I'LL FIND YOU

It was cold that evening. A chill breeze blew. She didn't care. She wore her plain white t-shirt and her short black pants as always. No shoes. Not a care in the world.

She walked merrily along through the park, holding my hand with a broad, gleeful smile on her face. I was dressed similarly; a black t-shirt, blue jeans and tennis shoes. I hardly shivered, just like Ed hardly shivered.

Ed. A girl named Ed. Not Edwina or anything else. Edward. There was no telling if her parents gave her that name or if she'd just declared that she always was and always would be Edward. Just the way she handled everything in her life.

Everything except for meeting me. She hadn't declared that she would meet a thirteen-year-old girl in some crappy little town on some crappy little moon of some crappy little planet. She hadn't declared that she would fall in love with that thirteen-year-old girl. She hadn't declared that that thirteen-year-old girl would love her back.

And yet there we were. Walking through the only park in a relatively nice part of town, breathing the air and living our lives. Nothing could break the mood. Nothing could change that smile on Ed's face. I heard thunder. It was close, and I suddenly noticed the moist smell of the air. "It's gonna' rain," I said absently. I didn't care, really. Just my jittery nature speaking on its own. She looked at me with her big doe eyes and glittering smile. "Ed loves the rain!" she said, her voice like that of a kid at Christmas.

She took a deep breath and exhaled it with a happy sigh, and then as fast as a cobra snake she had her skinny arms around me and her soft cheek nestled against mine. I could do nothing but savor her warmth and smile.

We'd only known each other a week, but that didn't make any difference. We both knew it had been some kind of magic when we'd first seen each other; she'd looked in one direction. I'd looked the opposite direction. Half way in between, we'd locked eyes. Anyone in any position other than our own, rather unique one, would tell you it's impossible to lock eyes with a total stranger from across a mixing crowd. That magic had followed us through that crowd toward each other; neither of us had had to bump or push people out of the way, or even see the other for us to find each other. The noise from the people around us hadn't quite been absent, just turned down so low we hadn't noticed it. When we'd met in the middle, it had been a mutual feeling of finding something we'd been looking for our whole lives. "Hi," she'd said. "Hi," I'd said.

And so it had gone from there. Within the course of a week, we'd realized and admitted our love for each other, gone all over this crappy little town hand-in-hand, and become integral parts of each other's lives. Not Ozzy and Harriet, but who gives a damn?

I moved my arms under hers and put them around her. We stared into each other's eyes. Suddenly, thunder crashed as loud as a grenade, and hard, icy rain began to fall. Before I knew it, Ed had closed her eyes, and her lips were on mine. I followed suit. We kissed hard, long and passionately, pausing upon occasion to breath in each other's scent. For some reason I remembered something I'd heard once about acid rain. Let it rain, I thought, my whole world consisting of nothing but Ed's warmth. Let it rain acid. Let it rain fire. Just at that moment, I didn't care about anything but Ed. I could have died smiling.

After god knows how long, our faces came apart. I told her I loved her. She told me she loved me. After a moment though, I noticed Ed was crying. Just the sound of her happy voice expressing sadness made me feel like my heart had been torn out. It made me want to join my tears with hers. In that driving rain, I don't know if I did or didn't.

"I can't stay," she said, crying against my chest. It was only with me, when we were alone, that she ever spoke in the first person. Her voice was always joyous harp-chords, but when she spoke straight, I swear you could go to every planet where birds sing and still never hear anything like it. "I have to go back to the Bebop tomorrow," she went on. We'd been avoiding this all week. She lives on a ship called the Bebop with three bounty-hunters. They'd stopped here for repairs and re-supply, but they were leaving after a week. Three bounty-hunters have no room for someone who contributes nothing, and we both knew it. "I'll find you," I told her, doing my best to give her some comfort. "I'll find you."

I've lived with a woman named Katy since I was nine, in an apartment sized for three people. No one knows what happened to my parents. Before Katy it was the orphanage, and I'd managed to sneak out of the orphanage. I took Ed there. She'd been living with us since she'd arrived.

In my room that night, we bathed in each other's warmth, we sighed each other's names, we proved what ever the previous week and our walk in the park hadn't. So what if we're thirteen. It doesn't make any difference.

The next morning, we got dressed and headed toward the docks. Ed maintained her cheery mood, until the very end. She threw herself at me, embracing me hard and quivering, on the verge of tears. She said she'd always remember me. She said she loved me. I returned the latter. "I'll find you," I promised solemnly. The rest of my life can be summed up by that sentence. "I'll find you, Ed."

With that her mood was light and cheerful once again. You'd have never known. After she'd left, I found a high place and watched her return to her ship. I made sure to get as good a look as I could. The ship was an old junker, the captain a haggard old coot minus his hair and minus an arm. The image ingrained in my mind.

"I'll find you," I swore to myself through gritted teeth as the ship took off. I'll find her. I love you Ed.

FINISHED (indeed, finished)