Today starts like this:
This morning I woke up to rain. It pounded the tin of the roof and beat against the glass of the windows. When the wind blows, it shakes the house down to its core. It’s Saturday and I know it will be like no other Saturday I’ve ever passed before.
I feed the pigs, the chickens and check in on the horses. Daddy is passed out on the couch again—another late night out with Felix. Since Momma died, he has taken a shine to whiskey. When he falls asleep, it is always with her picture in his hand.
I don’t bother him, instead I finish up my chores and dress in my warmest clothes, taking one of his lumberjack shirts from his closet and pull my grey wool hat over my ears.
Today they are searching the woods for my friend. A team out of Charlotte comes with blood hounds and horses. The animals breathe in the air and it comes out of their noses in pants of billowy clouds. The horses neigh when their owners pull at the reins. The men are dressed in thick jackets, ones I wish I could afford to buy Daddy.
Cars line the sides of the highway about a mile from my home. I stand among the crowd, my hands stuffed in old work gloves to fight the cold.
“We’ll take the northern perimeter,” I hear one say, using a map spread on the hood of his truck.
Next to him, sitting haphazardly on the hood, is a cup with steam escaping through a small hole on the lid. It makes my mouth water and makes the air feel colder somehow.
“Your team can take the west. Use your radios if you find anything.”
The man looks different from the rest of us. He is older, with gray hair along his temples which is nothing new. But the look of him—as if he had his whole life handed to him without asking—is different from the others who stand huddled together to beat the cold.
When I turn around, Ben Theodore—Shanda’s boyfriend—is standing against one of the hardwoods with his eyes to the sky. Even if he doesn’t speak it, I know he’s praying. They all are. I can see their lips moving with no sound coming from them.
Shanda’s father is sitting on the bumper of his Ford. His eyes are tired and rimmed red. He’s been crying and I wonder to myself why he bothers to pray at all. No god would take his daughter…not her.
I think about life and what this will mean for me now. In the end, I can see a white casket and thousands of baby pink roses and white carnations surrounding a mound of turned earth. I close my eyes and shake my head to erase the picture.
There are so many voices jumbled together here and all I can think of is her…the girl with the golden hair…my friend.
“Do you wanna come over today?” she asked me and I missed my footing, tripping on the lip of the doorjamb of our English class.
“What?”
“Wanna come over to my house today?” I studied her face, the way her skin glowed; her eyes sparkled with sincerity and her pink lips pulled apart—her teeth straight and white. She had a shower of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
The song comes into my head again. Sally Sue Judas prances around town…
Had she ever sang it with the others when we were children? Was she asking me to her house because they planned on making a fool of me? Nowhere in her face could I see those signs of cruelty. Those innocent freckles dictated my answer.
No one with sweet freckles like hers would lie.
“Alright,” I said.
That afternoon I skipped the country bus and headed for the parking lot. On our way to her car, I heard the monsters talking. Shanda has a new charity case. I wouldn’t be her friend if you paid me. They said things, but never really looked at us.
When I looked at my friend, she smiled over the top of her car and nodded so that I would get in. It felt unreal. I gripped the door handle and it didn’t make one sound when I opened it. Not like Daddy’s truck whose seats moved when you didn’t want them to and doors squeaked loudly in protest when you opened them.
Her car smelled of flowers whereas my father’s reeked of pipe tobacco and week old whiskey.
We drove through town and onto Brewster Street where her house perched on top of a small hill. The outside was soft white with light blue shutters. The porch wrapped around and a set of six steps that led to the light blue front door. On the three front windows were flower boxes with white peonies.
The inside smelled like a mother lived there—fresh baked cookies and cinnamon. The walls were the color of wheat and I wondered if they chose the color to match Shanda’s hair. In the kitchen was a small round table with a window that let the sunlight stream inside. It was warm and cozy, just like a home should be.
“Let’s go up to my room,” she said and we climbed the stairs up to a hallway with four doors, two on the right and two on the left.
She chose the first door on the left. Her room was light, airy with clean lines and mature taste. There were some pictures on her built-in shelves and I smiled when I saw that she had one of the two of us in a frame.
“When did you take that picture?” I asked because I couldn’t remember.
“A couple of months ago,” she said as she hung her purse off the chair at her desk.
I gazed at all the pretty little things she had on her shelves. Tiny wooden horses and miniature glass blown ballerinas in soft pink tutus. On her walls were pictures of horses and on her desk was a picture of a strong looking steed with chocolate and vanilla spots.
“Is that your horse?”
“Yup. That’s Daisy,” she said and I heard the pride in her voice.
In that moment, I wished I had a horse I felt that way about. I wished I had anything to take pride in so I would sound that way.
“She’s beautiful,” I said.
“Thanks. She’s real gentle. You should go riding with me sometime. You gotta horse?”
“Yeah, I do. But he ain’t this pretty,” I chuckled.
“Oh, any horse is pretty. If you give ‘em enough love and show them kindness, they’ll be as beautiful as a thoroughbred.”
How I wanted to see things just the way she saw them. How I wanted to dip my hands in the well of wishful thinking and positivity that she did every day of her life. But I live in the real world. In the real world, things are just that black and white.
“Have a seat,” she said and patted the empty space on her bed.
I accepted her offer with a weak smile because I still had no idea why she asked me here.
“Sally, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”
I liked the way she left out my middle name. It made me feel all grownup.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
She sat cross legged on her bed and picked at a loose thread on her blanket with her eyes down.
“I suppose you heard what those girls said on the way out of school.”
It was my turn to look away.
“Yeah, I heard.”
“Does it bother you much?”
It was an innocent question; one that deserved an honest answer. But I just couldn’t give it to her. How could I admit how weak I really am to the one person who made me feel a little stronger?
“Not really,” I said and prayed a hole would open in the floor and swallow me up. My voice betrayed me. She read through the cracks.
“I would venture to guess it does,” she said with a sad smile. “It has to because it bothers me a lot.” She frowned then and looked out her window. “The thing is, Sally, they just don’t see you the way I do.”
“And how’s that?” It was out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop and count the costs. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know how she saw me.
“You are like a drop of sunshine,” she said in her sweet voice. “People don’t see how wonderful and smart you really are.” Shanda looked down again. “I know they only see what’s on the outside because it’s easier.”
I turned my eyes away from her again, my cheeks flaming red from embarrassment. That—at least—she agreed with them on.
“Not that what’s on the outside is bad,” she said with a firm tone. But that didn’t help. “What they judge you on is not only how you look, but how you carry yourself.”
She used her finger to lift my chin until I was looking into those startling blue eyes.
“Sally, you walk around the school with your shoulders hunched and your eyes down. You literally hide behind your hair!” she said, as she playfully mussed my knotted mane. “Don’t you realize how beautiful you are?”
I stared at her in disbelief and shook my head uncertainly.
“How do you expect those people to see it, if you can’t see it for yourself?”
Then, Shanda took me by the hand and led me through the door to the left of her closet. Her bathroom was covered in products I had never seen. Different kinds of make-up and brushes and bows and rubber bands all neatly stacked in clear plastic boxes atop of a granite vanity.
“Sit down,” she said and I took a seat on a chair fit for a princess.
The large space was done up in pale lavender colors. The tub was claw footed and bright white.
Quietly she took a bottle that was scented with something like honeydew melons. I realized it was how her hair always smelled and I was excited that she was using it on me.
After twenty solid minutes, she brushed away every tangle that I had. The pain was minimal and I would take it any day.
“Can I see now?”
“Not yet,” she said with a determined voice. “Let me finish it up and then you can see.”
I don’t know how long I was in that chair but I would’ve stayed forever if she’d asked me to. When I turned to look in the mirror, I didn’t recognize the girl staring back at me. Her hair, the color of chestnuts, shined under the muted light of her bathroom. And her skin was ivory and her cheeks were rosy with blush; her lips as pink as Shanda’s.
It couldn’t be me…but it was.
“Whatta ya think?” she asked and looked nervous.
“Shanda, I…” There were no words.
“Do ya like it?” I nodded and tried hard not to cry.
Sally Sue Judas prances around town/up the street and down the street in her ugly nightgown.
No one could say that about me anymore. No one could ever make me feel ugly again when I know what is underneath it all. My friend showed me exactly what happens when you find a wildflower in a patch of weeds. And I was grateful to her for finding Sally.
Daddy wasn’t home when I got back that night and I was glad. I didn’t want him to see me this way. I didn’t want him to see the woman I was when Shanda was through with me. I knew this would only happen once. But once was enough to last me a lifetime.
Once was enough to show me that deep inside I was just as beautiful if not more than those monsters that lurked about our school. And if I wanted to fool them, all I had to do was comb my hair and dab on some cosmetics.
It was enough to know I had that option.
“Alright,” the stranger says to the rest of us. “You all got your maps and areas. Now go and use your radios if you find anything. Please be on the lookout for animals and watch your step. Don’t want anyone stepping on bear traps.”
We all take a position and when he heads forward, we do to.
My head is so full of thoughts right now I can’t tell which way is up or down. On my right are men with hounds that sniffed some of Shanda’s clothing before heading forward. On my left are another pack of strangers except for Ben whose eyes are down and hands are stuffed in the pockets of his jacket. For a moment, they drift towards me and I look down quickly when he meets my gaze.
My thoughts are on his heart and how it must be aching worse than mine.
We walk along the perimeter set for us and search for clues. We are one line of people with no one exactly ahead or behind. We are like one giant comb with corneas and pupils that search the bracken and dead leaves and branches.
We search the area for hours, all the while I am hoping we find some clue, some ray of hope that my friend is alive and well. That she maybe got lost in the woods on a hike or fell off her horse while riding, even though I know her horse is at the stable where it belongs.
Hope is heartless. It encourages you to believe in things that cannot exist in the rational world. My whole life I’ve lived with rationality. Now, I am in danger of hoping that she isn’t how my subconscious has already drawn her picture for me.
A corpse, her body gray with decomposition and hair no longer the color of sunshine.
“No,” I whisper to myself. No because she can’t be gone. Not if I can still feel her around me.
When she befriended me, I never noticed the connection. I never felt it because she was always right there next to me. If I’d been paying attention, I would have realized it the moment the black crow sang his warning to me. It was our connection that ached in my bones. It was because of it he came to me in the first place—my warning that soon this connection would be tested and maybe push my sanity as far as it could stretch.
With a deep breath I trudge forward, looking beyond that picture my head drew of her and listen to the quiet pining voice of hope that nestles into my ears like a whispered lullaby.
“Shanda, where are you?” my heart calls out silently to hers.
Maybe she’ll hear me and call back. I vow to keep my spirit open for the sound of it.
The day ends on a somber note. Not one clue, not one ray of hope so far. But tomorrow is another day and we’ll be out there again, searching the woods to the east.
I climb into the bathtub full of hot water. My toes are still numb from the cold but I’ll do it all over again...and again. It’s the least I can do—the only thing I can do to keep from going insane with worry. How I wish Nana were here to guide me. She’d know what to do; point me in the right direction.
My bedspread is scratchy on the underside. I pull it up over my head, as if it would help to keep those images out. Images I fight to keep from resurfacing. A light mist showers the window and I watch it gather until it forms droplets that run down the glass, making clear wavy paths all the way to the bottom.
Frustrated, I turn onto my back and stare up at the ceiling then close my eyes and open my spirit up the way Nana taught me. I relax my legs and arms, fingers and toes and work my way up until my mind is clear of everything except what I want.
Silently, I call out to her again and wait.
Where are you my friend? Where are you?
In the middle of the void, in between the sounds of my thoughts and my labored breaths I hear a small whimper of recognition. My heart thumps wildly in my chest and my eyes stay closed until I can make out a whisper.
Sally…help me. I need you…
I gasp—suck in a large gulp of air—and sit up quickly, trying to listen as hard as I can.
Just as quickly as it began, the connection is broken. When I open my eyes, tears blur my vision and my heart begins to ache uncontrollably when I catch the distinct smell of her perfume in the air.
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