The Tears Devourer

IV

    From the moment Michael Patton noticed Ariana Torres, he knew she was the one. Her straight hair, a shiny brown that caressed her elbows when she walked, and always smelled of fresh strawberries, delighted him at first glance. Those huge, honey eyes, delicate eyebrows that get thinner as you look over them, that small curved mouth, with the lower lip a little thicker than the other, and always moisturized, that tender and pink skin... In Michael's eyes, she was physically perfect.

    He wasn't even interested in knowing who she was or what she was like, he didn't care what she carried inside, her way of thinking or seeing the world. Michael was completely determined to speak to her just by looking at her for the first time, determined to possess her no matter what price he had to pay for. It would be his new obsession, his new muse.

    "Hi," Michael greeted, nervous enough to grin at her, and get another friendly, flirtatious smile back. "Your face looks familiar to me... Have we met before?" The boy leaned his weight on his left arm, atop the half wall of the reception at Dells Elementary School.

    "I don't think so," Ariana replied, as she rolled up and down with her index finger the straight lock of hair that fell behind her right ear, and she couldn't hide anywhere from the stupid smile that she had painted on her face. "I'm sure I would remember someone like you."

    "Someone like me?" Michael played along.

    "Yeah... Someone this cute." The embarrassment rose to her cheeks, but it didn't stop her eyes from wandering from the boy.

    "Maybe," Michael sighed, "if we went out together one day, I'd remember where I've seen your face before, and you... well, you wouldn't forget me anymore." Michael's confidence was strange for his age, and it was the immaturity in his voice that gave him away.

    "Where would you take me?" Ariana agreed almost immediately.

    "I haven't the slightest idea," the shy boy confessed. "How about we start with your favorite place in the world, and then I show you mine?"

    "I'm going out at five." The girl's crystalline eyes gave her away. She was enraptured by this handsome, gallant boy.

    That afternoon was the last time Ariana Torres was seen at Dells. That was the last time her parents could say goodbye to their beloved daughter, the last time they heard her voice. Two days after her disappearance, when the police could officially begin the search, the investigation began with the last people that Ariana had contact with that strange day.

    Her parents declared that they had seen her very happy and that at night, she would go out in the direction of the house of one of her friends. The aforementioned, Corie Cobrun, studied with Ariana during her childhood, until Ariana was withdrawn by her parents from elementary school to study at home. Despite this, Ariana and Corie never lost contact, and even Ariana begged her parents for months to get a part-time job, which could pay for outings and activities with her best friend.

    Ariana's parents were always very reserved, and above all, very Catholic. They hoped that at some point Ariana would find her calling in God and return to the sanctity of the habit, but they didn't want to force her and lose another daughter, as happened exactly with her older sister, who one day decided to leave everything behind, feeling suffocated by the obligations that her parents placed on her, and she ran away from home. They thought so of Ariana, they believed that the righteousness of their faith had caused another of their children to flee from home, but when they went for Corie in search of their daughter, Cobrun's version was somewhat different.

    "So, Ariana wouldn't see you, but with a boy who studies in Dells' high school, am I correct?" The officer crossed his arms across the table, settling into the icy metal chair.

    "That's right," Corie stated. "She told me that she met the boy that afternoon and that he picked her up from school when her shift ended, where she worked as a receptionist. They went to eat at the cafeteria on 101, the one with the strange name..."

    "Crêpe," the officer intervened.

    "Yes, that one," Corie nodded, keeping her hands together and hidden in the light blue jean she wore on her legs. "She liked going there, she liked the aroma of chocolate with ice cream on top, or of pancakes with a delicacy that they serve with the fruit you choose to put on top."

    "I have to ask you, please, to focus on Ariana's actions that day, it would be more fruitful for us, and you would help us a lot to find her current whereabouts."

    "Yes, of course... I understand," she sighed, holding back a tear that was already escaping from between her lashes. "Then Ariana told me that Michael... that's the boy's name," she clarified, "invited her to a secret place, a place that only he knew. That's why she told her parents that she would go to my house and that she would probably stay to sleep with me... Which was actually what we had planned, she came to my house that night, and he went to pick her up, but they no longer returned."

    "This boy, Michael... do you remember his last name? How does he look like? What was he wearing that day?"

    "Uh... yeah, more or less..." Corie let out another sigh, then a sudden involuntary tingling down her spine took her breath away for a few seconds. "His hair is a little wavy." Corie raised both hands and placed them on top of her head, not touching a single hair, trying to emphasize her spoken description, "and fluffy. It was combed back, parted on the left side. He's thin and tall… well, he's taller than me, I think I take him by the shoulder, huh…" The girl was silent for a moment, not knowing what else to say.

    "What was his face like? You remember?" The officer encouraged her to speak more. "Does he have any tattoos or scars? Maybe a mole or birthmark that can help us."

    "I don't know if he has tattoos, at least not visible," the girl answered, taking her time. "I think I noticed a mole on her chest, right here." She pointed with her left index finger at an area above her blouse, just between her collarbone and her left breast. "He was wearing a black shirt, and that mole stood out because it's not small. Hmm... His face... His face is also thin, his nose is somewhat large but straight; his eyebrows are somewhat thick; and his mouth, well I think it's normal, I don't know..."

    "You haven't told me the most important thing yet, Corie," he interrupted, remembering his first question himself. "Do you know what the boy's last name is?"