Time Spent (4 page)

______________________

When Beth didn't answer her cell for the
third time in two days, Brandon decided to drop by her house. There
were police cars out front.

Feeling fear in the pit of his stomach,
Brandon rapped on the door.

He heard muffled voices inside. Soon, Beth's
father opened the door. He was a chubby man with light brown hair
and glasses, an accountant by profession. He was unshaved and
looking quite haggard, and his face crashed when he saw it was
Brandon at the door.

"Oh, Brandon, it's you."

"Mr. Clark, what's going on? Is Beth
okay?"

He ushered Brandon inside. "Brandon, have
you seen Beth or heard from her at all?"

"No, not since the other night when I was
here."

There were police inside, sitting with
Beth's mom in the kitchen. She looked even more distraught than her
husband.

"Beth is missing," said Mr. Clark. "We've
looked everywhere. No one's seen her."

"Missing?" Brandon put a hand over his
mouth.

"Can you think of anywhere she might have
gone?" asked one of the policemen.

Brandon thought. "She said there was a
cabin. A cabin in the forest. She said she liked to walk out there
sometimes!"

"That's my dad's old cabin," Beth's mother
said.

"Okay, okay, that's good, we'll get some
guys out there, see if she's there."

Beth's father clapped him on the shoulder.
"Thank you, Brandon."

"I hope she's okay," Brandon said. "Please
call me, okay?"

"We will."

Brandon sat alone in his empty house,
feeling powerless. He kept trying Beth's number, but now it just
went to voice mail. He sat on the floor in his room, leaning
against his bed, comics spread around him on the floor, and wept.
If Beth weren't okay, if they didn't find her, he wasn't sure what
he would do.

He tried to read comics to distract himself,
but he couldn't get his mind off of her.
Beth's out there,
somewhere,
he thought,
she could be hurt, or scared. She
could be all alone.

I can't just sit here.

The thought hit him like a bolt of
lightning:
I'm going to find her.

He made copies, hundreds of copies, of a
photo of Beth, with her parents' phone number. He went to their
house to share them, then began walking door to door in her
neighborhood, distributing the copies. He put them in mailboxes,
attached them to streetlights and telephone poles, tacked them up
to fences. He went in a widening spiral out from her house, putting
them up until he ran out. Then he went back home to make more and
picked up again from where he left off.

It was nearly dark when he finally decided
to call it off for the day. His belly emitted loud groans (he had
never stopped to eat), and his arm and leg muscles complained with
every step.

"Hey, nerd," said a familiar voice.

Brandon turned to see Tommy Malone behind
him, with his sidekick Russell in tow. Tommy was holding a giant
wad of paper.

"Think you dropped these," Tommy said. He
shoved the ball of paper into Brandon's chest. It was composed of
Brandon's flyers, pulled from where he had posted them.

"What-? You...you fucking asshole!" Brandon
said.

"Ooo, think he's upset," Tommy said.

Russell giggled.

"It's not funny, man." Brandon was beside
himself with fury. "This isn't a game! She's missing, she could be
hurt!"

"Aw, nerd's got a girlfriend," Tommy
said.

"So sweet," Russell said with another
giggle.

Brandon swung his fist toward Russell's
giggling face, as hard as he could, but Tommy had the faster
reflexes. He caught Brandon's hand easily. He pulled Brandon close
with one powerfully muscled arm.

"You know what? I hope she is hurt. I hope
she's fucking dead. What are you gonna do about it?"

He threw Brandon down on the sidewalk as
casually as he might swat a bug. Brandon lay there, panting and
red-faced, trembling, while the two of them walked away laughing.
Finally, he crawled to his feet, and picked up the ball of paper.
He carefully unwrapped it, separating each flyer .

I'm going to find her.

Brandon went back to work, and he did not
stop, he did not eat, he did not rest, until each and every flyer
was back where it had been placed.

Then he went home to make more.

______________________

The snake fangs pulsed as they injected
venom into Brandon's hand.

"AHH!" Brandon launched backwards and blew
through the lab wall. He skipped across the ground outside before
impacting into the base of a tree. The tree fell with a crash, and
Brandon scrabbled to his feet.

The snake coils were still wrapped
tight.

Russell leaned close to Brandon's ear,
"Nithe try, but I'm thtill here!"

Damn,
Brandon thought. He had hoped
to knock Russell off or knock him out, but his power had protected
Russell from the impact just as it protected himself. His left hand
and arm were getting puffy and stiff. Brandon reached up with his
right hand to punch Russell in the face, but the angle was awkward;
Russell easily pulled back to avoid the blow. Worse, tiny snakes
were now wriggling in Russell's hair, they snapped at Brandon's
fist with their little fangs.

"Snakes in your hair? You've got to be
kidding me!" Brandon could feel them nipping at his neck now.

A shadow fell over them. Brandon looked up
in time to see Tommy in mid-leap, falling out of the sky. He zipped
to the side and Tommy landed with a thunderous impact, sending
rocks and wood flying.

"Woooo! This shit is fucking AWESOME!" Tommy
said. He grabbed hold of the tree's huge trunk and wrenched it free
of its remaining roots. Gripping it like a giant baseball bat, he
swung it at Brandon and Russell.

Brandon launched into the air, narrowly
avoiding the tree. Russell's coils yanked hard on his neck,
however, sending him in an arc that plowed him right back into the
ground.

Tommy made another great leap, landing
beside them. He seized Russell by the tail, and swung them over his
head, finally flinging them in the direction of a small creek.

Brandon re-directed his path, bringing him
down into the creek bed. He turned so Russell was underneath him
and plunged into the water, grazing the bed of rocks.

He still has to breathe,
he
remembered of his experience in space.
Let's hope he takes in
some water.

Above him he saw Tommy leaping to intercept
them again. Brandon curved his flight and rocketed up to meet him.
At the last moment he turned and cut off his power, allowing Tommy
to collide with Russell's sputtering, fanged face. The jolt was
enough nearly to knock him out as well, but he managed to
reactivate his power and sail down. Russell's coils were loose now.
Brandon shrugged him off and threw him to the ground; he was out
cold.

Suddenly, something hit him in the back: a
big tree limb. Brandon fell to the ground, the wind knocked out of
him.

A massive hand wrapped around his neck and
Tommy hauled him into the air. He slammed Brandon into the ground
and leaned over him.

"You're a tricky little nerd, I'll give ya
that," he said, "but it's 'Game Over' time. And you're all out of
extra lives."

______________________

One of the ships hovered above Brandon, and
a light beamed down on him. Brandon tried to fly up to it, but he
couldn't get off the ground. It was as if his feet were glued to
the rooftop.

Another ship returned, and another, all
casting beams down on Brandon. His arms splayed apart as they held
him, immobile.

At the center of the aperture in the sky,
another light formed, this one blood red.

A figure stepped forth.

______________________

When Brandon woke up the next morning, his
body was sore all over. His feet were blistered and tender, but he
forced his socks and shoes on, somehow, and got back to work.

I'm going to find her.

Beth's father was glad to see him, but had
no good news. Beth was nowhere to be found.

"Thank you so much for putting up all those
flyers," Beth's mom said, hugging him. "You're a sweet boy."

"I was thinking I'd go out to that cabin and
look for her there," Brandon said.

"The police have already been over the whole
area," Beth's dad said. "She's not out there."

"Still, I'd feel better if I at least gave
it a try."

Beth's mom embraced him again. "Such a good
boy. I'll give you the address."

He arrived at the cabin around noon. He
wasn't sure how his dad would feel about what the gravel road had
likely done to the paint job on his Lexus, but at the moment he
really didn't care.

The cabin was modestly sized, one main room,
a kitchen, bath, and two bedrooms. Beth's mom had given him a key,
so he let himself in and looked around. Beth had described it
pretty well. It was a cozy place, but the dusty old photos, the
antique furniture, the lack of anything modern, made it an eerie
snapshot of faded memories.

"Beth?" he called. "Are you here?"

No answer.

He looked around in the nooks and crannies,
like the closets and attic, enough to feel comfortable that Beth
wasn't stuck somewhere in the cabin. Then he checked to make sure
he had everything he needed: his backpack, a full canteen, and his
cell phone, complete with compass app. Satisfied that everything
was present and accounted for, he went outside and locked the door
behind him.

I'm going to find her.

"Beth!" he shouted as he stepped into the
forest. No reply, unless you counted the birds.

For hours he walked, calling her name. He
would range out in one direction until he feared he might get lost,
then turn back. Once back at the cabin, he'd go out in another
direction. He walked in diagonals each time: north, then northeast,
then east, then southeast, and so on, all the way around the
compass. When his voice grew hoarse, he'd drink from the canteen.
Each time at the cabin, he would make sure and refill it.

By late afternoon, his feet hurt terribly.
He was afraid to look at them for fear of seeing how bad the
blisters had become.

"Beth..." he called weakly. His voice was
degrading into a croak by this point, but he wouldn't stop. He
couldn't stop.

I'm going to f-
his foot kicked
something white, causing it to skitter across the ground in front
of him.

Brandon looked down, wiping sweat out of his
eyes.

It was a cell phone.
Beth's cell
phone!

He picked it up of the ground. The screen
was cracked, and the battery apparently dead, but he recognized it:
it was her phone, all right.

"Beth! BETH!!! BEEETTHHH!!" he shouted in
all directions, looking wildly back and forth.

Then he heard it, just barely:
"Brandon...?"

He burst forward in the direction of the
voice, and found behind a copse of trees a crevice. It widened out
into a ravine nearby, but Beth's voice was coming from the tightest
place in the crack, somewhere deep below the ground.

"Beth! I'm coming!" he called.

He searched until the ravine widened enough
to fit inside, then he took off his backpack and lowered himself
down. It was tight, but he crept slowly down until he could find
footing at the bottom. He edged in her direction, and finally, he
saw her dimly, in a sliver of light that made its way down from
above. She was lying at the base of the crack, and had apparently
dislodged a large stone during her fall. It lay across her
feet.

"Brandon? I can't move," she said.

"It's okay! It's okay. I got you. I'm here."
He knelt down over here and removed the canteen strap from around
his neck. He unscrewed the top and held it out for her.

"Here. Water."

She sipped at it thirstily. "Oh. That's
good."

Her glasses were gone, probably during the
fall, and there was a terrible scrape on her right cheek, with
flaps of skin hanging off.

"I've got a first aid kid in my pack up top.
We just need to get you out of here."

"I can't move my legs," she said.

Brandon set the canteen down beside her and
put his hands on the rock. It was very large, and impossibly
heavy.

"Okay, I'm gonna try to move this. It's
probably gonna hurt. A lot."

"Okay."

Brandon got his arms around the stone and
braced his feet. He pulled as hard as he could, but couldn't move
it.

"Damn. This thing is heavy."

"Yeah," she said. "I shouldn't have come
walking out here by myself. Stupid."

"Shh. Stop that. You're going to be okay."
He braced himself again, and pulled at the rock. He strained and
strained. The stone did not budge.

"You have to go get help, Brandon."

"I'm not leaving you here," Brandon
said.

"It's okay. Go get help."

He grabbed the stone again, braced himself,
and pulled with all his might.

"GRAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Nothing.

Brandon sagged against the rock wall,
breathing heavily.

"I'll be okay, just go get help."

Brandon looked up at the declining light.
"Okay. Okay, but I'm leaving the water here for you, okay?"

"Okay."

"I'll be back."

"I know you will."

Brandon ran a hand gently through her
hair.

"You found me," she said. "You're a hero,
Brandon. You're
my
hero."

He leaned down, and placed on her lips one
soft kiss.

"Take that Captain Picard," he said.

She laughed. "Meh. He's bald anyway."

Brandon smiled. "Okay, I'll be back." He
climbed back up out of the crevice, and looked back once, though he
could not see her face from above. Then he grabbed his pack and ran
in the direction of the cabin.