Blog Post #2: Blueberry Pancakes

          Two nights after Halloween, Elwood sat at a table in the park, watching Dorothy Rose lose a game of chess to Mr.Jenkins. Dorothy chatted on about the mysterious murder of Mr. Evans, while he nodded along with the conversation. He tried to look interested in the game, but he wasn't. In fact, he wouldn't be watching the game at all if there weren't nosy policeman around asking questions about Mr. Evans. He would be looking for the person who disappeared the night Evans died.

           The morning of the death of Mr. Evans, Elwood was enjoying his blueberry pancakes at the Breakfast in Bed diner. You might think, reader, that at 4:30 in the morning, Elwood would be eating alone, but at 4:35 a young woman in a faded pink hoodie and jeans walked into the diner and ordered a coffee. She was quite unusual for a number of reasons. The first being that her hair was a bright bubblegum pink, wild and curly, and it was home to a garden’s worth of roses and honeysuckle flowers. The second being that she had a crimson stain on her jeans that looked as though it could be dried blood, hers or someone else’s Elwood wasn’t sure. The third, and arguably the strangest thing about her was that on her right hand there appeared to be a tattoo in stark white ink mostly covered by her hoodie. It was merely dots and lines on her dark brown skin which formed a constellation Elwood didn’t recognize. He’d never seen anything like it.

As the young woman received her coffee from the counter, she walked over to Elwood, and sat down across from him, at his own booth, as though they were old friends. Elwood froze mid-bite, concerned by her strange behavior. She took a sip of her coffee, set it down on the table, and smiled but only slightly.

            “Hey, you’re Elwood Clark, aren’t you?” she asked.

             Elwood reluctantly nodded.

            “Do you remember me? I’m Lyra Banks,” she said.

            Lyra. Elwood knew that name too well. It sat in the back of his brain, spoiled and soaked in regrets and horror. It was the one name that Elwood could never bring himself to say. It was the name of his one great failure. The name of the girl he couldn’t save.

            And it haunted him.