The Return

by Rachel Harrison

Above all else, I knew two truths about Julie. The first was that she was the most stubborn, most determined person I’d ever met. And the second was that she loved attention. Julie would never be missing. She might go dark, intentionally disappear for a few days here or there just to make sure someone noticed. A pop quiz: “Do you love me?” That, she was capable of. That, I believed. But missing, as in milk cartons and posters and hounds in fields—no way.

“What? What world are you living in?” I’d been asking myself that question for a long time. I didn’t have an answer for her.

She was very upset. I know because she said she was very upset.”

She had a sensitive nature, but she tried her best to suppress it. She never wanted to put anyone out by acknowledging she had feelings of her own.

Molly was the funny one, so it was easy to forget that when she wasn’t being funny, she was being mean. She was capable of empathy, but on a case-by-case basis.

She and I were made of the same stuff. It was the special sauce of our friendship, and the curse that made it turn ugly sometimes.

When things were good between us, we would brag about our similarities, say we were soul sisters. When they weren’t, we both knew it was like spitting at a mirror.

There were times when I fantasized about vanishing. Chucking my phone through a sewer grate and taking the train to God knows where with nothing but a stack of cash. Cutting my hair with dull scissors in a shitty motel room.

During one of our late-night dorm room confessionals, we had bonded over obsessively imagining our own funerals. Which exes would show? Would they cry? Who else would cry? Who would give the eulogy? What w...

“We’re so fucked-up,” she said, giggling into her beloved puffer-fish pillow. “If I die first, will you give the eulogy?” I asked. “You know I will,” ...

It was possible to die there. But people die everywhere. People die at Disneyland.

woke up every morning forgetting. I would remember with my toothbrush molar deep, or while beating an egg, or on my third attempt to start the damn car.

Instead of voicing my concern, huffing and puffing, disapproving, giving advice that would go untaken, offering ultimatums, I was now relentlessly supportive. It disoriented her. She’d spin around in circles until the truth spilled out.

That was how she loved. Hard and fast. Until whoever she loved loved her back, or until she got bored.

“Burn me and scatter my ashes someplace pretty, would you?”

“I go crazy without my alone time,” I said. That had been true at some point in the past, but then I was alone all the time, and that was bad, too.

“We’re dysfunctional. You know that?” she asked me. “I’m aware.” “Just checking.”

What was the proof I needed, and was I crazy for needing it in the first place? Not neurotic crazy, or crazy with grief, but clinically insane?

“He’s not her type,” I said. He was too generic. All-American. Probably knew all the words to “Sweet Caroline.” Drank a lot of milk.

I figured it’s pretty much impossible for me to look cool, so why not dance with you? You liked to dance. I acted like I hated it, but I always had fun dancing with you.”

“You’d think after being stuck in the same room for days, the room would seem smaller, but it doesn’t. “You forget what it’s like to leave. To be somewhere else. “We’re adaptable,” I said with a definitive nod. Outside, the wind howled like somebody dying. “Stay somewhere long enough, it becomes your world.

Children are taken from sidewalks. Plucked from bus stops by strangers in old, unassuming station wagons. You read stories. Ones that turn your eyes into magnets. It’s almost like it’s against your will, or that’s what you want to believe. You don’t want to admit that you’re interested. That you want to know about the duct tape or the DNA evidence found in the trunk of the car when it turns up months later, even though the kid never does.

Women are kidnapped in parking garages, at Laundromats, from their beds, while out for their morning runs. It happens all the time. Taken by men who feel a sense of entitlement, a right to female bodies. Men who were dropped on their heads as babies or raised by mommie dearest.

Would I turn into one of those conspiracy theorists who put newspapers over the windows and hissed at the mailman?

“I don’t know if you’re dealing with it well or not dealing with it at all,”

That, actually, I was very intuitive and should maybe consider an alternate career as an oracle.

Her return disturbed my rituals. It created new ones.

“I’ll mope with you. If you want to mope, I’m happy to mope.”

She returned to Massachusetts with an eating disorder. It outlasted her acting dream.

Plus, the group dynamic overwhelmed me sometimes. It could be the most fun I ever had. It could also unearth insecurities. Who was in on what inside jokes? Who was present for what? Who remembered what? Who knew the secrets the others didn’t?

She didn’t like places like that, where you got side-eye for wearing sneakers.

“I just want you to know,” she said, clutching my hands and fake crying, “you’re my best friend.” “I wouldn’t want to dehydrate to death with anyone else!”

Mae was the default organizer for all events. It satiated her type A personality. Knowing Mae, I assumed she was desperate to orchestrate pretty new memories to eclipse the trauma of the past two years. It was her coping mechanism—tying ribbons over open wounds.

“What’s your therapist say?” “Don’t be a bitch.”

“You just don’t like being wrong.” “I’m going to reach through this phone and slap your beautiful face.” “I’m glad that’s not possible. You’re freakishly strong.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see them. I did. It was the dread. It moved under my skin like a sickness. It spread. I could feel it, always, as it manifested as a pinch in my throat when I swallowed or a slight ache in my neck, a migraine, a random sneezing fit, buckling knees. A range of symptoms that came and went, that had no intelligible connection, that persisted despite medication and heating pads and stretching and herbal tea. Something was wrong with me, physically, every day. It could be a different thing or the same. It could last for a few days or a week or two before switching to something else.

It was psychosomatic. I wasn’t beyond admitting that. It was my mind’s way of reminding me of my dread, of locking me inside it. I couldn’t be happy or free or excited about anything. I was in constant discomfort.

I went to see a doctor who took my blood and chastised me for smoking and for m...

“You should think about quitting.” “I have thought about it.” He didn’t care for my tone, either. “I haven’t been sleeping,” I said, hoping for a prescription. I got one. He wanted to get rid of me.

I would be the only one to blame. Solidify my status as the least favorite, the most problematic. Killjoy extraordinaire.

I cried myself to sleep over that number and the realization that the gap between my friends and me had grown so wide that soon I wouldn’t be able to jump the distance. It hurt. It was bad enough to be poor and unsuccessful, to make half of what they did, but to know they knew it and weren’t sensitive to it? That made it all so much worse.

Resentment began to take shape.

I understood that where I’d ended up was far less glamorous than where they had, but it shouldn’t have mattered. The fact that it did told me something about them I didn’t want to hear.

“I know she’s my sister, my blood. But she’s not my family.

It’s a sprawling storybook estate. Aggressively whimsical. Cloying. A pastel Frankenstein’s monster.

These trees have been around for a while, been around the block before. Seen some things.

This girl was definitely in her high school drama club. Sings along to show tunes in her car. “Practices” yoga. Knits.

I like the book but can barely get through a sentence. I’m too antsy to read. Restless.

I’m rejecting it like a body rejects a transplant.

Dark. Why does my brain always do that? Consider the worst, most ridiculous scenario?