Free Broken by Travis Thrasher Page B

the door, looking so cute and awkward and speechless, Laila leans over and gives him a kiss on his cheek.
    “Good night.”
    She locks the door and stands there in silence, wondering what’s outside waiting for her.
    Wondering if they’ll come lurking when her bodyguard is gone.
    •   •   •
    Lex dumps the bag on the hotel bed. Scraps of his sister’s life stare back at him. He looks at them again, wondering if there’s
     something he missed, wondering where to go from here. His head still hurts from being rammed into the leather headrest. He
     is just thankful he was close enough to a gas station to call a cab back to his hotel. He knows he needs to leave.
    His family needs him back home.
    Yet a lost member of that family needs his help too.
    None of these things help him. A tank top. An empty journal. A ticket stub to
Wicked
from a couple of years ago. Random little bits of nothing.
    He goes through the journal once again and finds the same thing he found twice before. Empty, blank pages.
    Even the couple of bills don’t help. Too bad there’s not a cell phone bill. That way he could get some more names and numbers.
    “Yeah, that’s probably all you need, Lexi.”
    He smiles saying that name. That’s the name Laila always used to call him. The more he told her he hated it, the more she
     called him by it.
    He picks up the three photos that were in the journal.
    One is a shot of her, except only the top of her hair and one of her eyes is shown in the corner of the photo. He can tell
     she is laughing, however. She’s got that look about her. She still looks thesame. Beautiful, exotic, haunting. Strange to think in those terms because she’s his sister, but she is nevertheless. He
     can’t tell where this shot was taken, but it looks like she was trying to avoid the picture and managed to just slightly get
     in the shot. The next is a photo of a man—maybe in his thirties, good-looking, wearing a tie and a coat. Something about the
     glance makes Lex think this man is in love with the person taking the picture. And something about the glance makes Lex believe
     it was Laila behind the lens, snapping it. There is no name on the back of the photo, no date, nothing.
    The third picture is of a boat, probably in Lake Michigan. It looks like the photo was taken on a pier looking out.
    “
Precious
,” he reads from the side of the boat.
    He thinks of the
Lord of the Rings
saga and of Gollum fondling the ring and whispering that word in his very unique way.
    The pictures are interesting but again don’t give him anything to go on. The man in the picture and the boat (probably both
     related) are somehow meaningful enough for Laila to have kept. So why didn’t she take them with her?
    It’s early Monday morning, and soon the sun will be rising. He will need to call home.
    He’s unsure what he will say.

8
    I was baptized in fourth grade. It was after my father’s big conversion, his big On-the-Road-to-Damascus saga that changed
     our lives. Changing it enough to make us move and have him go in search of the Almighty somewhere in Texas. Believe me, if
     the Almighty exists, He sure isn’t hanging out in Texas.
    It’s funny. So many people I came to know in New York and Chicago would probably look at me in complete bewilderment after
     saying a phrase like that: on the road to Damascus. Papa took us to so many churches that I grew to know the stories well.
     I can still recite them. But knowing the stories doesn’t get you far at all. It just reminds you of what you’re supposedly
     missing, or how deluded some loved ones are.
    I always wondered after our family got baptized in that little church whether I was a different person. But inside, deep down,
     I still had all these questions. “Okay, God, if You’re there why did You take our mom?” And, “Okay, God, if You’re there,
     why would You continue to allow things to happen again and again and again?” Soon I stopped saying “okay, God,”