Chapter Five
*POV John*
“Well where is she then?” I impatiently asked the stranger.
“I… I… I don’t know,” He replied shakily.
I moved around him, searching my apartment for clues. I noted that the picture of us next to the door was slightly diagonal. After mentally checking that, I decided to start my search. First off, I decided to go to the bedroom. It just seemed like the most obvious place to me at the time. Once I arrived, I immediately started searching for anything that might have given me an idea as to where she was. I rummaged through everything imaginable. Boxes, drawers, shoe boxes, closets, jewelry holders, TV cabinet etc. but nothing came up.
So far all I had was three mismatched shoes, some earrings, a necklace, some random National Geographic DVD, and clothes that we were going to give away to Goodwill. I sighed and looked around the room, trying to find just one more thing to look through, but there wasn’t anything. Rolling my eyes, I fell onto the bed in frustration. Right as I hit the top comforter, I jolted back up. It was strangely damp. This was quite unusual, but it gave me hope. Either her, or someone else must have been here pretty recently for the bed to still be damp.
I hurried to the bathroom to see if the shower had been used recently, but everything was dry. This just made me even more confused. I furrowed my brow in frustration and searched around the bathroom for any other leads. There weren’t any. I racked my mind, trying to think of what room(s) I should search next. My brain chose the kitchen.
My feet carried me out of our room and into the kitchen faster than a speeding bullet. My eyes darted back and forth over the whole area, as if they had a mind of their own. They quickly landed on a bag from the bakery down the block. I grew more and more curious as I slowly tiptoed over to the bag. My fingers pried open the sealed top and my eyes peeked inside. Just old croissant crumbs. I chuckled and carelessly tossed that into the trash bin. I moved on. The side bar, the sink, the little TV, the… the TV. It was still on and turned to the news. This didn’t give me very much info, as
Mary always watched the news in the morning… but why was the TV still on?
This led me to believe that she must have rushed out hurriedly. Also the picture being slightly askew could be from a door slamming which would have been caused by rushing out. Before I jumped to conclusions, no matter how logical they seemed, I decided to finish examining the kitchen. After I turned the TV off, all that came up was knives, cupboards, and finally the pantry. Nothing else caught my eye. I sighed in disappointment, but then my mood was lifted when I remembered that I had a lead. It may have been small, but at least I had one. Next, I chose to go to the dining room/ living room.
Since we live in a pretty small apartment, the dining room and the living room are side by side, so we sort of call it the ‘dining/living room’. Pretty creative am I right? I checked out the dining area first. On the table was a small plate with flakes of pastry on it. Huh. Mary was pretty careful about putting up dishes. This went straight into my mental notes section. Not much else seemed interesting to me, so my body wandered towards the ‘living’ area.
In this area, we have a red and black Russian rug, a TV counter with a TV (obviously), and a couch facing the TV. As my eyes wandered lazily around the room, I mindlessly straightened out the rug as I did whenever it was sideways or messed up. Wait a minute. I knew for sure that she had rushed out now, because the carpet wouldn’t have been a mess if she just walked out of here. Now the only question was; where did she go?
Finally, it was time to search the only room left in the apartment; my study.
My feet carried me from the living room, through the kitchen, and finally into the study. The study is a small room with two desks. One is mine, and one is Mary’s. Mine is slightly bigger, as I have to do real work on it; as Mary’s is smaller since she does more ‘fun’ work at it.
Once I got to the study, I paused in the doorway. The whole room was a completely, and total mess. Pens, papers, files, and anything imaginable littered the small floor. I waded through the items, kicking pens and papers out of my way until I safely made it to my desk. I sat down and thought.
The first thing that came to mind was that I had been robbed. Then instead of jumping to conclusions, I decided to think of more ideas. No ideas came to me straight away, so I decided to ask myself the most obvious questions. Why was it such a mess? Who did it? I closed my eyes and tried to personally answer these questions. An idea popped into my head. I’m going to search through all of this and then try and think of what’s missing. Then I’ll know what they took, and that will give me a clue as to who it was that caused this.
I bent over, my back popping, and reached into the masses of odds and ends that were on the floor. I grabbed an armful of papers and glanced over all of them to see what they were. All of them were letters. I sighed and put them into their own stack. Once again, I took another armful. Some were unfinished letters (I know. I know. I’m a procrastinator), some of them were bills, and some of them were invitations. I placed those in their own stacks.
This cycle kept continuing for the next twenty or so minutes until finally the floor was bare. All I found was twenty-nine letters, three bills, fifteen invitations, thirty-six pens, one box of paperclips, one rubber-band ball, three two-pound bags of candy (sometimes I get hungry when I work. I call it ‘brain food’), and three boxes of pencils.
I mentally checked these off in my head and thought of what might me missing. Nothing came to mind, so I paced back in forth. My brow was furrowed and my left hand was scratching my unshaven chin. I knew something was gone but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. It had to have been something important. But nothing that was in my drawer was impo…
I turned on my heels to face the desk. My eyes checked out the top of the desk for anything that was important, but all that was there were the stacks of what I had found. My itching hands grabbed and pulled at every drawer while my eyes peeked into every one until I found the right one. I carefully slid it open, my heart rate quickening. My palms started to sweat as I looked inside to see what was hidden there. I slid my palm on every wall of the drawers, trying to find a small bump or nick. Finally, my hands reached the bottom. I stuck my finger into the familiar hole and pulled up. The secret lid came off with ease. I searched around the dark, empty space, but nothing shone. I felt around inside, but my hands didn’t hit anything.
I panicked. Frantically, I kept feeling around the drawer but what I was looking for wasn’t there. It was my will, and it was gone. Suddenly, a light bulb went off in my head. It was Mary. Mary had taken my will. But why?
What was on that will that would have caused her to leave so fast? I searched my mind to remember what I had written on that. I wanted my brother to paint a painting of me, I knew that. I wanted to be cremated on a mountain, and my ashes to be spread in Pennsylvania. I skipped back to the mountain part. I remembered that it was a specific mountain, but which one was the hard part. It had to do with some vacation.
I sat there on the floor, trying to remember what it was. Nothing came to me. I drummed my fingers on the side of the desk as I pondered. A vacation… in 2003!! I congratulated myself for remembering what year it was and decided to go and get myself a victory glass of milk while I tried to remember where it was.
I walked across the hardwood floor, my work shoes clicking against the hard ground, to the kitchen. I opened the silver door of the refrigerator and reached inside for the jug of milk. The liquid sloshed around as I yanked it out of its cold home and poured it into the waiting glass. I lifted the chilled cup to my waiting lips and slurped a mouthful of the delicious liquid. I swished it around inside of my mouth as I tried to think.
All of a sudden, a phone rang. I smiled as I listened to the ringtone. It was “Surfin’ in the USA”. I liked that song. It always reminded me of a tropical island and I loved the feel to it. I started humming along to it and tapped my feet to the beat. I looked around the kitchen for nothing in particular. Just to look around. Suddenly it hit me.
I spit out the milk into the sink, wiped my face with my shirt, and reminded myself of what had hit me. The mountain was in Hawaii. I needed to get to Hawaii.
I ran out the front door while my phone sat on the counter still playing the song. If only I knew who had called me.
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