Maria

Her hair was the color of squid ink, and sometimes on long weary days it formed into a bush like state. He remembered when he would come home to her sweet smile, or when her toys were scattered around in messy piles from her attempting to clean the room. Those were the days he missed the most. She was only about two weeks away from her 10th birthday when she didn’t come home from school. The rain poured so hard that day that the streets were flooded by noon.

It appeared on the news at eight a.m on a tuesday morning just one week after her 10th birthday. Her dad hoped and prayed for her to be safe as he watched the report on his television. The area they were at was murky and hidden by a few trees. The land was the same brown as a warm cup of hot chocolate and the mud looked like it had been melting into the gravel. A ringing from the other room buzzed him out of the state he was engulfed in. He stumbled off the couch and ran toward the room that had his phone. “Hello, is this Mr.Woods?”, said the voice. “We need you to confirm a body”.

Three years pass and the sun that shines through his windows gets dimmer everyday. Bottles nearly blocking the front door to the cold apartment rattled as he entered his home. The walls that were once a vivid yellow were painted over to be a numbing eggshell white. There were no traces of toys or drawings, nor were there traces of a child being there in general.

Woods pinched his forehead as he made his way toward his blue couch. With heavy breaths and red eyes he managed to drift asleep almost automatically. He knew that his habits hurt him, but ever since that day he lost her everything seems like it’s been falling deeper and deeper into the darkness. Small faint footsteps crossed the room and the bottles rattled once again. A translucent child-like figure curiously travelled around the house. They rested their small hand on the shoulder of Woods, and strangely it felt familiar to him. He opened his eyes to find the figure staring at him, but he knew already who they were. Tears blurred his vision as he tried to grab onto his now ghostly daughter. “I’m sorry!”, he screamed, “Please I just want you to stay!”, he pleaded. The child took a look over at the bottles and once again at her dad. She lifted her hand off his shoulder and made her way to the door with her head lowered. Her dad tried to get up from the couch, but couldn't find his strength to leave.

Woods woke up with beads of sweat rushing down his face. A barn owl rested outside his foggy window and tapped on the glass. The man got up from the couch and rushed outside his doors. His heart raced as he made his way downtown to the liquor store. Empty cars filled the streets and with many people walked the sidewalks. One of those people was a small girl who moved faster than the rest. A tall man in all black seemed to be following close behind her, and soon he began to reach after her wrist. Like instinct Woods ran over to the girl and called out to her, “Dina! There you are I’ve been searching everywhere for you!”. The girl ran towards him and hid behind his pant leg. She had been shaking fiercely and had gripped the denim of his jeans so tightly that you could see the full outline of his leg. The strange man, who had been following the girl, ran toward a crowded area and never looked back. “Thanks”, said the little girl. She had been shifting her head left and right searching for the man who might still be tracking her. There had been no more signs of him being anywhere near. Her hair had been cut short into a bob and her jeans had been drenched in mud. “Where are your parents?”, he asked. She simply told him that she had run away from her mom and then pulled his pant leg to lead him to a gas station. Woods sighed and followed her lead.

They entered the quaint little gas station and looked around. He saw the girl grab a yogurt cup then rummage through her pockets pulling out the cloth stitched inside. Her hands gently placed the cup down and back to where she had found it. Defeated she looked at the floor and asked him if he could wait for her while she used the bathroom. Woods nodded and she walked off into the back. The yogurt cup had only been one dollar, so he grabbed it and made his first purchase in 2 years without buying alcohol. The cup was white with a couple of strawberries plastered on the front of the plastic sheet surrounding it. The girl walked out of the bathroom searching for the stranger that she had walked in with. When she spotted him she ran toward his direction and pulled him to ask him to leave the station. As soon as they got out he stopped and so did the girl. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the cup of yogurt. The girl's eyes lit up and a huge Cheshire grin appeared on her face. He pointed towards a bench and they went over to sit down. Her legs dangled over the edge, swinging back and forth and back and forth. For the first time in a while the sun in the sky seemed a little brighter.

She ripped open the yogurt cup and used the metal top as a makeshift spoon. It was hard to believe she had been so scared earlier. At this time Woods couldn't help but think about his daughter and if the reason she didn't come back in the first place was because the situation was exactly like the girls. The only difference being was that no one had come to save her that day. He slumped over onto his knees and pressed his fingers together to gently put onto his forehead. “She looked like you, a little”, he whispered. He remembered his daughter's smile and the sparkle in her eyes when she got excited about something. Woods gave a tranquil grin towards the girl and gave her his name. She wiped her mouth and responded, “Maria!”, she then continued eating the rest of her yogurt. He gave out a chuckle and looked at the clouds repeating her name.

When Maria had finished her yogurt she walked over to the nearby trashcan to dump the cup. She walked back over to the bench to where Woods was. “Doesn't that one look like a bear?” asked Maria as she pointed to a cloud in the baby blue sky. “I think it looks more like my first dog”, Woody responded. They sat there for a couple hours discussing the clouds and fun memories about their lives. As the day passed the sun got brighter and closer to be that once vivid yellow that painted his apartment's walls.

“I’m never going back home. I want to stay here forever!” enthusiastically yelled Maria. The mood shifted when she said that. Woody remembered how scared he was the first day his daughter had been gone, and it broke his heart that Maria would consider never going back to her family. He gently put his hand onto her shoulder and said, “Nothing last’s forever Maria. It’s getting late so we should go find your parents now”. Maria looked away as if he had said nothing and continued to watch the clouds. She sighed and gripped the bench as if her life depended on it. A second after she grabbed it she let go and agreed to go find her parents.

Both of them strolled down the street once again to walk down to the police department. The birds grabbing onto the power lines above them chirped and sang into the air. They soon reached the police department in no time, and asked the officer in the front if there had been any missing children cases recently about Maria. A couple snoozing in the back almost fell out of their chairs after they heard her name. Woods looked down at her and saw that her big eyes had been holding back tears, and her hands were soon slipping off of his denim and out into the air to reach for her parents. “Maria!”, shouted a crying woman who then ran head first ,with her husband, toward her. Woody explained everything and apologized for not bringing her in sooner. The man who had hugged Maria looked up at Woody and thanked him so many times that his voice got raspy. Soon after they had reunited they had left the building. Maria gave Woody a small sad wave because she knew that they would never meet again. A single tear fell from his face as he waved back. At that moment everything felt right like it had stopped falling. In the distance beyond in the sky there was a barn owl freely flying towards the sun.

When he got home to his cold apartment he started clearing out those rattling bottles and dirty dishes. He bought a bucket of bicycle yellow paint and began to turn a new leaf.