gone

--1--

Red, white, and blue lights painted my apartment complex as I stood outside, answering questions a man in blue asked me. He asked if I had any physical photos of Elodie that he could take with him; I did. He asked me how old she was; 26. Where was she going? On a hike. Did anyone go with her? No. They should've. When was the last time I talked to her? This morning when I declined her offer to go on the hike. What did I spend my day doing? Sleeping. How had she gotten to the trail? Uber. Could anyone corroborate my story? Any of my neighbors could confirm my car hadn't moved from the parking lot all day, and so could the security cameras.

I felt numb. Nothing felt real. There was no way Elodie was just gone. I kept looking off into the distance, behind the cop. It was now around 7:30, roughly two hours since she was supposed to meet Bradley and three and a half hours since she'd been heard from. I was waiting to see El stroll up and bitch at me about causing such a fuss because her hike ran long.

"Maybe she ended up walking the full trail," I muttered out loud. I was trying to muster hope. "She said she was going to do half the trail and turn back around because she had dinner plans with Bradley after he got out of class." The cop was writing all of this down. His hair was so dark, it was almost black. The color of his eyes was just as dark and his sun kissed skin was a deep caramel color. His badge read "HERNANDEZ."

"If you don't mind to go inside and grab me that picture of your sister for me, I'll take it back to the station and immediately start getting the word out. We already have several officers on scene walking the trail, looking to see if maybe she got injured and couldn't make it back. It happens more often than you would think."

I felt a little weight lift. He's right. This is Gulf Breeze. There's no way something worse would happen here. Even though El was very familiar with the trails in Naval Live Oaks, she could've tripped and fallen, or maybe got tangled and injured her ankle or something. The pair of jean shorts she was wearing had a tear in the bottom of one of the back pockets, where she usually stuck her phone. Maybe it fell out on her walk. Maybe she didn't have a way to call an Uber or let anyone know. "Thank you," I smiled softly. "I'll go grab the picture."

As soon as you walked inside my apartment, there's a small walkway that opened up into the kitchen and dining area. Off to the right, we had our dark-stained wooden table that sat four. The kitchen sat behind that, on the opposite wall of the walkway. It was tiled, up until the open-concept room expanded into the living room, where the tile made a transition into gray carpet. Our couch was in the far corner of the room, sitting on the opposite wall as the TV, which sat on the wall dividing the kitchen from the living room. Right where the tile turned into carpet, on the left side of the apartment was three doors; El's bedroom, the bathroom in the middle, and then my room.

I passed up the kitchen and hooked a left to Elodie's door. I opened the bedroom door, half hoping she'd be inside taking a nap on the bed. My heart broke a little when I confirmed what I already knew—that she wasn't there. As soon as you walked in her messy room, you saw clothes in a pile in the corner, but her bed was made in sage green sheets. Her walls were the same color as the rest of the apartment, which was a light gray. She had a tapestry hanging up behind her bed with mountains and the phases of the moon splitting it in half. She had a black dresser immediately to the left, and the top of it was lined with pictures in frames we'd taken. I opted for the picture that I'd taken of her posing in front of a huge cactus we'd seen on our vacation to Arizona. She looked so happy and so healthy and so lively. The pit inside of my stomach grew again. Whatever had happened to her couldn't be good, her phone was off.

I left the apartment and handed the photo, still in the frame, to the Officer Hernandez. I felt sickness bubbling back up my throat. "One more thing for now, Miss Pearson. Did she take her phone with her?"