At first, I thought that Dennis and Samara were in some cheap motel doing their business. Perhaps they were just not aware of the time because it was that good. But my attaboy attitude slowly became twinges of anxiety; it had been already two days since they had their date and my cousin hadn’t come back yet. I couldn’t help but think that something bad might have happened to him. Since his disappearance, I had been helping his family spread the word; I posted a message on Facebook with his photo, informing people of Dennis’ remarkable physical features.
Tonight, he demanded me to remove my post the moment I messaged him what I’d done.
Fear for his safety turned into irritation. Why was he like this?
I was so furious that I almost threw my headphones away. The whole conversation didn’t make sense. He didn’t make sense. After deleting my post and posting a new one informing people that Dennis had already contacted me, I immediately went to their home to tell his parents about our conversation.
Understandably, they were devastated, not having an idea as to why Dennis would want to stay away from them. They decided to tell the authorities that their son was not actually missing, and the police gave them nothing but empty words of comfort.
I, too, was confused with Dennis’ sudden change of heart. From where I was standing, there was no reason for him to do that. An only son, he was essentially a spoiled brat who always got what he wanted. Most of my childhood memories involved him having the latest toys. Even when he got older, his situation hadn’t changed; he had received a brand new car as a graduation gift. Even though he had gone through a rebellious phrase at some point—a business so distressing that it affected our extended family—we didn’t hear her parents complaining about it. He was properly loved and taken care of, and I believed even Dennis himself was aware of that.
The next day, I decided to convince Dennis one more time to return home and found out that I had been blocked from his account. I told his parents about it, and they told me that Dennis did the same thing to them. I was surprised that he would even do this to his own parents.
Thinking that he might have just deactivated, I asked some of his friends if they could still type on their chat box with him, and everyone confirmed that we were the only ones who couldn’t. I also requested for them to leave a message and update me if Dennis replied, but so far, it was apparent that he had no plans of messaging back at anybody. I couldn’t help but wonder what had been going through his mind. He had always been a little bit of a problem kid, but it never crossed my mind that he could do this.
Knowing Dennis’ strong feelings towards Samara, I told his parents my blind assumption that he and his date were actually serious with each other that they decided to live together; after all, she was his ultimate high school crush, and anyone would be ecstatic if they were asked by someone they intensely like. They accepted my explanation not because it’s the most plausible notion, but because it was simply an appealing notion that meant that Dennis was safe and sound.
However, one thing didn’t add up; rather, it was so eerily similar to Dennis’ situation that it didn’t make sense. I tried messaging Samara but was forced to contact her family when I hadn’t received a reply. As it turned out, the girl in question had been pronounced missing about a week ago until she messaged her contacts that she ran away in purpose. Like Dennis, she hadn’t returned home until now.
It was bizarre. Did she and Dennis plan this living-together idea beforehand?
Three days later, his friend Andrea messaged me, and if it wasn’t for one particular odd detail, I would have dismissed Dennis’ first statement as some sort of inside joke.
I asked her to provide more photos of their conversation, but she refused, claiming that Dennis had told her “nasty” things about his family that was too personal. Frustrated, I asserted that I was his damned cousin, but apparently, she was told a “secret” that was “for her eyes only.” She even didn’t tell me where they agreed to meet. To make matters worse, I provoked her, telling her that Dennis was just messing around when he told her he liked her. She defended him as irrational as she could get. It was obvious that Andrea liked Dennis and was willing to turn a blind eye to negative statements about him.
Would it be wise if I confronted Dennis’ parents? If he really had a reason to run away, then perhaps it would be worth looking into this further. This way, I could probably convince both parties to make up.
Before I had the chance to do so, I couldn’t help but find bizarre that Dennis had asked Andrea about the anatomy of a pig. It was so inappropriate and random that it was almost funny.
Then it occurred to me that I had seen that same question somewhere; it was the first thing Samara had asked him. Here was the first screenshot of Dennis and Samara’s conversation that Dennis had sent me:
He had kept on sending me screenshots of their conversation before he decided to run away, and for the sake of the girl’s dignity, I would rather not show the entirety of it.
I didn’t know how to make sense of it, but of one thing I was certain: asking about a part of a pig’s body twice didn’t give the impression that it was a random question—much more the fact that the sentence construction was exactly the same. Therefore, it couldn’t be a mere coincidence. What were Dennis and Samara up to? I still had the girl’s parents’ account listed, so I decided to meet them in their house.
Samara’s father offered me a cup of coffee as I settled down on the couch. “It’s been two weeks now.” He sighed heavily. “We did everything we could to make Sammy’s life comfortable, but… she just ran away. She told us that she didn’t want anything to do with us anymore…”
A set of amazing parents had been left by their children for some reason, or perhaps they were just trying to convince themselves that they weren’t terrible guardians. What I knew was children didn’t run away from their homes just because.
Until they told me that their child was supposed to meet someone the day she didn’t come home.
“She was excited about it,” her mother started, “being asked out by Ernest, a childhood friend whom she had always been fond of. He was a weirdo if I remember correctly, and I think that’s something that sticks even though they’re now grown-ups.”
Her father chuckled. “You tell me. Asking a woman out by starting off with some pig.”
I spat the coffee, making a huge mess on my clothes and the floor. “Did you… did you say ‘pig’?”
After lending me a shirt, they explained how their child told them everything about her conversation with Ernest: he started the conversation by asking about what part of a pig she hated the most, then he asked her if she was free on Wednesday.
It was exactly the same as what happened to Dennis.
“When she didn’t return for a day,” the father continued, “we asked the boy of their whereabouts. The one who responded was her… brother?” He looked at his wife as she nodded. “They told us that their boy had been missing a week before our daughter did. But they were relieved when the boy told them that he had just run away.”
The mother cleared her throat. “And we were told that the night Ernest went missing, he was supposed to meet a girl named…” She narrowed her eyes, looking at her husband.
“Nat,” the father supplemented. “Natalie.”
“Yes, and Ernest’s family also informed us that Natalie’s family told them that their girl had run away, too.”
I swallowed. “Does Ernest like Natalie?”
His father nodded. “He did, but he told Sammy how he realized that she was the one. It’s nice to see kids falling in love.”
That was essentially what Samara made Dennis believe. Now, I found out that someone whom Samara actually liked told her the same thing. The whole situation stank. What the hell was this all about? Fuck, Dennis. Are you really all right?
I bid my farewell and went home mindlessly, resisting thoughts of worst-case scenarios. The first thing I did when I arrived at my room was to open my Facebook and persuade Andrea to tell me where she and Dennis would meet. She didn’t budge in written confrontation; she probably would when I talked to her verbally. I called her, and exasperatingly, our conversation turned for the worse when she kept insisting that the matter was between her and Dennis exclusively. I’d had enough already, so I went straight to the point.
“How about this,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Just this. Do you love Dennis?”
“Yes, and it’s none of your business,” she replied.
“Enough of that ‘none of my business’ bullshit already! Listen to me: something strange is going on, and you could—”
She responded by hanging up and blocking my account from hers. Fuck this. If my gut feeling was right, it was just a matter of time before Andrea somehow ran away from her home too. As to why and how? I had no idea. If only I learned about the place where Dennis told her to meet.
It wouldn’t be implausible to say that, indeed, something strange was going on. I was planning to get to the bottom of this. For crying out loud, Dennis—and the others who ran away before him—might be in grave danger. Still, I hoped that this was just some kind of elaborate plan orchestrated by a bunch of teenagers who wanted to escape from their families’ grasp.
So far, this was how the pattern went: a person asking a question about a pig, requesting to meet on Wednesdays, and the receivers of the message were ones who had some sort of feelings for them. I had decided to contact the families of the ones who left their homes before Ernest, and if this had been going on way back, I would definitely find it hard to not believe that something sinister was happening.
But that was for another day. It was last Thursday night when Dennis was declared missing, so I was especially agitated today, obsessively refreshing Andrea’s Facebook profile for an update and getting in touch with some of her friends. It was already known that she didn’t come home yesterday. Nonetheless, what I was waiting for was a confirmation that she had come back; anything that was good news...
.
.
.
.
.
No. I couldn’t pretend to be optimistic any longer.
Andrea was missing.
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