The Girl In The White Labcoat

Where'd You Go

Hello, ghosts! You know, I gotta get at least a little dark. My brain just goes there. Always. I can't help myself. Thanks and enjoy!

The next day, I awoke in Levy's bed alone. I had a horrible headache. Looking around, I noticed her door was still barricaded and the window was wide open. I got up and went through it, searching around the house. It was silent and giving off the feeling of emptiness. I tried the front door. It was locked. I texted Levy, asking where she went.

After getting no reply in thirty minutes, I tried calling, but it just went straight to voice mail. I went back through her window into her room and dismantled the pile of furniture in front of her door. Once cleared, I searched the house. No one. What the hell is going on? I wondered to myself, starting to panic a little. I felt a bit winded as I went through the house. That should've been my first clue. I was in great shape. I didn't get winded easily.

Suddenly, blood started coming from my nose. I darted into the bathroom and looked at the mirror to see a clammy, pale face. Shit. I've seen that face before. I'd been drugged. But how? It was just Levy and me last night in her bed. I darted back into her room to search for clues. Nothing but a note on the bed side table. I snatched it up and read the sloppy hand writing.

I know you've been getting my daughter into trouble here lately and encouraging her to rebel against me. I don't want my little girl to have such negative influences in her life so I've taken her away. You are never to contact her again. -Levy's loving father

No... Fuck! I didn't waste another second. I sprinted to school - having to pause in moments of dizziness to catch my breath - and burst through the door to the staff room. It was still too early for classes so most of the teachers were there, including the one person that could help me.

"Mr. Clive, I need to talk to you in private. It's urgent," I slurred the words out in a rush. He gave me a puzzled look but jumped up and went to follow me out of the room, dismissing a few coworkers who offered their assistance. Once we were a safe distance away, I turned toward him and handed him the letter.

His face paled as he read it. "Tell me everything you know, now," he ordered.

I didn't hesitate. I told him everything about waking up this morning with her gone. I didn't even glaze over the fact that I had been spending the night with her. This wasn't the time to feel shameful. We needed to find our shrimp and fast.

Unfortunately, it wasn't that simple. We did everything we could. The police sent out a missing persons notice, but it was fruitless. I had searched the whole house hundreds of times trying to find something new. I had scoured the town trying to see if she was able to leave a bread crumb trail. Nothing. The only thing we were able to find was their cellphones abandoned and waterlogged in the kitchen sink. There were no new leads for almost a year before the police dropped the case. They pronounced her either dead or never to be found. I didn't want to believe it. My shrimp was tough and a genius. She'd find a way. She'd survive and escape. I knew she would. I just had to keep searching.

Mr. Clive never stopped looking either. We spent years going over old and new ideas together even after I had graduated high school, but eventually we had to accept the hard facts. It's been five years. She would've escaped by now or at least found a way to contact us. We needed to move on.

I was working in a repair shop and my manager wanted to make me the lead mechanic, but he first wanted me to dedicated myself to my work. Gildarts had been encouraging me to live my life. He would tell me that I'm still young and had a future, but Levy never left my mind. I still had a small hope that she was out there somewhere, alive.

I still loved that small girl in the white lab coat. She had been a beacon of light in my life. She made me want to be a better person, to be good enough for her. And that's what I did. When I wasn't searching for her, I was getting my life together. I worked, ate, and slept with the idea that she was going to come home to me, and I was going to be someone worth coming home to. I didn't allow myself to fall into the darkness. I held onto my strength and made myself a respectable adult. She wasn't going to come home to a broken man. I would skim the news every now and then, just in case something came up, but nothing ever did.

One day, while walking to work, I caught a glimpse of blue out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see nothing but an empty alleyway. It was just my imagination. It wasn't the first time my eyes played such mean tricks on me. I continued on into work. I had been showing up an hour early everyday for a month now to show the manager that I would dedicate myself to the job. I couldn't keep actively searching for the rest of my life. Levy wouldn't want that. I had to just believe in the shrimp and wait for her to make her way home. Upon clocking in, I started my usual routine: cleaning tools and stations, restocking fluids, and opening the garage doors.

It was another long and slow day. I was working on the brakes of a car when I saw that flash of blue again, but there was nothing. Maybe I didn't get enough sleep last night. When the day was over, I stayed another hour to count the cash drawers and file some paperwork before heading home.

As I walked, I felt like I was being followed. That old fighter's instinct was still sharp even though I had not been in a fight in years. I pretended not to notice it as I walked - not slowing down or picking up the pace. If someone was going to attack me, I wanted to catch them off guard with my self defense. Surprise was a great tactic, but nothing happened until I got home.

The front door was already cracked open, but it wasn't busted or jimmied. It had been lock picked. In either case, I knew someone had broken in. I stepped inside quietly in case they were still there and waited, listening. I heard a small movement upstairs, so I crept up towards the sound. I peered through a few doorways finding nothing until I heard a creak from my bed in my room a meter away. Slowly and carefully, I peered inside.

There she was; small, blue-haired, and very thin. She had dark circles under her eyes, and her skin was nearly translucent. She looked like she had been starved nearly to death. And beaten... I thought to myself angrily when I spotted several old looking bruises on her body. Her clothes were tattered and soiled. They were the exact same ones she was wearing when her father took her, I realized. She was perched at the edge of my bed with her head between her knobbly, emaciated knees. Her hair had lost the shine it had back then, as it lied limp down her back. It was much longer, and unkept.

She just sat there looking at the floor with tears falling from her face. I didn't know what to do. There were so many ways I had played out our reunion in my head but the image of her kept me held in place. Her body looked like it would break if I tried hugging her. She just looked so fragile, physically and mentally. I couldn't make myself move towards her.

The wood floor beneath me suddenly creaked as I unconsciously shifted my weight. Her head snapped up, and there was fear in her eyes. We held our gazes for a moment, both afraid to make a move.

"Shrimp." My old nickname for her escaped my lips, and I fell to my knees. My heart began to race. She was really here. Five years of searching and here she was, broken and abused. I had failed to protect her from whatever horrors she had experience all this time. Tears betrayed my hard, stony face. I would've hidden myself, but I didn't want to look away from her. I was still afraid that she was a hallucination and if I blinked, she'd disappear again.

She pushed herself off the bed and came to me, wrapping her thin arms around my head and whispering, "I'm home."