Marc awoke to the sound of his alarm, drawing him out of his dreams. He was lifting the covers over his head, intending to block out the noise, and he could hear the faint groans of his roommate, the muffled sounds of a "see ya later, John" from whatever girl he had had in his bed that night. Marc peeked out from under his blankets to see John, eyes still closed, treading like a zombie towards the clock, and fumbling with the buttons trying to turn it off. He proceeded to fall back onto his bed, snoring softly.
Marc, sleep still in his eyes, stood up from his bed and began getting ready. He looked at John sprawled across the bed, his mouth wide open, slightly drooling. His chestnut brown hair still had gel in it, and his face was covered in lipstick stains. He reeked of beer and marijuana, although he claimed to be, "totally straight, man".
Marc left the room and walked quietly down the hallway to the bathroom. No one ever woke up until after seven, which was why, even though John hated it, Marc liked to set the alarm for six. He hated the crowded bathrooms, having to brush his teeth and wash his face in front of the other guys in Hermann hall. Most of all, he couldn’t talk to her in front of John. His roommate was constantly asking him why he never went to parties with him, or why he wouldn't be his wingman, or let John be his wingman, or even just think about wingman-ing. "You know," he would say, " 'cause we're bros". But they were not bros. Because John would never understand about the girl. He would never understand the feeling of being completely in love with someone four years younger than him, most definitely underage. He would never understand not being able to tell her how he felt, because John did that just about every night to a different girl.
Marc pulled out his phone, ready to dial her number, when John walked into the bathroom
"I know you like to wake up early," he said, his eyes half closed,"but do all your friends wake up at the same time? Anyways theres a guy waiting for you outside our door.”
"What friend?" Marc didn't have many friends in Champagne.
“All he said is that he really needed to talk to you, just don’t do it in the room, I’m hoping to get a few hours of sleep in before my intro to…” John trailed off. “I don’t know, my intro to something ology. Anyways I’m tired so keep the noise down.”
He put his hand over his face, attempting to block any light out of his eyes, and tripped down the hall to the room.
Marc looked at his phone in his hand. He was curious about the person mentioned, but John might have just been hallucinating. It’s happened before, when he had partied a little too hard. He thought about how disappointed John’s parents must be with him. Marc wasn’t sure how John was still in school. He tried to picture him as a kid, one hundred percent sober, actively participating in his classes. He thought it was funny to think of his roommate as an innocent child. They had gone to high school together. John really had not always been like this. Something changed two years ago when he graduated high school. He had always kind of been a playboy, but he had never been as much of a burnout as he was then. He had good grades, and he knew when to stop drinking. After he graduated though, John didn’t stop as much.
He decided to see if there was a real living person outside his room. He couldn’t imagine who would need to talk to him so urgently.
* * * * * * * * *
As Marc walked down the hallway, John was just pulling the covers over his head.
It had been a crazy night for John, and he remembered it like it was a dream. He had drunk a lot, and he couldn’t remember the exact moment when things started to become hazy. There had been a woman, yes, although he couldn’t remember her name. At least she had left when Marc’s god-forsaken alarm clock had jerked him out of sleep.
John hated that he had become like this, but he had no other choice. When he stopped, if he ever sobered up, all he would think about would be the girl. By some ugly twist of fate she was born four years after him, and there was nothing he could do to forget about her, no matter how underage she was. He often imagined if things would have been different if they had met ten years later, instead of in highschool, when their age difference didn’t matter. They would be in a movie theatre, she would spill popcorn on him, smile her small, crooked smile that he loved, apologize, and introduce herself. There wouldn’t be talk of age, or popularity. He would laugh at her jokes, she would pity him enough to laugh at his bad ones.
But that’ll never happen he thought. Someone’s probably already stolen her from me.
* * * * * * * * *
Marc looked at his phone. He wanted more than anything to call her and hear her voice, but he was too close to his room to start talking to her. Someone would hear, most likely John. When Marc and John started college, Marc really wanted to be John’s friend, but he partied too much to ever have time to talk. John always tried to get Marc to come drinking with him, but Marc always refused.
In October of last year, Marc was studying in his bed, his thermos of tea next to him. Every sip of tea he took, the room spun a little faster. The words became gradually harder to read. Marc didn’t know what was happening, he thought he was sick, and he kept drinking his tea, hoping it would bring everything back to normal. He didn’t remember much from that night, only that at one point John came in, and they talked for a while. The room was spinning. Marc stopped trying to be friends with John after that.
Marc walked down the hallway and as he turned a corner, someone ran straight into him. The boy looked up. It was her brother. He had the same eyes as her. He hadn’t seen those eyes for a long time.
“Tom” he said, “What are you doing here?”
Looked frantically from Marc to John, John to Marc, as if he was just seeing them. His face was red and puffy, just like how she looked when she cried. His dark green eyes were glassy, and it looked like he was having trouble keeping them open. He loved her. Marc knew that. He might even have loved her more than Marc did. He started opening and closing his mouth, as if waiting for the words to come out. John, still confused about the situation, must have become curious, and sat up a little more on his bed. Tom finally got the words out.
“It’s Talia.” As he spoke John dropped the glass of water he was holding and spilled it all over himself. John hardly even noticed the water.
“Talia?” he said, eyes full concern. “Talia who?”
Tom glanced at him, a little phased by the outburst.
“Uh..Talia Bennett, my sister.”
At this John jumped out of bed, grabbed Tom by the collar, and put his face close to his. Marc could smell the stench of the liquor on his breath from five feet away, he could only imagine what Tom was going through at that moment.
“What’s. Wrong. With. Talia.” John almost growled this sentence, with every word pushing Tom up against the wall. Tom shoved him away, and wiped the spit off his face. He rubbed his collar bone.
“...She’s missing. I was going to tell you that, you know.”
Marc was sitting down on the bed. He was confused about John’s outburst, scared about Talia, and yet happy, because this connection with Tom is the closest he’d been to Talia in a year.
John had started pacing. He kept looking up at Tom, then down at his feet.
“Okay, okay” he was saying, “Everything is fine. We’ll just search all over Illinois. We’ll file a police report. We’ll put up posters.” He looked at Tom accusingly. “Don’t tell me you didn’t think of posters?” He almost yelled it.
Tom looked up, and realized John was talking to him. “I--I’m sorry. Wh-Who are you again?”
“I’m John, Talia’s--” John closed his mouth, then started over. “I’m John.”
“Okay John, thanks for all your help, but I think I’ll talked to Marc about this.”
John was stunned. He sat back down on his bed. He looked over at Marc and Tom, talking about where they last saw her, who she was with, and every now and then glancing at John, still curious. The whole day went by in a trance. All he could think about was how Marc knew Talia, how Talia was missing, and what he was going to do to save her.
It started to rain.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Marc walked in the dorm with a sense of disappointment. He had spent the whole day with Tom, at Talia’s house, at her school, at all her friends’ houses. They found nothing. Marc felt like his whole world was closing in on him, like the walls of the dorms were shrinking. He could not imagine a life without Talia.
To Marc’s surprise, when he walked into the dorm room, John was at his desk. Even more surprisingly, he looked to be actually studying. He had set up a makeshift office, with his phone next to him, his laptop in the center, and stacks of paper surrounding it. He was in the middle of a phone call, so Marc sat down on his bed, watching John with curiosity, regarding him in a whole new way.
John noticed Marc. He nodded to him and kept talking to someone on the phone, writing down information on one of his many legal pads. He hung up.
Marc waited a few seconds, but he could not bear it any longer. “So,” he said casually, “How do you know Talia?”
John jumped at the sound of her name. He hesitated, not quite sure how to respond.
“She’s….a friend. How d’you know her?”
Marc was fairly certain she was not just a friend, but he nodded his head.
“Talia is…” he smiled after saying her name, “She’s my friend too.” John seemed to accept this response and went back to his writing.
“So what are you doing?” Marc could hear himself bothering John, but he was too curious.
“Looking for Talia.”
Marc smiled, “You think she’s in your laptop?”
John rolled his eyes. “No, I’ve been contacting people all day, looking for a lead, who saw her last, that kind of thing. The most productive thing I’ve done all day is this, though.” John turned his computer to show Marc. “I found a website that’s able to track people using only their phone number. You do need a general location, though, so I input a bunch of possible locations she could be. I’m waiting for the results now.”
Marc was impressed. He had no idea how smart John was.
“Hey John?”
“Hmmm?”
“How do you really know Talia?” John jumped again.
“Talia? I told you...she’s just a friend”
“No one does all this for just a friend, and I can’t say her name without you jumping. What happened between you two?”
John turned around and looked Marc in the eye.
“You really want to know huh?” Marc nodded. John reluctantly started again. “I’ve been in love with that girl since I was a freshman in high school.”
Marc’s jaw dropped. That was the year he met her. He didn’t know how to respond.
“We couldn’t tell anyone, obviously, because of the age difference, but I didn’t care.”He started getting a far-away look in his eyes, smiling, thinking of his past. “She used to to look up at me, from her dark green eyes, and say, ‘John, I’m the luckiest girl alive.’ Things changed after I turned eighteen though. Told me it wasn’t worth it, we would get into trouble. I wasn’t worth it. Said we should just be friends.”
Marc was shaking his head. This isn’t happening he thought. This was hard for Marc to hear, because he remembered the same things. They would be sitting somewhere, holding hands, getting lost in Talia’s green Irises. ‘Mark,’ she would say, ‘I’m the luckiest girl alive.’ He believed her. Then, when he turned eighteen, she told him she wanted to be friends. Marc was scared and confused. He started to cry. He hadn’t cried since his eighteenth birthday.
“Marc?” John asked, “Did I say something?”
Marc shook his head. “She played us.” He sighed, and wiped his hand across his face. She played us.
John was still confused. “What do you mean?”
“She used to say those same things to me.”
“What? I don’t believe you. “
“It’s true. I was in love with her too John.”
John didn’t want to believe it. Talia was the one thing in the world that was never supposed to change for him, and now her whole world was changing. He looked back to his laptop. The screen was showing a map of illinois, with a red dot for where the cell phone is.
“Uhm, I can’t deal with this.” Talia loves me he thought to himself. “I have to find her.”
Marc looked down. He understood. John didn’t want to lose Talia, even if she was just a thought in his head.
Marc looked down. He understood. John didn’t want to lose Talia, even if she was just a thought in his head.
“I found her!!” John shouted it. “That’s weird, she’s in Champagne.”
“No way.”
“DUDEDUDEDUDE SHE’S IN OUR SCHOOL!”
Marc looked up. “What?”
John started dialing her number. He put the phone to his ear.
Just then Marc heard a faint ringing noise.
“Oh my god is that her phone??” Marc and John jumped up and walked toward the ringing. It was coming from the end of the hall. Neither boy could believe it. They were about to see Talia Bennett.
John reached the door first, and paused. “Do we want to go in?”
“Of course!!”
Marc tested the door, it was unlocked. He pushed the door open a crack. He could hear her voice.
He was about to open it all the way, when he heard something that he thought he would never hear again. John pressed his ear to the crack.
Talia’s sing-songy voice flowed through the door.
“You know something Max? I’m the luckiest girl alive.”
