To Whoevers Listening

Five : 2:34 AM

After the call from Abigail Taylor, all thoughts of sleep have suddenly spontaneously evaporated inside my head.

When the station phone rings at 2:34 am, I pick it up immediately.

“Hello, Moira here.” I say, twisting the cord around my index finger.

“Moira?” a young female voice chirps. “Hey, it's Kayla Moore.”

This girl, is in fact, someone I know.

I've had all my classes with Kayla Moore since the beginning of high school but in the last four years we've probably only shared an odd six conversations in total. And most of those conversations consisted of a question, an answer, and a thank you. “Hey, Moira, could I borrow a pen?” “Sure” "Thanks.”

It was a real connection sparker.

“Hi Kayla, how can I help you?”

“I was going to ask you to play me a song, but now I'm just wondering if you'd send out a message for me instead?”

“Uh... sure. I could do that.” I say with a nod and reach for some paper and a pen. I scribble down the message as she recites it, then drop the pen down beside the note. A song by Obediah Parker is playing on the radio and I tell Kayla I'll read her message out the moment the songs over. We end the call on a friendly goodbye.

Kayla's message is confusing as hell. It reads;

Dear J,

Meet me by the apple gums. Bring the talking dogs.

- Kayla.

Never have I heard of something called an 'apple gum', or knew that talking dogs existed outside children's cartoons. But once the message is spoken, I scrunch up the paper and shoot it towards the bin beside the live room door without a second thought. It misses, of course.

I line up a set of three songs and lean back in my chair, prepared to rest my eyes for a moment with the comforting image of talking dogs in mind. But after that call with Kayla the phone rings and it doesn't stop.

Three am. Four am. Five am. I'm answering call after call after call. There's people asking when the power will be on, people asking if I knew where their pets were, people asking what the weather forecast was, people asking if I could read out messages for them, too.

This is the most popular the call-line has been in well over a year. If Obie was listening, I know he'd be thrilled. But I, on the other hand, am starting to get severely pissed-off. Every time I put down the phone, it starts ringing again, almost like the person on the other end is psychic and knows exactly when I'm free.

God, it's like there's no one better to call in town than a sixteen year old girl on a mountain, stuck inside a radio station.

When the phone rings for what must be the hundredth time I'm tempted to pick it up and just slam it back down again. But the weak, worried voice on the other line stops me from doing so.

“Hello? Is there anybody there?”

I lift the phone up.

“Yes, I'm here.” I answer, my voice temporarily returned to it's usual, gentle calm. “What can I help you with?”

“It's my daughter.” The voice says, which is followed by the distinct sound of a sniffle. “She's seven years old and she's been missing since yesterday morning.”

Missing. God, it was such a terrible word. Your car keys are missing, you're wallet is missing, you're hairbrush is missing. Whatever it was, missing was just a bad word.

And now for this woman, her daughter is missing.

“Could you please describe her appearance for me?” I ask and she gladly obliges.

“She has shoulder length hair – it's blonde, like her fathers – green eyes, fair skin and a mole on her left cheek. This morning she left the house wearing a yellow parker, pink jeans, and a blue beanie."

“Okay, alright, that's good.” I mutter as I write it all down. “Anything else?”

The woman is silent but I know she's still there.

“We were just going to the park.” she says, her voice weakened by her tears. “I turned my back for two seconds – two seconds – and she was gone.”

“What's her name?” I ask.

“Daisy Berchal.” the mother says. “Her name is Daisy.”

This call has gone straight to air and has been broad casted over the radio, but I leave the woman with a promise that I will repeat her daughters description every hour on the hour and encourage people to call in if she is found. She tells me she'll be listening.

When I hang up the phone for the first time in four hours, it doesn't start ringing again the moment I've put it down. It's like everyone has only just realized that absent pets and weather forecasts aren't nearly as important as a missing child.

The radio station is silent, my head is silent, the world is silent.