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Chapter Twelve As soon as Anna got home, I asked her about my mother, and, while remembering to glare at Aunt Carol every five minutes, she told me that Aunt Carol had told me the truth about her. I ask her how Tina was able to communicate from her, and then, when I’ve already said too much, I remember that Anna never knew Tina let me talk to my mother. Anna’s eyes almost bulge out of their sockets and she picks up the phone, jamming in the buttons which she’s learnt off by heart. I don’t hear much of the conversation because Anna locks herself in her room while she’s talking, and I can only hear what she yells loud enough because Aunt Carol insists that it’s rude to eavesdrop, so I’m stuck in the dining room while Aunt Carol makes herself a cup of tea.

“You didn’t have to yell at her,” I mumble as Anna walks back in, and Anna’s angry tone hasn’t been finished on that phone. She turns back to me, then speaks just as softly as I mumbled.

“Well I’ll be damned if you’re going to tell me how to behave.” Anna doesn’t look back at me when she starts to speak in her normal voice, “Carol, I’m going to bed because I have to go to work in the morning. Lauren will set up your bed for you.” I know Anna’s lying because she doesn’t have work until three, but I don’t say anything and I let her go. I pull out the couch cushions and set up the guest bed for Aunt Carol. As I start to make her bed, she touches me on the arm again and she says “I’m sorry I got you into trouble, darling,” but the coldness of her hand on my skin makes me flinch. As soon as I’m done, I tell Aunt Carol good night, I brush my teeth and I go to bed. Aunt Carol doesn’t ask why nobody ate the dinner I cooked, and instead, she just wraps it up and puts it in the fridge.

When I get to school in the morning, I’m met with a familiar, “Did you hear the news?” but the voice is entirely different. It’s one of those girls in my grade with the braces and high ponytail who wants to volunteer for every charity event and school committee, but somehow I never knew her name.

“What news?” I ask, humouring her.

“Rose – you’re friends with Rose, right?”

“Yeah, why,” I ask, suddenly very tense.

“She ran away from home. Nobody knows where she is.”

“What? She wouldn’t do something like that, especially without telling me.”

“Lauren, you should really check Facebook. Her mum wrote this status asking anyone who sees her to please tell her to come home.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” I answer, starting to doubt my own words as I say it.

“Well she did,” she answers, walking away to go spread the news to someone else. I know Rose would hate me for letting rumours about her spread around the school, but I can’t control the gossip like she can.

Hunter notices me standing in one spot, trying to take everything in and when he comes over, he gently hugs me from the side. “Is everything okay?” he asks, and I assume he hasn’t heard about Rose either.

“Rose,” I say, hesitant to lean into his arms, but even more hesitant to finish the sentence. “My best friend ran away from home,” I continue, unable to hold back my tears. “My best friend ran away from home and I have no idea where she is.” Hunter doesn’t say anything, not even a stereotypical “It’ll be okay.” He just stands there and hugs me while I stain his white shirt with my makeup and tears. The bell rings, and I look up at him, wiping my hand across my eyes and taking off a smudge of eye makeup.

“I don’t want to go to class,” I whimper, and he looks down at me reassuringly and says with his soft, husky voice,

“I know.”

Hunter and I sneak out to the carpark, and we both sit out in his car, I uncomfortably sit across the gear stick and rest my head on his shoulder, trying to hold back my tears. He strokes his hands through my hair, and I realise they’re warm hands, and comforting, unlike Aunt Carol’s. After about half an hour of trying to ring Rose’s turned off phone, Hunter starts talking to me, asking places she might be. I start to think back to places Rose and I had been, and I remember the creek where Anna took us for a picnic once, and how Rose and I built a secret clubhouse underneath the jacaranda tree, with all the purple flowers. Something tells me to go there, so I start to direct Hunter, but my memory is hazy and it takes us another thirty minutes of driving in circles until I recognise the bridge which runs over it, and I tell Hunter to pull over on the side of the road, which he does when we’re off the bridge. I tell him that I have to do this alone, and he tells me he knows, before kissing me on the cheek and wishing me good luck.

The ground is slippery, presumably still from the morning dew which hadn’t disappeared yet, and as I walk down the semi-steep hill, I slip occasionally, then pause to regain my footing. As I get closer to the creek, I can see Rose, picking apart jacarandas even though she’s covered in them. I try to hurry over to her, but the ground is covered with water, and I almost slip over and knock my head on this huge rock, but instead I catch myself on it, and I clasp at the cut on my hand, trying to repress the pain from the freshly made graze. Rose turns to look at me, as I get closer, and with a sigh she says, “Oh, it’s you.”

“Can I sit here with you?” I ask, but instead she stands up.

“Look, if you’re here to tell me to come home, I’m not doing it.”

“But why,” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure it has something to do with her dad.

“There’s not enough to go around for me,” she answers, sounding spiteful.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, but she looks at me as if I’m clueless. I’ve been getting that look a lot lately from everyone.

“It’s you, Lauren. You’ve had four parents of your own, but for some reason you needed one more.”

“What? I wasn’t trying to steal your mum.”

“Tell me the last time you came over to my house to see me other than my birthday,” she says, and I actually have to think back, and I’m suddenly feeling guilty.

“What about that concert?”

“We never went, did we? How were you planning on getting to a concert, anyway?” she snaps.

“I don’t know, we’ve been to concerts before.”

“You know, I spent all of last night and all of this morning feeling bad about how I’d taken attention away from Toby. My dad doesn’t even want to acknowledge him as his own child, and I thought about how mum hasn’t been able to spend much time with him because she’d been bending over backwards for me. Only it wasn’t me, it was my friend.”

“Rose, I didn’t mean to –“ I try to defend, but she cuts me off.

“Save it, Lauren.”

“So are you never going home?”

“I might. I might go to my dad’s. He might not be much of a dad, but at least he has time for me.”

“You’re just going to leave your mum like that?”

“Trust you to care more about how my mum will feel than how I feel.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I defend, reaching out to try and touch her, and feeling another sting when she yanks her arm out of my reach.

“I think you should leave, Lauren,” she says, then she turns to walk away from me to another spot further up along the creek bed.

I turn to walk back to Hunter, not knowing what to say here now that I was the reason for Rose leaving, but as I walk I hear a loud splash, and I turn back around to see Rose lying face down in the water. For a moment, I don’t know what to do, but then I see the red water seeping out around her head, I run over to her, drop down into the water, soaking my school skirt and I roll her over, screaming out to Hunter as loud as I can. When I get her out of the water, I’m able to see the scar on her head clearer, it’s pouring out blood where she’d slipped and hit her head on a rock. “HUNTER!” I scream out again, desperately wanting him to hurry up and get here, but paranoid about him slipping too. I hear the car door slam, and then I hear him calling back.

“Hunter,” I call back again, nervously fumbling around with “I don’t think she’s breathing.”