Can Anybody Find Me?

Chapter 3

Gavin stepped into one of this rooms and looked around. Every being here used their own personal ritual to manifest elsewhere. For Gavin, he sat an incorporeal body down and looked into a mirror on the table top. He treated it like a scrying mirror and LOOKED for his charge. Images moved across the mirror like a movie screen, fast jerky motions as he tried to catch up on what has been happening to this poor girl.

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Lone stood with her classmates, a solitary figure in a crowd of people. She smiled and acted happy, putting on a show of being like everyone else, but it was slightly off. Anyone watching would realize that although she acted like the others, here was a young woman that somehow just didn't belong there. She wasn't anything special to look at. Her face was strong and beautiful only if you liked a face designed with characer. There were times when she could be breathtaking to look at, when her face was soft and happy, care free and joyous. But since she always looked at the world through jaded eyes, those moments were few and far between. Her hair was brown, a lighter shade in summer and a darker one in winter, changing as the sun bleached her hair.

Standing in her graduation gown, Lone looked like everyone around her. No one could see the hard muscles she'd worked for, nor trace their eyes along the lines of scars and bruises colouring her body. After her father had learned that she was doing kickboxing and fighting, he realized it was a perfect cover for the marks he left and stopped holding back. The hospital had a file thick with her name in it, but they never worried; reassured by a loving father that he was worried her kickboxing would land her in an early grave. They all bought it and he no longer had a reason to worry about being found out.

All the other students were joyous and excited, planning summer trips and parties, the last hurrah before college or university, or even work took over. "Elonore," Lone heard one of her classmates try to get her attention. She smiled and looked at him. "Elonore, I ah.... well the entire gradutating class is invited to my place. And I know I don't know you well or.. ah... well I'd like it if you came out. No one really seems to know you well and I'd like to see you there." Jack went on, rambling and boyishly charming.

Lone looked at his aura, seeing a blue tint of honest intent. He was a good guy, just too popular for her to ever try and be friends with. One on one she could stand him, he was decent. But all those others... too close, their colours mixing and sick, lust, anger, greed, pride, envy and angst. But then she saw her father in the watching parents. Other familes stood together, talking, hugging, happy. Her father stood there, glaring at her. Dark sunglasses covering hungover sensitive eyes, slightly wrinkled simple suit that he wore to interviews when he felt like giving work another shot. She didn't need to see his eyes to know the hatred swimming in htem.

"Sure." she agreed to Jack, taking down his address and directions to get there. He was so simple and happy to have everyone going, even the reject nerd kids and hte druggies. Jack was fabulously rich and yet somehow....pure.

Seeing her standing there, talking to someone, smiling like she had the right to be happy made her father clench his teeth in anger. She should remember who's life it cost for her to be here now. He was sick of seeing her wearing that pretentious robe. "We're going." he snarled at her, pulling her out of hte crowd. There were so many people around that no one saw how hard he grabbed her arm, or the fact that he dug his fingers in even though she followed meekly.

She sat silently in the passenger seat while he swore and wove hte beat up car through traffic. He'd lost his license years ago and had no insurance, but he'd bought the car for $500 when the liquor store nearby closed and he had to go farther for his favourite drinks. That was one of the few times Elonore had actually agreed with how he spent hte money she saved up to give him. She would use it whenever he was too drunk to drive or asleep. He would send her out when he was too lazy or hell, whenever he wanted to stay home.