explain why he was on their yard and that she had never told him her name.
Kennedy spent almost the majority of the day cleaning up the house, steering clear of her father’s study. It still gave her the creeps after that weird dream she'd had that morning. Helping out with chores was the least that she could do if her father was MIA and her mom practically lived at her job.
When she was done with the lower level of the house, she went upstairs – a fairly large cardboard box in hand – and started off with her bedroom. It was time to take out the things that she didn’t use from her clustered closet.
She was sorting through her long forgotten and extremely dusty bitty babies collection when her cell phone rang. She put down Yuyo, her favorite gorilla doll from when she had been a kid, and went to the nightstand to retrieve the device. Lauren’s name could be read in the small screen. She quickly pressed the accept key.
“Hey, Laurie!” She was filled with joy at talking with her best friend.
“Hello there, baby girl!” Lauren seemed equally delighted to speak with her. Something told her that it was more than happiness at hearing her voice.
“What have you been doing, anything exciting happen? You sound very happy.” There, she knew that her friend had something to tell her, she could hear it in her voice. So, she opened a window of opportunity for her, which she took without preamble.
“I met a guy.”
3. Lonely Day
A week had gone by so quickly that Kennedy had barely even noticed. There was still no word from her father and she saw less and less of her mother.
Every time that she approached Teresa on the subject, the latter would be purposefully evasive. She suspected that it was, at least in part, the reason as to why her mom was almost never home anymore.
She closed the book that she had been reading and placed it on the side table. She then took her cell phone out of her pocket and stared at the same skeleton background that she had for months now.
No calls.
Lauren barely called her anymore. He friend had retracted to the occasional text message here and there. She must have been spending all of her time with Nathan, the guy that she had called to tell her about.
Her friend's brain had temporarily gone out of business, it shut down allowing only pink heart shaped bubbles to go in now and then. The Lauren that she knew had been swapped, and in her place they left her a giggling, love sick girl that acted three years younger than she really was.
She remembered that her father had once told her some lore about Changelings as – according to her mother – an inappropriate bedtime story. They were supposed to be children or infants that were switched by some kind of evil fairy or something.
Okay, so Lauren was no kid, but maybe that was what this new girl was. It certainly would explain why rational, responsible and smart thinking Lauren was traipsing around with a total stranger, no worries whatsoever.
And it definitely would explain why she had forgotten about Kennedy. She, her supposed best friend.
If she could tell Steven about her suspicions, he would undoubtedly laugh his heart out. She never even considered any supernatural rationalization for any weird occurrence in her life, nor accepted his. Now, there she was, imagining some nonsense explanation for her friend's falling in love.
By Lauren's description on the phone the prior week, Nathan sounded like a nice guy. Hell, he sounded like the prefect guy. But, judging by her behavior, her view of the situation might be biased. She wished that she could be there for her friend.
On the other side, she felt bad. Maybe Nathan was the perfect man, perfect for Lauren. Maybe she was just letting the green monster of envy whisper in her ear because she was afraid of losing her one and only friend.
Kennedy convinced herself to give the unknown stranger a chance to prove himself before she jumped to any more silly conclusions. She stood from her seat on the living room couch and went to the kitchen for a drink.
She was putting the water pitcher back in the refrigerator when she realized that her mother hadn't left any food prepared.
It wasn't that Kennedy expected her to be her servant, but it was so out of character for her mom to forgo the house chores that it made her worry. It was undeniable proof that Steven's absence had affected Teresa more than she let on.
Acting on impulse, she reached in and took the ingredients that she would need to prepare her mom's favorite dish. Kennedy feared that she might be losing touch with her mother too and that scared her to death. She didn't like to feel alone.
Her mother was an amazing cook, and she had taught her how to prepare a decent meal. It wasn't that she didn't know how, it was just that she didn't want to. Her mom had always made sure that there was food on the table every day and to her chagrin, she had gotten used to it.
That night would be different. She would welcome her mother with a nice homemade meal and try to repair the growing rift between them.
She turned on the radio and listened to music, humming along as she set to work on the surprise.
After the food was done and a tray of freshly baked cupcakes cooled in the oven, Kennedy went upstairs and fished through a box full of pictures that had survived the raid to her closet the week before. She looked for a recent one of her dad.
She planned to make a flyer to post around the nearby towns. Maybe somebody had seen him and they would call. Even if it was to find out he had simply abandoned them, Kennedy didn't care, she just needed to know.
She went through the box's entire contents and came out empty handed. She hadn't realized that her relationship with her father had been damaged to the extent that he didn't show up in any of her family photographs, not counting those from her fifteenth and up to date, last birthday party.
There was a lot she hadn't been realizing lately.
She was almost positive that if she had been paying more attention to the comings and goings of her household, she would have had a clue as to what was truly going on, because she was definitely not swallowing her mother's excuse of a freelance project that she had never heard of.
She had had enough of self-pitying and decided that it was time to take some proactive action. Smiling, she recalled that she did have a recent photo of Steven in her digital camera's memory card, if you could call last year's neighborhood old hallows eve bonfire recent.
She remembered that night with such bittersweet longing that it shocked her. Every year, some of the neighbors got together and headed to the local beach and built a bonfire. They would all sit around it telling horror stories and urban legends. It was the only day of the year when being the Freak Girl was actually considered a cool thing.
Each year, the last of the spots was specially reserved for Steven and his fascinating tales. All, except Steven himself, considered them fun though make-believe.
Last year's gathering had been particularly spooky. The usual people were there and even some new faces that they had not seen before. One of the neighbors had passed a bag of marshmallows and some wooden sticks around the circle and Teresa had taken it upon herself to make a very detailed photo account of the events.
Kennedy inwardly celebrated the fact that although she had been too lazy to import the old pictures, she had also been too lazy to delete them. She flipped open the camera's card cover, took it out and quickly inserted it into the corresponding slot in the computer. She waited for the auto play window to appear.
Once it did, she clicked on the view pictures option and scrolled down the different images until the arrow pointer of the computer mouse stood on the one that she had been looking for.
The one besides it caught her attention. It was one that her mother had taken of her father and her as they shared a log together in front of the fire.
She almost didn't recognize the girl that sat besides Steven in the photo. She glowed from within and the sad thing was that she might never glow like that again. Try as she might
, she couldn't help but think that maybe she wouldn't get to see him again and she was afraid that it wasn't because she was going away to college in two months.
She created the flyer, printed a mock-up to show her mother and went downstairs to watch TV while she waited for Teresa to come home.
The hours passed and she fell asleep on the couch.
Kennedy came to, mildly disoriented. She opened her eyes warily, trying to adjust to her surroundings.
It was already dark out and she was momentarily confused by the shadows emitted from the TV's illumination. They were cast randomly throughout the room giving it an eerie feeling. Her eyes felt as if they were full of sand. She rubbed them furiously trying to make the sleep go away. The constant blaring of a siren hurt her ears.
She looked to find that the source of the shrill sound was some cop show that played on the forgotten television set, it was probably what had awoken her. She reached for her cell phone, pressed one of the keys and watched as the screen light up. It was twenty minutes past ten, she had been asleep for more than four hours.
Normally, Kennedy couldn't fall asleep during the day no matter how hard she tried, except under strenuous circumstances. She wondered at her sudden narcoleptic episode, but then realized that she really hadn't been sleeping all that well lately.
Even before Steven disappeared she had been having that same recurrent dream and kept waking up anxious as if it had some important