Samantha dreamt in undulating blues. It was as if it were a series of watercolors, all of different blue, swimming in each other, breathing like the ocean. As if she were floating high above the ocean, and its waves were bottles of blue inks. She was uncomfortable. There was no context of it. It just was. There was no sea air to enjoy. The Captain she dreamt of was no where to be found. A scarf of red floated atop it all, but would disappear as the waves pulled it down, then allowed it to float back up.
Then, she started to fall backward, up unto the sky. It was as if she were being pulled back, not falling down. It woke her up.
The flashes of blue light, and a slim streak of red, illuminated her room. She picked up her Raggedy Ann alarm clock. It was 3:28 and she had never seen that time in her life. She sat up and wondered why she was awake. She thought of this even before realizing that the lights were not typical either.
Police? She rose and pulled up the blinds. There was a police car two houses down. Ms. Margoit was standing speaking to a policeman, she in her nightgown, slippers and rollers in her hair. Sam's parents were consoling her. She was in hysterics. Her mouth agape and staring out into the houses for a sign. The policeman calmly wrote in his notepad. The Parkers and the Lopez' came out as well. Dad answered their questions as mom kept her arms around Ms. Margoit.
Sam blankly stared at the entire scene and took it all in. All of it. Every detail infused into her mind as if she were an artist and this her painting. With that, and the commotion seemingly leaving along with the lights of the policeman as he drove away, Sam fell back into bed. She didn't dream again before waking up for school.
She blearily walked out into the dining room, mom breezed by, "It was Margoit's dog, Charlie. She was taken right out of her house." Mom clattered breakfast in front of Sam as she walked back into the kitchen. Sam just stared through the plate. Why does she do that?
Samantha noticed a change in her mom when she had her first visitor. It was like a light switch. They were strangers. Samantha didn't understand it at all. She felt alone. Mom doesn't even look at me anymore. She looks over me. She looks to the side. She clatters a plate down and walks away.
"That's awful. Is Ms. Margoit ok?"
From the kitchen, "Poor thing. She needed a pill to calm down. I stayed with her until an hour or so ago."
"How do we know Charlie didn't run away."
Mom came out and stood in front of her, framed by the kitchen doorway. She stared out of the window and only looked at Sam for a fraction of a second. Samantha hated that even more. "There was a note."
With that, Sam shivered in instant excitement. "A note?"
"Yes. It's a ransom."
Samantha stood bolt upright and, as if in a trance, walked right back to her room and got dressed. She didn't wash up, but pulled her hair back into a ponytail, got on her Chucks and walked right out of the house. Mom was washing dishes at that point.
Sam stood in front of the Margoit house. Her name was Livvy. Samantha didn't walk on the lawn but stood on the street and got on her hands and knees. There must be something. She took out her 110 camera. She had a full roll, 23 pictures left. The first was of the sunrise last Saturday. The colors were amazing.
She took a picture of everything, although nothing looked amiss. However, underneath one of the windows there was footprints. The blood rushed from her head. The realization that there was a bad guy doing bad thing struck her then.
"Hey."
She jumped and turned, it was Jason. If she could hit him, she would. But Sam stood back and coolly said, "Don't do that again, kid. I am solving a mystery." Now it was his turn to jump back....
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