I stopped and asked her what she thought we’d do if we found anything, but she didn’t answer, so I kept searching. The few people at the lake left us alone—they either knew who we were, or assumed we were just being kids. Eventually, as the rocks grew uncomfortably hot under the sun, the other people began to filter out. We worked our way down the path where she had danced into the woods. For me, every speck of dirt, every pebble, every blade of grass became suspect. Everything around us had witnessed her disappearance with an omniscience, or an objectivity—I wasn’t sure which—that we did not have. I wanted to dissect everything I saw, find some kind of physical core that could tell me finally what really happened that day. Perhaps Mom’s disappearance began before she even reached the trees; perhaps she began to disintegrate as she danced away. I remembered how, on that day, the strong sun made a shadow of her— did her mystery begin then? Or did we do this to her? Maybe she began falling away when Emily and I were born and she sacrificed her career. Every day. And not at all. When we reached the woods, we stopped for a moment. “They found her hair clip in here,” Emily said, reaching almost unconsciously for me. I took her hand. She looked so small. And I knew looking at her was the same as looking at myself, but still, she seemed so young to me. “If they’d looked harder,” she said, “I know they would’ve found something else. We’ll look real hard. We’ll find what they missed.” “What could they have missed?” “Anything,” Emily snapped. She pulled away and walked into the woods. Emily and I started pointe at the same time. Emily was able to roll up onto the box of her shoes right away, but I wobbled. Once I was up all the way, I felt feather-light and taut. There was pain, too—my toes felt hot, my ankles stretched. I was reminded of how Mom looked when she danced—that painful ecstasy on her face—and I thought that I must be feeling whatever it was she felt. Pointe brought me closer to her, the lightness a celebration of her, the pain a penance for having lost her. We spent hours in the woods, Emily marking trees and checking her compass now and then so we knew how to get back out. Some time in the late afternoon we squatted up against a tree and ate. Then we continued searching. We didn’t say much to each other. I knew Emily wasn’t really mad at me—I knew she was just as scared as I was that we wouldn’t find anything, or that we’d find something worse than we could’ve imagined. When the sky began to take on a pinkish tinge, I suggested we go home, continue our search the next day. But Emily said, “We can’t stop now.” “Dad’s probably already wondering where we are. How long do you want to stay out here?” Emily looked at me as if I’d slapped her. “As long as it takes.” I grabbed her by her shoulders. She glared at me. “I want to find her just as bad as you do, you know,” I said.
19 | Issue 38