Maybe there was a sign and I missed it.
A month or so before Nina disappeared, I had gone into her room to look for a pencil, or that is what I told myself I was doing to have an excuse to snoop without feeling bad about it. The few months prior, Nina hadn’t been around much and I missed her. The house felt different when she wasn’t there, like no matter how many lights I’d turn on, it was always too dark.
I remember pushing her door open, the smell of oranges and ginger curling out to greet me. Her room looked the way it always did, jeans and tank tops tossed on the floor and the bed, a few bottles of hair dye on the desk, and drawings everywhere: on the walls, on the desk, on the f loor, on the dresser, on her bed, torn up, crumpled, folded, in varying degrees of doneness. I remember looking at a row of faces, wondering who the people in the pictures were supposed to be. Were they all from inside Nina’s head? Or was Nina’s life populated by a whole world of people who I’d never even seen before?
There were the pencils in a can on the desk. I grabbed one and let myself look around her room one more time. There on the floor was a half crumpled piece of paper covered in tiny handwriting. I poked it with my toe, hoping to “accidentally” get it to uncurl so I could read it. I dropped my pencil and bent down to pick it up. I looked at the paper again, I love you was written on it over and over and over in blue ballpoint pen. The marks were extra dark, whoever had written the letter had pushed so hard with their pen that it had torn the paper in a few places, because that’s how much they meant it. I stared at that paper, and tried to imagine what it would feel like to be Nina, to be so loved by everyone, that one individual person’s love could mean so little to you. That you could just toss it on the floor. I felt a stab of something then, similar to jealousy, but not jealousy exactly, mixed with a little twinge of pity for whoever had written the letter. I remember having an urge to pick that letter up, to smooth it out and take it to my room, to pretend it had been written just for me.
For the next six hours, the view out the front window doesn’t change—six red circles, four enormous wheels, a big chrome bumper. I might think we hadn’t moved at all, except for the fact that when we started driving, it was dark, and now the sun has risen, turning the sky the cool light blue of morning. And the bus has finally stopped, on a side-street bus depot. And now here we are in Denver, Colorado.
Denver is what a city looks like when it’s not afraid of running out of room. The buildings are far apart and the streets are wide. There’s a giant dome of open sky over us, reminding us that the city is not all there is.
The bus door opens and a line of dazed and sleepy-looking passengers emerge. A girl just a couple years older than I am comes off the bus and claims her sagging red duffel bag from the pile of luggage on the sidewalk. Two years ago, this could have been Nina. The girl turns around, she looks like she’s looking for someone, like she’s worried they might not be here. I can’t stop staring at her. I feel like I’m watching a movie about the past and the part of Nina is being played by this girl. I catch her eye and she smiles and I feel weirdly relieved, as though if this girl is okay, it means Nina was, too. This makes no sense.
I think I am very, very tired. I think maybe it is time to lie down now. I turn toward Sean who is leaning back against the seat, his eyes half closed, his hand resting against his stomach. An image flashes through my brain, the two of us together in a bed, my face resting against his chest.