Protect

       It’s been three days but it feels like 4 weeks have gone by without her.  The last time I saw those big brown eyes and scruffy, mud blonde hair that reminds me of the whole wheat pasta my mom makes me eat, was her waiting by the back door to go out and pee. She had just been fully trained, which was amazing because I wouldn’t be able to smell if he had an accident until my mom complained or I stepped in it. If only I had closed the gate or just gone outside with her, this would have never happened.

            A year after the fire my mom and Nan decided that a puppy would be the perfect solution to all of our fears. I would be able to have a responsibility ally my own and they wouldn’t have to worry about me starting fires because Lyla would be able to smell something burning and bark for warning. “500 dollar reward if found!” I put on top of the signs with a picture of me and Lyla in the center. I printed at least 5 dozen copies and put them all over town. The 500 dollars are all I have saved up, but I’d do anything to get her back. “She’ll show up eventually, Sage. She’s gotta. She loves more than life itself” Tyler tries to tell me to cheer me up by wrapping his arms around me. “I just can’t believe I left the fence open like that. How could I be so careless?” I hide my face in his in his chest. After trying to comfort me for a while, Tyler heads home for dinner. He invites me to come with him but I tell him I wouldn’t be much of a guest. When he leaves I get so anxious that I grab the flashlight and decide to go to the park, hoping maybe she wandered there after I took her a couple of times over the months. I whistle for her and sing her name, “Lyyyyyylaaa.” There is no sign of life at all at the park but I shine the flash light a little further back to the woods and figured maybe she thought it was a fun place to go. I try to stick as close to the trail as possible, but how would a dog know how to do that? It’s starting to get dark out and I am sure my mom is home from work wondering where I am. But poor Lyla is probably more worried about where she is. So I continue to go in deeper. “Come on girl, time to go home!” I scream and throw down my arms. “Where’s home?” I hear a voice say from behind me, a jump and turn the flashlight right towards the direction I heard it from. “Oh my goodness, you just scared the life out of me!” I say with a huge exhale with my left hand holding my heart and my right still on the man’s face. “I am sorry miss, I didn’t mean to frighten you, are you lost?” I tell him that I am not lost but that my puppy is. “She’s been missing for three, going on four days now. But I guess I should be heading home now.” I say walking past the man. “Did you say a puppy? What kind?” “She is a mutt, but mostly a blondish colored coat.” “Oh why didn’t you say so?” The man pulls out from behind his back a blood soaked carcass of what used to be my beautiful ball of life. Tears innately flood down my face and I open my mouth to scream at the horrible image that would scare the rest of my life. My life that I knew would be coming to an abrupt halt when the man dropped Lyla on the ground to cover my mouth and puncture my left lung with a chiseled tree branch. I lie there cold next to Lyla’s mangled body. “I should have closed the fence.” I manage to whisper to her.