The Missing Half

by Ashley Flowers

But more than that, I learned years ago that numbness is better than pain. I’ve been not talking for so long, I’m not sure I’d even know how to start.

Most people’s reaction when they’re confronted is fight or flight. I freeze. And I hate myself for it.

I wanted to sprawl at the foot of her bed like I’d done so often these past few months, chat about the night before. It was an irregular tradition of ours, something we did whenever we had time. We’d lie together, Kasey under the blankets, me on top, our voices still thick with sleep, and we’d talk until we were both laughing so hard we couldn’t stop. It was our most beloved competition: who could make the other laugh harder.

This is why I didn’t want to talk about the past. My emotions get too heavy to hold.

Kasey and I were the kind of sisters without walls. We shared eyeshadow and bras and lip gloss. Hair from both our heads intertwined in the same brush. When one of us got too much sunscreen on our hand, we’d slap it on the other’s thigh. Both of us knew every boy the other had ever had a crush on.

One woman who disappears from the side of the road, according to the police, is an anomaly. She could’ve run away to start a new life, could’ve been high on something and wandered into the wilderness, could’ve been tracked by an angry boyfriend / ex-lover / fill in the blank, then lured out of her car and murdered. It was a setup, an accident, a personal attack. It was a one-off. On the flip side, if there had been a string of disappearances, it would have been foul play, perpetrated most likely by a stranger. A Ted Bundy. A Zodiac Killer. Some people still argue this theory, say a serial killer was just getting started but then got locked up for another crime. Or died. Or moved because the investigators were getting too close. But that’s just people on the internet sensationalizing the story.

No one knows our sisters like we do. If there’s any similarity between their lives, maybe we can find it.

Patience, as people have told me throughout my entire life, is not my strong suit.

Two branches of the same tree, two pieces of a soul. Where one sister goes, the other will be, for she is but half of the whole.

Two branches of the same tree, two pieces of a soul. Where one sister goes, the other will be, for she is but half of the whole.