splitsville

Kyle and Roxie were on the outs.

"Well, I knew it would happen, eventually." Eric told Ellie before school.

"I guess," Ellie said, "But this is down right tragic. They've been so close." Even Ellie could feel a change in Roxie. Sort of.

"Maybe its a good thing." Eric shrugged.

"I guess." He was right. Better to get something like this over before homecoming. All though, that sounded so trival.

The next thing Ellie saw was Kyle and he'd been crying which she thought was sort of funny, but she hated to laugh.

"What's wrong?" Eric asked with a wince.

"Roxie ran away." He could hardly breathe he was so upset.

"Ran away?" This was typical Ellie thought, but then she'd never ran away before, now had she?

"They were going to send her back to her Mom's." He nodded.

"Who did she live with, anyway?"

"Her aunt, it was a foster care kind of thing," Kyle said.

Ellie just nodded. She didn't really know it was like that.

"I'm sorry."

"Well, I have to find her." Kyle told them.

"You don't want to do anything crazy." Eric told him. "You just have to wait it out."

"What if something happens to her?"

"She's Roxie. I think she knows about taking care of herself." Ellie nodded. Roxie would fend for herself. She was a kick-ass kind of girl. "And aren't the police looking into this."

"I guess, but I'm afraid they'll just let her fall through the cracks, you know," Kyle mentioned. "Remember that black girl who road the bus home and no one knew where she was for months. Then they found her body in the park."

"OK, we know that, but that didn't happen here." Eric reminded him. "I'm sure she's OK."

Kyle just shook his head. Ellie could see he was thinking the worst.