Bailey

Twenty-three days. It had been twenty-three days since I'd last heard from Lucas. I rang his phone and it went straight to voicemail and an inbox that hadn't been set up. I sent email after email and they never bounced back, but they were never answered either. I refused to answer the door because I wasn't ready for who might be on the other side.

Derek stopped asking about the emails four days ago. I guess he'd decided that reminding me they aren't coming wasn't helping anyone. He called me last week to check in and when he said he hadn't heard anything either, I broke down. I refreshed my phone a million times a day, praying for something from Lucas.

I'd pushed aside everything else I was supposed to be doing in my life to watch the news coverage and scan the paper for some clue about what might be happening with him. My thoughts were locked on the boy I was in love with. Just as he said before, I spelled his name each step I took and at night, I reread his emails to try to fall asleep. I stopped staying at the dorms and set up camp in my old room at my mom's. If they were going to give me news, it was her address they would come to.

I thought it would be hard if he didn't come back to me. I thought I knew what that might be like. I hadn't even been imagining the biggest nightmare that could have come to life. Radio silence. Not knowing if he was dead or alive. Was he laying somewhere in some hospital, or had the medic made a split second decision and passed his dying body to help someone who had hope?

A million what ifs filled my brain until I was plagued by unrelenting headaches. In the early morning hours as I lied in my bed, unable to sleep longer than a few minutes, I would imagine our story. I told it to myself over and over until my eyes would finally drift closed and I'd dream of him. Each time I got to the end of the story, I begged Lucas to put more words on the page. Anything. Even if he had to tell me it was the end. I couldn't take the torture of not knowing what happened any longer. I was slowly dying of heart poisoning and his words were the only cure. I feared they would never come.

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