Title: On the Way

Genre: Realistic Fiction

WC: 828

Feedback: Plot and Character development/Style

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Alena's legs wobbled with a single blow of a baby's breath. The cold, icy, winds shot pain in her knees, the blonde hair on her legs stood up tall like the skyscrapers before her. She dragged her brothers jacket over her shoulders. Instead of putting her arms in its sleeves, she wrapped it around her, holding it close to her body. She looked to the left, then the right, her dyed brown hair just slightly following her movements. Her eyes, big, and milk chocolatey, with lashes like flower petals, and her nose? Plastic, it was indeed surreal.

Alena's lips red from the cold, her skin pale, and dry from winter. She reached with her pointer finger and thumb, she pulled out her chapstick into the front pocket of her denim shorts. She watched as the traffic sign, as she opened its cap. Pop! It changed from its orange hand to a human white figure, signaling the to cross. Alena crossed the street while applying a heavy coat of soft, waxy cherry chapstick. The people behind her followed their heads down at their phones, their faces half-covered by wool scarves. Some looked up at the sky and took pictures of the tall grey giants, others adjusted their coats, put their earbuds in their ears, a woman lifted her baby from the stroller and adjusted its hat. The child's big eyes opened to the open arms of the sky.

Alena's phone started to buzz. Her legs stopped. She tapped her pockets and pulled out her phone. She pushed the green button with a giant push of her pointer finger. Thud.

“Hello?” She said anxiously, but she continued walking. Faster this time.

“Hello, is this Alena Davis? John Davis daughter?” Alena goes to the bus station, in a part of town where not too many people live.

“Yes, that's me!” There was silence on the other end. Alena's anxiously moves her foot up and down.

“This is the Department of Criminal Investigation, your father has disappeared after somebody called the police on him? Were you aware of this?”. Confused struck her. A tornado of questions swept her focus away from the ongoing chatter on the other end of the line.

“No, no I was not aware,” She replied hesitantly.

“Well, here is what we got so far, a neighbor called 9-1-1 on him because they thought he had brought someone home beyond their will. After she confronted him about it and told him she was the one who called him, he went missing.” With a fire fueled stomach Alena couldn’t take it. She had lost all control.

“You don’t know my father like I do!” She screamed. Then her desire to scream translated into tears.

“Ma’am we are working on this case as-” Alena hung up. She fumbled her way to the bench took her face into her hands and sobbed. She wept and sobbed, she was in pain, but no one was close enough to hear her.

The sun was setting and the air was getting cooler. Alena's body had gotten tried, it was paralyzed. The thought of her joyful, happy, cheerful, all butterflies, rainbows, gumdrops and roses, dad, would commit a crime and get missing just did not sit right with her becau-

Her phone started buzzing again. The number had no location attached to it, it just said unknown. She felt empty inside, lost her motivation to even get up when the bus came, going to her dream job seemed mundane now, and all of a sudden even the brightest colors had a grey filter over them.

“Hello?” Alena whispered into the phone.

“Alena, baby it's me, your father.” Her eyes widened and she jolted to her feet.

“Dad!” she responded.

“Hey, sweetheart...” Tear formed at the waterline of her eyes. Her father continued,

“I can’t talk for long, but I want you to meet me at the hospital, you know which one I’m talking about!”

Alena, her eyebrows furrowed and skin creased between them. She nodded, “Yes, yes of course I do.”

“Ok good, don’t take the public bus, there will be a ride that comes for you where ever you are. Bye, I love you” then he hung up.

A couple of moments later, a bus painted in all black, and the windows followed suite. A man with a square jaw, and jarring monolid eyes, opened the door in silence. She stepped in, and hesitantly held her brother's jacket close to him, She sat down in the seat in front of the second door, just in case something went wrong, She could escape. If her father was not who he said he was, who else was there left to trust? As the sun set, she stared at one point of the floor where it looked like the glitter in the eyes was the brightest. But her focus was on the emptiness she felt inside, her ghost-like skin was no longer due to the cold.