This is not the way this bus ride is supposed to unfold.
I was supposed to watch the snow fall
and the countryside disappear.
Sit idly as nothing happened. Talk to no one.
But Alex sitting next to me is like the moment before
you receive a test back, one you didn’t study for,
hoping there’s a chance that everything will
work out fine, but knowing that it probably won’t.
“Did you know that there are some types of jellyfish
that are immortal?” I say instead.
“Huh?” Alex twists her face at me,
like she’s trying to figure out
how jellyfish relate to her unanswered texts.
I point to the animal encyclopedia stuffed
into the seat-back pocket. “It’s what they’re teaching
kids these days in those things called books.”
“Better than teaching them about drugs,” Alex says.
Neither of us laughs. But it’s funny, in the morbid,
only-funny-to-us kind of way.
“That’s messed up,” I finally say.
“I know,” Alex says.
I forgot how good it feels to feel—
different with someone else.
Row
Kennedy frowns, but takes the box back.
“How is this not a clue?
It had to contain something, right?”
She flips it around, examining the corners,
still finding nothing.
“What do you want me to do?
Swab it for forensic evidence?
Send it to a lab for DNA testing?
“How is rifling through my sister’s closet
going to tell us anything
about where she went?”
Kennedy wedges the box
back into the closet,
then lies down on the carpet,
sighing dramatically.
“You have a good point,
Nancy Drew.”
I roll my eyes.
“It’s the twenty-first century.
Everyone’s secrets are hidden
on their phones.”
Kennedy bounces back up.
“Geez, Row. You’re a natural,”
Kennedy says, and reaches for her phone.
“Let’s scour her socials.
See if she’s posted anything
we can use,” she says.
Row
I reach for my phone
and glance at the screen.
I pull up the last text
from Ariana.
Four days ago,
when she was driving home
from the grocery store.
I love you, sis.
Ariana had gone
to the grocery store
to restock
our fridge
with milk and eggs.
She bought us a frozen pizza.
She made me eat a salad.
But Ariana
had come home.
This morning,
there was only one egg left
in the carton
and someone needed
to buy more milk.
Even when we didn’t get along,
even when we’d argue over small things
like who ate the last yogurt
or who didn’t empty the dishwasher
or who was the reason we were running late
for school,
there was a part of her
that was still my sister.
The part of her
that could text
just to say,
“I love you.”
Ariana
There was nothing magical about that night last summer.
There were no wispy clouds or peppered stars.
I rearranged a row of wooden chairs
in front of a ceremony arch adorned
with wisteria for a wedding
at the Wyndover Lodge while dressed
in an ill-fitting uniform
and faced a losing battle against bugs.
“What are you doing?”
A girl slumped into a seat
in the back row. She unscrewed
a water bottle and drank from it
while following me with her eyes.
She wore beat-up All Stars,
and her hair was all frizzy, like mine.
The bridge of her nose was red and peeling,
and I could see a nasty burn on her shoulders.
I assumed she was a guest of the hotel.
The groom’s wayward sister, perhaps.
My coworker returned with two lemonades in hand.
“Oh, hey. Alex meet Ariana.
Ariana, my cousin Alex,” she said,
and waved generally in our directions
while ice clinked against the glasses she held.
“Moving these chairs because
guests’ thighs might touch,” I replied.
“For real?” Alex shaded her eyes with her hand,
like she was trying to inspect the situation.
“Three-inch gaps,” my coworker said.
“That’s what the bride told us.” She set down
the lemonades and rearranged a chair.
“You realize no one’s gonna die,” Alex said.
I snorted. My coworker stopped what she was doing.
With a short, low hiss, she repeated her cousin’s name.
“I’m fine,” Alex said.
The way Alex said the word “fine.”
The look on her cousin’s face in response.
I felt the sense of being misunderstood,
the awkward feeling when other people
desperately want you to be someone different.
Normal. Maybe because you’re embarrassing.
Maybe because you’re too sad.
“Okay, I’m not fine. Of course I’m not fine.
But it’s funny. Right?”
“It’s funny,” I replied, because I wanted
her to know that I saw her,
not as a tragic story, locked into a genre,
with a formula and an ending.
She almost startled at my response,
like she recognized me, that I wasn’t
a stranger she just met for the first time.
“Hey, we’re going to a party later.
You should join,” she said.
My coworker gave Alex a look
that said, We’re not actually friends.
You don’t have to invite her.
But she did, maybe because she needed to know
that there were people in this world
who could understand her.
Row
“Are these her friends?”
Kennedy says, and I almost forgot
that she was even here.
The screen is a series of photos
of girls I don’t know.
I expand a photo to get a better look.
I can tell that these girls
are trying too hard.
The way they tilt their chins