Don't Catch Me!

Chapter 5 - Bloody Introductions

Chapter 5 - Bloody Introductions

I walked out of the Math class after an hour of staring at the blank page in front of me.  What was happening to me?  I used to be so sure of myself.  I used to know what to expect.  So what if my life wasn’t perfect, it was comfortable and predictable.  This was something else.  This was painful.

I stopped in the same spot that I had been an hour ago when I had watched his face crumble.  There was something wrong about all of this.  Something very wrong.  But I couldn’t put my finger on it.

 Was it because I thought I knew all my Fathers friends.  He sounded like he knew Dad very well, too well.  But if that was the case then how could he not know what had happened to him?  Two years was a long time not to know, especially considering he seemed to be on first name basis with Dad.  Actually that was a good point.  Dad was old fashion.  All my friends called him Mr King.  Even Elise, who had known me since we could crawl would never call him by his first name.   Only family members and very close friends would call him James.

So how had this boy, who was roughly my age, earned my Father’s respect?  How could he even know my Father who had worked long hours in an office?  Possibly the son of a colleague?   Maybe, but that would imply that Dad spent time with his co-workers.  My father was a career man who had little time to socialise and when he did we were invited too.  I would have remembered this boy if I had meet him before.   I closed my eyes and tried to visualise him two years younger, fat, with braces, nerdy, with a stutter, shy, acne, boring hair, glasses, buck teeth, and the list went on.  Even after imagining how he could have looked I knew that I would have still remembered him.  His smile would not have changed and I could never forget a smile.

No this made no sense, at all. 

Then there was the comment about finding me again.  Wierd.

He knew my relationship with my father too.  Dad and I were more than close.  He was my everything.  When he was home from work we would spend hours together just talking and laughing.  He could make me laugh so hard that my sides hurt and I cried.  I loved him more than anything in this world.  He was my rock and I was his Cissy.   I closed my eyes against the tears that came every time I thought of him.  I grimaced at the sky.  I silently sent him a SOS, please Dad, I thought I knew you, please I need you Dad, I pleaded to the grey skies.

So what now?  A thousand possible and impossible theories filled my head.  There was only one way to solve this mystery.  I would confront him.  OK so this wasn’t ignoring him.  But I had to know.  I couldn’t walk away from this.  This was about my father as much as it was about me. 

I looked in the direction he had gone.  This had to be done now.  Yes, I really wanted this to be private, just in case.  I made a quick and possibly rash decision and before I could talk myself out of it I walking quickly towards the rear of the gym.  It had been an hour so it was doubtful that he would still be there but I had to do something.

A whole different scenario distracted me.  I was walking to a quiet secluded place to find a boy who knew too much about me and who had no respect for my personal space.  OK so he didn’t look mentally unstable. But then again I wasn’t really close personal friends with any psychotic lunatics, so maybe?  He certainly looked to be in pain.  Was that a symptom?  I really had no idea.  My fingers dialled 999 and hovered over the call button just in case.

At the rear of the gym were the bike sheds, a loading bay and a refuse collection point.   There was also a bitumen alleyway from the car park to the sports fields.  I walked past the bleachers and on to the manicured field and still saw no one.  The place was deserted.  He was long gone.  I retreated to the stands, sat heavily on the bench and looked off towards the trees on the other side of the oval for inspiration.