63. Search & Rescue
It took Chase a total of five hours – more than that if he counted the snack breaks in between – but he was finally done and he couldn’t have felt prouder about himself. In the backyard, facing the swimming pool, the guest bed erected proudly on top of the grass. It was all there: bedframes, the canopy, the sheets, the mattress.
He had draped sheer white drapes over the canopy, and in the evening breeze, the long sheets fluttered gently in the wind. Fairy lights twirled around and up the bedposts and dangled down from the canopy. It took him forever to figure out how to do the wiring to get electricity that far out on his lawn, but that was nothing compared to the work he put in so Krislynn could roast marshmallows in his backyard.
In order to have a campfire, he pulled out a gigantic patch of grass with his bare hands, and had to dig a deep hole in the middle so he could put the firewood inside. He wasn’t even sure if he did it right; he looked it up on the Internet at the last minute, but regardless of all that, he was done! His hardships were over!
“See!” He boasted, standing back to admire his handiwork against the sunset. “Wasn’t that hard. Told you I could do it. Piece of cake.”
Krislynn waltzed passed him holding a box of candles in her arms and made him raise an eyebrow just watching her. Excitement had completely possessed her the moment he came home with the shopping list she demanded of him. Now she skipped and danced around him like a Disney princess – that treacherous way Disney animations made their characters skip about as if their bodies defied gravity.
“Come quick,” she sang. “We still have to scatter candles everywhere. Oh! It’s going to be so pretty once it gets dark and we light them all up.”
“Yeah… we’re not doing that.” Stopping in her tracks, Krislynn turned around and stared at him in horror. “Look, you said you wanted lights so I went out and bought you lights and decorated the crap out of it. We are not doing candles too.”
“Why?” She cried.
“Because it’s a fire hazard,” he shouted. “What if the wind knocks it over while we’re asleep and burn down my house?! Do you realize why I had to dig the fire pit all the way on the opposite side of the yard? Don’t you ever think?”
“Don’t you have insurance?” She retorted.
“Is that your back-up plan?”
Deciding that her method of persuasion obviously wasn’t working out, Krislynn promptly changed tactics. “I’ll be careful,” she begged. “Besides, if your house burns down, you’ll be mad – yes – but we’ll be laughing about it two weeks from now.”
“No, if my house burns down, I’d probably still be pissed off at you five years from now.”
She pouted. “Please Chase?”
“No.”
“Please!!”
“I said no.”
She let her lower lip sink to an impossible length and furrowed her brows to give him the best puppy look of her life. “Please.”
“No. Why do you even want candles anyways? I can turn the pool lights on. It’ll look like it’s glowing. Isn’t that good enough?”
“But it’s not candles.” She pouted. “I don’t know. I guess I just like them. Plus when a lot of them are lit up outside like those tumblr pictures… it reminds me of Disneyland.”
“That’s just bizarre. There is no way those two things are related.”
“Why not? Just shut your eyes and imagine. Dark forest… or backyard, you know, whatever. Then the flicking lights of the candles. It’s a full moon. The night breeze. It smells like lilacs and white roses in the air. You’re wearing a white nightgown that flutters at your ankles and you’re barefoot. You can hear tiny laughter. Are those pixies that you hear?”
Chase popped his eyes open in anger. “I a guy Krislynn,” he shouted. “Why would I wear a nightgown that flutters in the wind? And if I did hear tiny voices at night laughing, I wouldn’t be here with you. I’d be checked into a mental institution.”
“Okay that was my bad,” she admitted. “How about this? You know how on TV, sometimes they have witches? Well every time they do magic, they need a lot of big, white candles to make it happen.” She held up a candle as an example. “And Disneyland– ”
“…Is where the magic happens.” Chase finished her sentence with a loud groan. It was crazy, and he still couldn't see it, but he could see why she saw it.
“Exactly!” Krislynn shouted. “Besides I’ve never been to Disneyland! My family was too poor to go. And it’s just… they all have that mysterious, magical allure that promises romance and happiness! You know?”
“I know,” he sighed. “But what I don’t know is why you have to set up candles in the middle of my backyard.” He walked to her and yanked the box of candles out of her hands. “Why don’t we just go? To Disneyland.”
Krislynn was too baffled to answer him properly. She stood with her eyes wide and her fingers on her parted lips in complete astonishment. “G-go… W-w-where?”
“To Disneyland,” he repeated. “You are in California. It’s not that far. It’s a small drive. We could just go.” He waited for her to give him some sort of approval, but Krislynn was stuck in a confused trance, and after sighing, he turned around and walked back inside the house carrying the candles. At least he managed to pry the candles away from her.
Once he placed the box down inside the house, he heard the ear-bleeding shriek Krislynn released in the backyard, which almost startled him to death. “What the hell?!” He cried when she came trampling in after him. “I thought you found a dead body in the pool! The neighbours probably called the police!” He hardly managed to finish his sentence when she burst into laughter and jumped into his arms.
“Oh my God, you’re not lying right?” She shouted. “We’re going to Disneyland? Can we really?! Can we?!”
Laughing, he wrapped his arms around her. “Yeah. Yeah.” He muttered. “Jesus.” Why was it that the most childish things always excited Krislynn to no end? For example, there was McDonald’s and Happy Meals, and now there was Disneyland. Even more insane than Krislynn’s antics was himself: how come he was enjoying this so much?
“You’re not lying right?” She repeated. She broke free from his embrace and gave him a dark glare. “Right?”
“I said I’m not,” he snapped. “We can go.”
“Like when?!”
He rolled his eyes. “Like whenever.”
“Like tomorrow?!”
“Yeah, sure. Huh?! Isn’t tomorrow too soon? We’re not even done glamping yet!”
Krislynn snickered, and then with her daintiest feminine charm, nuzzled her head against his chest as her arms found its way around his waist. “You said we should enjoy our weekends,” she reminded him. “So we should do that.”
He smiled down at her and wrapped his own arms around her. “You’re crazy.” He sighed.
“So does that mean we can go?!”
He only needed to issue a small nod to send her cheering off outside. He watched her with amusement from the window as she did wild fist pumps and light-heartedly carried on with the direction of her current.
By the time they lit the fire and sat down for dinner in front of it, the sky was nicely darkened and the warmth of the fire kept them cozy against the night chills. It wasn’t that cold out, but bearing in mind that it was the beginning of December, Chase had brought out a couple of fleece throws just in case, and Krislynn had leisurely taken one as she roasted marshmallows in happiness.
She twirled the roasting stick in her hands as she spoke. “You know Chase… It’s been a lot of fun.”
He chewed through a bite of a hotdog, and held back a groan just thinking that soon enough he’d have to clean up his yard, take apart the bed, and drag it back upstairs to the guest room to put it back up again. “Good. Because it was a lot of work.”
She laughed. “No, I didn’t mean today. I meant just in general.” She smiled. “It’s been a lot of fun. Ever since meeting you, I’ve been able to go to places I wouldn’t have gone, see things that I wouldn’t have seen, experience things that I wouldn’t have experienced. Meeting you, it’s been a lot of fun.”
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Me too.”
They exchanged smiles, and didn’t seem to mind the silence as they filled up on more food than they could handle. The darkness above them only grew blacker as the night passed by, and as much as Krislynn wanted to count stars all night, the sky was rather vacant and she could count all of them without using all the fingers on her hands. She settled for admiring the fairy lights Chase had draped over the canopy when she crawled onto the bed to rest.
“It’s so pretty,” she murmured when Chase joined her after putting out the fire.
He shrugged, and pulled her arm out so he could sleep on her. “So now what?” He yawned. “Can we hump?”
“Can we what?!” She laughed. “No Chase. We can’t hump. I thought I made it perfectly clear that I didn’t want to be the one that turned you into a clinical sex addict.”
“But I worked hard today,” he complained. “So you should put out. Relationships are like that you know. It’s give and take.”
“I know. You did work hard today. So you should sleep?” She held back a giggle, and though she expected him to make a bigger fuss in disagreement, he was clearly exhausted from taking apart his house, taking apart his yard and running around town for errands.
He mumbled something inaudible as he closed his eyes.
“What?” She turned onto her side and stared at him.
“I said, fine. I’m tired so I’ll let you off today, but between getting too much and not getting any, I’d much rather the former than the latter.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I’m not kidding. Sexual frustration is a serious medical condition.” She started laughing so even with his eyes closed, he had to reach out and gently pinch a good chunk of her cheek to make her stop. “I’m not kidding,” he said again. “Did you know that when male rabbits get sexually frustrated in front of a female, they get so frustrated that they have a heart attack and die?! That could be me next!!!”
“You’re not a rabbit,” she laughed, “so you should be fine. You’re safe.”
He made sure she heard his displeasure, but shortly dozed off in her arms.
For a while, Krislynn just gazed at him as he slept, but his head was surprisingly heavy for the amount of contents inside. She was sure he only thought about making movies and sex for about ninety percent of his brain – why was it so heavy? Groaning, she wedged her arm out from under him, paying mind to do it gently so she wouldn't wake him up.
She wanted to stare at him all night if she could. Pedro’s concert was next Saturday and she wasn’t sure how much longer she would stay if she found Ella so she had to make the most of it. She wanted to remember Chase when he smiled, when he laughed, and when he slept. She wanted to remember what he looked like.
Smiling, her fingers reached out to touch him. They moved through the tips of his hair and along the side of his face. “I think I’m going to miss you Chase,” she whispered. “You have to call home often and stay healthy and happy.” She brushed her lips briefly across his, and after huddling herself against his warmth, fell asleep beside him.
She must have been asleep for several hours before the ruckus of a phone call disturbed her from her sleep. By the time Krislynn had her eyes half-opened to study her surroundings, Chase was already swearing as he shuffled his pants for his phone. “Fucking hell. Why is my phone here?” He pressed his phone against his head and stifled a yawn. “Hello?”
Krislynn closed her eyes and went back to sleep, but there was urgency in Chase’s voice that made her unable to displace her attention from him. “Wait. Jace? Calm down. Speak slowly. What?” He paused. “‘Kay, I got it. Calm down. Where are you right now?” He paused again. “Let’s meet up. Alright. I’ll see you soon.”
“Was that Jace? What’s wrong?”
From the look on Chase’s face, he was obviously in distraught, but tried not to let the bulk of it show as Krislynn sat up and looked on worriedly. He groaned, not knowing where to explain, but one thing was for sure: he was wide-awake now. “Jace… broke up with LaCienega.”
Immediately, her eyes peered at him accusingly. “Oh no, what did you do?”
“Why do you have to put it like that? I didn’t do anything.” Her accusing expression continued and forced him into reluctant submission. “Alright, I might have said something, but c’mon, I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. He doesn’t love her Krislynn. He shouldn’t marry her. Marriage isn't a game.”
She sighed as he pushed himself off the edge of the bed. “Where are you going right then? Is Jace in need of comforting? Is he okay?”
“Well, more than that… looks like LaCienega is gone.”
Her eyebrows wrinkled. “Meaning?”
“I don’t even know right now.” He sighed. “She probably turned off her cell so she could have some time alone and think, but Jace is scared she might do something stupid. She’s out there in the middle of the night and she doesn’t have her wallet on. Who knows where she could be.”
“She couldn’t have gone far if she didn’t even have money with her.”
“I don’t know Krislynn.” He heaved a sigh. “But I should go help look for her.” She nodded and quickly got up, but Chase shook his head, knowing perfectly well her intentions and wanting her to have no part in it. “You stay here,” he said sternly.
“But I could help look too!”
“It’s late, just stay here. I feel like it might be casually my fault so I have to see things through, but this isn’t your problem or your fault so don’t pry into it.” She seemed hesitant to let him leave alone so before she had further criticism, he shushed her with a kiss. “I’ll be back before you know it. Goodnight Piglet.”
Chase met Jace at a Starbucks near his house less than twenty minutes later. He was already waiting when Chase got out of his car and looked as if he had been thrown in a human-sized washing machine and tossed around for a good hour. “I don’t know where she could be,” he spluttered, looking more dishevelled than Chase had ever seen. “I looked everywhere I thought she could be. I thought she just walked out for a breather, but that was hours ago! That was this afternoon!”
“Jace, calm down!”
“I should have done it slowly, planned it out.” Jace squeezed his eyes clothes. “But I just… I don’t know what came over me. She’s not at her parents and she doesn’t have any friends here besides Michelle!”
“It’s not your fault.” Having never seen Jace lose his cool, Chase didn’t know how to comfort him, but he was sure that no one in his or her right mind would blame him for what he did. It was almost praiseworthy how long Jace was able to hold his feelings in until now. He grabbed his shoulder and gave it a squeeze before repeating his words. “It’s not your fault.”
Jace glanced up at him with doubt. “What do I do now?”
“First, let’s find her. Does her parents know she’s missing? Where have you checked?”
“Her parents don’t know. I just asked them something vague and determined she wasn’t in their household. As for places, I’ve checked all the places around our house and all her favourite cafés and restaurant.”
“Maybe she went and watched a movie?” It was odd, but he could picture a lovesick girl sitting alone, crying in the dark movie theatre, and watching a comedy of all things.
“She doesn’t enjoy places like that.”
“Well, let’s just check everything again. Maybe you just missed her before. You said she left the house on foot, she couldn’t have gone far. You check the places she likes to go to that are still open at this hour, and I’ll circle the places and neighbourhoods around your house. We’ll call each other as soon as we find her. Got it?”
Jace nodded and as Chase turned to go, called out his name. “Chase? Thanks.”
Chase smiled. “No problem man.”
It was three in the morning, and for twenty minutes Chase drove around Jace’s neighbourhood at a snail’s pace. It was dark except the spots the streetlights illuminated, and Chase quickly lost hope. Who would actually wander the streets this late at night with nothing to do? Sure, it was unlikely she could have gotten far without any money, but he couldn’t rule out that she could have gotten a ride from a friendly neighbour or a stranger. There was also the other option, but he didn’t want to think about an unfriendly stranger so he omitted that possibility out of his head.
So where could she be?
There was something that had been bothering him even before he parted ways with Jace. Something he said didn’t feel right, and that thought had been poking the back of his brain for the longest time. What was it?
“Oh shit. That’s what it was!” He stopped his car abruptly in the middle of the road, and slammed his hands against the steering wheel when he remembered. Places that LaCienega didn’t enjoy – of course Jace wouldn’t know – but as Chase clearly recalled, LaCienega had a peculiar habit of venturing into places she didn't "enjoy” when she was having a rough day, and Chase would call today pretty rough.
He was starting to think the image of the girl sitting alone in the movie theatre was not his imagination earlier, but a clairvoyant vision of where to find LaCienega. He would make a beeline for the theatres around L.A, but it was three in the morning, and since it was on the way, he decided it would be smart to check one other place first.
It was the bar he had ran into her before. It was exactly how he remembered it when he arrived, same old, musky smelling place though for a Saturday night, it wasn’t doing too well. The band was packing up just as he walked in, and because of the vacancy inside the pub, he found her right away sitting at the bar, swirling a brown liquid in one hand.
There was no mistake. Her long, dark curls were evident, and the closer he got to her, the closer he was convinced it was her. “LaCienega?” The dark haired girl turned at the sound of the name, and Chase frowned when their eyes met. It was LaCienega alright, and from the looks of it, he was surprised she could still recognize her name seeing how drunk she was.
She smiled when she saw him, but her attractive smile faded behind the harrowing gaze of her eyes. They were red and lightly smudged with black makeup that Chase was sure she was still crying heavily only moments ago.
“What are you doing here?” He asked.
LaCienega continued smiling wryly. “I’ve been waiting for you. What took you so long?”
“Waiting? Why? You sure you recognize me right now?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “What’s my name?”
She downed her drink and looked at the empty glass thoughtfully. “This is our place, isn’t it? Nobody knows about this place, but us. Nobody can find me here, but you. So I’ve been waiting for you here.” She smiled at him. “Chase.”