I beckoned Chris over, unable to speak past the lump in my throat. He examined the blood and the footprint carefully. They were both about thirty minutes old, he said. The footprint was made by a size six tennis shoe. That was Isabelle's shoe size. She had rather small feet. I started reminiscing, which didn't help any. I still couldn't quite grasp the fact that she was gone. My thoughts we interrupted by Chris.
"Well, the footprint is pointing southwest. That's all we've got to go on, I'm afraid."
A sudden thought dawned upon me. I bent down and examined the blood and the footprint again. The blood on the pavement, and yet so near it—the footprint on the lawn...as if she had deliberately stepped in the dirt and left a footprint. I laughed like a madman. "But of course!" I said with a smile that made Chris stare. "She did it on purpose! Oh Belle, you genius!" I ran in the direction the footprint was pointing, watching the ground carefully. In the driveway, I stopped and crouched. More blood. But it seemed intentional. I frowned and thought. I looked both ways down the driveway. The one way, towards the road, I saw more blood. Just a few drops at a time. Like Isabelle's nose was bleeding, and she was holding it, but occasionally letting some of the blood escape. I was fairly certain that was what she had done. "You're a genius, Belle," I whispered, then spoke to Chris, "I think she's left a sort of trail." I figured that after her nose stopped bleeding she'd have used something else to mark the way. But I was certain of one thing, and that was that Isabelle had left clues, expecting me to follow her. I was thrilled, and I tried to get Chris to come track with me right then. He wasn't quite sure about this. "What about your sister? And we can't just leave. We need to prepare, we need troops if we plan on attacking, we need a plan."
I stared at the blood stains on the concrete for a moment, then nodded. "Right. You go ahead and explain everything to Dalia. I'll be in in a minute." Chris started to counter, but decided against it and headed inside. I liked him already. Maybe in this awful moment my emotions were plainly scrawled across my face, but he seemed to understand exactly what I was feeling and what was going on.
After he had left I examined the footprint again. I traced the pattern in the dirt with my finger. I spoke to myself to calm the butterfly that was fluttering about, beating against my rib cage, trying to escape. "It's alright, J, we'll find her. We'll get her back. It'll be alright. She left a trail for a reason. We can track her. You've got to, you're her only hope. You can do it. She loves you." With the last words my voice gave. I sobbed tearlessly, digging my fingers into the ground, clenching the dirt, my shoulders shaking and the butterfly that was my heart throbbing with pain. She loves you. I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat. We'll get her back. And then what? Then what, Jonathan? After you rescue her, what do you think will happen? Is she going to come back here? Do you really think that?
The butterfly had turned into an angry man, trapped in my chest, beating relentlessly with screams of anguish. I let a yell of my own escape my lungs, then sat clutching my legs, gazing at the footprint as if it were the most valuable thing in the world to me, which it was. Correction: it was made by the most valuable thing in the world to me.
