strong wind caused the truck to sway and the rain to swirl wildly as it whistled. The trees were like rubber, springing back and forth, the branches whirling in circles.
Suddenly, the truck jerked and bounced, and the girl opened her eyes. The old man was trying to control the wheel, stomping on the brake pedal to no avail, as they barreled toward the sweeping, rain soaked curve ahead. Before either of them had the chance to scream, the truck turned sharply to the left and began to roll, over and over, until it barreled into the trunk of a thick oak tree.
All was silent, save for the rain pummeling against the destroyed body of the truck. Inside the vehicle, blood flowed from the old man’s cracked skull. The girl stared, blinking through a fog of rainwater that gushed through the shattered window and onto her face. She unclipped the seatbelt and slithered across shards of glass and twisted metal, digging her fingers into the mud to pull herself out of the wreckage.
Rain soaked, bleeding, bruised, and broken, the girl limped back toward the street. She couldn’t cry or scream anymore. She could hardly move, her body sore and trembling. She couldn’t see anything through the gray fog, the heavy cloud cover, the sheets of rain. She couldn’t hear anything but water striking the ground and rushing down the street, her heartbeat pounding in her head, and her breath ragged and painful in her chest. Still, she pushed her legs to move, forced her lungs to inhale and exhale, urged her heart to keep on beating. She barely felt alive at all, but still she kept on moving.
Void
I’ve been missing for about two years, now. The posters are still taped to the windows of all of the gas stations in town; the corners curling back, my photo faded and sun-bleached. I don’t even recognize the girl in that picture. Her bright green eyes sparkle and her skin is olive-tan. She has honey blonde hair that shines and bounces in long waves. That’s not what I look like, and it’s not who I am. The girl they’re looking for doesn’t exist anymore.
It’s taken me every moment of the last two years to be ready for this. Now, as I stand in the shadows outside, I’m starting to think I’m still not ready. There’s a feeling of dread welling up in the pit of my stomach as I stare at my reflection in the glass door. My hair has turned darker, and it casts a long, straight curtain over my face. Most of the color has left my eyes; they’re now a dull, sickly sort of green, like murky lake water. My skin is pale, almost translucent, the blue veins visible beneath it.
Something moves inside the police station and my vision refocuses to look through the glass rather than at the image on the surface. I fight the urge to turn and run. The officer opens the door.
“Can I help you, miss?”
The moment of truth, and I blow it. I say nothing as I stare up at the officer, in his intimidating uniform with the shiny badge and utility belt complete with heavy black handgun.
“Miss?” he asks again.
“Sorry,” I say. I regain my composure, remember what I’m here to do.
From my pocket, I pull one of the flyers, folded over a few times and wearing thin at the creases. I hold it up, show the officer the image of my face, or what used to be my face.
“You know something about the whereabouts of this girl?” He seems excited. He opens the door wider and stands up straight and tall. He’s about to be a hero.
“Yes, sir,” I say. I wait for a moment, build the tension just a little bit. “You see, the girl in the picture is me.”
“You?” He frowns at me, his blue eyes darting back and forth from my face to the face in the photo. “You’re Kirana Waterman?”
I flinch at the sound of my name. It sounds foreign. Am I Kirana Waterman? I know that I was, at one point.
“Yes, sir.” And that’s all it takes. In a flurry, I’m rushed into the police station. They take my fingerprints and ask me a bunch of questions. I sit and wait in a small room with one metal table and two metal chairs; the big mirror along the far wall doesn’t fool me. On the table in front of me is a phone, next to a cup of coffee and a box of donuts. They’ve told me I can make as many calls as I’d like. They’ve told me to contact my parents, my friends. They’ve told me that the whole town’s been worried, looking for me for years; they thought I was dead. I tell them that I am. They think I’m joking.
I’m alone in the room, but I can feel their eyes on me. There are two people behind that false mirror, staring, waiting. They are still, leering, waiting for me to make a phone call. I hold the phone in my hand and stare down at the smooth, flat screen. It looks just like the phone I used to have; the one I’d talk to my friends on for hours in my room. I stare down at the keypad and realize that I don’t know anyone’s number.
I put the phone down on the table. The donuts look dry and the coffee smells burnt. I’m hungry, but not for this garbage. I’m saving my appetite for something else.
Finally, the door opens, and a hulking man in a blue dress shirt enters. He wears something on a lanyard around his neck. He’s carrying a bottle of water and a steaming paper cup of coffee that matches the one sitting in front of me, though mine has gone cold now.
“Miss Waterman.” He nods at me. “How are you doing?”
I shrug. “Fine.”
“I know you’ve talked to a lot of people tonight,” he says. “But I just need to ask you a few questions. Is that alright?”
I sigh. “I understand that everyone wants to know where I’ve been and what happened to me. But it’s not important. Isn’t what’s important that I’m here, that I’m alive, that I’m… okay?”
He hesitates, blowing on his coffee as he peers at me. He is dark, like the night, with deep brown eyes and black hair and dark skin. His eyes twinkle like stars, and his teeth dazzle brightly whenever he opens his mouth.
“Are you?” he asks. “Okay, I mean.”
“I’m fine.”
“And you don’t want to tell me what happened to you? You disappeared in the middle of the night and no one saw you or heard from you until tonight when you came here.” He sits for a moment, pensive, then says, “Miss Waterman, were you kidnapped, or did you run away?”
Ah, the question I’ve been waiting for. I’ve answered so many questions already tonight, but no one has yet asked me the right one; the question with an answer that would upset the whole town, upset everyone who cared about me and worried about me and cried over my disappearance. It wasn’t the true answer, but it was the answer I was going to give.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t get your name.”
He frowns. “My name is Detective Riv Ballard.” He flips over the card hanging on the lanyard to show me his photo, his name underneath.
I nod. “Detective Ballard, I am very sorry to tell you that I was not kidnapped.”
He sits back in his chair, as if he’d expected me to say that. “Mhm.” He’s chewing on the inside of his cheek, and I’m waiting for him to yell at me. Instead, he sits forward again and says, “Did you run away from home, Miss Waterman?”
I nod again, just once, and stare down at the table. It’s made of shiny aluminum and I can see the distorted reflection of myself in its surface. I can’t look into my own eyes.
Detective Ballard says, “Why?”
I shrug.
He’s irritated with me, I can tell. Tension rolls off of him in waves, and it makes my skin crawl. He nods toward the phone. “You get ahold of your parents?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know the number.” I lock eyes with him and force a small smile. “The age of cell phones has destroyed any need for a mental catalogue of contact information, sir.”
He sighs and rubs his eyes, but I can see a small smile on his mouth. He knows I’m right. Detective Ballard stands and walks toward the door.
“I’ll call them,” he says. “They’ll be happy to hear you’re okay.”
I can tell by the tone in his voice that he means to follow this with a comment about how I caused m
y parents immeasurable pain and guilt. I caused this whole town to worry and be afraid, and all for what? So I, on a whim, with my dramatic teenage temper, could escape my terribly simple life for a while? But it’s not like that, not at all.
Ballard leaves me alone in the room. I wait, still as a statue, unmoving, unbreathing, unblinking. I wait, my mind blank, feeling the eyes on me from the other side of the faux mirror.
I hear my mother’s cries growing closer, from the moment she steps into the police station until she bursts through the door of the room. I have the option to pretend that I am still alive, pretend that I am human. I can wrap my arms around my mother, squeeze her tightly and apologize for making her worry about me. I can force tears to fall from my eyes and repeat that I’m sorry, that I love her, that I’ve missed her, that I’ll never run away from home again. But I am not human. I am not alive. And I didn’t run away.
I turn to face her as she hovers in the doorway, her hands over her mouth, her eyes wet and red. She’s still in her pajamas. She trembles as she stares at me and I know she knows that I am not the little girl she lost two years ago. I am not the pretty, popular girl who plays all the sports and has all the friends and throws big, booze-soaked parties at her parents’ house. She is dead.
“Your hair,” my mother says. “What have you done to your beautiful hair?” Apprehensively, she comes toward me.