ALL THAT WAS LEFT BEHIND

A Developing Case

            "Oh, how very nice," Terrance said. "So are going to tell me what's really going on now?"

            “What?”

            “Don’t play dumb, Sea. Did something happen?”

            I lowered my gaze to the floor, instantly becoming quite immersed in the lines of the flooring. I studied it with great diligence, and tried to say something.

            "Sea." he said with the sound of accusation and concern in his voice. "What happened?"

            His eyes locked onto mine with such immense intensity, as if he was locking me into his own personal storm. They flickered over me in a frantic bewilderment, as he began to stand in horror. “No, no, no. Don’t say that, don’t talk about me anymore. Catherine’s dead, she’s DEAD, Sea. You need to stop this now, and let everything go,” Lincoln went on in his troubled rant, becoming louder, and stronger in his voice.

            I rose to my feet, entranced in his words that tumbled from his mouth into a pile of angered shards of broken dread on the floor. “Lincoln,” I pleaded. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Please, tell me how you know her then. How do you know my mother?”

            His panicked murmurings stopped, and he froze from his pacing. He slowly turned to me. “No. I don’t know, I don’t know anything anymore!” he looked to the window, silent in our hurried banter. “I must leave,”

            “Lincoln, please! You said that you had some answers.”

            “And I said too much already. That is all I recall, and Charlie will be angry. And Sea,” he turned around, suddenly looking clear of thought and rational. “Do you know what to do if you get lost in a forest?”

            Baffled, I shook my head and stared in query.

            “You stay where you are, before you get hurt. Like me.”

            “Sea! Can you please answer me?” Terrance demanded in frustration, breaking me from my disturbing reverie of harrowing dread.

            "Sorry. Yeah, something did happen. I think it’s been troubling me, and I don’t know who to tell,” I slowly murmured to the tangerine walls.

            “Me, obviously! Spit it out already.”

            I nodded, and ran circles on my blanket with my finger. Terrance cleared his throat. “Okay,” I relented. “I’ll tell you what happened.” My breath quivered with each word, and I took a deep breath. “There’s another girl on our street, and so I went over to her lawn to try to talk to her today. She lives just across the street. And, I don’t know, she just flipped out on me. It freaked me right out, I guess.”

            “Oh wow,” he sympathized. “That’s stupid.”

            “Yeah,” I breathed. “Yeah it is.”

            "Sea?" I heard Claire's voice call up to me from the bottom of the stairs.

            I pressed the phone down on the bed, muffling the sound as I called back.

            “Come down here please!”

            "Hey,” I said back into the phone. “I'm going to have to talk to you later. I'm being summoned.”