014

"What I know of is that there's Brighton Police Station, Hove, all at maximum 2 miles away from where you were eating instead of going to the Sussex Police, which is what, 10 miles away?" Pen explained to them while he was lying on his couch in his apartment, his eyes set on the television in front of him.

"Shut up already, I know it now, all right?" Brian moaned as he was blowing smoke out of his mouth, holding a cigarette with his right hand, still in his bad mood. He was seated on the armchair, close to where Pen was. "It's not like I didn't know some of those you said, I've told her, but she wasn't listening to me."

Pen glared at him. "If she was really that unprepared to go to the police, then you should've been the one driving the car, instead of her, moron."

Not in the mood to be arguing, Brian sat up straight and stared at Pen, discontented, while his head was directed upward. He figured that Pen was probably making sense.

"My intention is to help her face her fear, or so, that's all."

Brian remembered the time after the three of them were done eating at the restaurant and they were going to go to a police station straight after that, much to Sarah's hesitation.

"No can do, then?" Brian asked to Sarah who was just done making a phone call, as he was returning Nisa's cellphone back to her after getting Joey's phone number in his hometown in Terengganu, Malaysia for his own information to keep. Out of the three of them, Sarah was the one who made the call to his home back in Malaysia, speaking in the normal Malay language, asking to speak to Joey, but he was not there and had not been home since the past 7 months.

"His brother was the one talking, telling me about Joey's furthering his studies here in Britain so he hadn't been home for a long time already now," Sarah told them.

"No suspicion that his bro is missing in action, cool," Brian stated, lying against Sarah's right side of the car as they were standing in front of the restaurant.

"Cakap melayu, bunyi tak macam international call la," Nisa spontaneously blurted out to add up to what Brian just said, not realising she was speaking her native Malay language in front of Brian. At that, Brian was stunned for the second to hear Nisa speak in her national language - he never heard any of them speak it before.

"You said international call what?" Brian looked at her anxiously, exchanging a few glances with Sarah who was then smiling at both of them. "Man, you hardly speak your local language. Let me hear it again?"

Then Nisa realised it, surprising herself, probably being caught up in her mind with something else at that time. "Ah, sorry, I mean, err, speaking Malay would, of course, not cause suspicion at Joey's own home.. since they all speak Malay at home, like we all do back in Malaysia."

"Then I hardly hear you converse in Malay with Sarah... or in fact, Sarah," Brian turned his attention to Sarah, "you hardly do, converse in any other language with anyone else as long as I've known you. Was it, I never heard you do that not even once?"

With a smile, Sarah said, "Then, you wouldn't understand me. And anyway, Nisa and I both enjoyed it, kinda used to it, I guess, but we never forget where we came from."

Nisa nodded. "We still speak Malay, just that you don't hear us often."

"Well, cool, maybe I can learn it." He grinned, feeling quite interested in doing so. He felt like he could get to know Sarah better that way, of which Sarah had told him about quite a few times.

"Then, no luck of Joey." Nisa returned them to what they were all trying to do in the first place, to find Joey. Brian snorted, feeling quite bad that he knew where this would lead Sarah to.

"Gotta go to the police." Brian stood up straight in front of Sarah, looking at her right in the eye. "We gotta face this. You, drive and I'll be looking out from right beside you." He turned to ask Nisa, "okay with you?" Nisa nodded again in agreement, as Sarah just looked at them both with a worried look on her face.

After that, Sarah turned to become more anxious than she was before.

"Whoa, wait there a minute, are you sure this is the right way?" Brian asked her, having a strange feeling about the route they were taking as Sarah was driving silently. "Sarah?" He knew something was off just by looking at her face.

"Sarah, where are you going?" Nisa asked from the passenger's seat. "I thought we're headed for Brighton, you gotta take Southover Street, this is the wrong way."

"It's barely a mile away, Sarah..." Brian was looking at her. "Take it easy, okay?"

"I'm doing fine here, okay?" She was distracted, and seemingly dissatisfied, at the same time having a worried look on her face. "Just fine..."

"But Sarah, you gotta stop. This is the opposite way of Brighton Station," Brian reminded her.

Sarah seemed to gulp. "No, I'm not driving there. I'm going to Sussex Station."

Brian was surprised, knowing that would be sort of ten more miles away. He and Nisa exchanged glances.

"You... know the route?" Nisa asked, concerned. "Coz that's quite far-"

"Of course I do!"

"Okay, then," Nisa said, signaling to Brian to deal with it nicely and patiently.

He moaned. "Fine, it's your car, and you're driving," Brian muttered, thinking this would be wasting more time and energy for all of them.

After passing by the University of Sussex along the way and going through long roads and a few roundabouts, they seemed not to be getting anywhere fifty minutes later.

"You definitely took the wrong turn somewhere," Brian told Sarah, fuming, as they were going down Ashcombe Hollow. "This doesn't seem right."

"Damn," Sarah was panicking in silence as she kept on driving.

Nisa was getting worried. "Sarah, this is getting out of hand. I think we're all tired. Are you sure about this?"

"What are you talking about? We've gone this far!" Sarah said, almost yelling. Nisa would not dare to say anything to make any of them both mad any worse than they were, although the night was already getting quite late.

"Still..." Nisa was in doubts, muttering to herself.

"Sarah, turn around. No sign board, this is getting quite local." Brian turned to face her. "Gotta trust me."

At turning around, they took another turn, and ended up driving to a place where there were hardly anyone around, quite a deserted place filled with empty lots of small shops. They were then clueless of where they were, and were tired, and very discontented with each other, especially between Brian and Sarah. They had both been arguing the entire time for the cause of them getting lost until the morning, mainly caused by each other's ego, also because Nisa was too afraid to enter in between them to have anything to say. Brian ended up falling asleep in the car, as Sarah kept driving to find a way back to where they came from instead of going to the police station like they first intended to. It seemed foolish, indeed.

"We found you there, while looking for our way back home," explaining what happened to Pen, Brian was feeling guilty about what happened between him and Sarah. "Idiot, what happened to you?"

Pen laughed at himself. "Nothing, really. I was dumped again, had a drink, had an accident, got robbed and even got threatened by a thug by a knife - might get killed there, all in a day... that's all."

Brian was dumbfounded by his act of "nothingness". "Nothing, you said?"

Pen was smiling at him now. "You know what buddy...?"

To have Pen call him a buddy, made Brian feel weirder since it was kind of unlikely.

"Let me be on my own right now. And... you, talk to Sarah, huh?" Pen got up and went to his room, shutting the door behind him, without looking back, leaving Brian astounded.

Pen? On his own? That's so not like him.

Although he knew, everyone needed a moment on their own.

Wait a minute, he was dumped again? Which means?