Sapphic Voices General Fiction

Best Friends Forever

“Xan!” Came a loud voice from the hallway. “Xan, get up! The King has come to assess your fighting skills for his Battle Command!”

I awake with a start to my dad’s voice.

“Kathryn, Charlie’s gone. I need your help.”

I jump out of bed; forsaking all proper clothing and morning ritual, stick my feet in a pair of pink and silver flip flops and race out the door.

Pause here for just a moment and let me give you a little back ground. Charlie is my best friend. He has lived with me since he was very young and is now 4 years old. We found him when I was sixteen so that makes me twenty-one now. Any way, I love this little boy more than anything. He is my entire world. I named him Charles Wallace for the boy in a Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle because he is SO smart. But, right now he’s missing.

I get Amber, my golden retriever/golden lab mix, tell her to “go find Charlie,” which she has done before, and off we go into the deep woods behind my house, following her nose. I sleep in a T-shirt and boxer shorts so, that’s all I was wearing. I am also highly allergic to poison ivy and our back woods are full of it. But, I don’t care. I have to find Charlie, now. My mom is out looking, my dad is driving around, but I know Charlie’s favorite place to go when he leaves the sanctuary of home.

I head back over a knocked over split-rail/barbed wire fence, tripping on it because I’m in such a rush, down a little path to a grassy field. For a split second I saw him. I called to him but he ignored me and ran the other way…

Imagine, if you will, grass up to your chest, in a wide circle of trees. It’s 87? but feels like 93, the sun is beating down, there are numerous noisy, creepy insects flying about, you’re running through cobweb after cobweb, and you can’t seem to find what you’re looking for…

I tried to follow him but was hindered by said fence. He hadn’t come to his usual place. He was on the other side. I can’t jump the fence, it’s wrapped in rusted barbed wire, but I know my way back around. So I run, and I run and I run, but I’ve lost him. He moves through the trees and brush much better than do I, for he is smaller. I scream to him, for him, saying, “Charles Wallace! I haven’t had my coffee yet, I’m in poison ivy up to my twat, and I don’t even have a bra on! Show yourself to me or be lost! You have 20 seconds!” And silence. I heard nothing, I saw nothing, and, as I turned to head back home, my heart broke and I screamed at the top of my lungs.

My parents didn’t give up on little Charlie. They persisted to tromp through the woods and drive around the near by streets. I sat down on the garage step to smoke a cigarette and I prayed, “Great Goddess,” says I, “Please bring him back to me. Great God, light him a path home. Keep him safe, protect him from harm. Take every ounce of good karma I have left, everything that You would have used to protect me, take from me, I give it freely. Protect my little man and bring him home to me.” When that was done, I forsook my smoking, allowed myself some emotion and cried. I sat on the step in a faux lotus position, palms up, and meditated. I sent a beautiful pink and yellow light into the sky with a fresh infusion of love, little hearts dancing through it and arrows pointing homeward that maybe he’d see it and find his way back to me.

Finishing that, I decided that I should be more physically active in the search. I hopped on my bike and took off around our mile long neighborhood. I spoke to people who were out, telling them where we lived, describing Charlie, and asking them to please keep and eye out. I called the man who owned the farm next door and let him know. He had found Charlie once before in said field and directed me to him. And when there was nothing more I could do, I went home again to wait.

“He’s a smart boy,” I said aloud to no one, “He’ll find his way back to me. He will.” And I cried my heart out, trying hard to swallow the knot my tears created in my throat. But I was crying so hard that I just could not swallow it any more. I lifted my head to the sky and I let out all of the anguish that had been building up for the loss of my best friend. My poor baby! Like a son to me he was! So lost he was now, alone, in the heat of the day.

I dried my tears after a few moments and went inside to make up missing posters with his picture. As soon as I had them printed all off, my dad called and said that he had found Charlie in a different field not too far from the road. He was a smart boy but he didn’t know a thing about being hit by a car, which had been one of my biggest fears for him. But, safe now in my dad’s car, they were coming home again.

When he came in, he was panting so hard from lack of water and the heat, he laid down on the cool kitchen floor. He looked up at me with his beautiful brown eyes and thumped his tail on the floor, licking his lips to kiss me. I sat there for a while, on the kitchen floor with him as he cooled down. When he did get up, I was petting his leg and what did I find but a little tick amongst his fur. We quickly poured alcohol on it and the tick came out, no harm done. Charlie is now lying on my parents’ bed, resting his weary body. We had quite a morning, but by the afternoon, I still have my best friend forever. To the old adage: Man’s Best Friend, I say, “What man?”

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