Xander POV
“I bet you know her more than me now,” Sophia sighed.
“Of course I do.” In truth, I knew nothing about Methis. We had talked a lot, but we never really went that far as to the point where she told me about her childhood. Perhaps it just escaped both our memories. Regardless, I continued my game. “Like how she loves sport.”
Sophia looked up. “Did Methis tell you that?”
“Of course not but I guessed it.”
Sophia laughed. “You guessed wrong.”
“OK. Maybe I didn’t get that one but let me try again,” I offered.
“Sure, be my guest,” Sophia accepted.
“She loves rock music and the outdoors.”
“Is it the same Methis we both know?” Sophia could not control her laughter at what I had said.
“OK, fine I accept. You know her more than I do.” I tap out. “I am terrible at observing people. What kind of journalist am I?”
Sophia finally recovered from her laughter. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. We’ve been besties for years. Two weeks of talking can’t get you to know her as much as I do.”
“Yeah. You are right. Or is that just a nice way of calling me dumb.”
“Noooo…” Sophia held her stomach laughing.
After a minute of silence, I came up to sit beside her and asked. “How was the years like?”
Just as a key starts an engine, the question started Sophia’s speech engine. “It was full of fun. Of course, there were the good and the bad but in all it was all good. We usually went to each other’s house an awful lot. We were like sisters. Like twin sisters, inseparable, we felt like we could handle anything that life threw at us be it a paper plane or a large rock we’d withstand it.”
“Like an everlasting friendship,” I chipped in.
“An everlasting friendship,” Sophia repeated almost automatically. “You know, she had fun parents too. I liked her dad a lot. Fun and fun and more fun. It was always fun with him, but he was immobile. He had an accident. It crushed Sophia I remembered. She was so down I had to be with her every day and night. remember those nights I did not sleep at home?”
“Yeah.”
“I was with her. She said she had never felt that way since her mum died.”
“It’s heartbreaking to hear,” I cautiously added.
“Yeah.” Sophia smiled sadly. “There was a day we accidentally overcooked the popcorn during a sleepover when we wanted to watch a film. It almost burnt the house. Her stepmum yelled at us for an hour straight. We ended up eating black popcorn and watching a horror film. Talk about a bitter night.”
I gave a small laugh so she noticed that her story had some impact then I asked. “Methis had a stepmother?”
“Yeah, nothing important to hear on that part.”
“Why? What happened? Did she die too?” I asked.
“Of course not, silly. They got divorced about four years ago after Methis came back from her treatment abroad.” My brain paused for a while. I don’t ask about the year she disappeared as it might raise suspicion so I let her carry on with the conversation. “But she was cool with me when she came back, you know. It’s just that things have changed.”
“You are a strong girl, Sophia,” I encouraged. “Never give up on Methis. She needs your help even though she doesn’t say it.”
“Thank you, Xander.” Sophia threw her hands around me in a tight hug. “I really needed someone to talk to.”
She releases me from the hug and gets back to folding her clothes. I help her complete the work and head back to my room.
I smile. I just got my first clue. Time to search.
It was strange, wasn’t it? It was a little suspicious that the very year Methis disappeared for ‘treatment’ abroad, her father divorced her stepmother. I wonder why? Methis mum had died when she was just seven years of age and her father remarried and they had been together ever since. Why was it that they had not separated all those years? Why that year? Why the year that was well shrouded in mystery? Surely the divorce had something to do with her disappearance.
I remembered vividly that Methis was declared missing after we had not heard a word from her for about a week. My guess was that she did not know that she was going to go somewhere and never return that day if not she would have made a call.
Regardless, until I got answers, all I could do was speculate which frankly did not help issues even one bit. Today I was going to go digging. I was going to find out what exactly made Methis disappear and hopefully, in the process, I would discover what connection Jamal and Methis shared. In the meantime, while little evidence existed concerning a link between Methis disappearance and Jamal’s existence, I knew for a fact that Jamal was from a different world, so a chemistry between them should not have gone unnoticed.
From the library to the internet, I surfed the entire world within my reach for any trace of Methi's stepmother and luckily enough, I found it. I found newspapers that showed a list of people changing surnames at the public office responsible for documentation of names. She was once single, then she married, then she divorced so she must have had a surname change at least twice. If I could find her documentation, then I had a good start.