I wish this next fact weren’t true, but it is and there’s nothing I can do about it now: The very last time I ever saw Nina, I yelled at her. She’d been about to eat one of the ice-cream sandwiches I’d asked our mom to get from the store. And I stopped her, shouted something about how it was my ice cream and if she wasn’t going to be around then she wasn’t allowed to eat it. It was incredibly petty, and terribly stupid. I was just hurt because she hadn’t been around much, and I wanted her to be sorry about it. And I thought somehow yelling was the best way to make that happen. But she just looked up at me. “Okay, Belly,” she said. “I’ll go put it back, okay? I’ll just go put it back.” And I remember the exact expression on her face then, not angry, just a little confused and a little hurt, like she just couldn’t figure out why I’d been so mad. For months after she was gone I would replay this scene over and over in my head, imagining a different version of this story in which I let her eat the ice-cream sandwich, in which I gave her the entire box of them, as though somehow that could have prevented what happened next.
Another unfortunate fact: When Nina first vanished, my mother barely seemed to notice. I guess when you spend all night working at the hospital and have seen some of the things she’s seen, your worry bar is set a little higher than most people’s. “Your sister’s not missing” is all my mother had said. “She’s just not here.” And any argument on my part, that Nina would never just leave us like that, that Nina would never leave me like that, she barely seemed to register. I wanted my mother to be concerned, too, so I didn’t have to carry this all on my own. But all I got was my mother’s somber exhaustion. And what, I swear, seemed like the tiniest hint of relief. Certain lines in my mother’s face seemed to soften, like she’d been clenching her jaw for eighteen years and only now could finally relax.
I gave up on the idea of my mother doing anything and took matters into my own hands. I printed Have You Seen My Sister? signs on Amanda’s parents’ fancy color printer and Amanda and I hung them up all over town. I called as many of her friends whose names I could remember. I even called our father (who left us when I was seven), who I had not spoken to in over two years. The connection was bad and I had to yell my name three times before he understood who I was. Finally, I called the police. But when they arrived at our house, my mother sent me out of the room. She talked with them in hushed tones in the kitchen over glasses of weak iced tea she’d made from a mix. They left about twenty minutes later looking rather unconcerned, while my mother rinsed their glasses out in the sink.
But then the phone calls came. First a few, and then a flood of them, all at once. I don’t know if they were from one person or from many because my mother instructed me to stop answering the phone. I remember one night, it was very late and I was supposed to be in bed and the phone rang, the phone had been ringing all day. I went to my mother’s doorway and watched her through the crack between the frame and the door. She was sitting on her bed in her bathrobe. I could only see her back. “Nina’s not home,” my mother was saying into the phone. Her voice sounded funny, like she was talking under water.
“No.” Pause. “No, I haven’t.” Pause. “I don’t know.” Pause. “Nina’s not the kind of girl who informs her mother of her whereabouts.” Pause. “So stop calling here.”
Then she hung up. And she just sat there for the longest time after that, phone cradled in her lap, head hanging down, shoulders shaking as she wiped her face over and over with her hands, barely making any sound at all.
Five
Sitting on the floor of Attic, I’m trying to remain completely still, which somehow feels necessary and important, although I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I know how fragile things can be, and if I move, I’m afraid I’ll pop the bubble of this moment and it will turn out that I’ve imagined the entire thing. I will look down and the doodles will be someone else’s doodles, or gone entirely. I’ve had this happen before…thought something meant one thing when really it meant nothing at all. But I have waited too long for this to let go so easily.
I don’t know how much time passes before Amanda says, “Oh shit.” And I look up.
There are so many questions bouncing around inside my head, each trying to get turned into words first. But I make myself take a breath, as much as part of me wants to GO GO GO, part of me needs to slow this down, to hold onto this moment for just a second longer, because right now whatever’s going to happen next hasn’t happened yet, and moments of thinking maybe are so much better than stretches of knowing no. But I can’t wait any longer so I take another breath and say, “Now what?”
I’m not even sure who I’m asking.
I look back down at Nina’s drawing, at my own face. And then I flip the card over. On the other side, the little piece of cardboard has been printed to look like a credit-card—Bank of the USA at the top in blue letters next to a little blue and white symbol, Your Name Goes Here in a typewriter font under a fake card number at the bottom. I flip the card back again.
And then I gasp because all of a sudden, for the first time since my sister disappeared two years ago, I know exactly what I’m supposed to do next. Swirled in with the leaves and vines next to my face is a phone number. 303-555-6271. I know the number must have been there all along and I just didn’t notice it before, but part of me feels like the number didn’t even appear until just now, like I willed it into existence by wanting it so badly.
“The phone,” I say. “I need the phone.”
Amanda takes the phone off Morgette’s desk and hands it to me.
And somehow I manage to dial.
The phone is ringing.
Someone picks up. First there’s loud music, a guitar, heavy drums, and a second later, “Hello.” It’s a guy. Southern maybe.