Finding the Lost Boy Read online

  Chapter One

  It was late in the evening on Bifoil, a tiny farming world on the edge of the galaxy, and Katelin was standing on her front porch staring up at the stars as usual. She had a plan beauty about her, soft straight hair, clear pale skin, and bright green eyes. Her parents use to say, her mother in particular, that her smile was so warm it protected the crops from the annual frost. This night however, was chilly and Katelin wasn't smiling. She hadn't smiled much since her father died about a year ago.

  At the time of the accident she was seventeen and attending medical school. She had always been a smart girl and despite her fathers firm disapproval she had wanted to be a doctor. "God chooses when we die. It's not mans place to interfere." her father had said when she brought up the idea. Her father was a simple man and Katelin knew that his opposition was more about his guilt over her mothers death than anything else. A simple infection combined with and allergic reaction took her mothers life. A small trip to any local doctor and she would've been fine, but it was not the family way. "It builds character", and "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" were common phrases around her house in the days of her youth. However, after the third straight day of her mother saying that she felt a little flushed no one could wake her. The doctor said that her heart shut down in her sleep and she passed painlessly.

  Katelin never blamed her father for her mothers death. No she knew that her mother was far too stubborn to go to see a doctor. She blamed their way of life more than anything else and made a silent vow to held save others from a so called "Peaceful Death" As far as Katelin was concerned death was anything but peaceful.

  After her mothers death she tried to move on with her life like before, but the house was lonely with just her and her father and was filled with memories of happier times that left the two of them in a constant state of mourning. As time moved on her father started to cling to her more and more for support when all she wanted to was leave and get as far away from the memories of her mother as she could. Her and her father started to fight more than a teenage girl and a single father should. Then one night after a particularly rough round of yelling that ended with her father saying "I'm glad your mother isn't around to see you now." and Katelin screaming through tears "I hate you and I wish it was you that died instead!", she ran away. She packed herself a few changes of clothes, all the credits that she had saved, and took the time to write her father a note before she left. In the note she told her father that she was going to Beaumont, a good school in the nearby city of Milton, and if he cared about her at all to send tuition. If he didn't then he could consider this her goodbye.

  Regardless of how often they fought or how bad those fights got Katelin still had a good father, and after the initial shock of finding her gone and reading her short note wore off her father did some research of his own on Beaumont. Katelin had mentioned it in passing before but he had never given it much thought. It was only after he read into the schools history and how well they compared to other schools that he realized how much thought his daughter had put into her choice. The school was much more affordable than its academic competitors and offered the option to pay a month at a time or by semester. It specialized in the medical fields and even offered a work program where the more senior students could work in the local hospitals to pay for their room, board and tuition. This was not a little girl running away to a friends house to throw a fit. She had been planning this for months, maybe even longer because she was truly unhappy.

  It seemed like a wonderful place for Katelin. By the third day after she left he realized she wasn't coming back and that he really only had one choice. If he supported her, told her he was sorry, and that he loved her, then they might be okay. He knew though, that if he marched in to the school, and forced her to leave all her dreams behind, that she would hate him even more. He knew that if he did that then the next time she left she wouldn't leave a note and he would lose her forever. He wept at the the thought and before he even wiped his tears he found a pen and pad and he began to write to his daughter, pleading for her forgiveness.

  After the first few days Katelin realized that her father wasn't going to show up and take her back home so at the end of the first week Katelin wasn't so much surprised as she was relieved that her father had sent her first semesters tuition. However she was surprised when she read the letter that had come with her tuition. She had never known her father to be an apologetic or emotional man, and by the third time she read the letter something took hold and she started to cry. No matter how much she thought she meant it she didn't hate her dad. She, like her father, knew what it meant to lose someone you care about and she didn't want to lose him. She just wanted to lead her own life, to be able to be her own person and chase her own dreams. What had clicked was that she didn't have to lose her father to be happy. In his letter he told her that as long as it made her happy and so long as she stayed out of trouble he would pay her tuition and support her in any way he could.

  Over the year that followed Katelin and her father rebuilt their relationship through countless letters, phone calls and video chats. Through all of these she told him all about the wonders of medicine and the world outside their farm that she was learning first hand. Her father enjoyed her stories of teenage trials and triumphs. He would give her; advice when he thought she could use it, words of encouragement when she seemed down, and an open mind to vent to when her friends were otherwise occupied. And even though he would tell her not to give up when things got hard, he made sure that she knew should she ever change her mind and want to come home to the farm and stay for more than a long weekend that he would be there waiting with open arms.

  Then just after her seventeenth birthday Katelin's father was killed. She left school and went back to the house that she grew up in to see to planning her father's funeral. She had been there when her father had done the same for her mother and after the initial shock wore off she handled it better than most people twice her age. The service was small and consisted of most of the same faces she saw at her mother's. Some of the neighbors that she knew well offered her a place to stay while others offered to stay with her. She politely declined all the offers and went back to her empty house alone. That first night after the service she sat alone and waited. She waited for the grief and pain to overtake her like it had when her mother died and cause the breakdown that she and everyone else knew was sure to come. But it didn't, and as the days skipped by she got back into the rhythm of tending to the farm out of a combination of habit and boredom.

  She thought about going back to school. She could sell the house, the farm, and all the equipment finish school and become a doctor in the city and move on. However, the thought that had once been her driving force didn't hold the same magic that it did when she left. Partly because all that the doctors she'd seen ever did was sign off on whatever pills or specialized treatment that their nurses or computers told them was needed. But mostly it was because she realized that the idea of saving everyone was a childish dream and she didn't have anyone else left to save.

  All of these things, however, were past pains. Pains that had long since scabbed over and healed to become the memories and experiences that made her into the young woman that was standing here alone on her porch in the middle of the night. These past pains weren't what kept her from smiling that night, or any of the other nights that she'd done the same thing. No this pain came from a longing for something more. She didn't know what else was suppose to be in her life that wasn't, but she knew there had to be more to life than this. Sure the farm she ran grew food hundreds of thousands of people throughout the galaxy, but she knew that if she were to die tomorrow, within a month someone else would be pressing the same buttons on the same machines to run the same farm. So what was she suppose to do with her life to make it worth while, she asked herself in silence day in and day out, but nothing ever came. And it was this lack of purpose that tinged everything in her world dull with the mundane monotony that was he
r reality. Everything but the stars. The stars held the mystery and wonder that this plane world had lost long ago. So on nights that she couldn't sleep, like this one, she would go out, gaze up and think of all the wonderful adventures to be had. She was no fool though, and between the civil wars, the pirates, the slavers, and whatever other horrors lurked in the perpetual darkness, space was no place for a teenage girl with no clue as to how to defend herself.

  She sighed and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Then she saw what she thought was a shooting star and the inner child that she thought had died a long time ago took hold. She squeezed her eyes shut and made a wish. It was a simple wish. Something more. She opened her eyes and watched with envy as she waited for it to shoot across the sky and off into the unknown. But it didn't. Katelin stood there with her mouth open and head slightly tilted, caught somewhere in between awe and confusion as she stared at what she was now sure wasn't a shooting star. Whatever it was it didn't shoot across the sky, it looked like it was falling, and it was getting bigger which meant it was getting closer. As it did Katelin could tell that whatever it was, it was red. At first she thought it was a ship but she quickly decided it couldn't be. There wasn't a port for miles and whatever the red thing was, it was too small to be a ship. It was even to small to be an escape pod. In a split second Katelin's awe and confusion turned into fear as she thought that whatever it was, was heading straight for her. She screamed and threw her hands and arms over her face in what she knew was a pointless attempt to protect herself. Nothing hit her and as she half stood half crouched, still clinched in fear on the porch, she heard the dull thud of whatever it was landing hard in the field, followed by the brief rustle of disturbed vegetation. Then she only heard the silence of the country night.

  With the same quickness that the sense of panic had overtaken her it was gone, replaced with an urgency for the need to see, to the know what it was. With that Katelin flew off her porch into the field running bare foot as fast as she could towards the cloud of dust some fifty feet from her house. She reached the impact crater, if you could even call it that. Sure the vegetation was gone but the crater was only five or six feet across and half a foot deep. The crops around the hole were about knee high so it was easy for Katelin to see where the red thing bounced and rolled off to. She followed the trail, still running, and almost tripped over something hard that she couldn't see, but she didn't break stride. She assumed it was just some fragment of the red thing that she was so close to and didn't care and the only reason she looked down at all was to regain her footing. When she looked back up she was at the end of the trail and she saw what it was that had fallen. It was a man, or rather a boy.