The Mechanic

-Chapter Twenty-Three-

Location: Central

I feel like I've been walking forever, and it's only been a mile or so. But I guess all distance feels like that if you're going to see someone you love.

Love. It feels like such a mushy word this morning. It also describes the way I feel, as I have considered already, and that is by definition pretty mushy.

Mushy is a weird word for the feeling in the pit of my stomach. It doesn't match the smile it paints on my face.

It doesn't match anything. Makes me wonder if it's even really the way it is.

The store passes on my left, and I know I'm close enough to sprint to the front door of Matt and Elena's house, but I don't. Instead I try to worry away the breathless grin that has me caught in the horribly agonizing light-headed happy feeling...

Then, breathing in the gray morning, I find myself on Matt's front step. I knock on the door. And then I knock again, sighing softly.

I wait for a while. Then I knock again and step off the front step, deciding to pace the waiting away.

The door still doesn't open.

I grasp the handle and shove it sharply inward.

The door swings open, into the darkened house. No noise can be heard from anywhere. Nowhere in the shadows, nowhere in the open.

"Hello?" I call, closing the door behind me. I flip on a light, frowning. A bit of sun cuts in through the window, sending sparks across the concrete floor.

The weather is being finicky today. Light one moment, dark the next. Every cloud shares some of its space with the sunny sky.

I pace along the side of the kitchen area, peer into the darkness of my brother and his wife's bedroom, glance into Piper's crib. Then I step back along the wall and the line of cabinets to Femi's curtained-off living quarters. I part the curtains and glance around.

Just a little room, a couple of hangers with clothes on them hanging from a nail in the cracked, plaster wall. Not much. On the floor, a pile of twisted sheets and wrinkled pillows, still dented with the shape of a tired head.

A strand of red hair there. A strand here. There's a piece on my jacket from yesterday.

Where is Femi?

It doesn't add up for her not to be here—Matt and Elena are always up to something, but I don't see Femi going with them on one of their crazy adventures. She would have stayed here for me, because she would know that I'd show up early to take her out to do something. Like vandalize an alley or have a milkshake down at the café. Maybe go on a walk, or just go out and sit on my fire escape.

But she isn't here.

Why?

I let the curtains fall back into place and turn, pacing back down the wall to the kitchen. On the stove there's the coffee percolator that my brother would die for, and a cup of cold tea. But nothing else. My eyes roam further down, to the cupboards and the countertops.

They land eventually on this little square of wrinkled, lined paper, and I step forward, catching the edge of it between two fingers.

Paris

I've never seen this handwriting before, but that doesn't keep me from recognizing it. It looks like the way she talks, all slanted lines and inexact curves. Little curls that aren't usually there, and messily placed.

I had never considered before that writing looks like voices.

I unfold it slowly, trying not let my heartbeat go out of control when I see and feel the damp spots of blotchy smears that must be from catching the tears of a crying redhead.