Little Lucy Lockhart ran from her daddy's frying pan.

The forest of a thousand legs killed her and then laid their eggs.

That's a jump rope rhyme my classmates used to sing on the playground in elementary school.

It's really messed up that they sang that because Lucy Lockhart was a real person we attended

school with.

She vanished when we were in second grade, so we must have been around seven years old.

The rhyme was loosely based in truth, in that the official story was that Lucy Lockhart

did in fact vanish into the Lockhart wood, 50 yards from her father

at Robert's house, but he wasn't chasing her, brandishing a frying pan to beat her with.

I was too young at the time to understand what was happening, and it wasn't until much later

that my mom actually explained it to me.

It wasn't a particularly shocking story, just sad.

I remember the day Lucy went missing, at least the first day she didn't come to school.

It was Monday.

She went missing the Friday before.

My mother told me it was a few days before Lucy's seventh birthday, and that Lucy had asked

her father if she could have a birthday party at the house.

I remember that Lucy and I had been in the same group of friends, and I remembered her

telling us that she was going to ask her dad about having a birthday sleepover.

I especially remember being annoyed that she wanted it to be a sleepover because I was the

only boy in the group and was never allowed to sleep over with them.

I was still excited at the prospect of a party, though, as we all were, because we knew her

...