Missing Person
Listen to the author read “Missing Person” at the launch party of The Blackstick Review in May 2017. Story begins at 0:25-
Sweat, chlorine, and other chemical compounds stung the inside of Sam’s nose, and she loved every moment of it. Each stroke pulled her body through the water, legs propelling her faster than the rest of her teammates. The last 500 yards were always the best, after the 7th lap or so her thoughts would disappear. She would follow the black line on the floor beneath her and watch it dip into the deepest part of the pool. Every seven strokes, her lungs tugged her to breath into her armpit, alternating each side. Gasp… one…two… three… four… five…release air…breath. When the flags above the pool came into vision, Sam would speed up a little faster, tuck her body into a tight ball, and summersault away from the wall, pushing with her two feet. She would try to stay underwater as long as possible, pointing her feet and dolphin kicking her two legs together, taking three strokes before finally emerging for a breath.
On the 15th lap, Sam forgot to breathe before flipping against the wall. Panicking, she flipped and kicked off of the wall harder than before. Clawing her way to the surface of the water, she gasped for air only to swallow a gulp of water. Stopping mid lane, she tore off her goggles and hung onto the lane line to let others pass her. She coughed and every breath sounded like a wheeze.
“What the hell happened?” Her coach yelled from across the pool deck.
“Nothing, I just…forgot to breathe…”
“Come on Sammy baby; you gotta get your head in the game!”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry.”
“You better be, you’re not in the fast lane for nothin’…take fifty and then go shower off.”
Pulling her goggles back over her eyes and shaking her head side to side, she glided through the lane for two more laps. Sam was startled and remembered that she’d woken up feeling the same way she did a week before. Someone was missing; she just didn’t know who.
*
“… now remember, you should never start a paper with dialogue. I know that when you were in the elementary and middle school…”
Sam could hear Mrs. Button speak, but her eyes kept wandering towards the clock, she watched the second-hand tick by three times only to move back once every cycle. There was only so much talking that Sam could sit through. First, she would start bouncing her right leg up and down to stay focused, then she would start clicking on a retractable pen, but eventually, her eyes would always find their way to the clock. Watching it closely and trying to listen to the clicks between the words of the people around her. There were moments that she felt guilty. Mrs. Button was kind and occasionally funny, but more often than not, she would just say things that didn’t make sense.
“Hey, you still with us Sam? It’s time for lunch,” Franny asked. Her eyebrows knit together, both hands firmly planted on the desk in front of Sam’s notebook, breasts four inches away from Sam’s nose. A mixture of chlorine and salt lingered on Franny’s skin from swim practice that morning, and her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, probably the source of her headaches.
“Oh yeah, geez. I’m so ready for lunch. Coach killed us today. For such a tiny man, he has such a… uh… a…I actually have no idea where I was going with that statement.”
“Classic.”
“Classic,” a smile crept on Sam’s face as she got up from her desk.
“Yeah, what happened today? I was in lane five, and I heard some yelling going on in the last five hundred, and it sounded like your voice.”
“Oh, nothing. I just forgot to breathe, and I swallowed way too much.”
“That’s what she said!”
Sam stopped, gaped, and shoved her sister lovingly before running ahead of her, laughing down the corridor, and tugging on the giant red doors that led into the cafeteria.
*
Once they heard from Terra that Mr. Sullivan had a substitute, the two girls knew that they were going to skip their 5th period. They went to their favorite spot, the Atlantic atrium. Years before they arrived at Maritime Technology Academy, students had painted murals onto the high walls. This particular room featured a marshland with spoonbills, swamp chickens, and alligators. There was an ongoing debate among the Juniors and Seniors if there was a bong hidden between the blades of grass, but the art teacher always just gave a meek smile whenever anyone asked. Sam and Franny both believed it was a bong. The two girls lay side by side with their legs perpendicular to their hips and against the wall. They listened to the crowd grow soft and classroom doors slam shut. Sam looked over to Franny and watched the light filter through the skylight onto her face. Franny’s eyes were shut, and her freckles flashed every time a cloud passed by. Sam always felt the most grounded in moments like these, content to just shut the world out with her best friend.
“Remember that dream that I told you about earlier this last week,” Sam asked, breaking the silence between the two.
“No, not really. You have a lot of dreams, which one was it? Ooh was it about the one with the baby and slime?”
“… No.”
“Dang it. Okay, which one was it?”
“It was the one about that person. You know, the one where I felt like I was supposed to meet someone?”
“Oh, yeah that one. What about it?”
“Well, I had it again. And, I can’t get rid of this pressure in my chest. It feels like… well, it feels like I love this person.”
“Aww, are you finally going to admit that you love Danny?”
“Omg no. I don’t love Danny. It’s not like… I don’t know.”
“Do you feel like you want to get laid?”
“No, it’s definitely not that. The feeling in my chest, it’s both sad and happy. I’m not even sure if it’s in a romantic way. All I know is that I’m lying in the back of a pick-up truck and it’s like the perfect weather. It’s sunny, and the leaves have just turned into the different colors. There’s a nice breeze and a pile of blankets. And they’re just there… lying next to me and it feels like I’ve known them my entire life.”
“Wait, you keep on saying they. You don’t know if this person is a boy or a girl?”
“I mean, I know that they have short hair and they have a really nice smile. And they’re like bigger than me. But other than that, no. All I know is that it feels safe to be with them.”
“Wow.”
“I know, that’s the weird part. I looked it up online. What it means to dream about a person that you don’t know, but then all I found was a woman who was talking about feeling like she was cheating on her husband and how she would leave her kids in dreamland for this man. Then I tried looking up what’s the significance of like a pick-up truck. Didn’t get much there either.”
“You do realize that dreams are mostly nonsense right?”
“According to who? No one really understands dreams. I guess, I just want to know why I’m having these dreams. Maybe it is because I’m lonely. Maybe I feel like there’s something that I’m missing.”
“Maybe.”
*
A thin wall separated Franny’s room from Sam’s, not that it really mattered. They always opted to hang out in Sam’s room; rather they opted to use Sam’s window to gain access to the roof of their house. Countless scratches left their marks on the girls’ legs because of the grainy texture of the roof. They watched sunsets, sunrises, migratory bird patterns, runners, bikers, swarming gnats. They laughed, cried, tried their first and last cigarettes, thought, questioned.
“Hey, what are you doing out here alone?” Franny’s head stuck out of the window, one arm supporting her body and the other shielding her eyes from the sun.
“I’m just thinking about things.” On cue, Franny pulled her head back in and swung her left leg through the window and crawled her body through the hole before plopping next to Sam.
“Whatcha thinkin’ about?”
“I guess, I don’t know. It’s weird.”
“Dude, just tell me. It’s fine.”
“Okay, well I mean. What if the person I’m missing in my life…is like a sister or a brother?”
“What are you talking about? I’m your sister.”
“No, I know. But like… I was reading online and there have been like stories that adoptees have found biological siblings through DNA testing and I was just thinking…what if I have a sibling out there?”
“What difference does it make though?”
“I guess, I don’t know. It’s weird. To think that there’s someone else out there that looks like me. I’ve been thinking about asking Mom if I can order a DNA kit.”
Silence passed between the two and Sam breathed in deeply.
“What are you thinking about, Fran?”
“I don’t know; I guess I don’t see the point. Why do you feel like the missing person in your dream is a sibling? Do you not feel safe with me?”
“It’s not about that Fran. I don’t know. It’s hard for me to explain. I don’t think you’re understanding.”
“I’m not. Why does it matter if you have a biological sibling?”
“It doesn’t… I mean it does… but like…Look.”
Sam held her arm and compared it next to Franny’s. Sam’s arm was significantly darker than the light skin of her sister’s. Sam had always had a slightly darker complexion, but swim seasons always exacerbated the difference. Their hair was different, their eyes were different, everything was different.
“Fran, I love you, but there are just some things that you would never understand,” Sam didn’t even know if she understood or what things she was talking about.
“Look, it’s fine. I get it, I think that if you want to search for this part of your identity, then you should do it.”
Franny broke eye contact and pulled her legs closer to her body, arms wrapped around her shins, chin rested on her knees. Sam looked at her sister and noticed the knit between Fran’s brow and the concern that filled her eyes.
“I don’t want to replace you, Fran. I just want to know more about myself. I want to piece together a history that I never got. I want to know what it’s like to look into the face of someone and think ‘oh. I guess that’s where I got my birthmark, or hey, we share the same eye shape.’ I just want to be able to be recognized as someone’s sister. I don’t want to be told that I speak English well, when English is the only language I have ever known.”
Franny looked up at the sky and then turned to look at Sam. She took her sister in silently before formulating what she wanted to say next.
“I know that you don’t want to replace me, but that doesn’t change how it feels. What if you like them more than me? What if you spend more time with them? You’re the only sister that I’ve ever known. You talk about how you want to be somebody’s sister, and you’re my sister. I just don’t see why I’m not enough. And you don’t think I understand when someone tells me they think I’m dumb because I have blond hair?”
“It’s… not the same… and replacing you, that’s not going to happen. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I may have a biological sibling; I may not. It may be a fabrication made up in my mind, but it’s something that I have to find out. You are my sister, but no one else sees that.”
“I guess.”
“Yeah, I guess so too.”
Their shadows stretched and bled into the trees at the end of their yard until they faded into one another.
Camille Gladieux is a short fiction and nonfiction writer. In need of a change of scenery, she left sunny Miami, Florida to the gloomy New England area. She is a Junior at Mount Holyoke College and studies Sociology and English, with a focus on Asian American Studies. Some of her favorite authors include: Margaret Atwood, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Franz Kafka.