SEVENTY SEVEN: CAN'T SAY GOODBYE

The very next morning after she disappeared, mom was in the police station to report her missing. The whole night, she had not been herself because Jamie had gone to school like every other student but didn't return home, and especially because the Brooks were not helping. When she asked Pamela if she knew her sister's whereabouts, she said, "Pan took her home after closing hour yesterday". The little lass couldn't have been lying. She knew who she saw. So, mom went to our neighbors to ask if Pan was around, and when they told her he was sent on a three-day errand, she couldn't take it anymore. Pamela insisted she saw Pan drive into their school premises and take Jamie away. "Why didn't he ask you to come with?" Mrs Brooks asked her. "It couldn't have been him" she said to which mom yelled and thumped her feet. "my daughter is not blind. She knows what she's talking about, and Jamie wouldn't follow just any vehicle, it must have been Pan. Y'all have a criminal for a driver!" She insisted. I was panic-stricken. Everything started to go down. Everywhere was messy, with the Brooks claiming they scrutinized whoever they employed before taking them, and that Pan was not a criminal. "He's probably a lookalike who took Jamie away or Pamela is plainly lying" Mom wouldn't have any of it. "How can you say a child is lying? What does she stand to gain from bearing a false witness! Don't make me sick! I'm uptight right now!" Mom started to regret permitting us to relate with our neighbors. She believed they had a hand in the occurrence, and so, Mrs Brooks was arrested as a suspect. Those times were so bad that everytime, mom was on the phone. Either she was on the phone or moping around the house or on the move. 24/7, without tasting any food or talking to me. She was totally downcast and I was scared Jamie would be gone just like that. She spoke to Nora about this, and I wanted to tell Jack too, but I couldn't find his number anymore. It mysteriously left my contact list, and I was so damn sure Mom must have deleted his contact after their break-up. These times were really tough, to be honest, so tough that when Jamie finally was found and when she died, we felt a strange relief. It didn't mean that we were bad or didn't want her in our lives anymore. We were just strangely relieved that she found some rest. The poor little girl. When she closed her eyes in death, mom stared at her for a long time and sighed. "Finally! You're getting some rest, my pretty princess" she said, but when she got home, the weight of her loss dawned on her, and she started to scream so much it almost deafened anyone who heard her. I have never cried as much as I cried that day, and the days after. I cried because mom thought she killed Jamie, and she was busy dying of guilt while i struggled to tell her it wasn't her fault. And at the same time, I was pacifying her with me being very hurt inside. I was more hurt later, when my memories returned, because I realized I had seen this happen before. I already knew long ago that Jamie would die. Never in my life would I ever have thought that Cameron would go so far as to send a spy to us by tricking our neighbors with a supposed 'applicant' for a driver's position in their family. Or maybe they both planned it. Maybe Cameron paid the Brooks heavily just to catch us. I don't think so. I see Mrs Brooks face everytime I visited the station. She looked uncertain and sad. She said she'd never liase with anyone to steal away such a beautiful child. She claimed Jamie was her favorite of the twins. And yes, that's true. So, I conclude that it was Cameron who did this on his own. How he sent the spy, who spied on us everytime until he was able to take one of us away was all pre-planned. He was able to prepare clean information about the spy, make it look like he wanted to apply for a driver's position at the Brooks'. How did he know that they needed one? Cameron was several miles away. How he did it so clean is what I do not understand. Well, he had been a murderer in the past, so why not? For five weeks that Jamie was missing, nothing remained the same again. Everyone was on the lookout for her every minute. Placards, and search teams. What other effort did mom not make? Barnabas and Tessy seemed to be the most affected. They came over to our place to spend the night and console mom. They prayed with her and told her sweet things. I caught Tessy crying in their balcony once or twice. Everybody was confused about the whole thing. It was the first time I'd ever see their father since we arrived Germany. He was in the army and he had to come down home when he got the news about what happened. Still, nothing could be done to get Jamie back. When after three days that the trip he was sent to take lapsed, and he didn't return, Mrs Brooks and the rest of her family started to believe innocent Pamela's story. They tried calling Pan and even visited the address he gave as his family residential area, but on getting there, to their dismay, it was only an ongoing construction site, maybe even abandoned already. He had fooled them. Very clean crime. Even his personality and looks had totally fooled them, but his personal information and identity were the most convincing. No one, virtually nobody knew anything about him. The numbers he dropped to be his brothers' number stopped going through. It was all practically useless. It was obvious that he was a criminal and was on the run already. Why he took Jamie was what the police started to investigate, but mom was not interested in the prolonged process. All she wanted was her daughter, and as soon as possible. She started to shout at the police at the station, not minding whatever happened. She even promised to give anyone who found Jamie anything he asked for. While all this happened, I prayed that I'd run into Jack. I just wanted to tell him what was happening now to the woman he loved so much. I was certain it'd definitely touch the insides of his heart, and he'd take a very urgent major step, maybe be even faster than the police. All I needed to do was find him. It was crazy and looked impossible, as we were in different domiciles. Mom was crazier. She started to Google hideouts of abductors in Germany. Started to do a lot of harmful researches. Started to buy and install surveillance cameras everywhere she visited- the suspected places. Started to do abnormal but useful things in the search for her daughter. I couldn't even stop her. She said that she was going to find Jamie herself, and nothing would stop her, even if it meant doing it till her last drop of blood, and holy moley, the determination I saw on her face was unrivaled! Even the police couldn't beat that resolve. If we were going to find her and our family be returned to normalcy, it was not going to work doing something regular. And that's why I was not too surprised and did not blame mom when one late afternoon,around 4pm, she ran out of the house like a mad woman, and ran into her vehicle. She soon returned after a while, looking less disappointed as of she just discovered something big. She returned to change her dress, and went to the phone again. She took her shoes and went back to the parking lot to start her car around 10:40pm in the night. It was after she called at the station again and they said there was no news yet. She got into her vehicle and started it. I didn't know what to do, so I went into the car to join her before she zoomed off. No neighbor was around to stop us. I didn't know where she was driving to, or what she found out, but it seemed like she was not directionless. She knew exactly where she was driving to. When we ended up in an uninhabited land in the woods, somewhere far away, she stopped the car, came out and ran very far away into the woods somewhere. I didn't know where. I thought I should have followed her and help with my superpower. That's why I blame myself too, but I just waited in the car instead. My hands shivered and my lips moved in response to the gnashing in my insides. So I called Nora and Barnabas. I called Barnabas first. He asked where exactly we were, and when I looked around for a signpost, I didn't find any. And I started to cry. He told me to let my location stay on, that he would find me. I hoped he would, because fear was an understatement for what I felt that night. I couldn't stop mom. I thought she was going mad. Half an hour later, mom returned, running very swiftly with a body in her hands. She threw the body into the seat beside me, ran into her seat and started the car very fast. I was too scared to see who it was but I knew it was Jamie. I thought she was dead but I saw her move sluggishly beside me. That day was plain horror. She looked emaciated and abused. How did mom find her? Mom accelerated on the rough road out of the woods. Apparently, she was not in her right state of mind. Adrenaline was working its magic I yelled and cried as she hit trees and bumped into stumps and swerved away from more stumps. I called Barnabas and Nora multiple times because there was nothing else to do. Looking back, I saw what mom was running from. Another vehicle, a small noiseless truck was after us. The culprit. We could have made it. Jamie could have made it. We were only a hair's breadth away from the main street, but mom had lost control of her mind at that moment. Lost total control. And it was freaking DARK! It was half past 11 in the night. And she ran straight into a ditch where our vehicle somersaulted twice before coming to an abrupt halt. Blood, everywhere. All of us could have died but mom and I are alive, Mom, with a scarred hip and multiple fractures, me with lots of injuries that turned to scars and I lost a lot of blood(I also lost half of my left ear which was later fixed) but still, both of us made it. And I wished we all made it.