Stolen (2 page)

“Yeah, I know what you mean. This college stuff is
pretty hard. I feel like I’m living on the edge if I take time to eat in a
place other than the school cafeteria,” he says with a grunt.

I push the thoughts of what I refer to as “my past
life” as far away as I can, nod, and laugh in agreement. It’s true, college is
a huge change of pace from the carefree life most everyone takes for granted
when they’re in high school. I was one of them, until I turned sixteen anyway;
then I took nothing for granted.

Three
years ago . . .

“Hey, Jess, are you planning on ever getting into this
car or do I have to get out and shove you into the back seat? Please say you
want me to put you into the back seat.”

Rogan is such a pervert and I love him for it. He’s
leaning over the passenger seat with his left arm casually draped over the
steering wheel wiggling his eyebrows up and down trying to tempt me into the
back seat, even though he knows I won’t do it. We haven’t exactly gotten to the
point in our relationship for back seat rendezvous’.

“I’m trying to find Cass. She was supposed to wait for
me until I got out of practice. Mom’s going to be pissed if I leave without
her, so unless you want me to get grounded for losing my baby sister and never
get the opportunity to get me into the back seat and have your wicked way with
me, then you better get your mind out of the gutter and help me find her.”

He pulls ahead and into an empty parking spot,
catching up quickly with me on the sidewalk along the front of the high school
while I make my way around toward the back of the building where Cass and her
boyfriend, Luke, sometimes hang out. Our mother doesn’t approve of their having
alone time at their age. I can’t say I blame her; eleven years old is pretty
young, but I’m supposed to be the cool older sister so I just make sure to
“casually” watch them like a hawk. If I’m not getting any, I’ll be damned if my
little sister tries to.

Before I round the corner, Rogan grabs me by the elbow
and swings me around so I’m facing him. A gasp leaves my throat. Being this
close to him, even after all this time, still makes my heart thump in my chest.
We’ve been together for almost one year. It’ll be one year in two weeks, the
longest relationship of any of our friends and the envy of most of them.

He bends down—he’s one of the only guys who’s taller
than I am—and lightly traces the back of his hand down the side of my face. He
grazes his thumb along my lower lip before replacing his thumb with his lips,
resulting in a low moan emanating from my throat. This is my favorite kiss of
ours. It’s so soft I almost wonder if we ever kissed, but the fluttering in my
heart confirms that we did.

“Sorry, I just couldn’t resist doing that. School
sucks for so many reasons, but the biggest one is that I can’t be with you
more. I miss you so much in the day it drives me crazy, and everyone else who
has to hear me talk about how much I miss you,” he says with a grin as he pulls
me close to his chest. He rests his chin on top of my head, swaying us from
left to right as if we’re leaves in the wind able to fly wherever and whenever
we want.

“Why don’t you two get a room?” I turn around quickly
and see my sister a few feet ahead with a big grin, heading right toward us,
Luke in tow. She looks happy, which makes me happy, but I think a sister-sister
talk is in order, just to check on where she and Luke are at, or not at,
hopefully. I mean, she’s only eleven so she’d better not be anywhere.

The sun is starting to set, making Cass look angelic
surrounded by bright light, which is reflecting off her light brown hair and
tanned skin she somehow naturally has, even though no one else in our family
has that complexion. She lucked out in the height department. Unlike me, she’s
the perfect height for her age and girls in general. I’ve never been the right
height, always too tall and feeling awkward, until I found volleyball. Now my
height is an asset, finally.

“Where have you been? We’ve been looking all over for
you. You were supposed to wait up front for me, not run off doing God knows
what.” I watch for a reaction from either her or Luke, but their expressions
don’t change. I hope that means nothing was going on and not that they’ve
figured out a way to lie to me.

“Sorry, I got bored waiting for you, then Luke found
me and we were just walking around while we waited. I guess we lost track of
time. It doesn’t look like you two were
that
upset about it, though.”
She arches her brows and cocks her head toward one side, throwing me a look of
mock disapproval. 

I reach out and grab her arm, pulling her close to me
and squeezing my arm around her neck, pushing her head into my chest and
roughing up her hair. She tries to tell me to stop, but her giggling is
drowning out her protests. I finally relent and release her, but grab her by
her hand, keeping her close to me while we walk toward Rogan’s car with Rogan
and Luke trailing us. Another reason I love him, he’s talking to my younger
sister’s boyfriend as if it’s his job to protect Cass, too. I don’t think Luke is
that afraid of me, but I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t dare upset Rogan—like I
said, another reason I love him.

When we get to the car, I step aside so Cass and Luke
can say their goodbyes while Rogan walks around to the driver’s side and slides
behind the wheel. His car only has two doors so I wait by an open passenger
door for Cass to get into the back seat. By what feels like the hundredth time
of “I love you more,” no, “I love you more” the car stereo breaks the moment.
Cass groans and rolls her hazel colored eyes toward Rogan even though she knows
he can’t see her, although I imagine he can feel it and is probably laughing at
her right now like he always does when he knows he’s driving her crazy.

Cass climbs in the back and I shut the door when I put
the seat back in position and climb in myself. We watch Luke head toward a car
in the parking lot as we pull out onto the street. “Cass? Who’s giving Luke a
ride home?” I turn in my seat so I can see her while Rogan continues driving
away from the school.

“It’s his uncle. He watches him when his mom has to
work nights. I’ve never met him, though, so I don’t know anything about him
except what Luke tells me. I guess he’s a pretty cool guy, though.”

“You’re sure that’s his uncle back there, though?” I
press, trying to shake the overprotective big sister role I’m in right now.

I hadn’t realized that we were pulling back into the
school parking lot until I see the car Luke was heading toward a few minutes
ago with Luke standing outside the driver’s side door.  He’s leaning down
into an open window talking to whoever is in the driver seat, hopefully his
uncle. But if it is, why hasn’t he gotten into the car yet?

Rogan pulls up alongside Luke and rolls his window
down, casually hanging his head out. “Hey, Luke, you still heading home?”

I’m trying to get a good look at who the driver is,
but between the way Luke is standing and Rogan’s body, I can’t see anything but
a vague silhouette of a man. I feel my headrest shift from the pull of Cass’s
hands as she tries to get a better view from the back seat. I feel like we’re
about to witness a crime and are trying to imprint every detail of this
situation on our brains in case we do. I’m just happy Rogan is here and that
I’m not alone in this situation. I would be of no use to anyone, I’m sure. I
have a tendency to overreact, which is probably what I’m doing right now; but
what if I’m not?

Luke turns toward our car and comes face to face with
Rogan while looking into the cabin of the car toward Cass and me. “Yeah, I was
just thinking about walking home. My uncle just got a call from my mom saying
she’s there, so it seems like a waste of a trip for him to drive me home only
to turn back around. We were just trying to figure it out, that’s all.”

Before I can say it, the words I was thinking are
already out of Rogan’s mouth. “Why don’t we just give you a ride home? Problem
solved. Your uncle doesn’t have to waste a trip and, we get the honor of your
presence on our way home.”

Rogan always seems so easy going and laid back, which
he is for the most part, but there’s a large part of him that no one knows
that’s the exact opposite. He comes from a pretty rough home life. Before his
mom divorced his dad, his dad used to beat her up pretty badly, but it wasn’t
until he turned his aggression toward Rogan that she decided to take action.

I didn’t know him before the divorce but he has
confided in me some of what it was like living in constant fear that your dad
was going to kill your mom and if that did happen he would abandon you, leaving
you alone and parentless. At some point in every child’s life, the fear of
losing a parent is a real, terrifying fear, but to have that be a true fear is
unimaginable to me. I thank the Cosmos every day for my mom, and while Cass and
I’s father may be out of the picture, it isn’t for any dramatic,
life-threatening reason like Rogan’s. Our parents just didn’t love each other
anymore.

The way Rogan is acting right now is making me uneasy.
The way that he so quickly came back to the school to check on Luke instead of
trying to calm me down by reassuring me everything was fine, that I needed to
stop worrying so much, as he has done in the past, he came back without any
prompting from me. Maybe he was saving trouble for later when I pestered him
about whether we should have checked on Luke or whether we should call Luke’s
house to make sure he got home safely and instead just checked now; or maybe
it’s something else?

It doesn’t take long for Rogan to get out of the car,
pull the seat forward, and for Luke to hop into the back seat. Before Rogan
gets back in, I watch him bend down and say something into the other car’s
window. I try to hear what he’s saying, but the words are so soft it barely
sounds like words at all. What could he be saying? Maybe introducing us to his
uncle, letting him know we’re safe people to be taking his nephew home? I never
did think about the fact that we’re strangers to him and that he may be uneasy
letting us just ride off with Luke. Or maybe he knows something I don’t.

 I’m sure I’m being dramatic. There’s nothing
wrong here. Just an uncle and his nephew working out details about a car ride.
So why do I have an uneasy feeling about this situation?

I watch as the other car pulls away and out of the
lot, with Rogan still standing there. I count the barely perceptible moments
that pass before Rogan gets back in the car. No one else would have noticed,
I’m sure, but I do, and it makes my hair prickle and a shiver to course through
my blood. I’ll have to talk to him once we’re alone. Something isn’t right and
I want to know what it is, but I’m not about to scare Cass by bringing it up. I
doubt I would scare Luke; I have a suspicion that he already knows.

“So,” Rogan begins once behind the wheel and belted
in. “I think I could use an ice cream and I imagine if you let your mom know
that you’re with us she’ll be fine if you stay out a little while, don’t you
think?” He doesn’t turn around, but instead talks to Luke in his rearview
mirror.

“Yeah, I’ll text her and let her know. I’m sure she’ll
be cool with it.”

He seems different now than when we left him earlier,
quieter, and somber somehow, and it makes me want to hug him. I have to chuckle
to myself. Cass must have had the same urge because I see her out of the corner
of my eye throw her arms around his neck and pull him into one of her infamous
bear hugs. I trade a sideways glance with Rogan, who has a smile on his face
that I know mirrors mine. We’re off to get ice cream and for a few hours be
four young kids without a trouble in the world.

It ends up being later than we originally intended
when we finally drop Luke off at home, but unless his mom is in bed at seven
o’clock, it’s obvious the house is empty. I can’t tell if anyone has been here
at all tonight. I don’t want to leave, but Luke seems fine, more like the boy
I’ve come to know. He seems perfectly comfortable being here and leaving
us.  I take that as a good sign, a sign that it’s safe for us to leave.

He’s unlocking his front door, and we’re backing out
of his driveway when I grab Rogan’s arm, telling him to stop the car. I jump
outside and run to catch Luke before he closes the door. I tell him to give me
his phone and I use it to call my phone, then program my number into his
contact list. “I know you have Cass’s, but if you can’t get her or you need
something and don’t want her to know about it, call me. You can trust me, and
no matter what happens between the two of you, you can come to me if you need
to. Got it?”

He’s staring as deep into my eyes as I am his big
green ones but I think for different reasons. I want him to know I’m serious
and he probably wants to know why I’m doing this, especially for someone I
don’t know, and I won’t be able to give him an answer if he asks, but it’s
something I have to do, and I hope he lets me without trying to uncover a
motive.

He doesn’t tell me his answer in words, but with a
nod, and with that, he steps inside and closes the door behind him.

That was the last time I saw Luke alive. The next day
the story broke that both he and his mom had been found shot to death in their
home. It only took a few hours to find the killer, which turned out to be a
drug dealer trying to collect money his uncle owed. The dealer came looking for
Luke’s uncle—who apparently used to live in the house with Luke and his
mother—to collect, but instead found only his mom.

 The man confessed easily to everything, which
the police believed was because he was the fall guy for someone higher up in
the chain, admitting that he had tried to get her to pay off her brother’s
debt, but when she refused, he shot her in cold blood.

 He never denied killing Luke, and when asked why
he did, he admitted, with true sincerity, that he did it for Luke so he
wouldn’t have to live without his mom. He was sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.