CHAPTER 2

 At home and without Gabe looking at her as if she were a hitman, Ilem began to think slowly and systematically: What did she remember from Friday?  Before she hadn't given it that much importance and had just suppressed everything about her, it wasn't important anyway, but now the police would want to talk to her and she couldn't just say that she didn't remember how she told Gabe.

 She remembered leaving high school at two o'clock because she felt sick to her stomach and coming home to empty her stomach three times and die slowly.  She had taken some medicine for pain and fever then she only went to sleep around eight forty-five and everything was black nothing.  Until Saturday morning she maybe she had the slight feeling of having woken up to go vomit again but it seemed more like a dream than something that happened.

When she looked back at her door, Allin looked at her with the face of few friends, she Ilem was only being judged by everyone and no one seemed to care

-         Now, what's up, Allin.  She asked in a bad way making her sister turn her back on him and leave her.  Allin wait!  I scream behind it

-                 What?  Shout back Allin, I told you not to go out in that state on Friday but you only left as a soul that the devil carries and now you are involved with Grace and her crazy things but of course nobody listens to Allin.

Ilem saw how mature her younger sister was and how much she cared for everyone

-         Allin, did you see me leave the house? I mean, what was I supposed to do?  She asked surprised now that she had started to force her mind to remember and she knew she had a bad stomach why would she go out, she would never party with a stomach cold

-         I don't know, you just went out and said you will take care of Ellen while you came back or Gabe came back then Gabe came home and you didn't come back.

-         What happened to dad because he didn't stop me from going out so late at night?  She insisted again.

-         You don't remember anything?  Allin asked sarcastically.  Dad had an emergency at the Liverpool office and left around six o'clock then you woke up you vomited and left around eight o'clock, mom came back at nine Thirty Gabe arrived around ten o'clock and immediately went with another boy to a party  Then Ian came to bring the car because Gabe needed it and Marianna came to look for Ian because he had some swimming or I don't know what.

-         You are involved in everything sister.  I blame Ilem for smiling at how nosy Allin could be.

 She just rolled her eyes and wiggled her brown hair away like a Victorias's Secret model.  Ilem smiled to herself. Allin was the closest thing to her mother of all of hers, she was always trying to keep everyone together and safe she was like a little mother leg.

 When they were children and her parents worked much more,n now Allin was always after Gabe to remind him of Ellen's lunch hours and that she should not watch TV until late when her mother worked overtime in high school and due stay up late.

 On the other hand, Gabe was the black sheep of the family, he is nothing like his mother and he did not resemble his father as much as Ellen and Ilem illogical but true while Ellen preferred to play chess and read all the books in the house since she learned  To read, Gabe as a child had preferred video juices and swimming or doing some nonsense sports, but Ilem, like his little sister, preferred everything that had to do with books rather than sports.

Of course, Gabe loved reading as much as his father only it was not his priority, he was so cheerful so kind, naive, loving, and above all overprotective.  Things that almost every being in that family lacked if it weren't for Gabe no one would speak beyond saying hello and giving orders.  Rules, protocol, study, and reason were natural laws for the Fullers except for Gabe, another reason why he fell into Grace's clutches.

 Moon and Star Gabe's cats were both comfortably lying on the sofa when Ilem pushed them away, another particular thing about Gabe the animals were sticking to him like leeches, that's what Moon and Star had come home from.

 Ilem continued to focus her attention on everything but the real problem.  Like, what else could he do without his family telling him what he was supposed to do, they had to agree, or else when he had to declare they would think he was lying but even though he didn't remember being in the library with Grace or anything like that  Night I knew that whatever Grace was in didn't look good at all.

 Grace had arrived when she was in her third year of high school. It has been fun having an American at home, weird sometimes but beyond that Grace was very friendly and fun.

 Of course only Until a month passed and she stopped talking to everyone except Gabe and sometimes crossed words with Ilem but only to refer to silly her things like asking about something or whatever, Gabe and her despite spending so much time together were more as friends.

 Moon and star got back on her lap and begged for caresses which put her on her nerves, animals were not her strong suit, she did not hate them but she was not much of a fan while she caressed Moon, Star went to Allin's room and Ellen.  Ilem declined to go back to the room, and think a little more about all that Friday meant to her but she stopped when she saw the cat calmly asleep and decided to spend a little more time there in the living room that everyone seemed to avoid years ago.

 Grace was so strange and in turn, she always seemed so sad, Ilem thought.  Maybe she had just returned to her house it crossed her mind, she remembered hearing something like a fight from Grace on the phone a few weeks ago, she was upset and hung up when she realized that Ilem was in the kitchen, then she just looked at her badly and took her bag off the counter and out.  Just like that whenever someone from the house arrived, she left or returned to her room.

 Ilem took Moon in her arms willing to walk into her room and follow the timeline of her connecting memories

 When her father and her mother entered the room.  She thought she had heard the door a while ago but she was so engulfed in memories that she did not care but seeing the look on her parents' faces she knew it was time to talk about the statements they should make in three days the words  They left her mouth and she only limited herself to look at the sad faces of her parents until finally her mother asked her the most anticipated question of the night and she had to search for the lost words in her head.

-         I don't know what happened mom, I just know that I woke up at Ian's house on Saturday, I … I couldn't say anything, Gabe you know how it is, I would have drawn conclusions and a problem would have been generated, and Ian was in Liverpool and not anything happened.

 -Very good I know about Ian and his competition he was here on Friday around nine or ten, but why did you go to the library?  And where were you almost five hours before since your father and sister saw you sleeping?

 Asked her mother this time with an angrier tone than she allows herself to show

 -I don't know, Ilem almost yelled angrily at the sermon the pressure, all the blank spaces in her head were already more than she could bear and her mother kept asking questions that she had no words to answer

-         Okay, Lera, you don't remember, her father scolded the furious woman who was now her mother.  Besides, Grace always leaves and comes back after a while, it is not her fault that she has been in the same place as Grace, we will say that you had to go find a book that you forgot you needed to do your homework and that's it if they ask what  You spoke to Grace and you told them that you said hello and asked her if they were coming home together and she said no.

 She told him her father regardless of the faces her mother made every time that she would have the roof to interrupt what he said.

 -But what about Gabe?  What if the police ask me about things I don't know how to answer?  Ilem commented, focusing all his attention on her father and not on her mother's expression.

—    Just tell the truth, but don't say that you don't know or that you don't remember they will think that you're hiding something if you say that, and regarding Gabe he knows that this girl is problematic so we couldn't expect anything less, maybe he did us a favor to all and returned to Boston.

 She got up from the table and went to her room after what her father said, she had never heard him speak with that disgust and repulsion towards a person, Ilem knew that from the first time Grace left and returned a week later with pacifiers on her neck and a hangover so strong that the noises she made vomiting could be heard in the kitchen her parents took her off the pedestal and what they most expected was that the three years of the exchange would pass and she left.

 But Gabe seemed to ignore how bad Grace was and look at the adorable gray-eyed freckled woman who came from a troubled family with a mother who hung around looking for the highest bidder for money and a left father just discovered that his  His wife was unfaithful to him, he did not care about his daughter so the poor thing maybe had a bad time.

 Ready to go to sleep, Gabe entered the room and lay on the foot of the bed didn't say anything for a long time until Ilem was almost asleep when she heard him speak.

-                 Do not say that.  Her voice was rough and she looked like she had been drinking from the wobbly s of her words.  Don't destroy it lemni.

Hearing the nickname hers used when they were little and she hurt herself and started crying made her heart stop.  I just wanted to comfort him and tell him that she would come back but he didn't know, it was true that when Grace left she always told her college friends never the Fullers but if someone reported her missing after four days it had to be one of them.

-         I won't say what Daddy told me that she didn't want to come home with me, she promised her brother but I'm going to say everything else Daddy Gabe said because otherwise, if something happened to her, they might think it's my fault and you know  …

 -Well, Ilem, I understand, everyone here sees her as the crazy girl, of course, everyone in this family is snooty who believe that the world should only follow her stupid rules.  She dropped him in his face as if Grace were the holiest woman in the universe.

-         Well, Gabe, it's our fault that your "friend" she said, making quotation marks with her fingers, left the face of the earth when you, who should be behind her skirts, don't even know where she could be, or what she was doing in the institute library when he is in his third year of business administration.

 Gabe got up angrily and slammed the door, Ilem got up ready to go after him, but she stopped, she had said the institute library, she was the only one with cameras and spent most of the night open.  The public closed around three o'clock and the university one could only enter with membership as a student so in no way she would have been able to enter, there was no other than the institute library, it was also the only one where there were cameras, in the library of the university not because the university was old and they wanted to keep it that way.

 She had found the point of her statement, Grace did not have to be there but she on the other hand could be looking for a book as her father had said.

 The smile grew on her face and she did not feel as scared as a few hours ago now she had an advantage over what anyone could say and Grace did not.