(song: "Lost On You" - LP)

A day with no light is the worst.

     I stay hopped-up all night on energy drinks until my heart revs two times past its normal speed. I pour over articles and memories all night long. Even when the sunrises it doesn't feel like it. My mother calls me to breakfast and when she catches me staring at nothing she asks if I am okay.

     Am I okay?

     Eddie isn't hard to find. He aged out of foster-care and works as in the kitchen of a fast-food joint fifteen minutes away from my house. As soon as I pin-point his location, I head in that direction. My clothes are still the same hipster attire I wore yesterday, but now they smell more like me and less like laundry detergent.

    I debate pulling up beside the drive-through window and ordering up an Eddie and decide against it. Instead, I park my car and stand in a line of eager children hungry for kids meals.

     "One hamburger kids meal and one Edward Knox please," I request when it's my turn.

     The woman working the cash register looks at me like I'm crazy for a minute and then she connects the dots.

     "Eddie! A friend of yours is here," the woman shouts back into the kitchen.

     A guy not much older than myself emerges expecting to see a familiar face, but sees me instead. His shoulders slump and his lackluster disposition reveals that he probably hoped to see Cassie. Sorry to disappoint.

     "Oh it's just you," he says with recognition. "I get a break in an hour, can you wait?"

    I tuck away the desire to ask him how he knows who I am and just nod. "I can, but I insist on having two kids meals to entertain me until said hour passes."

    Eddie effectively ignores me and returns to doing his job like a functional adult is supposed to. I pay for my food and find an empty table far from the noise and excitement of the children. My meals are in paper bags, which annoys me. I want the clever cardboard cut-out boxes, but corporations don't care about being clever, they want things to be cheap.

    The not-so-surprising gift inside is a racing car and a pink-pony. I push the car forward with my finger and count down the minutes . . . the seconds . . . the milliseconds.

    I try to force the willpower within me to not text Kristen. I can survive a day without texting this girl.

    Sixty-seconds and counting.

    I am capable of having discipline and resisting impulsive urges.

    Eighty-seconds and counting.

    But maybe I should check on her.

    I turn on my phone and it feels like I've just come out of water after holding my breath. My fingers search down my contact list past Cassie's old number to Kristen's phone and her secret phone. I text it immediately.

     [Found Eddie. -Toby]

    No reply. Maybe she's busy. I keep staring at the dialogue window and wait for her reply. I don't count the seconds anymore, time no longer matters; I just want a response.

     [Okay. -Kristen]

    Really? She has nothing more to say to me than that? I'm offended. So offended that I decide that I'm not going to give her the pink-pony I found inside my second kids meal.

     "Toby?" Eddie's standing beside me. I didn't even notice his arrival. Did an hour pass already?

     "How do you know who I am?"

     Eddie sits down in an uncomfortable red-plastic seat opposite of me. He's just as tall as I am so our legs suffer from the same issues with micro-seating.

    "I've seen you," he says. "You just haven't seen me. Cassie showed me the pictures she took with you on her phone. I've always seen her as a little sister, someone who always needed protection. You wouldn't believe how often Cassie got into trouble when we were younger. I thought she'd age-out of foster care like I was destined to, but she got adopted. After that we kept up with each other here and there."

    "Have you received any postcards from Cassie?" I get right to the point.

    "Postcards?" He sounds confused.

    I was right. Greg had been taking Eddies postcards, but the question was how?

     "Cassie has been reaching out via postcards to me and two others. You were supposed to be one of the two, but your postcards are getting stolen. She needs our help. She could be hiding out in some abandoned house somewhere waiting for us to make things right."

     Eddie is calm, scarily calm. "Look, wherever Cassie is, I'm sure she has a roof over her head and food in her mouth. She was close with a lot of other kids who aged-out. She is probably hiding at one of their places."

     I hadn't even thought of that theory, it made a lot of sense.

    "Besides," Eddie continues. "I don't want any part in this. Cassie is complicated. Some of the kids back when we were younger used to steal money or trinkets and that got them sent away or put in juvie. Cassie learned from a really young age that the best thing to take from people was their secrets. Information is the most valuable asset there is. It can make or break even the biggest of companies. The older she got, the more intense the secrets became. I will tell you anything I know and keep up with you by phone too if that helps, but nothing more."

     And in that moment, Eddie doesn't look quite as tall as me. He looks small and tired, he's seen too much and experienced too much for a nineteen-year-old. He's a man just trying to play along with the system and hope it doesn't chew him up.

     My fingers tap a french fry against the table and I prop it in the corner of my mouth like a cigarette. "You disappoint me, Eddie. She wouldn't be reaching out like this unless she thought we were going to help her."

    Eddie's brows flatten with intensity. "Re-evaluate what you know about Cassie. Rewind and really investigate who she was versus who you assume she was. She told me that she liked you because you had no secrets. You take everything that's bad about you and display it publicly. There's nothing to pick apart because you pick yourself apart constantly. Cassie isn't like you, she kept everything hidden deep inside and only let the good show."

    I did have a secret though; being in-love with her for years. Still, his words give me reason for doubt.

    Eddie places a scrap of paper from his pocket on the table and scrawls down his number on it. He leaves it there and returns to work.

    The joint suddenly feels too full for me, too suffocating. I take the paper and retreat to the security of my car and my loud music. I close my eyes and I allow the thought-bees to come in. Inside the bees I try to find something that can give me clarity on who the person I love really was.

I stare at the tin box that sits on my coffee table. The USB, VHS tape and stack of blank postcards stare back at me.

     I take the postcards out of the box and push everything else off the table until it hits the floor. Cassie said for us to not do more than she requested, but she can't know what's going on here. She probably has no idea that Greg took Eddie's postcards, and she isn't aware that I know about Becker & Long or Mrs. Livingston's connection to David Walters. Whatever her original plan had been, things were not working as sequentially as she intended.

     My fingers feel possessed; I start writing down everything I feel inside onto the postcards.

     Dear Cassie, I no longer know which way is up or down, that's thanks to you. I'm mad at you and how you've chosen to handle this situation. Postcards? Really? I understand you not wanting to involve the police, but you know who you should have involved? Me. Because whether you are a good person or a bad person, a devil or an angel, I'd have accepted you.

      I run out of space and continue the letter on the second postcard.

     Dear Cassie, I have to continue ranting on this card because you've chosen to use archaic postcards over a more logical form of old-world communication like letters with pages. You think I had no secrets? You are wrong. The reason we fought so much at the end, and the reason I didn't get physical with you was because I fell in-love with you.

     No more space again. This is starting to really annoy me.

     Dear Cassie, how is the weather in Phoenix? I doubt you are even really in Phoenix, but back to the subject of being in-love with you. I never told you before because I didn't want to ruin our friendship. I am telling you now because I don't care if it ruins our friendship, you pretty much have already abandoned me. I'm going to help you because it's what I do. I'm going to find you because it's what I do.

     Next card.

     Dear Cassie, perennials are the backbone of every good garden and grow seasonable well this year. As I mentioned in the previous card, there's a lot of crap that I do for you. I will find out the secret you learned and face the consequences that follow. I will become a "gate-keeper" just like you. One thing I will not continue to do is love you. By saving you, I am free of you.

     Next card!

     Dear Cassie, that is all. Peace out. -Toby

     I stamp all five cards and make sure to place them in the mailbox outside. A weight lifts off my shoulders and everything becomes clear. For the first time I start to feel my obsession towards Cassie turn into simply care and consideration.

    Cassie was my light in the darkness. Now I have come to the conclusion that I didn't need a light in the darkness, I just needed night-vision . . .