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She’d been crying for days.
The walls of her bedroom felt all too familiar, that stupid wallpaper her mother had put up for her when she was just a girl had been trapping her inside of this little brick box for what felt like years.
Two weeks.
That’s how long he’d been missing for.
Two weeks ago today the storm had hit Shady Grove, devastating the local farmers, killing three.
That’s what the news said at least.
There was one person the local newspaper had failed to mention.
Her sweet boy, Willoughby, whom she had left there, crying, thinking he was going to die. She knew he was scared to death by the rain, and she had left him there, curled up, crying underneath the coffee table.
Will left the next day, sending Ethel into an endless spiral that was going to continue for weeks more.
She grabbed the polaroid stuck to the wall beside her nightstand, peeling some of the fragile wallpaper off with it, and just stared at it.
It was the day of the pep rally, 1985, and she sat in the auditorium next to a boy she had never seen before.
He introduced himself as Will, short for Willoughby, and they immediately hit it off.
He had beautiful blonde hair, messy, covering his dark brown eyes. He smelled of sweat, but Ethel didn’t care, she had smelled worse.
He had a scrawny build, barely filling out the tiny t-shirt he was wearing, but Ethel thought he was gorgeous.
They had spent the whole day together, running through the halls, snapping pictures together on Ethel’s old polaroid camera she had gotten from her late father, who’d passed just a few years ago.
Willoughby told her about his father. He said he had a tough exterior but under all that he was just a little boy wanting to be loved.
Ethel wished her father was still alive. All this preacher’s daughter bullshit was driving her insane, but Willoughby seemed to make her forget about all that, just for a moment.
Ethel thought about Janie, how she’d been avoiding her recently because of her new boyfriend. They had been best friends since they were tiny and now she’d been left in the dirt for some boy. Whatever, now Ethel was going to do it back to her.
After the festivities of the day finished, Ethel and Willoughby walked to the park together. He said he had a joint in his bag they could share as the sun set over the horizon.
Sitting together, with this boy she had only just met but was possibly already the love of her life, had put Ethel at peace. She had forgotten about all of her worries that followed her everywhere everyday, all thanks to Willoughby.
Now though, he was gone, and she was to blame.
She spoke to his mother, who had wondered how she was doing. His mother thought he was only taking a short trip—that’s what he told her—but Ethel knew there was a possibility he’s never come back home, and she would spend every waking moment of her life knowing that she might be the reason he won’t come home, the reason his mother might never see him again.