Flickering Shadows

Hide and Seek (Chapter 24)

Hide & Seek

Five Years Later

Dylan

I left Beckingdale three months after Lucy.  After I left, I moved into a small home and continued working at the newspaper.  I was promoted to writing the obituaries-if you can call that a promotion, writing about dead old people all day. I stopped calling her for a while to give her some time to maybe cool off.  The next time I called her grandma answered and said she wasn't home.  After calling nonstop the next week, she finally admitted that Lucy moved out.  I tried to pry it out of her where she moved, but her lips were sealed.

           I searched the area around Denver and had no luck. It was like a game of hide and seek, and she was an extremely good hider.  For a while there, I gave up.  Lucy would need time to forgive me-if she ever would. 

           My intent in going to Beckingdale was simple in the beginning-get better.  Then representatives from the news station approached me.  They said that I was an attractive, young man and that I should do a task for them; they offered me a lot of money and I took it. All I knew about Lucy then was that she was supposedly insane.

           As time wore on, Lucy started to grow on me.  I refused to act on my feelings.  I had a job to do, and she kept getting in the way of it.  The night she caught me in the staff room, I had been calling her family members not ten minutes before hand.  The day her sister visited, I had talked to her first.   On prom night, I turned in my findings to my boss.  I figured there was nothing wrong with letting my feelings be known then.  After that night, I realized that I made a huge mistake.  The report would destroy her and I would be held responsible.  I called and asked-begged-them not to play it.  Obviously they did not listen.

           There was not another choice but to move on with life.  I dated a few other girls, none of them measuring up to the one I truly wanted. 

           Days passed by like years; life without her had no meaning. I realized that before I had been zombie-like. I had been cold and hard and unfeeling.  The only emotions I had been capable of were depression and anger.  I tried to kill myself so many times; what was the point of waiting for nature to do it for me, if I did not want to live?  Then I got to know her.  Lucy was like a sparkling diamond in a pile of coal.  Lucy brought me to life.  She taught me happiness, sympathy, and most importantly, love.

           When I lost Lucy, I wasn't back in my zombie state. It was worse-the pain was unbearable.  Even though she had said nothing mean, her silence was worse.  Silence is unknown, and more of than not, unforgiving.  I would rather have had her swear like a sailor at me. To this day, five years later, I still don't know what she's thinking.

           It kills me more and more as the days go by.

          

           It's the first day of March, and the cold winter air still hangs.  I shrug into my black winter coat and took a look at the newspaper before heading out the door to go to work.   There's an article on the greatest and the worst camping states.  I skim it until something catches my eye. "Wyoming is one of the best states-if you like isolation and animals running about." Wyoming!

           It all came back to me now.  Lucy wasn't in Colorado like I thought; she was probably in Wyoming like she said many years ago.  I zoomed to work and ran up the stairs to the office, and started googling.