offered a more genuine smile, though it was still small and a little nervous. "We should be fine to hang out there tonight."

At least when he'd been arrested, he hadn't disappeared entirely. They'd lost contact, but Alex had always known exactly where he was.

Pulling away, he looked up at Andy and nodded, then took his keys. He didn't mind driving. Honestly, he preferred it that way. Andy was one of the few people he'd really let cart him around, but in this case, he didn't think he wanted to be sitting passively in the passenger seat while they were searching for his friend. At least driving gave him something to focus on, and some sense of control about where they went. He pressed close to Andy while they walked and looked up at him, a soft frown on his face. "..Hope so, too," he said, then looked away. It wasn't an option he was ready to consider just yet.

-----

Alex drove them around town until he had Andy's car running on fumes. He tried the park again, drove past the diner, made a scene at the library when he asked every employee he could find the same question of if they'd seen Jonathan Stone. Finally, he was just driving them past all the same landmarks and seeing nothing- no sign Rabbit, not even something he could fool himself into thinking was a nudge in the right direction- and decided it was time to take them home. Andy was on-edge, and Alex was tired, and this wasn't getting them anywhere. Even so, as he left his house with a change of clothes or two stuffed inside of a bookbag, he felt the urge to drive them around yet again. He didn't want to be in the wrong place when Rabbit finally showed up, in need of a friend and a ride home. He didn't want anyone else to be the ones to pick him up.

mr baseball and the weird girl ❤️

She didn't even want to talk to him. She didn't want to see his face, didn't want to ask him for help, didn't want to be here. It was just the fact that it'd been the only place she could think of when she'd finally left the locker room and walked herself barefoot across the parking lot. The late spring air was just cold enough to make her shiver and it'd made her wish for summer. Last year, she'd spent it sweating in Andy's passenger seat, the windows rolled down and the radio singing as he drove her out to wherever she wanted to go. And whenever she leaned against him, he was warm, like summertime was in his veins. She needed that, right now. She needed a friend.

Without warning, her eyes stung. Chris made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat and scrubbed at them with her wrist, her breath shaky when she inhaled. She'd needed a friend the whole time, but when she'd tried to write Rabbit again- when she tried to apologize for being friends with Andy- she'd still gotten no response. She'd even admitted to him the confusing, weird things she'd been thinking about herself, had hoped he might understand, but he hadn't responded to that, either. If he didn't care, she didn't blame him. He had bigger things to worry about. But it still stung.

Trying to sniffle through a stuffed up nose, Chris pushed her way out of her car and walked right up to the front porch. When she reached up to knock, it was with the hope that maybe he wasn't home.

She could hear footsteps on the other side of the door, heavy and moving at a trot, always in some kind of a rush. It wasn't Catherine, then. Chris frowned at herself and had no time to decide this was a bad idea before the door swung open. Andy stopped when he saw her, his eyes wide, and for a long moment neither of them spoke.

She was of half a mind to just turn around and leave. And then his gaze moved over her, catching on something just above her eye line, and his expression fell. "Jesus," he said, reaching out to her, no second thoughts about it no matter how many months it had been. "Is that blood? Chris--"

"It's not mine," she snapped, and pulled back from him. There was a hurt, puppyish expression on his face, not unlike the look he'd given her the day she'd stormed out on him. He faltered, clearly unsure of what to make of that, and Chris sniffled again. Her eyes were back to stinging. "It's- I think- I think its some kind of animal. Um-" She broke into a bitter laugh. There was nothing else she could do, standing on Andy's porch and feeling her chest tighten the way it had. It was either laugh or cry. "Did you ever read Carrie?" She asked. "I was on the stage, to take pictures, and-"

She was afraid to even look too closely at her camera after her first attempts to wipe the blood from the lens. Chris broke, shuddering against the cool night breeze, and suddenly Andy's arms were around her. She didn't quite catch what he was saying as he dragged her inside, but she didn't fight against him, either. She let him hold her to his chest while she cried, and she wasn't even sure she was crying over her stupid ruined prom. It'd been ruined over a year ago, when her best friend had been arrested and she known she'd never get to dance with him again. She missed him, and she'd missed Andy, and she hated him for the fact that she'd missed him. His arms were warm and safe and suddenly she was pretty sure he was crying, too, shaking as he held her.

"Andy.."

"I know," he said, pulling back to look at her. His eyes were puffy and red, but he suddenly broke into a grin when he met her gaze. He ruffled her damp hair and laughed wetly. "You look like a drowned rat, Prescott. You wanna use the shower?"

She wanted a hot shower more than anything, but she shook her head. "I tried at the school," she told him. "I couldn't get it all out by myself."

"Then come on." He grabbed her hand and started dragging her towards the bathroom. "I'll see what I can do."

-----

She was wrapped in one of Catherine's fancy bathrobes, sitting on the floor and leaning back against the side of the tub while Andy combed his fingers through her hair. The water coming from the shower head was warm enough to be comforting, but not hot enough to burn, and the lightbulb overhead was dim enough not to blind her. Andy was quiet, for once, focused on the task of washing out the blood, and Chris was content with not explaining the whole night to him, just yet.

Honestly, most of it had been pretty uneventful. She'd stuck to the walls and taken photos when she was asked to, all the way up until the senior boy everyone knew would be prom king had asked her to get on stage to snap a photo. She should've known, when he'd told her exactly where to stand, that something was off, but she'd just wanted it all to be over with. She hadn't expected the cold, sticky rush of blood.

Andy let out a frustrated noise and sat back on his heels, looking to Chris' face. "Man, you'd think it'd just wash right out, wouldn't you? But its really sticky."

Chris frowned at him and pushed herself up a little. Her hair slipped from the side of the tub, falling to drip all over Catherine's bath robe, but she didn't care. "Is there still a lot in there?"

Andy nodded. "Yeah. I tried, but..." he scratched at his cheek, then looked over at the counter, considering for a moment. There was a familiar spark in his eye, Andy getting an idea that Chris would either love or hate. She felt her frown deepen when he looked back at her. "What if we just cut it off?" He asked.

"What?" Chris pulled pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them as she watched Andy suddenly stand. He moved to the counter and started digging through the drawers.

"Yeah!" He said, the start of a smile on his face. He found the scissors he was looking for, then looked back at her. "You were thinking about, like.." he strugged for a moment, gesturing vaguely at her. "Being a boy, right? Last time we talked? So we could just cut your hair. I mean-" he paused, and Chris could see the color rushing to his face. Andy shrugged at her. "You can be a boy with long hair, if you want, but if its all matted up with blood.."

The last time they'd talked, Chris had poured her heart out to him. She'd admitted things she'd never thought she could say to anyone. And she'd thought he was doing the same, when he started telling her about Rabbit, about their history-- and then the truth of what he'd done had come spilling out of him. She found herself giving a skeptical look to the scissors in his hand. He could be screwing her over, just like the boys who'd planned to cover her in deer guts.

But if the blood wouldn't go away... Chris shrugged. Andy offered out a hand and pulled her up from the ground, then put his hands on her shoulders to position her in front of the mirror. He shot her a grin through their reflection, and despite herself, she found herself wanting to smile back.

-----

Crusty locks of her hair still littered the bathroom floor when she'd left it to go to Andy's room. He'd shrugged it off and said he'd have time to get it in the morning, before his parents got home, then left her to shower off the rest of the blood and loose hair and gave her a t-shirt and shorts to borrow for the night. When she stepped into his bedroom, her new, choppy haircut halfway dry snd the t-shirt hanging loose, Andy looked up from the book he'd been idly flipping through and studied her for a long moment. And then he grinned.

"That haircut suits you," he said earnestly. Chris snorted, dropping her towel into his hamper, but she felt a warm feeling move through her chest all the same. One thing she'd learned while they'd been friends was how to tell when Andy was bullshitting. The comment about her hair wasn't bullshit. Picking a familiar path through the dirty laundry he'd left on his floor, she made her way to his bed and crawled up next to him. Andy hooked an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her to his side.

They sat in quiet for a moment. Then he looked at her, and his voice fell soft. "...So," he said, after another long few seconds had passed. "Does this mean we're friends again?"

He sounded so hopeful that Chris had to shut her eyes, or she might start crying again. She hesitated, then nodded. "I think so," she told him. Andy's hand squeezed down on her shoulder.

"Then you're staying the night here, right?" He asked. When she opened her eyes to look at him and nodded, he shot her an easy grin. "I'll go get some snacks. Hang tight."

Bags pack and ready to hit the trails.

California