Please, Find Me

Chapter 21

Hey man, pick up. Where are you? Your phone keeps going to voicemail and it's making me naar.

Hey. Hello Mickey Mouse? Answer.

Hello. Dude, seriously where the fuck are you? Your phone is never switched off.

Are you still pissed at me? Stop acting like a bloody moffie. Suck it up man.

Okay hello... Sorry. Ignore the last message.

Agh, naaier. Answer your fucking phone. We need you.

Sorry... Okay fine I'm sorry okay. I'm sorry about the shit I started at the restaurant. But seriously, I don't want to drive right now and Dahlia can't drive either. This is the last time. I promise.

Hello? Mikaeel... Mickey... Mickey Man! Hello? I busted 10 bucks on all the texts I just sent you. Answer.

Please man. Please. We really need your help. Dahlia can't actually stand right now.

Okay I get it I'm sorry. Answer. Answer. Answer. Shuaib just told me to fuck off so he's a no-go. Please man... I promise after today we will never, ever ask for help again.

Hello. Okay I'm desperate. It's been 2 hours... Oh wait, it's cool. These guys know Dahlia. They'll give us a lift. Bye man.

Mikaeel didn't think of her as she was just then.

He thought of her when she was 15 years old and she was madly in love with Ihsaan and he was madly in love with her. She was round and curvaceous with big pink cheeks and blue tipped braces that they loved to laugh at. She had a healthy dark brown complexion and her hair... It was such a fucking mess with that blonde shit in it but she managed to pull it off. 

She was like his little sister and he loved her for it.

And they were good together. She would sneak away from her house to meet Ihsaan whenever they played soccer on Sundays and she always stole a tub of her mum's koeksisters for them to eat. She and Ihsaan constantly ganged up on him for whatever shit it was they felt like as they prodded and teased and laughed at him. They laughed at the way he was always studying and at the way he would parrot off his textbook when he thought no one was listening. But still, they would end up joining him when he was studying and he would help them with their homework when they had finished off their food and waited for one of their parents to fetch them.

But that Dahlia had died a long time ago. She had died on a cold winter's day when her parents were out and her father's best friend had come to visit.

This Dahlia was but a shell living merely by breathing. She had no soul and no heart and no matter how hard Ihsaan had tried, he could never bring her back. This wasn't her. The near skeletal frame, the sunken eyes, the bright red lipstick splashed across her lips. She wasn't the one who was draped across the backseat of his car as he dropped them home nor was she the one that had undressed herself before him in order to fulfil a need that had stemmed from the filth running through her veins.

His Dahlia was sweet and caring and she loved her mother's koeksisters and her father's milkshake. She had spots across her cheeks and bright, brown eyes that twinkled in the sun as she looked at Ihsaan. She was the sister he had always wanted and wished he had. She was the sunshine and when she was with them, all they ever wanted to do was make her smile.

How could he mourn for the girl covered by a blue sheet on a gurney down the hall? How could he mourn for someone that he had already mourned for 8 years?

Mikaeel couldn't speak or move or stand.

He could only watch as Dahlia's mother's knees buckled under the strain of the words that had seemed to drown her. And he could only watch as she sought solace in her husband's arms as the sunshine in her life had been snuffed out in an instant.