Travis Kasperbauer smoked all the time.
He smoked when he was bored. He smoked when he was angry. He smoked when he woke up in the mornings. He smoked when he was feeling uninspired. He smoked when he was sad. He smoked when he couldn’t sleep. He smoked when he was stressed. He smoked when he was hungry. He smoked when he was cold.
Most of all, though, Travis smoked when he was anxious.

He had been chain smoking outside of Casa de Waffles for nearly half an hour. He had already gone through eight cigarettes, and was about to light up his ninth when Missy gave him the look.
“Okay. I think you’ve had enough,” she said as though he was consuming whiskey rather than smoke.
Travis stared down at the little stick of tobacco in his hand. He knew he was just stalling. He kept trying to imagine what he would do if he saw the man who attacked him, but he genuinely had no clue.
“I don’t think I can do this,” he said softly.
“Don’t be a pussy,” said Missy. “He may not be there. Hell, he may not even be your guy. But you have to know for sure, right?”
Travis nodded, sliding the cigarette behind his ear for safekeeping.
“Fine,” he sighed.

It was about noon, just in time for the lunch rush, so the place was packed. As Travis scanned the room for his attacker, a familiar voice called his name.
“Travis Kasperbuer. What are you, a smoker now?”
He followed the voice to a nearby booth where Bridget sat with some guy he didn’t recognize.
“Yeah I guess,” he replied, still surveying the restaurant.
“That’s hot,” she said. When he didn’t respond, she continued. “Where’d you run off to yesterday? We were having such a good conversation,” she said with a sort of pouty-face.
“Were we?” Travis asked. He genuinely didn’t remember speaking to her.
Missy snorted a little laugh.
“Missy. How good to see you,” Bridget said flatly.
“Likewise,” Missy replied. “And who is this?” She motioned at the man sitting next to Bridget.
“Oh. This is Mike. He’s a graphic design major. Mike, these are my friends Missy and Travis.”
“Nice to meet you,” Mike nodded.
Then Travis saw her. The woman who made a scene when that bus stalled out on Poplar a few months ago. Two enormous, gold door knocker earrings hung from her ears, just like Kindra described.
“Shaniqua,” he whispered.
“What?” Mike asked, confused.
“Who?” Bridget said.
“Is that her?” Missy asked, following his gaze.
Travis nodded and walked away. Missy followed.
“Seriously?” Bridget said. “Again?”

Travis took a seat at the counter. Missy sat beside him.
Shaniqua passed by them at least three times before Travis found the courage to speak to her.
“What can I do you for?” She asked once he finally flagged her down.
“Weird question,” he said pulling his sketchbook from his backpack. “Do you recognize this man?” He held up one of his lighter, less disturbing sketches.
Shaniqua squinted at the picture for a second and then nodded confidently.
“Yeah, I know him. That’s James, James Reid. He works in the kitchen. Why?”
Travis shot Missy a nervous look. “Is he here? Could I speak to him please?”
“Sure thing.” Shaniqua smiled and walked into the kitchen. A few moments later, she opened the door, pointed to Travis, and continued with her duties.
The man, who actually looked more like a boy now that his face was fully visible, approached the counter, wiping his hands on his apron. When he looked up, he froze.
Neither he or Travis spoke for a while, so Missy, of course, took the liberty to start the conversation herself.
“Hi. You don’t know me, but I think you may know my friend, here. His name is Travis and I’m pretty sure you beat the shit out of him twice in the same day a few months ago. Correct me if I’m wrong,” she began. “I also think you may have something to do with the kidnapping of a little orphan girl. Laney, is it?”
Travis nodded, still locked in a stare-down with James.
“Anyway, James, Travis has had a really rough time since then. He gets these killer headaches pretty often and has terrible nightmares almost every night. Were you aware that you gave him a concussion? You must have hit him pretty fuckin’ hard. Then there’s the sprained wrist and dislocated shoulder, but we can address those later. At least all of the bruises and scratches have healed.” Missy leaned back in her bar stool and sighed.
“So here’s the thing: you can either turn yourself in to the police for kidnapping and assault–maybe if you plead guilty your sentence won’t be too long–or you can do nothing and wait for the cops to show up at your house with a warrant for your arrest. It’s completely up to you.”
James stood paralyzed before them looking so much smaller and weaker than Travis remembered. Maybe it was the change in environment or attire. Maybe Travis just imaged him bigger and more ominous. Regardless, the terrified look on his face almost made Travis feel bad for him.
“Please,” said James. “Let me explain.”
Missy nodded, giving him a look that said ‘I’m waiting.’
“...let me explain somewhere less crowded,” he clarified.
Travis and Missy agreed and followed James around to the side of the building. Travis half expected him to whip out a gun and blow their brains out, but no such gun appeared.
Instead, James leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. He looked like he was trying to phrase something in his head but it wasn’t sounding right. Finally, he took a deep breath. “Laney is my sister,” he said.
Travis’s jaw actually dropped.
“I was just released from juvi about five months ago. Now that I’m 18, I don’t have to go back to that godforsaken orphanage, but I couldn’t just leave Laney there,” he said. “I had to get her out. She’s better off with me anyway, I’m the only family she’s got left––”
“Wait wait wait wait,” Missy interrupted. “Why were you in prison?”
James sighed. “I was fifteen. I was stupid...” he began. Missy rolled her eyes. “I tried to rob Ray’s Liquor store down on Sobchack Street. I just wanted to get some money so Laney and I could run away, but...” he trailed off.
“But you got caught,” Travis said.
“Right,” James nodded, staring down at his hands. Travis could hear the shame in his voice.
Then he looked up at Travis with those piercing light brown eyes. He didn’t need to say anything–his expression said it all–but he went on anyway.
“I’m so sorry for... for attacking you, I guess. For everything,” he confessed. “I panicked. I didn’t know what to do, but I couldn’t let anyone find out about Laney. I had to make it look like she really disappeared. I didn’t think anyone would try all that hard to find her.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t think anybody cared.”
Travis looked away. It occurred to him that he never actually knew Laney, that he got involved with her disappearance more for himself than for her. He recognized that he had been so bored with his life that he would have done just about anything to stray from his daily routine, to experience something new. Laney’s disappearance was the perfect opportunity.
“Wait a second,” Missy said, interrupting Travis’s thoughts. “Where is Laney now?”
James sighed. “In the shed behind the old sawmill theater, where you found me” he looked at Travis. Before anyone could react, he continued. “I know, she’s way too young to be by herself like that, but I don’t have any other options. As soon as I get some money saved up, we’re out of here. We’ll go some place where she won’t have to hide in a locked shed all day, some place with a real school for her to go to with real, teachers, not a bunch of crazy nuns.” He looked almost like he was in pain as he spoke. “You’ve got to understand, I hate that it’s like this for her. She was only three when I got arrested, so she barely knows me. This is going to be her first memory of me.”

“Where did you get that?” Travis Kasperbauer snatched the drawing from her hand.
Missy glared at him. “This is really weird, Travis.”
“It’s also none of your business,” he snapped, rolling up the paper into a tube.
“Actually, as your friend and roommate, it kind of is my business if you’ve been obsessively sketching some guy who attacked you four months ago.” She stood up. “I’m no psychologist, but I’m pretty sure that’s unhealthy.”
Travis ran his fingers through his sloppy hair. He always did that when he was frustrated. Or nervous. Or embarrassed. This time, though, he accidentally ripped out a few hairs in the process. He didn’t appear to notice. “You’re right, you aren’t a psychologist, so stop trying to psychoanalyze me––”
“233,” she said bluntly. “That’s how many drawings of this guy you have in your room. 233. Now tell me that’s not a little weird to you.”
“Shut up! You don’t understand...”
“So talk to me! Tell me what’s going on! How am I supposed to understand if you won’t let me?”
Travis paced around the little room, trying to figure out what to say. Missy waited patiently.
“I... I... it’s just that...” Travis was panicking. He couldn’t explain what was going on with him because he didn’t understand it himself. As he paced, he felt his palms begin to sweat, which only made him more conscious of the growing silence in the room. He looked up and, seeing Missy still staring at him, immediately looked away again. Her eyes were like lasers boring into the side of his head. His pulse picked up and his toes tingled. He thought he might pass out, and almost wished he would.
Just then, there was a knock at the door. Travis sighed with relief.
“I’ll get it,” he said abruptly. Missy rolled her eyes.

The woman on the other side of the door looked about as stressed as Travis felt. Her cheeks were flushed and she was breathing heavily. It then occurred to Travis that his apartment was on the top floor and just about everyone looked like that once they climbed all 12 flights of stairs to get there. Still, her presence comforted him somehow.
“Are you Travis?” She asked flatly.
Then he recognized her.
“Kindra,” he said.
“Yes. You have my wallet?”
“Yeah,” he unzipped his backpack. “It’s in here somewhere.”
Nobody said anything for a moment, so Kindra spoke up. “I feel like such an idiot. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I was on my way to the airport. But you can’t get very far there without an ID, so it didn’t take me long to figure out that I had lost it,” she said as Travis rummaged through the bag. “I’m just glad someone like you found it instead of some creepy guy––”
Kindra was interrupted when Travis’s sketchbook suddenly fell out of his backpack and hit the floor. It landed open, revealing yet another sketch of the dark, hooded man.
“...like him,” Kindra joked, pointing at the picture.
Nobody laughed, though. Instead, Travis avoided Missy’s glare as he hurriedly scooped up the book.
“Oh, there’s more?” Missy spat. “Because 233 isn’t enough.”
Travis fumbled with the book, trying to shove it back into his bag, but Missy snatched it from him. Kindra, confused, just watched.
“Oh my god. This is so not okay,” Missy said as she flipped through the book, seeing that Travis had drawn some variation of the attacker’s face on every page.
“Stop! Give it back!” Travis reached for the book, but Missy pushed his hand away.

To Kindra, the scene resembled one of those big-brother-little-brother fights where the big brother holds something above the little brother’s head, knowing he is too short to reach it, but the kid keeps jumping anyway. It was a little bizarre that Missy, who couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, played the role of the big brother, while Travis, who couldn’t have been less than six feet tall, played that of the little brother, but she said nothing.

A ridiculous game of tug-of-war ensued, which resulted in Travis accidentally ripping out a few of the pages and scattering them through the air.
Catching one, Kindra examined the man in the drawing. “Who is this?” She asked without diverting her eyes from the page.
Forgetting that they had a guest, Travis and Missy froze at the sound of her voice.
“What did you say?” Missy asked, casually brushing her messy hair back into place with her free hand.
Kindra looked up. “Who is this guy? He looks really familiar.”
Travis and Missy exchanged a skeptical look. “I don’t know his name. He attacked me a few months ago,” Travis said. “So I’ve kind of been drawing him a lot lately.”
“That’s a bit of an understatement,” Missy mumbled under her breath.
“Shut up,” Travis elbowed Missy in the ribs and turned back to Kindra. “Do you know him?”
“Not personally,” Kindra replied. “But I’ve definitely seen him before...” She continued to study the picture. Nobody spoke. Then she looked up, a look of recognition on her face.
“I think he works at Casa de Waffles,” she said softly, not entirely confident in her statement. “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him and Shaniqua talking there.”
Kindra noticed the similar confused expressions on their faces and, realizing neither of them knew Shaniqua, she clarified. “Shaniqua is a friend of mine who works there. She’s the tall, black woman who always wears those giant, gold door-knocker earrings. You can’t miss her.”
Travis and Missy stared at each other.
Assuming that they were a couple, Kindra thought they were doing that annoying mind-reading thing couples sometimes do.
And although they most certainly were not a couple, they did actually exchange a sort of are-you-thinking-what-I’m-thinking look.
“Uhh, can I have my wallet back?” Kindra interrupted the silent conversation.
“Oh, sorry,” Travis said. He dug through his backpack once more and quickly pulled out the wallet. “Here.”
“Thank you so much. And this is yours.” She handed him the drawing. “Good luck with... that, I guess.”
“Thanks,” Travis replied, attempting a friendly smile.
Kindra left, closing the door behind her. She stopped at the top of the stairs and tried to take in what she just witnessed.
“Strange people,” she said to herself.
Then she walked away.

Three months had passed and there was still no sign of Laney.
Travis Kasperbauer did go to the police station back in December to report the attack, but the woman who he spoke to didn’t seem that interested. The next week, he learned from Vinny Johnson that the police officially closed the investigation without ever having pursued his lead.

Missy encouraged him to keep trying, to keep working with Vinny to find the little girl, but Travis had had enough. He started getting headaches all the time, probably from the concussion, and no amount of Asprin could make them go away. The nightmares he had about that day woke him up almost every night, so he just stopped going to sleep altogether. He stayed up for days at a time, consuming nothing but coffee and Red Bull until he finally crashed again. He did most of his sleeping in class, and he would have flunked out of Character Design II if Missy hadn’t covered for him all the time. He also took up smoking and could go through a pack a day on weekends. He left the apartment only to buy more cigarettes and go to class; whenever he needed anything, he either ordered it on the internet or made Missy go get it.
She knew Travis was going through a hard time, so she didn’t mind picking up a few extra items at the grocery store, but his behavior was really starting to worry her. This was not the Travis she knew, not the Travis she used to watch Deadliest Warrior with on Friday nights because neither of them had plans. This kidnapping business had changed him.
The worst part, though, was his obsession with his attacker.

One day in late March, as Travis dozed off in his illustration class, Missy worked on a painting back at the apartment. She reached for her sable brush but couldn’t find it, so, knowing Travis had one, she ventured into his room for the first time since the attack.

One thing you should know about Missy is that she is not easily scared. She laughs at horror films, keeps her eyes open on roller coasters, and never, ever screams. Ever.

But when she opened the door to Travis’s room, a weak little scream escaped her mouth. Not loud enough for any neighbors to hear, but a scream nonetheless.
Nearly every surface in the room was covered with sketches of the same hooded man. Though some aspects of the image changed subtly from sketch to sketch–shading, stroke size, etc.– the eyes remained the same: dark, intense, and angry.


Meanwhile in Illustration class, Travis had woken up from his nap when Bridget took a seat beside him. For some reason, she had recently developed an interest in him again. He noticed, but didn’t really care. That’s how he felt about a lot of things lately; he just couldn’t make himself care.
And when Bridget started talking to him, he couldn’t make himself listen, either. Instead, he drew a picture.
He was sitting alone on a little island only big enough for some palm trees and a hammock. With a cold Miller Highlife in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Travis admired the magnificent sunset before him.
The picture was simple and seemed somewhat empty, but Travis liked it that way. He thought to himself: If I ever have the chance to go on a vacation, this is what I want to do. I want to be alone on a beach where no one can bother me or attack me or give me stupid homework assignments. More than anything, I want to get away from all of this and just be.
Bridget was still talking when his cell phone buzzed, waking him up from his daydream. He had two missed calls and a text from Missy. The text read: 
 

Call me when you get this. I really need to talk to you.

That’s my cue, Travis thought. My excuse to leave.
He grabbed his sketchbook, swung his backpack over his shoulder, and walked out of the classroom.
For the first time since she sat down next to him, Bridget was silent. She had been telling Travis how much she missed him and their late-night conversations, how he was so observant and such a good listener, how she really loved that about him.
But he didn’t hear a word she said.

As Travis stepped onto the bus, a woman named Kindra Lee stepped off. He didn’t know her name was Kindra Lee, though, until he sat on her wallet.
Before he could call after her, the bus jerked forward. As he watched her walk away, he noticed something slightly peculiar: she was carrying a cell phone and a pack of cigarettes and nothing else. Travis tried to think of a time when he saw a woman in public with so few possessions, but he drew a blank.
Odd, he thought.
Examining her driver’s license more thoroughly, he was pleasantly surprised to see that she also lived in Castle Apartments, so returning the wallet to her would be easy.

Travis knocked on the door of apt. #7083 and waited. No response. He knocked again, this time more loudly, and once more heard no response.
He then ripped a sheet out of his sketchbook and wrote:

Kindra,
I found your wallet on the bus. Just come up to apt. #1212 to pick it up when you get this.

-Travis K.

He folded the paper, slipped it under the door, and continued up the stairs.
During the two minutes it took him to get to the 12th floor, he wondered why Missy needed to talk to him. She never had anything to say that was so important that it couldn’t wait until he got out of class.
Once he entered the apartment, though, it didn’t take him long to figure it out.

Travis Kasperbauer’s legs ached. Badly.
After climbing 12 flights of stairs, he finally reached apartment #1212, where he was surprised to find that the door was unlocked
He reached into his front pocket for his phone but remembered that it wasn’t there, so he checked his watch instead. It was 6:23am. Glancing at the date, he realized that it was also Christmas Eve Eve.
He was too late. Missy was back in New York with her family by now. Not that he had actually found a present for her. He looked, but was unsuccessful to say the least.

With a defeated sigh, he pushed the door open and walked in.
“Travis?”
Missy sat upright on the couch in the so-called living room and rubbed her eyes. She had clearly been sleeping before he arrived.
“Missy?”
“Travis!”
Missy leapt up from the couch. As she rushed toward him, Travis opened his arms for the hug he was about to receive, and was thoroughly surprised when, instead of embracing him, Missy placed her little hands on his chest and gave him an angry shove.
Stumbling backwards, he collided with the open door behind him with so much force that it slammed shut.
“Where the hell have you been? You knew I had a 7:30 flight last night. You knew that. So what happened? Were you too busy or something? Too busy to even call me and say goodbye? Oh wait, I forgot, you’re incapable of using your phone. Ever. Jesus, Travis, I thought something had happened to you.”
“Missy,” Travis said quietly.
She continued. “Now I’m going to have to buy another plane ticket... You know what I should do? I should make you pay for it. It’s your fault. God, what were you thinking?!”
“Missy.”
“You never think about anyone else! You’re so selfish. All you had to do was call.”
“Missy.”
“I’d be at home with my family by now, but you just had to screw things up! You always screw things up.”
“Missy!”
“What?!”
Travis took a deep breath. “I didn’t call you because I lost my phone last night.”
“How convenient.”
“I was... mugged.”
“What?”
“Well, not really.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Travis paused to think. This was not coming out right. “I didn’t really get mugged... I was... attacked I guess. Twice.”
“Twice?”
“Yeah.”
“Now that’s just bad luck.”
“Well it was the same person both times.”
“Oh. That makes a little more sense.”
There was a pause. Nobody spoke for a few seconds.
“Wait, who attacked you? And why? What could you possibly have done to warrant an attack? And when did this happen? You don’t look like you’ve been attacked.”
Travis brushed a clump of shaggy hair off his forehead revealing the large, swollen bump where his attacker had struck him hours before. He then proceeded to roll up both of his sleeves, showing Missy the scattered marks and scratches on his arms where the man had pinned him down. Finally, he took off his scarf. Missy gasped.
“Holy shit,” she said.
A thick ring of bruises circled Travis’s neck. He hadn’t had access to a mirror since the attack, so he wasn’t fully aware of the severity of his battle wounds, but the look on Missy’s face confirmed his suspicions.
“How bad is it?” He asked.
Missy gently ran her fingers over the bruises. “I don’t understand. Why would someone do this to you?”

Travis explained everything, or at least everything he could remember. He told her about Vinny Johnson and the flyers, about the little shoe and the locked shed, about the hooded man and the attacks.
“...when I woke up an hour ago, he was gone and the shed was empty,” he said. “I blew it.”
“What? You know who he is now, or at least what he looks like,” Missy said.
Travis shook his head. “I chased him away. Knowing what he looks like doesn’t help when I don’t know where he is. I should have just gone to the cops or something.”
Missy was silent for a moment. “So go now,” she said. “They’ll want to hear what you have to say. I mean, it’s a lead, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so...”
“Alright then, let’s go.” Missy reached for the door.
“To the police station?” He asked.
“Yeah.”
“Now?”
“Yes, Travis. This guy could be anywhere.”
“But...”
“Come on.”
Missy grabbed his wrist and pulled him out the door.

Walking to the staircase, Missy stopped suddenly.
“Shit. I forgot my bag,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
Travis watched the door close behind her and sighed. He really didn’t want to go to the police for some reason. Maybe it was because of what Vinny said: that the they weren’t helping, that they didn’t care. Maybe it was because Travis just really didn’t like cops. Or maybe he was just exhausted, too exhausted to try to explain his bizarre story to a bunch of people who may or may not give a shit.

A door opened. A young guy stepped out, locking the door behind him. Travis vaguely recognized him. His name was... Pink? No, that couldn’t be it. Pink is a color, not a name, right?

Pink turned and walked over to a nearby window overlooking the city, rested his arms on the window pane, and sighed. Travis wasn’t entirely sure if Pink noticed him standing in the corner until he started speaking.
“If you could have any superpower, which one would it be?” He asked.
Travis, a little surprised, took a second to process the question. After a moment, he finally said:
“The ability to stop time,” he nodded. “You?”
“I want to fly,” Pink said. “Far away from here.”
The door of apartment 1212 opened. Missy looked at Travis as she locked the door.
“Ready?” She asked.
He nodded.
Approaching the stairs, Travis looked back at Pink. He was still gazing out the window.
“See ya,” he said.
“Later,” Pink replied.

Out on the window ledge, a sparrow paced back and forth. After watching him enviously for a few minutes, Pink suddenly made a fist and pounded on the window, scaring the bird.
Then the sparrow flew away, and Pink resented him even more.

For Travis Kasperbauer’s fourth birthday, his parents gave him a set of 120 Crayola crayons. That was more than any of his pre-K classmates had. More, in fact, than he had ever seen before in one box.
He was thrilled, to say the least.
He took the box of crayons with him everywhere and, after only a few months, had memorized all 120 colors. His favorites included Leather Jacket, Fuzzy Wuzzy, Granny Smith Apple, Macaroni and Cheese, and Razzmatazz.

Though Travis was never a particularly social child, this obsessive relationship with his crayons only further alienated him from other kids. Girls thought he was weird, and boys thought he was, in the eloquent words of classmate Ben Benson, a “freakin’ pansy.”
His own father often criticized him for spending entire weekends inside with his crayons rather than playing with the neighborhood boys like a normal kid.
Travis never paid much attention to anyone else, and on the rare occasion that he did, he didn’t realized that they were insulting him. For example, Travis thought nothing of Ben’s remark because, then, he associated the word “pansy” only with the lovely crayon color Pansy Purple, and thus took no offense.
But on April 12, 1998, when Travis was in the first grade, Ben finally made his disdain for Travis perfectly clear.

Every day, the students of Prado Elementary School were given 45 minutes of recess after lunch, and every day, Travis spent those 45 minutes on a small, wooden picnic table, coloring with his now very short, overused crayons.
Absorbed by the scene on his paper, Travis didn’t notice Ben take a seat across from him at the table.
Once he finished coloring a red car, he placed the Rusty Red crayon back in its usual place in the box (second row, sixth column) and reached for his all-time favorite color, Timberwolf, but soon realized that its respective place was vacant.
He scanned the box for the missing crayon, and gasped when he realized that it was not simply misplaced, but that it was actually not in the box at all. Panicked, he looked up and saw Ben holding his beloved Timberwolf. With an index finger and a thumb on either end of the crayon, Ben tilted his head to the side and asked: "Looking for this?"
Travis sighed in relief. "Oh, thanks Ben," he said. "I thought I lost it."
As he extended his arm to accept the crayon, a devious smile spread across Ben’s face, and Travis watched helplessly as Ben very deliberately snapped his precious crayon in half.
"Freakin’ pansy, he said with a laugh.

Travis was speechless. His mouth hung open as he tried to process what had just happened.
"Eeeaaauuuhhh..." Travis couldn’t form words; the only sound he could produce was a groan of pain.
He suddenly realized that “Pansy” was not a compliment, that Ben was definitely not his friend, and that, at that moment, he wanted more than anything to hurt that smug little boy sitting across from him.
So when Travis watched Ben walk away from the picnic table, he felt an unfamiliar sensation in his gut that gradually made its way down to his toes. The feeling grew stronger with every step Ben took.

Pushing himself up, he rose from his seat. It wasn’t really a conscious action; it just kind of happened. Then he was running. Sprinting, even. Never in his life had he moved that fast.

Seeing Travis, Ben took off down the blacktop. Ben had always been one of the fastest kids in the class, but today, Travis was faster.
Ben flung himself at the ladder of a nearby play structure in a desperate attempt to escape his pursuer, but before his foot made contact with the third rung, Travis grabbed hold of the back of his shirt and forcefully pulled him to the ground.

Travis Kasperbauer kicked the shit out of Ben Benson. Literally.


Almost 14 years later, on Thursday December 22, 2011, when Travis made eye contact with the man who must have been Laney’s kidnapper, he felt a similar sensation in his stomach. It was like butterflies, but not the kind you get when you’re excited.

He recognized the feeling; it was a kind of butterflies he'd had only once before, when he was six years old. It was the kind of butterflies you feel when anger takes over, when you get the uncontrollable urge to break something, when you become some kind of hulkish version of yourself and all you can do is scream.

Then he was running.

Travis Kasperbauer gently ran his hand over the large, painful bump growing on his forehead. 
Holy shit, he thought. That guy really drilled me.

Travis was sitting on the curb at the corner of H. Street and Poplar, rubbing his head, trying to recall what had happened before he hit the pavement.
"The signs... He was ripping the signs off the light posts," Travis said to himself. "The signs with Laney’s picture on it. He didn’t want anybody to see them. He didn’t want anybody to go looking for her."

Travis stood up a little too fast and had to sit back down again. He took a few deep breaths, waited for his vision to stop spinning, and then stood up again, this time more slowly.
His head was throbbing––he was pretty sure that the hooded man had given him a concussion––but he tried to ignore it.

As he walked down H. Street he wondered how long he’d been unconscious and why nobody had tried to help him, or if anybody had seen him knocked out on the sidewalk in the first place. He checked the time on his phone. It was 5:57pm.
"So I’ve been out for..." he did the math in his head. "...about 20 minutes. I think. Shit. That guy could be anywhere by now."
Travis stopped walking, discouraged, and was about to turn around when he made eye contact with, of all people, Laney. Laney!

Not really Laney, though. Just her picture, the one that Travis painted last week.
The missing persons flyer lay wrinkled on the ground a few feet in front of him. He walked over to it and picked it up, noticing the rip in the paper where it had once been stapled to a light post.

Travis immediately started walking again. One might even say he was speed walking, which was quite impressive, considering his recent head trauma. And although he didn’t know where he was going exactly, he had a feeling that he was headed in the right direction. (It did occur to him that that feeling may just have been his own wishful thinking, but he continued nonetheless.)
He walked past the post office, the bus stop, the Forever 21 that he went into for the first time earlier that day. As he walked, he noticed that the shoe store down the street had a surprising number of customers, even for the week before Christmas, and that one man entering the store was, oddly enough, missing his left shoe.
Just like Missy, Travis thought. 

Speaking of shoes, specifically those for the left foot, lying in the field behind the old sawmill theater was none other than a little pink left shoe. Seeing as the color pink does not particularly blend in with the color of grass, it actually caught Travis’ attention, despite the fact that he was thoroughly distracted by the thought of Missy and by the throbbing pain on his forehead.

Approaching the shoe, he concluded that, yes, that was definitely the right size shoe for a seven-year-old girl, and that, no, that could not have possibly been just a coincidence.

Travis picked up the shoe and examined it. He didn’t know what he expected to discover, so he wasn’t too disappointed when he discovered nothing.

That’s when he heard it, the sound of a little girl crying, or, more accurately, whimpering.
Travis tightened his grip on the little shoe, almost as though he was afraid someone would take it, take the only real substantial clue he had.

He couldn’t pinpoint the origin of the whimper until he heard another sound coming from the same place.

A few yards away, the door of a small shed opened, and the same hooded man Travis encountered earlier stepped out. He had the same black messenger bag hanging over his shoulder, and the same gray sweatshirt with thumb holes in the sleeves. The only thing that was different about him was that, this time, he wasn’t wearing a hood.

It was December 22 and Travis Kasperbauer still hadn’t found Missy a Christmas present.
He had two days to look before he went home to be with his family. He had already tried Forever 21, but being in there was just too overwhelming for him, so he left immediately.
He then stopped at the Pawn Shop, but the guy behind the counter was eyeing him suspiciously, so he left after a quick scan of the merchandise.
He thought about getting Missy a gift card to Casa d’ Waffles, her favorite restaurant, but he hated getting people gift cards. They are just too unoriginal, and he couldn’t bring himself to get Missy such an impersonal gift. After all, she was pretty much his best friend. His only friend.

Walking aimlessly down Poplar, Travis thought about his social life. Or, more accurately, his lack of a social life. It bothered him that he didn’t have many friends, but at the same time, he didn’t know many people who he wanted to be friends with anyway. Is that my problem? That I don’t know anyone? He thought. Or is it that I just don’t like anyone? He pondered this for a moment. Does anyone like me?
While walking past a light post, something caught his eye. There, stapled to the wooden post, was his painting of Laney, the little orphan girl who recently went missing. The girl who Vinny Johnson from the fifth floor was looking for.
Vinny, Travis thought. I know Vinny. Maybe he’ll be my friend. He smiled, proud of his epiphany.

He continued walking and instantly noticed the row of light posts lining the street, each with the same ‘Have You Seen This Girl?’ sign with his painting on it. A few posts down from Travis, a man was hurriedly tearing the signs off the posts and shoving them into the messenger bag hanging at his side. Travis furrowed his eyebrows, confused.
"Hey!" Travis shouted, approaching the man. "What are you doing?"
The man turned to Travis, but his features were barely visible under his dark hooded sweatshirt. 

Travis picked up his pace. So did the hooded man.
"Stop!" Travis was running now. "You can’t do that!"
He was closing in on the man, who, reaching into has bag, wrapped his hand around something heavy and raised it into the air, ready to swing.
As the object struck Travis’ head and knocked him to the ground, he got a quick glimpse of the man’s face. He had dark, sloppy hair covering his forehead, a hard jawline, and piercing light brown eyes that held contact with Travis’ until his vision faded to black.
But just before he lost consciousness, Travis thought to himself, that’s the man who kidnapped Laney.

Something changed in Travis Kasperbauer, and everyone had noticed.
His watercolor teacher noticed, she even showed his work to the class last Tuesday.
Bridget noticed too, but she wasn't quite as thrilled about it as everyone else seemed to be. You see, Travis had been painting more, just for the hell of it, and in the process, he found himself a muse: Missy.

Missy didn't know how to feel about being Travis's muse. She was flattered, but sometimes she'd be sitting on the couch watching The Mightiest Warrior or something and she'd turn to see him, paintbrush in hand, studying her face. It was too weird. But she had noticed this change in him too, and she didn’t want to spoil it by being an unwilling model. Plus, she had to admit, he was pretty damn good. Annoying, but good.

It was an average Wednesday morning, around 7:15pm. Life On Mars by David Bowie was playing from his radio clock. Travis sat at his desk working on a self portrait for his character design class. He hated self portraits. He could never finished them.
"Who am I?" He asked himself. "Who the hell is Travis Kasperbauer?"
There was an urgent knock on the door.
"Come in."
The door flew open, and there Missy stood, obviously pissed off about something. Travis noticed that she had been very pissy lately. Pissy Missy. He wondered if she was having lady problems.
"Good morning, Missy," he said without diverting his eyes from the canvas.
"Good morning my ass," she spat.
Travis looked up. "Is something wrong?"
"Yes, Travis, something is very wrong. What part of ‘stay the hell out of my room’ don’t you understand?"
Travis was confused. "I don’t understand."
"Oh my god..." Missy shook her head.
"Did I do something?" He asked, and he was genuinely curious. Usually he knew when he had screwed up.
Missy nodded slowly. "When I went to sleep last night, I had two black boots in my closet. Now I have one."
Travis looked down. Indeed, she was wearing only one boot. "That’s strange, he said. I wonder what happened to it."
"Travis, please be serious for a second! I have a date in fifteen minutes, and I’m going to need my other shoe!"


You know that feeling you get when somebody says something you really didn't want to hear but you have to act normal so they won't know that it hurt you? That's how Travis felt. He only just started to accept the fact that Missy would never like him the way he liked her, and the thought that she had a date with a girl and not with him made him feel a little nauseous. But he sucked it up. He had to.


"Do you want me to help you look for it? Where did you see it last? Retrace your steps. That usually works for me." He paused and then laughed to himself. "Retrace your steps. Get it? It’s a shoe..."
"Just give me the damn shoe!"
"Oh, you think I have it?" It all made sense now.
"Yes! You’re the only other person who lives in this apartment, and I certainly didn’t hide my own shoe."
"Why would I take your shoe?"
"I don’t know, you’ve kind of been obsessing over me lately." Missy put a hand on her hip. That’s how you know she’s really pissed. "I figured you probably wanted it for a still life assignment or something."
"I don’t have any still life assignments, and if I did, I wouldn’t use your shoe for inspiration." He paused. "And I’m not obsessing over you... I just like your face."
"Wow. That’s not creepy at all."
"You know what I mean. You’re aesthetically pleasing."
"Just stop... She sighed. So you really don’t have my shoe?"
"No!"
"Then where the hell is it? I saw it last night." She shook her head. "Now I’m going to have to change my whole outfit."
"Why? What’s wrong with your other shoes?"
"You wouldn’t understand." She sighed. "I’m sorry I freaked out on you. That wasn’t cool."
"No worries. I hope you find your other boot."
"Thanks." She checked her watch. "Shit, I gotta run. I’m already late. See you later." And with that, she was gone and Travis was alone again. 

Travis was experiencing a severe case of artist’s block. This self portrait was due the next day, and he could barely get his paintbrush on the paper without second-guessing himself. He was an extraordinarily good procrastinator, though, so he elected to go check the mail rather than staring at the blank canvas any longer.

As he was walking down the stairs, wrapped up in his thoughts, as usual, Travis accidentally bumped into a man on the fifth floor. The man paused and looked at him. He was clearly distressed about something. His name was Vinny. They had met once, probably in the elevator or something.
"Vinny..." he said. 
 "What?" He looked exhausted, almost as though he hadn’t slept in a few days. He was holding a stack of papers, but Travis didn’t get a good look at them. He was too busy trying to remember Vinny’s last name.
"Do I know you?" Vinny asked.
"Yeah. We met once."
"When?"
"I don’t remember."
"Where?"
"I don’t remember."
Vinny rolled his eyes. "Who are you?"
"Travis. Travis Kasperbauer. Twelfth floor."
"Not ringing any bells," Vinny said.
"Well, it’s nice to meet you, then." Travis laughed and held out his hand, but Vinny clearly wasn’t in a hand-shaking mood. Instead, he grabbed a sheet of paper from the stack and placed it Travis’s hand. "Have you seen this girl?" He asked. "Her name is Laney Reid. She went missing from the orphanage two nights ago."
Travis examined the paper. The small photo in the center of the page was pretty bad quality, but he was confident that he had never seen the girl is his life.
"No. Sorry," he said. "What happened?"
Vinny shook his head. "I don’t know. She just disappeared, and the cops aren’t doing a damn thing about it."
Travis stared at her picture. She had a sweet face. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"No, not really. I just wish I had a better photo of her." He sighed. "When you’re an orphan, nobody really cares enough to take your picture."
Travis continued to stare at the page until something occurred to him. He looked up at Vinny. "I could paint it," he said. "I’m an art student, I could paint her for you."
"What?"
"It wouldn’t be perfect, but it’d be bigger, and certainly more noticeable," he said. "It’s worth a shot, right?"
Vinny shrugged. "All right. Go for it."
Travis was almost excited now. "What’s your apartment number? I’ll drop it off when I’m finished."
"511," Vinny said. "I probably won’t be home, but just slide it under the door or something."
Travis nodded.
"Thanks," Vinny said. He looked down at the paper in his hands.
"No problem. It’s the least I could do," said Travis. "And good luck. I hope you find her."
"Me too..." Vinny walked away.

Travis completely forgot about the mail, ran back up seven flights of stairs, and got to work. Within an hour, he had finished Laney’s portrait and made good progress on his own. When Missy came home, he was done. He was just sitting on his stool, listening to WTF, so Missy joined him. The station was playing a sad-sounding song by some girl who called herself Birdy, but it didn’t seem all that sad to Travis. For some reason, he was happy. He felt odd being happy after hearing of Laney’s disappearance, but he hadn’t been genuinely happy in a while, so he just accepted it.