Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

Mom bought a book about how shy I was. I don’t know if you ever noticed it, but the book was called The Shy Child and they stuck it on the bookshelf for all to see, and the only thing it did was remind me that I was problematically shy and so I became shier. I refused to audition for the school play. I blushed wildly anytime a teacher called on me, even if I knew the answer, and Mom and Dad were brought back into school to have more conferences about my shyness. “You need to participate, Sally,” Mom said over and over again that year, then called everybody she knew on the phone, as if she could participate the problem away.

And so we just stood there, as if all the conversation in the world had dried up like a beach just before a tidal wave. All of the beautiful words, sucked out to sea.