Victoria DeLarge's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Victoria DeLarge wanted one thing this morning: to find Frankie and take back what she said. She had called him useless before he walked out. Now the sun was up over Hidden Falls, and her boyfriend was gone. She wanted them both out of this town alive. That plan started with getting him home. She checked his phone location twice. It sat dark. She grabbed her keys, told herself the fight was small. Then she remembered his face at the door. Frankie didn't slam things. He got quiet and left. Quiet was worse. She drove to the one place he cooled off. The dive bar wrapped around a glass tank, where a swimmer in a mermaid tail drifted behind the glass. Warm light spilled onto the wet boards outside. Frankie came here when his hands shook and he didn't want to talk. His truck wasn't in the lot. Inside, Jon filled a whole barstool. Frankie's best friend was built like a door, bald, with a beard down to his chest. He was Frankie's oldest friend, the one who always knew where he went. He didn't turn when the door opened. He just lifted his beer. "You're late," Jon said. "Late for what?" Victoria stopped behind him. "Was he here?" Jon set the beer down slow. "He was. An hour ago. Drank one, said maybe six words." He finally looked at her. His eyes weren't kind. "He asked me if you'd ever really leave with him. I told him I didn't know." "Where did he go?" Her voice cracked. "He wouldn't say to me." Jon reached into his shirt pocket. He put a folded napkin on the bar. "He left this for you. Said you'd understand." Victoria opened it. Frankie's handwriting slanted hard. Three words. *Going where nobody finds me.* Her stomach dropped. She knew the place he meant. Everyone in Hidden Falls knew it. The cavern at the edge of town, the black mouth in the rock where people went to disappear. Nobody came back from there the same. Some didn't come back. "He didn't mean it like that," she said. "Tell me he didn't." Jon pushed off the stool. The floor creaked under him. "I know that look on him, Victoria. He means to stay gone a while." He grabbed his jacket. "I'm coming with you. He's my friend too." She folded the napkin into her fist. The bar's warm light suddenly felt far away. Frankie was walking toward the worst place in Hidden Falls, alone, because of what she said. She pushed out the door into the daylight. "Then move," she told Jon. "We find him before dark, or we don't find him at all." The bar hadn't held Frankie. But it had told her exactly where he was going. Now the goal wasn't finding him. It was reaching the cavern first.