We read about her disappearance in the paper before we heard it ourselves, and for months afterward – when she had returned, twenty pounds lighter and pale as the winter sun; when we had met over coffee and cardboard donut boxes and resolved our involvement; when Paul had stopped vomiting and Christopher had stopped calling in sick and Lexya had stopped smoking behind the gymnasium; that part – the awful first moment, with half-panicked exhale of shock at her pumice eyes staring solemnly out from the newsprint, the orange juice quivering in the glass, silence and fear heavy on all our lungs – was what lingered. Tainted, ruined us. 

That was what snapped us apart as clean and sure as a shoulder from its socket: painful, necessary, and inconsolable.

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