I can’t fucking find anything that states outright that Nikki’s okay. I break out in a sweat. What the fuck do I do?
The feeling of helplessness that rises up inside is almost choking me. My breath comes in choppy pants. I don’t know what else to do.
I jump up from the desk and pace around my condo. I consider running up to Mabel and Benny’s place. It’s nearly seven. They’re probably home. But what am I going to say to them? They already give me a hard time about “stalking” Nikki.
Fuck it. This isn’t the time to be worried about what my sister or friends think of me. Nikki could be dead.
I take the elevator up to the eighteenth floor and bang on the door.
It opens a moment later with Mabel staring at me wide-eyed. “What the hell?”
“I need to come in. I need to talk to you.” I push past her and stride into the living room. Benny’s on the couch with a book in his hand, looking at me with a wrinkled forehead.
“A roof collapsed in Berlin,” I blurt out.
Mabel blinks at me. “Okay. I mean, that’s terrible. But why are you freaking out?”
“It was at Nikki’s concert.”
Mabel and Benny both jerk back, then say, “Ohhhh,” at the exact same time.
“Is she okay?” Mabel asks, taking a step closer.
“I don’t know.” I shove a hand into my hair and yank it. “I can’t find anything about her. A bunch of people were killed.”
“Oh my God.” Mabel pushes me toward a chair. “Sit. Take a breath.”
I sit, but there’s so much energy vibrating inside me I’m not sure I can stay still very long. “I just came across it online,” I tell them, scrubbing hands over my face. “But I can’t find anything about her.”
Benny picks up his phone and starts tapping on the screen. “She must be okay. They would lead with that if she wasn’t.”
“That’s what I thought. But I need to know.”
“Marek.” Mabel gazes at me with concern in her eyes. “You barely know her.”
I shake my head violently. “I do know her.”
Her eyebrows climb to her hairline. “Okay,” she says, slowly. Calmly. “Okay.” She glances at Benny and he catches it and shakes his head. “We’ll find out. There’ll be something in the news about it soon. This sounds like a big thing.”
“Yeah. Fuck, yeah.” I grip the arms of the chair. “Jesus. I can’t believe this.”
Benny sets his phone on the coffee table. “We might have to wait till morning for more news. It’s about one in the morning there, I think.”
“Shit.” I pull in a long breath through my nose and stare at the ceiling. “Shit. I can’t wait that long. Maybe I should go there.”
“Whaaat!” Mabel’s eyes pop open wide. “Marek, that’s crazy.”
“Is it? I dunno. I could be there by morning in Berlin. I could find her.”
“You can’t do that, bro.” Benny’s also speaking in calm, measured tones. It pisses me off that they’re not upset about this.
“Why? We don’t have a game until Saturday.”
“But it’s in Chicago. We leave Saturday morning.”
I sigh. “It could be done.”
“You can’t do that.”
