Free Translucent by Nathaniel Beardsley Page B

other things. Last time she’d focused on learning and knowledge, but this time she focused on trying to find Shawn again. She had no idea if he was even out there, if he existed in this world on not, but she resolved that if he was, then she would find him as soon as she could .
    And so the moment her limbs were capable of manipulating pages of a phonebook and clicking her way through the internet, she began searching for him. When she looked through the names of people in the suburbs where she lived, there were no results. She realized that he must have moved here later on in his life, and she immediately realized what a fool she was for not having asked him, in all those years they’d been together, where he was actually from . He’d said that he’d gotten a different job in each of his lives, so he could end up practically anywhere in the world.
    Right now though, she knew he still had to be a kid if he was alive, and so she began looking for Shawn Ryker in multiple cities and towns all over the state. When her meticulous search yielded no results, she looked through cities and towns in the whole country, going state by state. She would spend hours at the computer searching for Shawn Ryker, finding some results but not the ones she wanted. A couple of times she found someone with the exact same name , but when she called them she instantly knew that they were not the right Shawn. All she had to do was say her name and maybe mention the Sandman, and she’d know. But for the longest time her search yielded nothing and Karena felt like she’d never see Shawn again.

23
    Karena, after months and months of searching, still hadn’t found Shawn. She grew frustrated on multiple occasions, but o ther times she was glad to have a distraction from the constant fear of the Sandman. Besides, it was of absolute necessity that she carried out her search, otherwise she would have no one to whom she could really confide and open up to.
    And then, one d ay, she found someone named Shaw n Ryker on the Internet who lived all the way in Canada. Karena called him, and a man answered the phone who was not Shawn.
    “Hello?” the man said.
    “Hello,” said Karena, awkwardly, as these phone conversations always were.
    “Who is this, eh?” the man asked.
    “ This is Karena,” said Karena. “Is this Shawn Ryker?”
    “This is Shawn’s father,” said the man. “Who the heck is Karena?”
    “Can you please put me on the phone with Shawn?” Karena asked.
    “Are you a friend of Shawn?” the man asked. “He doesn’t have any friends, so you can’t be. Then who are you? ”
    Karena felt a surge of excitement at the man saying Shawn had no friends. This could be him, since she knew that after 8 lifetimes he wasn’t likely to be the most social person on the planet . “Can you just please let me talk to him?” Karena asked.
    The man sighed. “All right, fine.” There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment, before a boy of about 14 years old answered.
    “This is Shawn,” said the boy quietly.
    “This is Karena,” Karena answered.
    There was silence. “Karena?” the boy asked. “You mean…the Karena who I met…”
    “Yes,” Karena replied, almost bubbling over with joy. “I’m the Karena you met in your past life!”
    “You’re real,” Shawn whispered . “Finally, after all these years, I hear you again.”
    Shawn was even more excited to see Karena that Karena was to see him. Although they lived far away, Karena and Shawn were finally communica ting again, and for Shawn it had been 12 years since they’d spoken.
    “I can’t believe it,” he said. “I started over 12 years ago and I’d almost thought that you were never going to come. Although I suppose it wouldn’t make sense for you to come while I was younger, since I was still a little boy. I can’t believe I never told you where I’d be when you started over, if we actually could meet up again.”
    “I searched the whole country,”