Now It's Too Late

It was so cold outside. If I knew I would be walking around outside at 2 a.m., I would have dressed warmer. I had thought about grabbing my coat before leaving the house, but my dad was so adamant about me leaving right then and there. My thin hoodie wasn't helping much, so I decided to take a small detour and walk into the Shell Station that was only one block over from my destination. Once inside, I called Parker. I knew he was awake because he had texted me right before I left my house about some homework in our math class. I told him about my "trip" and asked if he wanted to join me. Since he lived only two minutes away from the gas station I was at, he agreed, so I walked to his house and waited for him to meet me outside. He snuck out of his bedroom window. He told me about the Ring doorbell, but since I had already walked in front of it, he knew his parents would see the footage when they woke up, so there was no point in backing out now. As we walked off, I pointed out the red car. I had seen that car so many times over the past few weeks. My dad has had me do these odd tasks every now and then, and that car always disappears the moment I start talking to someone else. Not thinking much of it, Parker and I walked to the address my dad had given me. I just needed to grab a bag and walk back home with it. I tried to question what was in the bag, but he never cared to explain. Once we got to the house, two men had opened the door. They told us to walk in and wait by the stairs while they grabbed the bag for me. This is where it gets odd. My dad called me. He sounded pissed. He told me that I was supposed to be alone and that Parker needed to go back home. He told me to stay put and that he would come to pick me up. Parker said that he was too cold to turn around and walk back home immediately. My dad told him that if he didn't start walking, he would call his parents to come pick him up. Not wanting to get his overly strict parents involved, Parker reluctantly decided to walk home. Since he was wearing a t-shirt and basketball shorts, I told my dad that we should drop him off. His house was on our way home, but he annoyingly refused. He told me to instead give Parker my hoodie and let him wear my sweatpants while I wore his shorts. Seeing as we had no other option, we traded clothes, and Parker started his walk home alone. My dad told me to stay away from the doors and windows. He even told me to turn my phone off. The red flags were just one after another, but I stayed silent and just did as I was told. Once my dad pulled into the driveway, I immediately got in the car. As we drove home, I looked for Parker. It was a 20-minute walk home, and only 10 minutes had passed. We should have passed him on our drive. I told my dad that I needed to call Parker since I hadn't seen him, and he snatched my phone from my hand, telling me that Parker probably just called a friend to pick him up. When Parker didn't show up to school the next day, my worries intensified. The next thing I knew, there was a search party, and Parker was all over the local news. His parents were freaking out. They saw me on the ring footage that night. I was brought to the police station, where I explained how he snuck out to go with me to that house and then walked home alone. The cops who questioned me showed me some footage from a nearby business showing Parker talking to a blonde lady on the street around the time he went missing. After more and more evidence came in, they found out that the lady was driving a red Kia Forte. It was the red car that I had mentioned to Parker in the Ring footage the night he went missing. The feeling that my dad was hiding something from me grew with every bit of new evidence that came to light. I snuck into my dad's office the next day and decided to snoop through his MacBook. I looked through his emails, his photos, and everything else he had on his laptop. Finally, I got on his messages, and after digging around for a few hours, I found messages to an unknown contact he had called Leslie in the second message he sent. He had very odd conversations with Leslie. Most of them didn't make sense. Every time he would send me to do one of those odd errands for him, he would tell Leslie when I left and also what I was wearing. Leslie would only respond with "Not today" or "Talking". Since I remembered the address my dad had me walk to that night, I started doing some of my own research. The owner's name was Jackson Porter. He owned a red Kia Forte that matched the car I had seen for weeks. Looking more into it, Jackson Porter had a wife, and her middle name was Leslie. The tall, blonde woman matched the description of the lady in the business footage. I brought all of my findings back to the police station. After confirming everything I had told them was true, they were able to arrest Leslie, and they even arrested my dad. It took about a week before they both started to confess to their crimes. My dad had a severe gambling addiction. One night, he started to gamble with a group of men that Leslie confessed to working for. My dad lost everything he had. He was so eager to win it back that one of the men told him he would be willing to return everything my dad had lost, but only if he gave them his son. He was hesitant, but after arranging it to look like a kidnapping, my dad finally agreed. He never wanted anyone to know what actually happened. Leslie had been given my description every time I had left the house alone. My dad realized that night that since Parker was the same height and weight as me and we had the same brown hair and brown eyes, Leslie would have no idea that she had taken the wrong kid. He had planned it all out after finding out Parker was with me. Leslie told the police that she brought Parker back to her home. She held him in the garage for three days. She gaslighted him into believing she was helping him. She got him back into her car by convincing him that she was taking him to the nearest hospital, where his mom was waiting for him. She manipulated Parker into believing that she was a good person. She then dropped Parker off with two men at a location she refused to give up. She said she would be killed if she told the cops anything more than what she'd already told them. I don't know where Parker is, but I do know that the men who made that deal with my dad now know that Parker isn't the boy that they wanted. I know this because, as I write all of this down, I can see a black car in my peripheral vision. The same black car I have been seeing since Leslie and my dad made their confessions. All I can do now is sit here feeling guilty and full of regret. Guilty because I am the reason Parker is missing and full of regret because now that I have helped the police with this case, those men are looking for me again. I should have just let them continue to think that Parker was me. Now it's too late.