Warnings and the buddy system.
The drive home was anxious, Arthur's knuckles were white with how tight he's gripping the steering wheel. Usually, when he was this anxious over something, it was work related, but this time, it was slightly different. Yes, it was still work related, but now it involved Heathen. Sandra and Heathen shared a resemblance, Morgan and Heathen behaved similarly, and all of them were similar in age. Not to mention, Heathen was always home alone. Arthur couldn't get the idea of finding his home broken into, with his daughter missing from her usual spot on the couch, and no actual fucking leads to help solve this case and catch the bastard that's stealing children from their homes.
When he finally got home, he immediately went to the living room. He skipped his usual steps of greeting the dog and pouring himself a drink and went straight into the living room, then upstairs when Heathen wasn't on her normal spot on the couch. He couldn't help the fact that he was sweating and felt like he was going to combust at any moment, that feeling only slightly going away when he turned on the light and saw Heathen, for once, asleep in her bed.
"Heathen, honey, we need to talk." He didn't bother whispering, shaking her gently as he spoke in a half-panicked manner. Heathen didn't slowly wake up like she usually would. Instead, her body forced her awake, clearly confused. "Dad, what the fuck is going on?" Her voice was raspy, and she squeezed her eyes shut to try and relieve herself of the almost immediate headache starting to seep into her skull. Arthur had managed to calm himself down a bit by the time he was sat on Heathen's bed, not looking at her for a second. "Who's that boy you've started bein' friends with?"
Heathen blinked at him, looking more confused than he had ever seen her. "Micheal Denzy... why? And we aren't exactly friends." Arthur nodded, putting a hand on her knee in an attempted soothing action. "Okay, well, you're friends now. It's safer for you that way." Arthur had noticed Heathen's face shift, and he realized he didn't actually know how he could tell her that she was a possible target for kidnapping. "Listen, darlin'. There's just a pattern we noticed, and— and I just want to make sure you're safe, okay? I'm sure you'll be fine, but I just need to be completely sure." Heathen nodded, clearly nervous. Arthur gave her a hug and left the room after making sure she was okay.
Heathen didn't sleep well, not until she let Lassie lay in her bed with her. Her and Micheal's usual talk at the bus stop the next day that usually involved schoolwork, or gossip that was mostly Micheal talking, was replaced with deafening silence. Micheal stared at Heathen, and Heathen stared at the road in front of them. Micheal took a second to actually try and gauge a response out of Heathen. "So... what happened with you and your dad--" He was almost immediately cut off by Heathen. "He thinks I'm going to get kidnapped, something about similar situations the other victims had been in. This means that we basically have to use the buddy system until this whole thing is over." Heathen hadn't looked away from where her eyes had been glued to the street, only looking up at Micheal when the bus actually showed up. "Damn." Was what Micheal started with, stepping into the bus with Heathen and only continuing his thoughts when they were sat down in the back of the bus. "So basically, your dad, who's a detective, or so you claim," Heathen stared at him with a confused frown while Micheal continued, like he hadn't said anything about Arthur at all. "Is worried about you, a girl that can defend herself and who has a dog—" Micheal was cut off by Heathen, loudly correcting him. "Lassie won't do shit. She's like a literal personification of an empty threat." Micheal nodded, like it would make her shut up faster, which it did. Only because she was done with her own input. "Yeah, right, okay. Whatever. But the thing is, she sounds like she'd rip someone apart. It doesn't matter that she won't. My point is, you're like.. untouchable. Like entirely. No kidnapper is stupid enough to take you." Heathen shrugged, Micheal enthusiastically patting her shoulder. Heathen, for just a moment, realized that Micheal was either really, really high, or really, really oblivious to most of her circumstances, and her father's worry.
School went by mostly in a blur, classes blended into one, notebook pages that had been filled with as many notes as she could manage to take down before the teacher moved onto the next part of the lesson were blank, not even a small drawing on the pages. One thing she had noticed when she looked around her French class, something she hadn't done at all since she had apparently entered the classroom, was notice that the seat next to her had Laci Whitlock in it, who was occasionally glancing at Heathen, who had probably spent most of the class staring at her desk, out the window past Laci, or at the blackboard. Laci and Heathen briefly made eye contact, before Heathen slowly, and painstakingly pulled her gaze back to the blackboard. Lunch couldn't have possibly come as quickly to Heathen as it did. As much as Micheal complained about his Spanish class feeling longer than it was, Heathen could have sworn French class had finished in seconds. Either way, she was sat in the cafeteria now, with Micheal. "Heathen, are you listening?" She, unsurprisingly, was not. But she still nodded like she had been. "Yeah, no, totally." even her tone was dismissive, and a bit distant, but Micheal only sighed and moved on. There was maybe a 3-minute window where it was just Micheal and Heathen by themselves, before Laci slammed a tray down only a few spaces from where Micheal was sitting. "Heathen, why didn't you say hi to me in class today? I was gone for like a week, did you not notice?" Heathen looked at Laci with a deer in headlights look for a second. "No, I did notice, I only noticed that, to be completely fair. And I'm sorry I didn't say hi, Lace, I had a lot on my mind. Honestly, I didn't even realize I was in a class." She gave Laci a half smile, hoping it would ease her out of the angry, yet anxious looking space Laci seemed glued into. "She is, I can vouch for her." Micheal gave Laci a smile as she turned her attention to him "...I'm Micheal, by the way." He extended a hand for Laci to shake. which she did, just with a confused look. "Did you just move here or something?" Despite the fact Micheal had already answered that question before when he and Heathen had met that week prior, he smiled, and explained, in the exact same way, that he just liked blending into the background, and had recently changed his mind. Laci turned back to Heathen, who had been staring at the table again. "Hey, Heathen, how come you two are hanging out?" Heathen snapped her attention to Laci, thinking of a way to respond. "You went AWOL, and he wanted to hang out, what else was I supposed to do? Tell him to fuck off and die?" - "I'm allowed to have other friends, aren't I?" She didn't mean to sound so rude, or angry. Especially not with Laci, but she deemed her first response idea to be worse than what she actually said. However, Laci just nodded rather than get angry, maybe she felt bad about getting angry at Heathen earlier. Micheal decided to ask a question, that for better or for worse got Laci's attention. "So, Laci, how's the search for Sandra going?" Laci glared at him, before sighing. "They put up missing posters, and formed a search group, but they can't find her, and I think they're just giving up, but I guess we'll see."
When Heathen and Micheal got off the bus, Micheal looked at his house, then Heathen's. "Hey, Heathen. Can I come in for a bit? I think my parents might be fighting." She looked back at Micheal from the white picket fence gate that had been there since Heathen was born, all she did was silently nod and open the gate. it slightly dragged on the concrete path leading to the front door. Micheal followed swiftly behind her and closed to gate as she walked up to the front porch, Lassie starting to bark from inside. He noted the number of dead flowers in the flowerbed in front of the ivy-covered window, while everything else looked perfectly fine, almost pristine. "So.... does no one take care of the flowers?" He questioned, as Heathen pushed the door open, putting one leg between the gap of the door to keep Lassie inside. "No, they were my mom's. and when she died, the flowers died with her, it's really nothing that important." She managed to contain the energetic dog trying to break her way out of the house to greet Micheal on the porch. Heathen had a small feeling, in the back of her mind, that Micheal's parents weren't actually fighting and that he had used it as an excuse to honor her dad's request of the buddy system, despite the fact it was unnecessary. They got inside and Micheal immediately took to looking around, Lassie following quickly behind him and trying to sniff him like she was a drug dog. "I hope that animal fur on you is dog fur." Heathen remarked as she lazily walked to the dining room table, throwing her bag on one of the chairs. "Oh, no, it's cat hair." Micheal remarked from the living room, which Heathen soon entered, with a frown on her face. "My dad's allergic to cats, so—" "Shit, do I like... sit outside?" Heathen shook her head. "Nah, I'll just vacuum." She wouldn't. She was too lazy to actually follow through with that, plus her dad's allergy wasn't deadly or anything. It just meant that he sneezed a little bit until the fur actually got vacuumed up.
There had been a couple hours between them actually coming home, Heathen had been next to Micheal on the couch, she usually ignored him. But being home alone with him was making that more difficult. It wasn't like.. how she felt about Laci, but it felt close to that. And he wasn't Laci, so it was probably better for her to feel this way with him, instead. It didn't help Heathen's confusion that Micheal was pretty for a boy. Not handsome. Just pretty. She confused herself. Micheal had turned his attention to her, and Heathen just stared at him. "Do- Do you need something?" Heathen just stared at him a little longer, his stupid fucking dimple was back. She stuttered over her words a bit before getting frustrated and just... turning to stare at the TV.