Chapter Six: Missing Person

CHAPTER SIX:

Missing Person

Robert McAfee sat up in bed, on top of the covers still wearing his clothes from the day before, as the window across from him lightened with the dawn of a new morning. His cell phone was nearby, and every few minutes he picked it up and checked Patrick’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, hoping for some new post, anything to indicate Patrick still existed in the world and hadn’t simply evaporated into the atmosphere.

Nothing. The last appearance from Patrick on social media was a Tweet from two days ago that simply read, “Enlightenment comes not from denying your emotions but from understanding them.” He’d concluded with the hashtag #BuddhaKnowsBest.

Robert smiled as he read the Tweet for the zillionth time. It was exactly the kind of philosophical-sounding nonsense his boyfriend loved to post online. Robert often teased him about it, calling him Dali Lama. Not with any spite, but with good-natured affection. The way Patrick sometimes called Robert Mr. Sloth. Not traditional pet-names like sweetheart or honey, but said with the same degree of love. He even found it endearing the way Patrick never used text-speak but all his posts were in complete sentences with full punctuation and no abbreviations.  

Pulling up his own Facebook page, Robert began scrolling through all the pictures he’d uploaded the last few months of him and Patrick. Taken on campus, at Falls Park, their trip to Asheville, the Greenville Zoo, the Upcountry History Museum. Always with their arms around each other, cheeks pushed together. As different as the two men were physically, in all the photos they wore identical high-wattage smiles.

Robert was startled by the beeping of his roommate’s alarm at seven. With a slap of the hand, Kirk silenced the alarm, broke wind with a sound like paper ripping, then swung his feet out of bed. After a stretch and a yawn, he glanced over at Robert. “Dude, have you been up all night?”

Robert only nodded in response.

Kirk stumbled over to his closet and rummaged through the clothes that littered the floor, smelling some and discarding them, before coming up with a wrinkled shirt and a tattered pair of cargo shorts. Grabbing his travel bag of toiletries, he started for the door to head to the floor’s communal bathroom. He paused with his hand on the knob and looked back at his Robert. “So you still haven’t heard from Patrick, huh?”

Robert shook his head.

Kirk fidgeted, shifting from one foot to the other like he urgently had to relieve his bladder. “He’s probably just sick or something. I’m sure he’ll be in touch today.”

With that, Kirk left the room quickly, almost as if he were fleeing the scene of a crime.

Robert still marveled at the fact that he’d confided in his roommate at all. They weren’t exactly friends. No animosity or disdain, but neither was there camaraderie or bonding. They didn’t hang out together and rarely spoke more than a few words to one another in a given day. Sometimes, Robert thought it was like living with a benign ghost. Objects moved around and you heard noises from time to time, but no real interaction.

Truth be told, Robert had few actual friends. He had acquaintances by the dozens, but the only person he’d let get truly close was Patrick. With no one to tell about his worries, he’d turned to Kirk and unburdened last night. Such raw intimacy clearly made his roommate uncomfortable, but Kirk had made a commendable if lackluster effort at being sympathetic.

Robert tried calling Patrick again. Like all the times before, the call went straight to voicemail. Disconnecting, he sent another text. The latest in a string of texts over the past twenty-four hours that had gone unanswered.

“Where R U? Did I do something wrong? R U mad at me? Please say something I’m worrying myself sick over here.”

He waited five minutes, and when there was no response he sighed and got off the bed, stepping into his shoes. He left the dorm room, not bothering to shower, or brush his teeth, or even run a comb through his hair. It wasn’t as if he planned on attending any of his classes today anyway.

He exited Manly Hall and followed the walkway to the stone steps that led up to the next series of dorm buildings. Geer Hall was the next dorm up the hill. Robert didn’t have a keycard to get into this building, so he waited outside the door until someone came out, a girl in a pink jogging suit, hair in a ponytail, and a backpack slung over one shoulder. Robert said good morning to her then slipped in before the door closed all the way.

Patrick’s room was on the second floor, and Robert pounded on the door for several minutes, until his knuckles ached and began to abrade from the rough grain of the faux wood. He turned when he heard a door behind him open. Paul Guffey came out of the room directly across the hall and nodded at him. The two shared a Statistics class this semester.

“Hey, Robert.”

“Have you seen Patrick?” Robert asked without returning the greeting.

Paul paused for a moment tilted his head as he mulled over the question. “I think the last time I saw him was day before yesterday. Yeah, Saturday, that’s right.”

A bottomless pit opened in Robert’s gut and it felt as if he were turning inside out and falling into it. “I haven’t heard from him since Saturday night.”

“Maybe he had some kind of family emergency and had to split.”

“I guess that’s possible.”

“I have to run or I’ll be late for Bio. See you in Statistics tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you then,” Robert said, though he had no real intention of going to his classes tomorrow either, not until he figured out what was going on with Patrick.

Alone in the hall again, Robert leaned his forehead against Patrick’s door and felt tears making hot trails down his cheeks. Worry twisted through him like coils of barbed wire, shredding his insides.

Everything had seemed normal Saturday. They’d had an early dinner at Pita House; Robert marveled that he was actually growing to like the taste of hummus and falafel and even those stuffed grape leaves. They’d made plans to go to Men’s Warehouse across from Haywood Mall and get fitted for tuxes Monday night.

Tonight. We’re supposed to be there at six tonight.

They had decided not to spend the night together—Robert had taken to spending most nights in Patrick’s room since Patrick had a single with no roommate—because Patrick was adamant that he needed to get some serious work done on a paper for Abnormal Psych. Or maybe it was Theories of Personality. One of those upper-level Psych courses. Still, even apart they had continued exchanging texts until almost midnight. The last text Robert had received from Patrick read, “Love you, sweetie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Then tomorrow had come and there had been no word. Robert had rolled out of bed at about half past ten Sunday, expecting to already have a text waiting from his boyfriend. Patrick usually sent a message after his morning jog, but there had been nothing. Odd, but at first Robert had not been alarmed. He’d sent his own good morning text, and had then taken a shower. After scarfing down a breakfast of cold Pop-Tarts, he’d tried texting again. When that generated no reciprocal response, he’d called and gotten the voicemail.

As morning gave way to afternoon, Robert began to grow concerned. Since they’d started dating, he and Patrick never went a day without seeing one another, and when they weren’t together, they kept up a steady stream of texts and posts on each other’s social media accounts. This radio silence was unlike Patrick, and vaguely disturbing.

By dinner time, what was vague had become quite solid. He’d contacted some mutual acquaintances, but no one else had heard from Patrick either.

Robert considered pounding on the door again, but he knew it was useless. Either Patrick wasn’t in, or he was choosing not to answer.

There is a third option. Something could have happened, and he’s lying in there unconscious or worse.

Robert imagined himself delivering a swift kick that would crack the lock, but instead he turned and hurried down the hall. While the idea that something may have happened—ruptured appendix, aneurysm, slipped and hit his head on the side of his desk—terrified Robert, that wasn’t what he believed in his heart.

What he believed was that Patrick had grown tired of the relationship and was breaking up with him by cutting off all contact. Ghosting, Robert had heard this technique called. Avoiding the big breakup scene by simply vanishing from the other person’s life. Ignoring calls and texts and hoping that the other party got the message and eventually faded from your life like a movie specter dissipating in a gradual dissolve.

Pushing away from the door, Robert left the dorm, heading out into campus with no real direction in mind, just letting his feet lead him on a random path. The pathways were busy this morning, students walking singly, in pairs, sometimes in groups, chattering away about things as inconsequential as parties, part-time jobs, and exams. Robert kept his head down and spoke to no one, not even the few who said hello to him as he stalked past.

When he finally looked up, he wasn’t surprised to find he was walking down the road that led beside the bookstore. The cascading fountain gurgled behind its pressed sheets of glass. As he rounded the corner, he stepped onto one of the small wooden decks that thrust out into the lake on this end.

Of course he had been heading to the lake, even if his conscious mind hadn’t been aware of it. He and Patrick had picnicked by the lake several times, usually down by the clock tower, and while Robert had never joined his boyfriend on his morning jogs, he knew the runs around the lake were so important to Patrick as to border on ritual.

Robert began walking along the path toward the rose garden and the dining hall beyond that, the route he knew that Patrick always took. Joggers, power-walkers, bicyclists were out in force, making the loop around the lake. Men, women, older, younger, parents pushing children in strollers, even a couple on a tandem bike. This time Robert met the eyes of every person he passed, part of him hoping he’d find Patrick on the trail even though it was much later in the day than the man normally went jogging.

I know his schedule. He has Art Appreciation at 9. I could just hang out by the classroom, waiting for him to arrive.

Robert thought that sounded a bit too stalkerish, but the truth was he felt stalkerish. He’d heard of people being love sick before, but he’d always thought it a silly expression meant to explain away the behavior of people who had temporarily lost their minds.

Now he knew better.

Of course, he realized that almost everything pertaining to love had seemed silly to Robert before he’d met Patrick, because Robert had never been in love before Patrick. He’d had numerous dalliances and affairs, dated men for a few months here and there, but he’d never known this kind of emotional dependency. A year ago, if asked whether or not he believed in the concept of soulmates, he would have answered with a cynical laugh, but what he felt for Patrick was powerful and profound and elemental. It wasn’t a result of chemical responses or pheromones; it was a force of nature as fierce as a hurricane.

And as potentially destructive.

Robert certainly felt like he’d been through a hurricane, the damage leaving him in an emotional state of emergency. Love had lifted him to heights he had never suspected before, but now he saw that such a meteoric rise came with a price. Namely the possibility of plunging back to the ground without a parachute.

Just past the amphitheater, he turned to cross the bridge that spanned the tail end of the lake to avoid climbing the steep hill. Even walking at a leisurely pace along a relatively flat path, Robert found himself winded and sweaty.

Is that why Patrick dumped me? Because I’m so out of shape?

Patrick had never seemed particularly bothered by Robert’s extra pounds, but then it was an unfortunate fact of life that what didn’t bother people in the beginning could grow to bother them a great deal over time.

He chastised himself for being so weak. It wasn’t like him. Normally he had a confidence that seemed almost disproportionate, which explained how he’d bedded so many men most would consider out of his league. A lot of that confidence was merely façade, an overcompensation to make up for not being the most enticing physical specimen on the market, but now the façade was slipping, leaving behind the self-conscious, insecure boy he’d been growing up.

As Robert passed a group of guys playing Frisbee golf to his right, he tried to grasp hold to the edges of his fleeing confidence, to force the mask back in place. If he was going to get dumped, he wasn’t going to go out without a fight. Damn it, at the very least Patrick owned him an explanation and one delivered in person.

Pulling out his cell, he dialed Patrick’s number again, leaving yet another message, this one less whiny and more firm. “I’m not just going to disappear, Patrick. If you think I’ll just slink away into the night, you need to give up that dream. Whatever the hell is going on with you, I’m going to keep pestering and needling until you tell me. Face to face. So just suck it up, grow a sack, be a man, and call me back!”

As soon as he disconnected the call, Robert felt a wave of regret wash through him. Had he been too harsh? What if something truly were wrong? What if one of Patrick’s parents had died and he’d had to rush home to West Virginia?

If something like that had happened, he’d have let you know. He wouldn’t just leave you hanging.

Then again, when people were grieving, they weren’t always thinking straight.

His mind also revisited the image of Patrick lying unconscious in his room. Such a scenario wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility, and since Patrick didn’t have a roommate, who would know?

As Robert started through the parking lot back toward the bookstore, he pondered whether he should call the police. Seemed a bit extreme, though as far as he knew no one had seen Patrick in the past twenty-four hours. On those police procedural shows his mother liked to watch, that was the rule. A person had to be missing twenty-four hours for the police to do anything.

Still, he hesitated. How foolish would he look if he called the police because his boyfriend was trying to ghost him? Talk about humiliation piled atop humiliation.

You’ll feel a lot more than foolish if something really is wrong and you don’t call someone.

Robert stopped halfway across the parking lot, near a dark stain on the pavement that he failed to notice, and pulled his cell phone from his pocket once again. Chewing on his bottom lip, he scrolled through his contacts until he found the number for Patrick’s parents.

Taking a shaky breath, he selected the number and pressed SEND.