Life Lost and Found

2: Lost

Madeline fled stealthily through the parking lot, keeping low as she made for the trees beyond. She applied pressure to her nose with the back of her hand as she ran. It was bleeding pretty hard from the face-plant.

When she was far enough away that no one could hear, she let free the quiet sobs bubbling beneath her lips. "Oh, yeah! Fine! I'll come to your stupid party!" she blubbered to herself, her head to the sky to slow the bleeding. "Yeah, great idea, you social reject! Congratulations, Madeline! You're eighteen, and you just graduated from teenage loser to adult loser! How do you feel?"

She tried screaming about it, but she just coughed on all the blood, tears, and shame dripping down her face.

She furiously wiped her face and looked again to the sky. The night was clear and largely cloudless; the stars shone bright and glimmering. Through the trees, she found the Big Dipper, followed it past the constellation Boötes to Virgo, and there located a bright blue star which astronomers knew as Spica. Madeline, however, knew it as her mother's star. It sparkled brilliantly, standing out clearly among so many others.

"Mom..." She choked on another sob.

She reached the tree line and emerged onto Oregon State Road 42, the highway that connected Ackland with the outside world.

Her mother, Holly, had died on this highway. Seven years ago. About a mile away.

It had gone down like this: Holly had been out visiting people all day on a Sunday. Mainly widows or people who lived alone and rarely saw visitors. She would take them food or help them with chores, but mostly she just listened to them. Made them feel less abandoned. Like someone cared.

Holly had always been like that. Unwilling to allow an opportunity to help or cheer pass by. People called her the "town chaplain".

Anyway, that Sunday she didn't finish until well after dark. She had been on her way home when their old beater of a car had finally broken down. That by itself wasn't a big problem; home was only a mile away, and Holly had never been afraid of walking.

The problem was the rain. A torrential late-autumn downpour had struck that night. That, and a drunk driver.

No one could say exactly what had happened, whether she had been walking or trying to wave down a car for help. Either way, her body had been found the next morning, huddled against a tree just off the road, her head bowed and hands clasped together. She'd been praying when she died.

Despite a cracked skull and numerous internal injuries, the coroner believed she had survived for about thirty minutes. "The cold would have eased the pain," he had said after breaking the news, in a vain attempt to be comforting. Of course, because dying cold, wet, and alone was way better than just normal dying, Madeline had thought.

The killer was caught after the local mechanic reported finding blood and fabric embedded in a cracked headlight of a car dropped off for repairs. The fabric matched Holly's jacket. Furthermore, the killer, a wealthy man passing through on his way to Portland, had been seen dumping beer cans and vodka bottles into a dumpster the night of Holly's death. He eventually confessed. Not only to driving under the influence, but to the hit-and-run.

Madeline remembered it all with disturbing clarity. The way her father had melted to the floor of the kitchen after getting the news that rainy night, the phone spilling out of his lifeless hand as if he too had died. She had never seen him cry before. Not like that.

She remembered returning to her bedroom to continue working on a series of flowerpots which she had been painting with meticulous detail.

"She will love them. She will love them! Gotta hurry and finish, because she will love them!" eleven-year-old Madeline repeated over and over as she furiously dabbed the pots with her brush. Because the pots were for her mother's birthday—painted in all her favorite colors and to be filled with all her favorite flowers—and she would always have birthdays—and she couldn't ever stop having birthdays, because Madeline had made a present! In her young, shocked mind, the two were connected. You couldn't have a present without someone to give it to. If the gift existed, so did her mother. It didn't make sense any other way!

So she kept painting. And painting. And when she ran out of pots, she painted on paper and books and a shoebox and coins—whatever. And when she ran out of paint, she used crayons and markers. And then she started wrapping it all.

She didn't understand why her father took the tape and scissors away. Why he had begged her to stop. Why he held her in his arms so she couldn't keep working. Didn't he realize how important this was? "But I'm making her presents, Dad! I'm making her presents!"

A pair of headlights broke the darkness around eighteen-year-old Madeline as a car crested the top of the hill behind her, bringing her out of her memory and back to reality. To a world where the dead remained dead, no matter how many presents you made for them.

Madeline tensed as the car came closer. She didn't wonder if it would stop. Or imagine the driver offering her a ride, asking if she were all right out here, alone and bleeding on the highway. People didn't do things like that.

Part of her wondered what it would be like if she didn't move. To be hit. To experience what her mother had. To die. And to do so in the same way as her mother, so close to the same place, even... It seemed fitting somehow. Poetic.

There might be a sentence in the paper about it—maybe—buried in a section that no one ever read. Within days the entire world would continue onward as if she had never existed. No one would miss her, because in order to be missed, you first had to matter to someone. And the fact of the matter was, Madeline didn't matter to anyone. She didn't fit in, and she wasn't wanted. Tonight was just another reminder of the fact.

She breathed a sad, trembling sigh, and her hand drifted absently to her mother's necklace. Her mother was the last person who had ever made her feel—

"My necklace!" She halted in her tracks and searched her neck frantically with both hands. Her throat and chest tightened. It was gone! "No, no, no!" She spun around, facing the direction of the lodge. "What do I do? What do I do? Calm down! Um, I lost it at the party. Yeah. Maybe in the bathroom? Or in the crowd?"

She started back up the hill but stopped after only a few steps. "But... how would I find it? How would I get back in?" The only way back in was through the main entrance, and she couldn't go in there looking like this—smelling like alcohol, her eyes all red, her face bleeding—just to start searching the floors of the men's restroom like some kind of lunatic. Besides, someone had picked it up by now. It was gold.

"But, it was Mom's..." They had given it to her after the autopsy, and ever since, it had been Madeline's physical connection to her mother. She couldn't imagine life without it.

But it looked like she would to have to. Oh, sure, she could put up flyers or something, or check the lodge's lost and found, if there was one. But no one was going to turn it in when they could just sell it. People didn't do things like that. Her necklace was gone.

Her hands dropped to her sides. She was too sad to even cry anymore. In a stupor, she followed the highway down the hill, whispering dark wishes each time a car drove past and feeling cheated every time.

"No, that's stupid," she whispered in response to her thoughts. "You're being irrational." She didn't actually want to be hit by a car. She was merely suffering from a very mild case of extreme, long-term emotional devastation. That was all.

Never mind that Mark was uploading The Incident to the web right now. Never mind that her last friend had moved away, leaving her with none, and she couldn't make any more if her life depended on it. Never mind that Jared, when he had pinned her to the lockers this morning, had whispered his usual advice: "You're so ugly, you should die. No one will miss you." With a smile, he had backed away. "Just die, ugly girl. Let us forget you."

It was a game he had been playing with her since tenth grade, and others had joined him over the years. She didn't even know why—she hadn't done anything to them.

Another car rushed uneventfully by.