Charlie stomped out of the restroom and let the door slap against the wooden frame behind her. She marched toward the food stand where she'd left her best friend and that jerk...but as the crowd thinned, her steps slowed. Shay and Jake weren't there. Not Jonny, not Demi. She couldn't even see Dan's bushy hair poking above the crowd anywhere.
How could they just leave?
"Shay?" Charlie called out.
A woman wearing a sparkly midnight blue dress with matching sparkly midnight blue eyeshadow gave her a demeaning glare. Charlie didn't care. Her anger was drenched in panic now. Panic from being alone in the midst of all of these strange strangers, and panic from not knowing where Shay was. She didn't trust Jake. That's what her gut must have been hinting at. How could she have not realized? And all this time, she was simply happy to see Shay smiling. Charlie hadn't even thought that maybe Jake wasn't worth smiling for. Had her experiences in life taught her nothing?
Stupid, she thought. Stupid, stupid.
Being cute didn't make him a good person. It didn't even make him likable. It was his fake smile and his flirty words. He'd reeled Shay right in. He'd reeled Charlie in, too, making it look like Tamera was the bad one. Well...Tamera wasn't a wonderfully nice person, but still. The nerve of him!
Charlie tried to steady her breath. She called out to Shay again.
"Hey!" a guy with three bright red streaks of hair down his otherwise bald head said.
He stepped away from his group and approached Charlie. She tensed up. Her body was already on distrust mode, and this guy was a stranger. The danger sign flashed as red as his hair in her mind. She tried to breathe steady and remind herself what she learned in all the therapy she took after her childhood incident. She repeated the words in her mind: not everyone is evil. Not every person is out to hurt you. There are still kind people in the world. Don't let Jack control your future. He can't hurt you anymore.
"You looking for that little purple haired girl you was with earlier?" he asked.
She didn't correct his grammar or mention the fact that Shay's hair was called burgundy, not purple. It was written on the box of dye that Charlie had used in Shay's hair only a few days before.
"Yeah," Charlie said, panting slightly from her adrenaline.
"She went off to the back, looking for some band members. They're trying to meet the bands, you know, get autographs and stuff. I told them no chance, man, they gotta wait until the members walk around here offering, but that dude insisted." He threw his clanking, bulky ring clad hands up. "Whatever, man, you know?"
"Erm, yeah, okay. Thanks," Charlie said awkwardly, her heart pounding in her chest and her ears.
She's gone! He took her! She's alone with him! He lured her away! Charlie's mind screamed. Just like Jack did to me...
Charlie was so afraid, her eyes began to water as if she were crying. She took off in the direction the red haired guy had pointed her, rushing through the crowd without actually seeing or even feeling them. The only thought was to find her best friend before something terrible happened. What would she do if she found them and he's hurting her? Pepper spray the hell out of him, she decided, pulling the little bottle out of her pocket. Then she'll take Shay, run as fast as they can and scream, just like her mom told her.
"Shayleigh!" she shouted. She readied herself to spit the sour taste from her mouth when she called out, "Jake!"