One Day and Two Sleeps
A Microcosm witness prompt story - A child goes missing…
The police came. Felicity was having breakfast but nobody else was eating. Her foster mother was twisting a tea towel as the serious-faced officer laid a map on the table.
Why was everyone acting as if something terrible had happened? It had only been one day and two sleeps. Jenna would be hungry trapped in the wooden hideout, but she had her pink Sabrina-heart water bottle in her school bag. The nights weren’t cold and there were even a couple of worn out garden chairs to lounge on. They’d found them dumped in a skip during the holidays.
If her foster sister had been loyal then Felicity wouldn’t have locked her inside to teach her a lesson. She’d caught Jenna telling a secret that wasn’t hers, one they’d pinky-promised to keep. It hurt. Not only that, if the social worker found out then Felicity could lose another family over this.
The inspector pointed at the map and said that the search for Jenna was being widened. “The next few hours will be critical.”
Felicity suddenly lost her appetite.
Perhaps it was time to end this? She had to reach the old hut first. Jenna was probably alright and would forgive her. The grown-ups never would, and she’d be sent away again.
If they’d let her walk to school, she would have cut through the woods, unbolted the door, and told Jenna not to grass on her. Instead, Felicity sat anxiously in the back of the family Skoda.
Later, in the classroom, she remembered her foster sister’s scream, “I’m scared, let me out.” Felicity’s breath caught. What if… Jenna wasn’t OK? She blinked away a tear.
The teacher called her aside, speaking calmly. She saw the woman’s mouth moving but couldn’t understand the words. Her head was too full.
Everyone was being very nice to her. Yesterday, she’d enjoyed the attention. Today, she wished they’d all go away. If they didn’t, Jenna could end up spending a third night alone in the dark instead of beside Felicity in their cosy twin room, a Justin Bieber lamp glowing between their beds. Together they’d laughed about the dark. That’s easy to do until you have to face it alone.
Author Note
This scene above is part of a wider, longer story I am sometime working on, and I thought it matched the current prompt - The Witness - from Microcosm, a Medium publication.
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