Nano 2012 Day Ten

Well that was interesting. She was being friendly at the cafe but that's because she was his friend. And when they said goodnight she definitely didn't say anything about him coming round, they just went their separate ways. Of course, it's not like he was the master of working out what women were thinking about, so who knows? It could have been she went home and thought about him. Or it could just be that she's a little shaken up after seeing someone she knew getting hit by a car. He sighed. "You're an idiot" he thought to himself and started to text back, "sure" when he remembered he was waiting for the police. He looked up from his phone and the little girl was still in the same place, watching TV. He wondered how he was going to explain this to Tina, if indeed he should explain this. Well, why not, it's not like he was doing anything wrong he thought. He wrote in a message, "I'd love to. Right now though I've got a weird situation at my place."

"Weird how?" came the reply.

"A little girl turned up at my door with no parents in sight and I'm waiting for the police to turn up to take her."

"What, really? You're not just avoiding coming over?"

"Why would I be avoiding it?"

"I dunno. I just need company I think."

"You could come here?"

"I don't have a car and can't afford the taxi."

"OK no problem. I'll let you know when this is sorted out."

"OK good luck :)"

He signed and put down his phone. He found he sighed a lot lately. Maybe he always sighed? Am I seen as the "Wistful one" in my friends group, he wondered. When were the police going to turn up?

"Hey," he called out, "did you want a glass of water or anything?"

The girl on the couch shook her head once. No. He decided to fill in some time by getting on the internet on his laptop. Maybe he could find something to do. He checked his email and went through systematically binning all the different newsletters and spam he'd signed up to. He wondered what it meant when he'd reached that point that almost all of the actual spam that people normally thought of when the word was mentioned was finally not getting to his inbox but instead his inbox was filled with email that he asked for that he only ever briefly looked at and deleted? In fact, most days he just ticked half of it and deleted it immediately.

This time it wasn't too bad but there weren't any emails he actually wanted to read. He decided to see what was happening in a chat room he used to go into when he used to write a lot. He went through a phase a year or so back where he wrote a lot of short stories and was trying to hone his art. Well, he thought of it as his art. The people in the chat room were really helpful but he ended up deciding that he was just a terrible writer and should probably quit. He did sometimes wonder how they were going though and it would be interesting to talk to them. Plus he felt like he needed some sort of outlet right now, maybe he's even go back to writing again, see if it was as much of a dead end as it was last time.

He loaded up his chat program and saw it go through the usual connecting things. Crap, what was the name of the actual room? He went to the old writing website and looked around for it. He finally found it, "writerlyFrm" and went to it. He saw about six people he didn't recognise but the other 4 people in there he recognised from the last time he was in.

"Hey guys!" he wrote.

"Hey there, Laust!" FireDrake wrote in the channel, "You've been gone a while, we wondered what happened to you."

"Yeah I stopped writing for a while, got caught up in other stuff as well..."

"Ah fair enough" FireDrake said, "So you've started writing again?"

"Not yet, but I'm thinking about it."

"Hey there Laust." This time it was Calliope talking.

"Hey there Calliope."

"So have you started writing now?"

"Not yet, but I think I'm ready to try again."

"Well, good, you should go for it! Write something right now!"

"Hah maybe tomorrow, today and tonight have been a bit extreme."

"Oh, what happened?" This was Kusa talking now.

"Well, it was my birthday and I was having dinner with my friends and afterwards one of them got hit by a car. I saw him in the hospital and just got home a short while ago."

There was a chorus of "That's terrible!" and similar sentiments in the chat room.

"How old did you turn, anyway?" Kusa said

"28"

"I guess you won't forget it."

"Probably not." Menelaus typed.

"How did your friend look? Is it really bad?"

"He looked a lot better in the hospital than he did right after the car hit him. I had to hold my tshirt against a cut he had just under his ribs. while we were waiting for the ambulance."

"Did anyone get a statement from the guy who was driving?" Calliope this time. Menelaus thought about it, did anyone talk to him?

"I don't know, I was with my friend the whole time. I guess someone must have, or the police did when they turned up."

"Oh, when did the police turn up?"

"I don't remember. I think they turned up? It's been a really full on night."

"It definitely sounds like it."

There was a knock at the door. "Brb" Menelaus typed, in the internet slang for "Be Right Back".

He walked up to his door and opened it. There was a policeman at the door. "I heard you had a girl turn up earlier?"

"Yes, there she is." He pointed towards the little girl who was still wrapped up in the movie on the screen. "Alright then." The police officer pulled out a notepad and a pen. "Name?"

"My name is Menelaus Trigosi." He spelled it for the officer.

"Do you have a driver's license?"

"Yes" He pulled it out and handed it to him. The police officer wrote down the details on there.

"Obviously this is still the current address on here, being the address I have come to here?"

"Yes, that's right."

The officer walked over to where the girl was sitting and went down on his haunches next to her. “Hello there.”

The girl kept watching the cartoon. The police officer relocated himself so he was in front of her and repeated himself. “Hey there, what brings you here?”

The girl said, “I wanted to come in.”

“Why did you want to come in?” The girl didn’t answer. “Where are your parents?” Still nothing. “Is there an adult who takes care of you?”

“I don’t want to go back to them.”

“Did they do something to you?”

The girl lifted her head as if to nod then stopped and kept her eyes on the TV.

The police officer made a few more notes and said, “Ok, what’s your name princess?”

“Jessica.”

“That’s a pretty name, Jessica. Do you want to come with me and we’ll try to sort all of this out?”
“I like it here.”

“Well we have videos too, and we can try to work something out for you for a longer time. "

"Hmm."

The police officer stood up and and looked at Menelaus. "Alright I'm going to take her to the station. Have you ever seen her before or seen her around here?"

"No, never."

"Are you certain? Think about it for a second."

Menelaus thought about it. He knew there were several people living in the building but he barely saw any of them. If anything, he was more likely to see friends of theirs turning up to say hello. None of the friends had kids either, from what he could remember.

"No, sorry, I have no idea. I'm sure I've never seen her before."

"Alright then. Thank you for ringing it through, we'll take it from here."

"Thanks for coming down."

The police man nodded and walked back over to Jessica.

"Jessica?" The girl looked up at the officer, "I'm going to take you with me now, OK? We need to work out what's going on and give you some hot chocolate and talk to you a bit."

"Hmmm..."

The officer put out his hand to Jessica, "Let's go."

"Alright" she said and slid off the couch and took his hand. They walked to the door and the officer nodded to Menelaus as they left. Menelaus closed the door once they were out and shook his head once they were gone. How strange. He went back to his laptop and saw a few worried messages from his sudden disappearance. He took up his typing there.

"Hey there, sorry, had another weird occurrence. Seems to be the night for it."

He suddenly remembered: Tina. He scanned all the questions coming in and decided he'd just leave it for the night. "Sorry everyone, I'm fine, it wasn't anything serious I'm going to go for the night. Catch you all later." He closed the laptop and picked up his phone. There was no new message, he sent a text through to Tina, "Hey are you still up?"

"Yes, what happened?"

"The police came and took her."

"Was she upset?"

"Not really, the officer was nice to her."

"Oh good."

Hmm she wasn't mentioning his coming over. After a couple of minutes went by, he decided to send, "Do you still want some company?"

"Only if you don't mind coming by."

"You're not scared of my hugs?”

A couple of minutes went by. Menelaus started to worry that he’d said the wrong thing, then his phone beeped again. “I’m counting on them. Come over please.”

Menelaus found his keys and his jacket and went out the door. He felt his heart rate quicken. It had been a strange night.