two kids could imagine.
My feet shuffle and bring me closer to Dakota without my mind’s permission. She holds up a small hand and I stop in my tracks.
“Just listen, don’t try to fix anything,” she urges.
I do everything I can to abide by her wishes. I stare at the green numbers on the stove and tuck my hands behind my back. It’s almost nine, the day having flown by without me.
I continue to focus on the numbers as she goes on.
“I remember the first time you talked to me, the first time you told me you loved me. Do you remember the first time you told me you loved me?”
I do remember . . . how could I possibly forgot that day?
Dakota had run away; Carter told me she had been missing for hours. Her dad, drunk and seemingly unfazed that his fifteen-year-old daughter was nowhere to be found, sat in his stained recliner, a cold beer can sweating in his hand. His stomach had grown fuller—all the liquor and beer had to go somewhere. His face hadn’t been shaved in weeks, the hair on his chin was unruly, growing thick and rough in patches on his face.
I couldn’t get a response from him, I couldn’t even get him to glance away from the damn television screen. I remember he was watching CSI, and the small living room was full of smoke and cluttered with junk. Empty beer cans covered the table and unread magazines were piled on the floor.
“Where is she?” I asked him for the fifth time.
My voice was so loud that I was scared he was going to react and hit me like he did his son.
He didn’t, though; he just sat there lazily staring at the screen, and I gave up quickly, knowing he was too intoxicated to do anything useful.
He moved and I jumped back a little, my fear soothed when he reached for his pack of Basic cigarettes. When he grabbed the ashtray, cigarette butts and ashes fell onto the brown carpet. He didn’t seem to notice, just the way he didn’t seem to notice me standing there, asking where his only daughter was.
I got on my bike and rode around the neighborhood, stopping everyone who passed. I began to panic after Buddy, one of the drunks who lived by the woods, said he saw her run into the woods. We called the rows of trees and trash the Patch, and it was full of people whose lives were empty. Drugs and liquor was all they had and they littered the woods with it.
The Patch wasn’t safe, and she wasn’t safe in it.
I dropped my bike at the edge of the spruce trees and ran into the darkness like my life depended on it. In a way, it did.
I ignored the drunken voices and the ache of my muscles as I ran toward the center. The Patch wasn’t very big. You could run from one side to the other in about five minutes. I found her near the middle, alone, unharmed, her back against a tree.
When I found her, my lungs burned and I could barely breathe, but she was safe, and that’s all that mattered. She was sitting cross-legged on the ground of the woods, dirt and sticks and leaves surrounding her, and at the sight of her, I had never been more relieved in my life.
She looked up at me and saw me standing in front of her, my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.
“Landon?” She sounded confused. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to find you! Why are you out here? You know what this place is like!” I was shouting, which spurred her to look around, her dark eyes taking in the surroundings.
A blanket hung on broken branches, ripped and dirty, being used as a makeshift tent. Beer bottles lay scattered on the ground; it had recently rained, and the rain hadn’t dried in some places, leaving wet trash and mud puddles all around us.
I stood up straight and reached out my hand to her. “You shouldn’t ever, ever come out here again. It’s not safe.”