Arbel's heart froze in her chest. Her first thought was that this wasn't true, that either Ben was wrong or he was deceiving her because it couldn't be.
She would know something like that, she had to know.
Rosie looked shaken too, and she didn't even share the same blood with Leo.
"Wait a minute-" Rosie said in a confused voice "-Leo sleeps at Cory's house ? How close were Leo and Corey?"
"I didn't know they were friends at all-" Arbel added "- They're not even in the same age group, how did they meet?"
Something flickered on Ben's face, but she couldn't figure out what it was exactly
"They met on the football team. He wasn't one of Leo's closest friends but he was the one Leo went to scary shits with"
"Scary things?" Rosie repeated.
Ben waved his hand in the air like it didn't matter
"Horror movies, haunted houses, all that shit. I can't stand it, and from what I know, Corey is the only one who's as obsessed with that shit as Leo, if not more so"
And then Ben's face twisted
"I meant he was obsessed"
That's right, the right word is was. Because right now Corey is dead.
And Leo...Leo....
Fucking Leo. Makes her feel that way.
"You...-" Arbel said without thinking
"-you said he was sleeping in corey house before he died. Do you think Cory's death was somehow connected to Leo's disappearance?"
Rosie looked at her in surprise, probably not understanding the question. Or more importantly, how she could possibly ask it.
But after Arbel found out about Cory, everything suddenly started to feel possible.
Fuck it, was her brother really involved?
Ben shrugged, if he wasn't such an
emotionally closed creature Arbel might have thought he looked sad.
"Who knows-" he replied "-Leo is hard to shake, and he was definitely weird before Corey died, but after that? After that, everything just got worse"
Arbel must have looked lost because Rosie put a hand on her shoulder
"That makes sense-" she said "- Death is hard, especially death that happens close to you"
Arbel shook her head and stood up
"So what? We think now that Corey's death shook my little brother and that's why he disappeared? Is that really our theory?"
'Do you really think he ran away from us on purpose?' was the question she really wanted to ask, but those words couldn't come out of her mouth.
Why didn't he ask for help? Why didn't he ask her for help?
"We don't have any theory -" Rosie responded impatiently "- simply because we don't have enough information"
Arbel nodded to herself, pressing her palms to her face
"Information, we need more information -" she muttered to herself and turned to Ben, looking at him with an anger that she couldn't really explain.
She couldn't shake the feeling that he knew more, but a feeling, not backed up by reality at all, wasn't helping her much right now.
"Is there anything else you can tell us?" Arbel asked, not bothering to hide the impatience in her tone.
For maybe the tenth time today, Ben rolled his eyes. At this rate, Arbel didn't know how he still had eyes and they didn't fall out.
"I can tell you that you're stupid, and that you'll never find Leo at this rate"
Arbel, for once, didn't take the bait and didn't raise her voice
"Anything else?" she insisted.
For a second, Ben seemed to hesitate, as if he had something to say, but finally he shook his head.
Rosie patted her on the shoulder, pushing her phone in Arbel face.
Arbel took the phone and looked, her eyes moving over a news article from a few weeks ago.
An article about Corey's death.
"They say he died in a car accident-"
Rosie noted
"-He ran into the road for no reason. Something strange, the police said it was just an accident, they didn't find drugs or alcohol in his blood."
Arbel frowned, rolling up the article. "They said all that in the article? There's no privacy anymore." She complained.
She had a few more things to say but the words got stuck in her throat when she reached the end of the article.
Down there they had attached a picture of Corey.
Arbel's thoughts were cut off for a few seconds, like the static of an old TV, just before a channel picked up.
"Arbel?" Rosie asked "-Is everything okay?"
But Arbel didn't answer that question, instead she looked up and pushed the phone back to Rosie.
"I saw him once." Arbel say
"What?"
Rosie didn't understand, but Ben seemed to get where this conversation was going.
"Corey-" Arbel said "-I remember seeing him"