If I Go Missing

by Leslie Wolfe

If you’re reading this, I’ve gone missing.

A jigsaw puzzle made of photos, bank accounts, social media usernames and passwords, fingerprints, and DNA.

I’m a lefty, so mirror writing comes easier to me than it would to most people.

All I know is that I’m caught in a quagmire of shadows and deceit, an inescapable trap that might have swallowed me already.

It’s in your power to save me. No one else can. Please find me.

I’ll only take a sip.

I’m a coward: I don’t want to ruin a perfectly good Sunday afternoon by starting to spew things as unpalatable and disturbing as the truth.

Everything is a joke to my husband.

A critical, uncompromising look in the mirror returns an image I’m not particularly proud of, but not ashamed of either.

I thought of myself as painfully plain.

the salty air, the dense fog rolling in at night; the small, rural community that comes together after the hordes of seasonal tourists have gone home.

We were a good fit, Chloe and I, and her unusual upbringing kept the issue of money from causing damage.

The world was ours, even if I just hitched the ride.

Life has been good to Chloe.

I can easily translate his shorthand. He’s frustrated, wondering if I’m okay, and he’s on his way. It’s Daniel’s way of saying what the hell.

She’s shamelessly flirting with my husband, while I stand there speechless, feeling blood draining from my face.

sweet to correct himself for my sake although the diner has always been his.

Without realizing, I made it out the door and drove myself to school.

I can’t do this.

It’s too late for appearances.

And yet, she’s here.

time to pay for what you’ve done. I haven’t forgotten.

bringing the threat of revealing buried secrets that could destroy me.

before everything went wrong—has

I wasn’t that much of a fighter back then.

If I Go Missing binders.

just a piece of paper with key information on it, not a real binder like it is today. We also had much less information back then; our lives used to be so much simpler.

I should’ve stayed away. I didn’t. Maybe out of curiosity, force of habit, or just loneliness, I followed Chloe wherever Chloe wanted to go.

she was getting her do-not-touch message across to Nikki. Marking territory.

For eleven years, I believed the past was just that, the past. Not anymore. The past came home to roost the day Chloe moved next door.

but there was static between us, a tension that hadn’t used to exist.

I feel like such a coward for not daring to talk openly with her about it.

I like discipline, being on time, doing the things I have to do when I must do them.

With each passing day, the lies grow thicker, uglier, fed by my unwillingness to face the consequences of my actions.

All her self-confidence is gone, and her voice is now fraught.

but I’ve never seen her so vulnerable.

I feel like I’m drowning, pulled down by a merciless undertow, deadly and yet hypnotizing, unescapable.

That somehow, being so self-absorbed, she had no idea.

No one cared about me enough to ask other questions, like until when, what time I got off, or if I was okay.

“I thought we had something special, Alana. I can’t believe you’re giving up so easily. I thought you’d fight for me.”

She still went, just not with me. With him.

I didn’t even notice the pattern until recently.

Anxiety washes over me in waves, ebbing and flowing almost all the time, urging me to do the impossible and put some distance between Chloe and me.

She’s missing.

By the end of a very long day, we were both released with the reassurance that Nikki’s death would be ruled an accident. It made sense to me. After all, that’s what it was.

realizing he remembered me just fine, and was playing games with me.

There’s something he’s not telling me, something I don’t know.

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Preston vanished about the time you and I were talking things over at school. You have the perfect alibi, Ms. Blake. Me.”

“You and your binders.”

All I obstructed was the perpetuation of the lies she put in her binder.