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.