Chasing Footprints

He Advances

We'd hated school together. Actually, hate is a strong word. We disliked it together. We were friendly enough, but we never enjoyed getting up at 6 in the morning to spend all day sitting in various desks being scrutinized by exhausted teachers and judged by exhausted students. We didn't really make any other friends because everyone around us loved school. They each showed up for football games, played a sport or an instrument, were friends with everyone around them, loved high school. Neither of us fit in with any of that. We enjoyed making jokes and being sarcastic and fixing our eyes on the future.
Future. The very word sent a pang of guilt into me. I'd get a future, but Henry might not.
These thoughts clouded my vision for the next two days, and sometime around 11 pm on September 5th, three days after his disappearance, I decided that there wasn't much hope.

On day five at 7:02 pm, the Sioux County police received an anonymous tip from Ashland, Montana- he'd been spotted outside of a motel. By the time their police had gotten around to searching the place, he was gone.

But this incident gave me some hope. Someone who matched his description- a young kid, a teenager, tall, with shaggy brown hair and dark eyes, wearing that green sweatshirt and jeans- had been seen alive. He was alive.

The next day, day six, a pack of apple pie gum had been discovered in Custer National Forest around 4 pm. There had been a search there, considering that this was just a few miles from the motel he'd ditched. It was the same kind that had been found in his car, and it was his aforementioned favorite. It raised some eyebrows down at the station.

"What kind?" I asked. I held the phone to my ear as discreetly as possible, trying not to offend the cashier. The cashier, though, was already rolling his eyes. The huge line of people behind me grew.
"Apple pie," Henry responded. "When has it ever been anything different?"
"Do you have apple pie gum?" I asked the cashier. He annoyedly reached in front of the counter and grabbed a pack from the display, plopping it back onto the counter without breaking eye contact. I smiled nervously.
"Do you have change for a hundred? Daddy's money," I chuckled, checking the cashier's name tag. "Doug."
Doug snatched the bill out of my hand. "You're buying a ninety-nine cent pack of gum with a hundred dollar bill?"
There was a collective groan from the line behind me. Doug made hasty change and shoved the plastic bag to me, kind of pushing me away with it. I tried to contain my laughter.
Henry waited out in his car, an old 199-something light blue Toyota. The engine was running, the car was warm. "Buying normal things as a rich person," he read off of the list.
Henry and Lucy's Super Awesome Winter Break Bucket List. What a great bucket list that was. It included things like "Go ice skating in Converse" and "Ask the mall Santa to give you all his money."
Henry's dark eyes always lit up when he laughed, and now was no exception. I laughed as well, pulling off my ridiculous costume jewelry.
"Being a rich person is exhausting."
"Thanks for the gum, Lu," he said, snatching the gum out of my hand the way that Doug snatched the hundred dollar bill.
He chewed it right away and the car smelled like some weird gummy bakery.

No new developments on day 7. Day 8 was a big day, though- Mrs. Kallinger's ruby ring was pawned at about 3 pm in Broadus, Montana. Actually, only part of the ring. The band was pawned, and whoever pawned it pocketed the stone. Of course the police were on it as soon as they were able. The problem was that they didn't know how Henry was getting around, who he might be with, whether he'd changed clothes... he was outsmarting them somehow, at least for now, and he was probably walking around with a very thick wallet.

For the next three days, I practically waited by the phone, so to speak, trying my damndest to hear any bit of news about Henry's case. There was none. None on day nine, non on day ten, none on day eleven. This void, this deafening silence, was absolutely maddening. The police, in my mind, weren't doing enough.

On the 13th of September, a quiet Sunday, I escaped my house to go down to Whistle Creek. It was a stone's throw away, a common meeting place for Henry and me. We had this little area, which consisted of a group of three trees, two big rocks, and a fluffy patch of grass. It overlooked Whistle Creek and the nearby river. We felt like nobody knew this spot existed.
I sat on my usual rock. Looking to my left, I felt tears coming to my eyes because that's where Henry always sat-- to my left, on the bigger rock.

"I'm older, so I get the bigger rock," Henry argued. "Plus I've got better grades and I live closer to the park."
Henry's words were mean, sure, but they weren't really anything out of the ordinary. I'd learned to not to take what he said too seriously.
"Fine," I said. I sat on the smaller rock reluctantly, kicking at it with the heels of my Converse. We were short back then, around fifth grade. Well, I was short. Henry'd always loomed above everyone else.
"Lu, I don't mean to be rude..." he started. He took a breath. "That's just the way it's gotta be. Maybe next time I'll give you the bigger ice cream cone or something, huh?"
I mustered up a smile and pretended to be interested in whatever he was talking about next.

I sat on my rock on that afternoon on day 13. River Road was behind me; the very occasional car went by about every ten minutes. As the sky began to darken, I decided it was time to go back. I packed up my things and started home.
As I turned around the bend to River Road, I heard some sticks crack and I knew that something wasn't right. Crouching down, I held my breath, trying to listen and trying to not get killed out here in the middle of nowhere.