h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Scared heartbeats reverberated, echoing off linoleum. His head lay where it hit the ground; the loud crack of his skull could still be heard in their hearts, though it had left their ears behind. Deathly sound waves bounced down endless corridors, rebounding, weakening, ebbing away until only a shadow remained. A silent echo. He is no more than an echo now, lost to both the sea of time and to space itself. They gather around his vacant body, shaking, pleading, praying in vain for the salvation of one already lost. But he is away from them, now only a shadow of a shadow.
What could we have done?
Go back to that October.
Go back to where it all began.
Go back to the garden, where she sat beneath the trees, the collar of her jacket turned up to block the brisk wind; the wind that gusted and changed in direction, blowing her rich brown hair across her face, rustling the papers peeking out of her notebook.
You sat with her beneath the trees, sharing secrets and cigarettes.
You loved her.
He loved her.
She was unloved.
What would your father say when you came smelling like cigarettes and cheap beer, life savers and gum to mask the smell? The smell of rebellion. The only way you knew how to resist him. Would he beat you? Take you to the shed and strike you with his long leather belt, tearing flesh, new bruises on top of old ones. Who did he become those nights? When did he become wild? The wildness—was it in him all the time, or only when you erred?
You didn’t know.
You didn’t know she left.
You didn’t know until that afternoon, when the patch of grass beneath the trees was empty, when her smiling face was absent; you didn’t know until you saw her absence. You never saw her until she left.
How could you not know?
How could you not see?
How could she leave you alone, after all that you had done? After all the conversations you had had, the shared secrets on cold and lonely October nights when you couldn’t tell if the white vapor in the air was the cigarette or your breath, when you were alone but for the silvery eye of the moon.
The moon was watching you.
The moon knew where she had gone, if you did not.
The moon knew, but you did not ask, because you would find her on your own.