My Calamity

We didn't realize Penelope wasn't in her room until her mother retrieved the skeleton key and unlocked her bedroom door and we found the doors to the porch open. Penelope had left and we had no idea when she'd left and where she had gone to.

We all took separate directions and went looking. I patrolled around the college, checked the parks, and the beach. She wasn't anywhere, and her phone was off. As the night passed I grew my more anxious. Every scenario my mind concocted was worse then the one before. My imagination was vivid and if anything did happen to her, I don't know, I wouldn't be able to live with myself, let alone live at all.

It was sad really, to understand that you loved a person so much you wouldn't be able to live without them, and it wasn't if they left you, or if they had to move, or something but the type of separation that no amount of phone calls, plane trips, or letters could get to. I didn't want to think, believe, that I could loose Penelope. It was the saddest kind of realization and it wasn't helpful when I was frantically trying to find her.

My phone buzzed in the cup holder as I rounded the college for a third time and I grabbed it hoping it was Penelope. It wasn't her, but a text message from my mother. Come home, it read. There's nothing more you can do.

I didn't want to believe there wasn't anything else I could do. I wanted to believe that if I thought hard enough I could figure out where she would go. I wanted to believe that she would call and I would pick her up and I wouldn't have to worry about her anymore. I hated worrying, and I really worried about her. I mean, what if she was bleeding out in alley because someone had beaten her up and stole her wallet. That would be plausible if I thought she had taken her wallet with her, which I didn't.

I dialed her number and listen to it ring once before picking up the voice mail. I'd left her at least twenty other voice messages, and a good amount of text messages as well. I wished she'd just pick up and let me know she was okay. "Penelope," I began after the beep, "I'm going home. Please do not do anything stupid, and if you need me to come get you please call. I don't care what time it is. And my window is going to be open, my rooms in the back of the house, there's a trellis you can climb. I love you, okay. I love you and you can't do something stupid because that'll kill me. Please don't do anything --"

The voice mail cut me off and I tossed my phone into the cup angrily. It took me a few minutes to get home and every light was off in the house except for the living room light. I parked my car in the garage next to my mother's. My father had left yesterday for another business trip this one was to last a week and then he'd be back for two weeks, not that I cared. He was annoying during the school year, constantly checking in on my grades and bugging me about college.

When I walked inside both Jessica and my mom looked at me curiously. They both looked tired, it was two in the morning and I knew they were waiting up for me. I walked upstairs with out a word to them and put on something to go to bed in before I slipped under my covers and tried to fall asleep. My mind was running though and I was still so worried about Penelope, I kept checking my phone but nothing, I'd gotten no news. I finally fell asleep around three-thirty.

I heard a rustling, it was indistinct, and I didn't know where it was coming from inside my dream. I heard some shuffling, and the sound of something hitting the floor. My eyes shot up and I stared at the wall of my bedroom trying to understand why there was a figure climbing into my bedroom.

Penelope stared at me from her spot in front of my window, her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks were tear-stained. She slid to the floor and sat underneath my window and we just stared at each other, this silent understanding. I moved back in my bed, and lifted the covers back, a silent offering. Penelope stared for a moment longer before pulling a sneaker off and then the other one. She got up slowly and slid into the bed in front of me. Her hair smelled like the sea, and that told me where she'd been the whole time. I wrapped my arms around her, and my head fell into the crook of her neck.

I felt her sobs before I heard them. I tried to calm her down but that seemed to have the opposite effect. "What is it Penel? What is it?" She cried louder and shook harder. She gasped for hair and it sounded like she was hyperventilating. It was the saddest thing I'd ever heard, I never wanted her to cry again, that was all I knew. I was willing to devote my life to make sure she never cried again.

"Penelope please tell me what's wrong," I pleaded.

She gasped again. "I," she breathed. "I-I," she broke out into another sob. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. "I love you so much it hurts." She sobbed even louder. "Oh god, I love you Patrick, it scares me how much I love you."

I wrapped my arms around her tighter, pulling her too me. "I love you too, Penel," I whispered into her neck. "I love you too." It took a while but her crying eased up, and I could tell from her even breaths that she'd fallen asleep. I breathed her in, and knew my heart was breaking but in a good way, in the only good way that a heart could possibly break in. It was cracking right down the middle and I knew it was because I was giving a piece of it to Penelope. And she was giving me a piece in return.