Chapter 62 2014
Profe was gone. Each day I needed to remind myself of it, and after several months, I’d gotten past the shock, and the barb of remembering began to dull.
Entirely unbeknownst to me was that, while I recovered in the small room in the back of a school for girls in a remote village in Somalia, the question of where I’d disappeared to had become a great unsolved mystery.
Speculation ran wild, with everyone from Ellen to Conan talking about it.
There were even betting odds on it in Las Vegas.
Hundreds had money on suicide. I even had several hashtags: #whereispatch, #patchsighting, #findpatch.
The only people I had any contact with, other than Astur, Boodo, and Tiny, were Esma, Heinrich, Meryl, Kai, Mr. Jeffries . . . and Dylan.
Three weeks after I arrived in Somalia, an email arrived.
Hey Patch,
I was sorry to hear about Profe. Even though I never met him I feel like I knew him by how much you talked about him.
You once said there was no one like him so I imagine like my mom he is irreplaceable and that him being gone has left a pretty big hole in your life.
I have no answers on how to fill it only understanding on how it feels.
Sometimes that can help. I’m writing this from a library computer so if you email back I probably won’t get it for a while.
I find disconnecting helps. Or maybe it doesn’t. I just don’t know anymore.
Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!
Dylan
Eventually, slowly, impossible as it once seemed, glimmers of light began to break through the shroud of clouds that had enveloped me.
I started to help Tiny in the kitchen prepare the food for the students.
It was repetitive, rewarding work, and it took my mind off Profe, Mother, the end of my skating dreams, and what came next.