Finding Opal

Chapter 4

Chapter

          Reality check please!

          Crazy? Yes.

          Dangerous? Oh yeah.

          Huge trouble beyond my belief and understanding visible in my future? Definitely.

The next day after school while I was channel surfing I flipped through the news.  It wasn’t even five yet so I wasn’t expecting anything about Opal; if there was anything it wouldn’t be on until around six.  I flipped past Channel 5 and once again something caught my eye.  Did the caption say “found”?  I quickly and swiftly went back from channel seven.  No way was I going to repeat the same mistake of spazzing out and losing control so I would miss whatever this was, I was getting pretty good at self-control lately, if I do say so myself.

          Thankfully the story was still on.  False alarm though.  It was just a story about a found dog that was lost for about a week now.  The picture showed the thankful owners hugging their lost pet.  Nothing important, I should have known better. 

          This was the kind of news that we should be getting in Betty Valley, we were too small for huge phenomenon crimes like this.  If you looked in our history books about crime I can practically guarantee that there will be nothing like what happened to Opal.  We don’t really have any crazy people that would try to get a person like this.  This is completely wild for us. We should have stuff on the news like what’s going on in other states; big stuff that would never happen here.  Lost dogs being found, the latest sale at the supermarket, student athlete of the week, weather effecting other people in our great country.  This isn’t what should be on the news. 

Frankly, this was scaring me.  What if this starts happening to other people?  This is a small town, anyone could be targeted next.  That anyone could be me.  That anyone could be my mother, or father, or my grandma, or my neighbor, or my teacher, or the guy I passed walking home from the bus stop a few weeks ago.  This needed to stop.

          I was really getting serious about finding Opal, I was determined.  One thing everyone knew about me was if I set my mind to something it almost always got done.  Once when I was six, I wanted a special doll for my birthday.  Everything about that doll, I knew.  From the price to where it was manufactured to how long it would take for shipping to get to my house.  I printed out all the information about the doll and gave it to my parents.  Of course they got the doll for me.  I thought at the time they wanted to reward all my research and determination, but I later found out they were going to get the doll for me anyways.  But that still didn’t dampen my spirit that I found out everything about that doll that there was, I was proud of myself.

          I started a whole wall above my desk in my room dedicated to information about Opal.  Anything I could get about her.  Newspaper scraps, pictures, spare information I had written down from the news.  Anything that was released about her I had in the small space above my desk. 

          It was my secret.  No one knew about the information or the beginning of my plan to find Opal Read.  And I wanted to keep it that way.  It would stay my secret until after Opal and I were safe and sound back home.  Maybe I would get to be on the news, maybe even the national news.  Maybe I would get my own special at 6:00 PM.  Maybe people would start to hang out with me on Saturday nights.  Maybe Marty would ask me out (finally!).  Maybe I would get fan mail.  Maybe…

          S T O P.  It would be good if I recued Opal before I start thinking of all these impossibilities. 

          No one went in my room, so that part was safe.  The part I was beginning to have trouble with was that I was thinking about my plan during school and my grades have been slipping.  I have always been an A-B student, how would I explain to Mom and Dad about my grades?  Lately I’ve been averaging a C-, with the occasional C+ if I got lucky on an answer.  I guess it was clear I had to bring up my grades in order to keep the suspicion on the DL. 

     ***

          Before bed I went outside to take another walk.  I had a feeling I would be doing this a lot.  The fresh air and surroundings helped clear my head so I could think more about Opal.  On my walk I passed a child’s swing set.  I stood there for a moment; just watching, waiting.  For what I could not tell you, but I was waiting.

I stood there for a good five minutes before moving on.  After I left the swing set I felt refreshed, clear minded.  Like a hypnotist with a watch on a chain; swinging back and forth, back and forth.  My mind wandered to places I’d never thought to go before.  I thought about school in a way I’d never thought about before.  I thought about my future again, which wasn’t unusual, but I thought about college and family.  I thought about love and jobs.  But most of all I thought about Opal. 

I thought about her curly dark brown hair.  Her milk chocolate eyes that looked so deep into you when you saw her.  I felt so close to her but in reality I’d just heard her name for the first time a few days ago.  Maybe it was because all the research I’d done on her or the pictures of her on my wall above my desk. 

I stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk.  Slowly I was realizing I didn’t know a thing about this girl, I barely knew her last name.  I’d never even met her!  I doubt I’d ever been within miles of her.  Still I felt a connection.  A connection that was stronger than any connection with even my best friends.  

Who was this girl? At that moment I wanted to know everything about her.  What was her favorite color?  Her favorite food? Her favorite summer activity? Winter?  Did she play any sports?  What was her family like? Did she have a crazy Aunt Sally?  Did she have any pets?  Was she a good student?  What is her middle name?  I wanted to know all of this and I wanted immediate answers.  But no one had answers, no one except this girl herself. 

This made me want to find her even more.