Disappearing Earth

by Julia Phillips

Being born second had given Sophia the privilege of staying a baby all her life.

“Something happens in the north,” he said, “and no one pays any attention. Then the same thing goes on down here and it’s news. When

But what about that Even girl who disappeared three years ago? Who covered that? Who even thinks about her anymore?”

should stay constantly in touch.

some desperately needed escape. Ksyusha used to feel that way, too, before Ruslan chose her.

For years, in bed with him, she had been shy, self-conscious, but she turned now in the white light without hesitation. Forward. Away again. Her body

flowed into the next step, the next, as easily as a river following its course. She was dancing well. She knew it. She moved as if these steps didn’t want a partner—as if she were fine on her own.

“You wanted something different.”

After all this time, Ksyusha was showing her nature. It felt a base kind of good to know it: she was, in truth, the person she had promised Ruslan she

wasn’t after Lilia left—the person he feared was there. She was treacherous.

The sameness of each day, each year, acted like the endless reopening of a cut, scarring those summers into her memory.

“Sometimes.” The guilt rose in Ksyusha. She stared up.

And even if he did not catch her— She loved Ruslan, she did, and always had, but was it right for her to stay with him after what she had done and what she was going to do?

Everyone looked better at a distance. Everyone sounded sweetest when you did not have to hear them talk too long. After her husband hung up, Natasha skated past her brother at the wall, their mother cleaning her glasses beside him. Loving someone close-up—that was difficult.

But now she would live. She had to. It was what she did: live while others could not. There was no pleasure in it.

Her heart had been fragile, its chambers shifting as easily and dangerously as volcanic earth. Slava got in there before the ground hardened.

Once in her life, one time, she would like someone to love her completely, with no room left for anything else.

It hurts too much to break your own heart out of stupidity, to leave a door unlocked or a child untended and return to discover that whatever you value most has disappeared. No. You want to be intentional about the destruction. Be a witness. You want to watch how your life will shatter.

She started having these attacks last August, after her daughters disappeared. A doctor gave her tablets to relieve the anxiety. Those did not help. No prescription brought her children home.

He wanted her to leave in grief but come back different.

No. Alyona and Sophia did not drown that day. They were taken.

Everything that once propelled her was now gone. She used to be a storyteller, she used to have a sense of humor, she used to be a mother, but now she was—nothing. Alla Innokentevna was equipped, after her loss,

“Please help me find my daughters, Alyona Golosovskaya and Sophia Golosovskaya, who went missing from the center of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky last August. August

“Life in a village is not what most eighteen-year-old girls dream of. Lilia had so many reasons to go.” She was

The drums bumped up in volume. “During these long summer days,” Alla Innokentevna said, “the old sun dies, and the new one is created. The gates of the spirit world open. This is a time when the dead walk among us. Those who are living can be reborn.”