Little girl lost

A little doe eyed girl, dressed all in her Christmas best, plunked herself across the schoolroom from Jake and looked at him intently for several seconds before he decided he needed to say something to her.

“Hi,” he said to her as gently as he could muster, despite being interrupted.
“Hi,” she replied quickly and quietly, swinging her black Mary Janed feet back and forth, back and forth. “I’m Cassie.”

“Hi Cassie, I’m Jake,” he said as he smiled his best ‘don’t worry little girl, I’m going to be your friend’ smile. He immediately noticed that her translucent blue skin was paler then a normal, spring time sun-kissed child’s, and that she seemed, at the moment to be far more interested in her rather bony, stocking covered knees than in him. A typically shy young girl, he mused for a moment before returning to his ever-present calculus homework. He didn’t know Cassie, but he knew better than to push or pry a child like her. Jake knew that she had wandered over to him, in this classroom for a reason and that she would talk to him when she wanted or needed to.

Sure enough, a moment later a soft, kittenish whimper escaped from her little lips.

“Can you help me?” she asked him plaintively. “I’m lost. I can’t find my Mommy and Daddy and no one else talks to me.”

“Sure,” Jake replied steadily, unsurprised at the seemly odd situation he was now thrust into. Instead, he rose up, shut his book, put it in his bag, and crossed the room to grasp her tiny, delicate, hand in his own. “Can we call your parents?”

Cassie bit her lip and looked down at floor as she followed him across the room, through the maze of desks and chairs. “I can’t remember the number,” she stated. “We just moved here. And I tried talking to a policewoman,” she continued shyly, “but she didn’t talk back.” Jake sighed silently but continued on, leading Cassie out of the classroom and into the hauntingly empty after school high school hallways.

“Where do you live?” Jake asked her.

“By the river. On Maple Street,” she replied as decisively as she could.

“Do you live in the city or outside of it?”

“Out. In the suburbs.”

“All right then,” Jake said as they left the fenced in schoolyard behind them for the day. “I think I know where that is-let’s go.”

As they walked out to bright sunny day and busy street, Jake turned to look at unfortunate little lost Cassie. He watched while the white silken bows that held back her soft, long light brown hair, bounced up and down on her head. The poor little girl, he thought to himself sympathetically, has really no idea of how terribly lost she is.

“You know you shouldn’t talk to strangers,” he said gently to her as they walked to the nearest intersection.

“I’ve seen you before, walking around. And I knew you were nice because you waved to me a few days ago, even if your hair is funny,” she said in her own defense.

“I couldn’t help it because you looked really sad that day,” he told her, looking down on her little light brown haired head while she said nothing in reply. “How long have you been lost for?”

Cassie only shrugged her thin pale shoulders in reply and kept her eyes focused on the ground before her, successfully keeping quiet for the few moments it took for Jake to really set them on the way to Maple Street. Luckily for the two of them, it wasn’t far, and it was still a fairly nice warm day. Meanwhile, dozens of elementary school aged kids on bikes and skateboards chatted and flew by Jake and Cassie like they weren’t even there, they were so excited for the coming end of school.

“How did you get into the high school? You’re only about seven, right?”

“I’ll be eight in February,” she declared, so highly offended her little voice actually rose a notch. “I walked in.” Of course it would be that easy for a small child to go past our crack security guards, Jake thought grimly, not trying to think of what else had probably come in during the year.

“What house number?” he asked instead, realizing they must be close to Cassie’s home.
She paused a moment to think. “Uh...612.”

“That’s not that far from here,” he said, looking around at all the house numbers. He turned and studied her for a short moment. “You weren’t that lost,” he said not accusingly.

“I was lost,” she declared righteously, shivering as two more children her own age sped by on some ten-speed bikes. “I was coming from the hospital. I got sick and my mom and dad had to leave me so I could get better and now I want to find them to tell them I’m all better,” she said, bowing her head and plowing on as if she wasn’t upset in the least, only to stop short, mesmerized, in front of a small, neat, blue green house a few moments later.

“Here,” she said to him, momentarily dazed by what Jake did not know.

Inside an open window, simple yellow lace curtains swayed in the breeze while blooming daffodils dotted the front yard of an impeccably neat house. There was nothing-not a lawnmower or a toy or a speck of dirt-to indicate any signs of the life of the person whom Jake saw walking around inside the otherwise empty house. But as usual, Jake wound up paying those details little mind as he led Cassie on up to the doorway and watched as she solemnly rang it, twice.
The youngish man answered whom Jake had seen in the window answered the door, surprised and a little afraid to see Jake, a strange, purpled haired young high school boy, standing empty handed in his doorway.

“Can I help you?” the man asked warily.

“No,” Jake replied while Cassie invisibly snuck by the young man and sat herself comfortably on the large couch in the living room. She turned, and for the first time she really looked and smiled at Jake, rather gleefully making her dark brown eyes meet his bright blue ones, before happily waving him away forever. “Thanks,” she was all chirped.

Jake never said another word to the man it would have been too much for the already perplexed man to handle. Instead, he only nodded and turned to head out to the driveway, while the very puzzled and now somewhat frightened young man, went inside and shut and locked the door, all the while wondering if the purple haired kid was all right in the head.

Still, Jake found that he couldn’t leave right away. Though he knew it was risky, he circled around to the back of the house, to the large dining room window and peered in. Looking into a large living room mirror through the window, he saw Cassie comfortably and lovingly lean into the man who was now sitting next to her on the couch. A colorful, black-bordered patchwork quilt covered his legs and as Cassie got closer, Jake could, by looking into a nearby mirror, see the young father smile for first time in what was probably a very, very long time, just before little Cassie, now forever home, disappeared from sight for forever yet again.