Half My Heart

3) Owen

"Had trouble sleeping?" Dad says, looking at me with concern in his eyes as I enter the kitchen.

"Yeah."

I sit down at the table and look at the food not really hungry but knowing I need to take something or else I'll be cranky until lunch.

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!"

Not that it helps though.

I finally settle on a chocolate chip bagel and slowly chew it while the news is blaring on the tv in our kitchen.

"Police are investigating the strange disappearance of 17 year old Ivan Rybny after his sailboat was found floating by Waverly Pier without the young man in sight on Thursday night at 9 pm."

I stopped chewing my bagel, my attention solely focused on the screen.

"If anybody knows any information regarding his disappearance please call the local authorities."

I put my bagel down, suddenly losing my appetite. Eat or not, I'd still feel that gnawing feeling of guilt eating at me. It didn't matter if it was on a full stomach or an empty one. It wasn't really a fun Saturday anymore if a guy I've known since grade school was missing.

I was pushed out of my reverie by my dad.

"How does one of the best swimmers and sailors in the town end up drowning?"

I suddenly felt a chill go within me.

Drowning.

That didn't sit well with me.

"But he didn't drown," I growled quietly.

"Hopefully he didn't drown, but there aren't many other possibilities as to what could have happened to him, son."

"Maybe he fell in the water, but was picked up by a passing ship and ended up on the other side of the lake?" My mood was darkening slowly.

Despite my hopeful words that he was alive and well, with a police department from a different county calling our sheriff and telling him Ivan was alive, my head had other thoughts. Images of Ivan's lifeless body lying at the bottom of the lake: his skin becoming pale and stiff and his eyes empty of any joy or kindness. The only things keeping him company were the fish and the algae and he would fade into obscurity, being one with the ocean separated from the rest of humanity. The image made me shudder.

"Hopefully," my father agreed, sensing my unease, "Until we know further, the only thing we can do is hope. Hope is the last to die after all." 

Indeed, the irony of those words made me mood darker. Those were the last words mom said to us before she died last year. That did not make me feel any better about the situation.

"If the police don't confirm that Ivan is alive or dead, then I'll hold onto my other theory."

Yeah, this doesn't feel like a solid logical theory that the police might come up with if it's coming from my dad. I sigh.

"He may have drowned and get pulled down by the Rusalky and got transformed into one of them."

I looked at my dad straight in the face, looking for any tell-tale signs of joking. His face was stony and serious. This wasn't a joke.

"Dad, I don't think we should joke about such things. This isn't a topic to joke about."

Next thing you know, dad might say that he was a merman and I could breathe under water without trouble because of my half-mermaid genetics. Maybe I'd even get a tale!

"I'm serious son. This is a potential theory that nobody might have considered."

Someone might have considered it of course. A five year-old, perhaps? I don't know whether my dad had such ideas in his head before he met mom, or if he started getting them from all the Ukrainian folktales mom told me. If the former, then mom's stories just helped increase his wild imagination. In cases like these, this wasn't a good time for that imagination. I just wish my dad would learn.

"You know I don't believe you dad."

"I know, Owen. You're too old for fairytales."

My father emphasized this in air quotes, of course.

"I still love you though."

He looked at me with a tender expression on his face, "I love you too son."

Then the tender expression left his face and was reply by a look of determination. He got up from his seat and went to the oven, opening its door and a savory smell wafted throughout the room.

"Now back to business. You're gonna go to the Rybny household on your route to practice and give them this dish of stuffed cabbages," he says as he's holding out the tray in front of him.

I start getting my things ready and feel a new wave of apprehension. I have to see Alaina tomorrow. I haven't seen her since gym class on Thursday. I haven't seen Ivan since Thursday either. How do I talk to her?

My dad gives me the pack of stuffed cabbages as I head out the door.

I open the door and begin to leave but my dad grabs my hand before my foot steps through the threshold.

"Son, be careful."

His blue eyes hold a strange light in them and I can't help but have a feeling that this is the calm before the storm.

"I will," I tell him before I pass through the threshold.