Excerpt:

The first thing Lea thinks when she wakes up is /it's too early/. She shifts around and rolls onto her stomach before the second though slides through her sleepy haze, /Why am I on the floor?/ because this so isn't as comfortable as her bed is. Mmm, bed. That sounds good. She starts formulating a plan to maneuver herself from here to her bed without having to move too much, cracking open her eyes to see where, exactly, she's fallen asleep this time. Because she's been known to just fall asleep anywhere when she gets tired enough, and sometimes it's a little awkward, but this is her own apartment, apparently, so that's fine.

She pushes herself up on her hands and knees, then to her feet, and starts moving at a slow shuffle for the door at the end of the room where her room lies waiting with fluffy pillows and snuggly blankets. She makes it inside without much effort, drops onto her bed, and prepares for a long day of napping and laziness, burrowing into her bed like she's some small woodland creature burrowing into it's nest or whatever.

And the napping starts off wonderfully. She's got a natural talent at napping, and she thinks if there were a napping competition she'd take home the gold without a problem.

And then someone's calling her name, her brother's calling her name, and she buries her head under her pillow and doesn't reply, because Ben's a terrible, horrible person if he's going to interrupt her blissful napping, and horrible people don't deserve more than being ignored. Besides, ignoring him is so much easier than, like, whatever he wants her to do. Breakfast run, probably. Pft. He can go get friggin’ breakfast...

But then she notices the tone of his voice, the thin panic woven through her name, and she gets back out of bed and shuffles back out of her room. Ben's pacing, and he stops when he sees her, relief clear on his face like it was written across in black Sharpie, and he rushes over and crushes her in an unexpected hug.

"I thought you were gone too."

That hits something, a nerve or whatever and it makes her insides twist with guilt, because when she woke up he wasn't there, but she hadn't thought anything of it, and he could have been missing, too but she wouldn't have noticed. He noticed as soon as he saw she wasn't there, he thought the worst, and she wonders if that makes him paranoid, or if she's a terrible sister.

She hugs back just for a second, then, "Dude, I can't breathe," and he lets her go.

"Sam's still missing," he says, " I finally got signal on my phone, but it went straight to her voicemail..." Sam never lets her phone go to voicemail, not unless she seriously can’t help it, and they both know it.

"Her car still here?"

He nods and moves to the window, lifting the thick black curtain away. " Still where it was, yeah."

Okay, so something probably is wrong, then. She doesn't want to say it, doesn't want to even have thought it but really doesn't want to have to be the one to say it, just bites her lip and fidgets.

"Maybe we should call the police." Ben moves away from the window, " I mean, she's gone, just disappeared - she could have been kidnapped or--" He stops and his green eyes are like broken glass, the worried guilty look she remembers.

"Calling would be good," she agrees, then, "It's not your fault. Whatever happened, it's not."

"I should've gone with her."

"You didn't know."

"I should have."

She doesn't know why Ben always seems to think he has to be the one to blame for everything that goes wrong - he's always been that way, too. Even when they were kids, he'd take the blame for the stupid things she'd do like stealing cookies or breaking dishes by mistake. The time she snuck out of their aunt and uncle's house to go to a party, he covered for her, and showed up at the party when she called him because she'd been drinking and her ride had left without her, taken the heat for it when she got in trouble.

And now here he is again, blaming himself for something Sam did or maybe some freak did to Sam, when he had no possible way of knowing it was going to happen. He's not psychic, and he's not all powerful, even though she used to think so when she was little.

He turns away and starts dialing, and she stands in place and tries to decide if she should suck it up and get breakfast, or if she's still going to sleep. She doubts Ben's going to let her go get their breakfast on her own, not acting like he is right now, so she just flops onto the couch and listens to her brother's concerned voice telling the police what had happened last night, and trying not to nod off.

When he snaps his phone closed and stops pacing, she looks up, blinks away the threads of sleepiness threatening to overtake her again. "What'd they say?"

"Nothing useful. She has to be missing twenty-four hours before it's a missing persons case. It's only been... seven. Ish."

"Oh," she fidgets with her hands in her lap, tries to think of something optimistic to say, something to help the situation. Nothing comes to mind.

"I'm gonna go get us some breakfast," he says, " Don't.... don’t go anywhere, alright?" /Don't go missing/, his eyes say.

She nods, and he turns and heads for the door.