#cporttask07

Getting the hell out of Castleport and back to his regular routine was absolutely necessary.

There’d been too much of the back and forth lately, the result of it a few hundred more miles on his Jeep and a whole new rear window for the effort. Thinking too much on the latter only pissed him off, so instead he channeled his focus into work.

The busy bustle of Mystery Ink was a welcome reprieve from the chaos of Castleport, where his routine was easier to navigate. His schedule was packed, the uptick in clients more than likely blamed on the upcoming holiday. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was about February 14th but the days leading up to it was typically crowded with all types of people looking to express their sentiments, schmaltz or otherwise, on the day of love, ink-style.

But Sam took at advantage of that, letting his mind settle into the comforting adrenaline rush of work mode--the buzz of needles, ink palettes, sketchbooks, and late night artwork. It was exactly what he needed.

Though, in those small breaks, between clients and chats with his coworkers, it was tough to turn off certain thoughts about his hometown, at least not completely. His two-thirty client had wanted a galaxy of stars, a blend of shading and geometric blocking that was in this year, but at least it wasn’t the typical design. It proved to be a challenge, exactly the kind of art and ink he preferred...even if the stars aesthetic reminded him of Rachel.

She used to add them to everything...even instagram captions. Sam recalled a time in high school when he’d asked to borrow her notes in World Civ and there they were, tiny stars dotting her neatly written ‘i’s. It was the weirdly cute, if a little grating kind of self confidence boosting shit she did that Sam had to give her credit for, it certainly made her memorable.

Then again, Rachel didn’t pop up in his mind too much, at least not as often as before. When the news was still fresh and Sam, like most of the people who knew (and in his case, only sorta tolerated) her, were confused and mostly curious about the case. When it seemed like the police had some actual footing, the texts and the discovery of the guy that Sam had immediately gotten a bad vibe from, off their messages alone. And Rachel was a handful, but she didn’t deserve the aggressive attention and stalking that came with being involved with a guy like Brody. He’d always believed something had happened, even if he wasn’t sure what the hell it was. Call it a gut instinct.

And it also wasn’t entirely surprising the cops had dropped the ball in their own investigation. Sam wrinkled his nose in disgust and busied his hands with the Cafe Bustelo at the coffee bar, filling his Spiderman mug with the robust roast before adding enough milk and sugar.

He could recall just how utterly useless the police had been, in his personal encounters with Castleport’s finest. The many nights his father had spent in the drunk tank or had his keys taken away, or needed a police escort home. The pitying looks that followed a disapproving tone that reeked of judgment and it annoyed the absolute shit out of Sam. Much more than his own run-ins when he got bold enough to take his art from the classrooms to the sides of buildings around town.

Rationally, he knew it wasn’t all the police’s fault...there were plenty of dead ends in Rachel’s disappearance, but it was instinct (and common sense) not to trust the cops.  The one sure thing had seemingly slipped from their grasp with little effort. Knowing Brody was out there, most likely knowing a hell of a lot more than the police let the public in on...that was weird as hell.

Not to mention the necklace...the blood…

Briefly, Sam wondered about Mercedes. She was close to Rachel, and he was sure the news was only worrying the hell out of her. He hadn’t seen her around much, but that wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary; they tended to float and out of each other’s orbit, it didn’t seem like it wasn’t changing anytime soon. Still, he’d send a text or something to be sure.

He was doing it again, the mental slide right back into the whirlwind of bullshit and drama of Castleport. And Sam reasoned that maybe it was inevitable. He’d long stopped feeling tethered to the city he’d called home for the past years, but it was as if deciding to open his own shop back in Maine had knocked something loose inside of him.

And It wasn’t sustainable, living with one foot planted in the past but with everything happening, with his father and the bar, with his former classmates, and Rachel herself...it weighed on him. Tugged him further into his hometown that felt less and less like the place he remembered the longer he stayed and the longer Rachel stayed gone.

“Yo! Evans! Your four-thirty’s here.”

Jolting out of his thoughts, Sam pushed away from the window ledge where he’d been perched, coffee long cooled in his mug and flashed a brief smile in the direction of Janae, the shop’s front desk manager, setting aside the ramble of disappearing former classmates and bloody necklaces. At least for now.

Santana snapped her curtains closed, slandering her mother under her breath for leaving them open, again. Lately (since returning from Hunter’s cabin) she hated when they were open. The winter sun flooding into her room was now a welcome mat to be watched, by whoever, whatever. It was a pessimistic thought that had fully bloomed between homecoming, Castle House, and then the cabin. And thoughts, were followed with fatalistic behavior. Like the short walk from her car to her door was now a jog with frequent glances over her shoulder. She hated being home alone, she had even resorted to hanging out with her shit head brother to avoid it.

It changed her; the fear that night. 

It was too real, and she couldn’t shake it. It crept up on her at night when the house was dark and still. When silence made the home vulnerable to every creak or bump, so it boomed through the hallway and rattled her nerves.

So instead of a few hours of half-hazard sleep, she had settled into a new routine - not sleeping. She would sketch, sew, take care of business, but most of all, maul over the never ending questions, and timeline. How it had escalated from petty attacks, to broken glass and ominous shadows of footprints outside of locked sheds.

She lazily reached for her glass of wine (her lunch) as she opened up her notebook. A new foundation for her thoughts and conspiracies. It was separated in different categories.

Who Dun it?

One person? Two?

Different people behind the different events?

Events. Brody.   Overall, it was an organized mess. Questions, and two solid facts sprinkled in the middle.

Brody had manila envelopes.

Brody ran.

Jane wasn’t at the Halloween event.

Had a LAME secret.

Saw a text, ‘delete our text’ on Bree’s phone.

Rachel Barbra Berry ☆

The click of her nails on the phone screen were accompanied by a sigh as the Facebook page loaded, taking a moment to sip from the glass of wine in her other hand. Bree was wrapped in a blanket on her couch in the living room, a place she was finding herself more often than not recently. At the moment she was trying to distract herself from the problems in her own life by focusing on someone else’s -- not that she would ever admit it out loud.

Lips pressing together tightly as she scrolled down the page there were countless of posts either calling out for help in finding Rachel or wishing her well ‘wherever she was.’ They had died down in the past few months, the initial shock and scandal of it all unable to capture people’s attention for more than a short period of time. But Bree wasn’t interested in any of that. She wanted to go back to when things were normal, when every now and then she would post a snarky comment on one of the other girl’s selfies and doubtlessly end up tagged in a long paragraph posting about how girls should be building each other up these days, not tearing each other down. Typical Berry bullshit.

But it wasn’t one of Rachel’s posts that caught her eye initially, it was one with a name that was all too familiar. Brody Weston. Just a song he had shared on her page, with some comment about how he thought she would appreciate this. Seemingly innocent, but at the same time sending shivers down the back of her spine. Especially considering the recent developments ever since the night at the Clarington cabin. Tapping on his name Bree perused his page slowly, although there wasn’t much to go on from just that. Sporadic pictures of him here and there, never seeming to be in the same place for more than a moment. By all means a stereotypical profile, not sure if that’s what she had been looking for initially or not.

Clicking out of the app she pulled up her text messages, even if she knew that she wasn’t going to find what she was looking for there. The texts were gone, messages traded between her and Brody starting a few weeks ago that started superficially, but then got deep into the matter of one missing Castleport resident. To be completely honest, Bree was just starting to think that maybe everyone did have it wrong, that Brody just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time and the police department was searching for someone to pin it on. The problem, however, was that there was no way for her to go back and dissect the messages since they were gone. Missing, as if they had never existed in the first place. When she had finally gotten her phone back at the cabin it was the first thing she had checked, especially considering the weird messages he had sent her earlier that day. Delete these texts. Almost as if he knew that something was going to happen, someone was going to see.

With an overly dramatic sigh she locked the screen of her phone, tossing it to the other end of the couch as she sunk down a little in the blanket. If anything, the recent developments just served to make everything more confusing, the bits and pieces from the night at the cabin that people were willing to share not starting to make sense in the slightest. Tensions were high (not even taking into consideration the sexual tensions that Bree spent an equal amount of her time thinking about), people were looking for someone to blame. And it seemed that somehow, her name was quickly making its way to the top of that list.