Page 9 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

Sometimes I dream about her instead of Jordan, but when I want to touch her, I can never reach her. It’s always like looking at her on a screen. In the videos which she has been so generously posting on Facebook for some time now, her voice is exactly how I imagined it. Clear and bright, reminding me of the blue in bluebells, the sky, the vastness, and maybe flying. When I first heard it, I thought I was going to have a blackout. Sometimes, I think Lou comes across like an overdose of life.

After lighting this evening's campfire, I sit down in front of it with my laptop on my lap and watch my favorite video first. A friend of Lou’s took it in the Scrivers’ parched yard. The camera shot is unsteady, but it doesn’t matter. Lou wears shorts with a crocheted lace hem and a light-colored ruffled top that hangs over the shorts. It almost looks like she’s wearing a white dress. In the golden evening light, she turns absent-mindedly on the lawn, barefoot, arms outstretched, hair like a sparkling tide lapping around her shoulders. And every time she looks into the camera, my heart aches because surrounded by light, the girl’s laughter and the fluttering of the ruffles make her seem like a creature from another reality—intangible, merely a dream.

There are days when I can watch this video 20 times in a row, today, however, a new post distracts me. I’ve been waiting all day for it because it’s not usual for Lou to go so long without leaving an update.

Full of anticipation, I switch to her entry.

Hello to all of you out there! Unfortunately, today I have to tell you that I am leaving Facebook for a while.

It takes me a few seconds to truly grasp the meaning of her statement. My pulse starts pounding in my temples as I read the sentence over and over again. I automatically clench my hands and only realize it when I squeeze so hard, my knuckles crack.

What does Lou mean by for a while? Three days? One week? A year? That can’t be—she was so happy on Facebook! Suddenly, a second pop-up window opens at the bottom of the screen and alerts another post from her.

Thank God, this must have been a stupid joke!

I greedily absorb the next few words, and as I read, nausea rises in my throat.

For anyone who’s interested in my summer break—here’s our itinerary:

6/25–7/1: Sequoia National Park, Lodgepole

7/2–7/8: Yosemite National Park, Tuolumne Meadows

7/9–7/11: Mammoth Lakes, New Shady Rest

7/12–7/15: Death Valley National Park, we don’t know yet where exactly!

7/16 > Ash Springs

I’m sorry, don’t forget me!

The letters dance drunkenly before my eyes. “A while” apparently means a long time. Way too long! It’s only the beginning of May now! Judging by the route, she won’t be back on Facebook until August at the earliest. But why is she signing off? Does she have a boyfriend who won’t let her be on the platform? She never mentioned a guy, I paid special attention to that—it was always about her brothers, her girlfriends, her everyday life. I would have noticed if she had suddenly met someone, I’m sure of it.

Does it have anything to do with the club that she so desperately wanted to join? The Hades-in-Love? They must be in dire need of it if they named themselves after the Greek god of the underworld.

Maybe it’s just a bad joke and Lou will soon post: Hah, did you fall for it?

That would be like her! Yes, of course, that has to be it.

I stare at the screen and wait. It feels like December and I am waiting for the ice to crack. What if it wasn’t a joke? What if she’s gone forever from my life? So what? More trance-like than mindful, I take a screenshot of her last post and save it in the Lou folder. She can’t just disappear like that! She shouldn’t just disappear like that. What am I supposed to do in the wilderness without her? What reason would I have to get up in the morning and breathe?

I wipe the sweat from my face with trembling hands. Something inside me grows out of control, but before I can smash the laptop to the floor in anger, I refresh the page again.

Please, just let it be a joke!

The connection takes forever to reload the page, and when it finally does, it just says:

404 Not found

Suddenly, my head is blank. Everything is gone. I reload again.

404 Not found.

She’s actually gone! An ominous flicker surrounds me—dark, evil flames eat through my body straight to my soul. Stunned, I set the laptop next to me, get up, and walk in circles around the campfire. Once, twice, three times… Lou cannot have left me. She shouldn’t have left me!

A thunderstorm of desperation and anger builds inside me as I blindly wander around. At some point, I thrash the nearest tree trunk like a madman. The splintering bark hits my eye and a sudden pain shoots up my hands through my forearms and into my shoulders.

I’d love to drag Lou out of the computer and ask why she’s doing this to me! I scream words into the night that I don’t understand. A sort of mishmash of bitter pleading and raging anger. I want to go back to the computer and smash it to pieces to get Lou out of there, but all I do is pound the trunk in front of me. I only stop when my hands are numb and knuckles bloodied.

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