The Search for Artemis - By P. D. Griffith Page 0,6

what he had seen in the apartment. He closed his eyes, but there was no closing his brain, which appeared inclined to assault him with a barrage of images from the crime scene. Landon resigned himself to a long, restless night.

Landon awoke the next morning to the sound of the ducks quacking in the lake. Somehow he fell asleep, and it was now early morning. He quickly got up and looked around. The sun peeked above the horizon, the light morning fog hadn’t lifted yet, and the ground was wet with dew. Landon immediately devised a game plan. First, he would scope out his surroundings and try to memorize all the other places he might be able to run to if someone came after him. Second, breakfast. Third, he would sit down and try to write everything he remembered from the night before. If he expected to ever rid himself of this nightmare, he needed to figure out what happened.

A number of locals ran through the footpaths of the park for a bit of morning exercise. Unlike them, Landon studied the paths, mentally noting every possible unmarked route into the trees and every dark spot behind a rock or root that he might be able to use for hiding in case of emergency. The park was more beautiful than he remembered. It was the middle of the summer; the flowers were in full bloom and the grass had filled in since the cold winter. Squirrels ran around playing in the grass and hoarding whatever they could find. Birds chirped and glided from tree to tree. The ducks and geese swam peacefully in the lake.

Once he finished his reconnaissance mission, the fog had lifted and the burdensome heat returned with a vengeance. Landon started to sweat profusely. For a reprieve, he left the park and went into a little bagel shop across the street. When he opened the door, the cool air conditioning blasted him in the face. It felt wonderful. Landon sauntered up to the counter and ordered himself a toasted everything bagel covered in a lox cream cheese spread. As he ate it, he realized there was no reason to go outside to work on his third task of his imaginary To-Do list, so he pulled out his notebook and pen and sat in the back of the shop to work.

He started by trying to remember everything he saw once he woke up in the living room, jotting down what he remembered of his father under the couch and his mother amidst the books with blood covering the floor. He noted the crumbling walls, the broken picture frames and light bulbs, the busted TV in the corner, and the overturned dining table pushed up against the back wall. After that, he couldn’t really remember anything. He closed his eyes and tried to think back to before he woke up on the floor. He remembered dinner, reading David Copperfield, falling asleep, waking up, and opening up his door while half asleep. Everything between opening the door and waking up on the floor was a haze; he just couldn’t remember. It was just black—a blank space in his mind. As he continued to hopelessly think back to the night before, Landon started to doodle little geometric shapes and lines in the margin of the notebook, but after about an hour of getting nowhere, he gave up and went back to the park.

For the next few days, Landon didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Every night he slept under the willow tree, ate at the little shops and food carts around the park and watched the many people that passed through. He never stopped wondering, however, what he should do next. He wracked his brain for somewhere he could go—the apartment of a friend at school or the home of one of his mother’s co-workers—but without his cell phone he didn’t know how to ask them. He didn’t know a single one of their numbers to call, and Landon was afraid to just show up at their house and involve them in his mess. He wasn’t about to volunteer someone to become his accomplice. He was on his own, and he was on the run. Alone, he would have to figure out what was his next move.

But as the days passed, his thoughts of his next move didn’t go much further than where he was going to find money and how he was going to get food. No matter where he