Mermaids and Vampires

17: The Search Begins

~~~~DYLAN~~~~

Monday morning starts like all others, with the awful sound of my alarm clock piercing my ears. What's worse is that I worked so hard yesterday and the day before, that my muscles are sore and I'm too tired to be getting up this early this many days in a row.

I slog through the morning routine, only half awake. After dropping Lauren at her school, I end up at my own, still feeling like a zombie. But there's something else wrong. Aside from the physical tiredness and the muscle aches, I'm not motivated to be here right now, to be up right now, to even bother trying at anything. I'm still trying to figure out why that girl I met at the beach ever got involved with me and much more importantly why she left. She ripped a hole right through my psyche. It feels like everything that happened that night was just a dream, something that happened so fast it couldn't have been real. But dreams like that make waking up torturous.

"Dylan, how's it going?" Blane catches me in the hall as I veer towards my locker.

"I can't stop thinking about her," I say, twisting the dial on my lock.

"What'd you do with the clothes?" He asks.

"Threw them out, I wasn't about to bring them home with me." I reply.

"That was one weird night." Blane remarks, leaning against the locker beside mine.

"I want to find her again. I have too many questions, I've got to find out who she is." I say, exchanging the books in my bag with the ones in my locker. "Do you remember her last name?" I ask.

"Ooh, I think it sounded like airplane..." He tries to remember.

"Apanie!" I shout, so happy to have had my memory triggered. "Thank you so much!"

I close my locker and begin walking to class.

"What are you going to do, look her up?" Blane asks, following close behind me.

"Absolutely, I'll hunt her down, Blane. As long as she lives on dry land I'll find her." I state, overwhelmed with anticipation once more.

Something had gone seriously wrong that night, but I'm convinced that it didn't have to do with me. Maybe it's like Cinderella when she has to return home after midnight. I don't know, but I'll soon find out. Lunch can't come quick enough.

The first periods of the day seem to drag on forever, but the bell eventually rings and I'm free.

I sit with Blane and a few of his friends in the cafeteria. It's crowded and noisy, not the best environment for a bit of internet stocking, but I can handle it. Instead of taking out a lunch, I turn on my phone and open up the internet, doing a quick search for anything that comes up under the name Cordelia Apanie. There's a few hits, but looking closer none of them are her. It's frustrating. You'd think a teenage girl would have at least some internet history.

Abandoning the internet as my search engine, I ditch the cafeteria and head for the front lobby of our school. It's here that I find the old fashioned way of looking people up; the phone book, located conveniently under a pay phone.

Obviously her first name won't be in there, but as long as she lives in this town her parent's last name will be. 

Surprisingly, and to my dismay, there's no Apanie in the phone book. Not even one.

The next logical solution, obviously, is to check the phone books of neighbouring towns. I head to the school library to see if they have any copies.  

It takes me all lunch, and I end up calling six different numbers looking for her, but none of the Apanies say that they have a daughter named Cordelia.

I've come to a disappointing conclusion; either she has parents who are compulsive liars, or she made up a fake name.

It only leaves me with more questions about what she was really trying to do that night.