“Normal. I mean, we had fights, but nothing really serious. She was always in her room, reading or listening to music.”
“What about with her siblings, her father?”
“Everyone was fine. Everything was fine.”
[There’s a long pause, and she looks away with tears in her eyes. Video ends.]
* * *
Jessie’s father died the year we turned eight. I remember black clothing, tears, confusion, and the smell of flowers. At some point, she and I snuck out into her backyard and played in the sandbox. I don’t remember what we talked about or if we talked about anything at all, but I remember how we slipped out of our dress shoes and wriggled our toes through the warm top layer of sand to the cool beneath. I remember the scent of honeysuckle thick in the air.
* * *
Recording of a telephone interview, July 28, 2012:
“You’re not going to use my name, right? I don’t want you to use my name.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Good. Okay.”
“Tell me what you think happened on the night of August second.”
“All I can tell you is what I saw. The kid was hanging in the air in her backyard, looking like some kind of angel, only not the kind you can see through. I mean, she wasn’t wearing anything like an angel would. I think she had on some kind of dress, but nothing like you see in pictures of angels or anything like that. Then she went straight up. Craziest damn thing I ever saw. I kept thinking it was the beer. I only had a couple, maybe three, but …”
“Did you do anything?”
“What could I do? Hell, by the time I figured out my eyes weren’t playing tricks, she was high up. I mean really high.”
“And you told the authorities what you saw?”
“Yeah, I told them. Lot of good that did. They said I was crazy. Or drunk. People can’t float. But I know what I saw, and that girl just floated up and away.”
“Did you know anything about her?”
“No, she was just the kid who lived next door. She kept to herself, the whole family did. I mean they were nice enough, just not real friendly.”
“Is there anything else you’d like to say?”
“You’re not going to use my name for this thing, right? I don’t want my name used.”
“No, sir. As I said before, I won’t use your name.”
* * *
Jessie and I started to drift apart the summer she turned eleven, about a year after her mom remarried. I’d ask her to come over and catch fireflies, and she’d say no. I’d invite her to spend the night, and she’d say no. I spent countless nights crying, trying to figure out what I’d done wrong, because best friends didn’t stop talking to each other unless something was wrong.
My mother sat me down and said, “Tracy, honey, that’s what happens with friends sometimes. Don’t worry. Maybe she’s just going through a phase. You are becoming young women, you know.”
She was only trying to help, but I wanted everything to go back to the way it had been, not the way it was.
* * *
Video footage, dated August 2, 2002:
Video opens with a scene of a back yard, complete with a hot tub, a fire pit, and tables and chairs setup for a party. There’s a break in the video; when it returns, the sky is dark and a party is in full swing. No children are present. The camera captures several people saying hello to the cameraman, there’s another break in the filming, and then the camera is stationary, capturing a wide view of the partygoers.
5 minutes, 06 seconds: A pale blotch can be seen in the far left corner, above a row of well-trimmed hedges.
5 minutes, 08 seconds: The pale blotch is larger, the shape completely visible over the hedge.
5 minutes, 10 seconds: While the partygoers continue to drink and laugh, the blotch continues to rise.
Video editing enhancement of the last few seconds before the blotch disappears from the film clearly shows a young girl in her early teens, her face solemn, rising up through the air.
[Note: Records state the video was taken by Jack Stevenson of Denver, Colorado. Repeated attempts to contact Mr. Stevenson have been unsuccessful.]
* * *
By the time I was twelve, the drift between Jessie and I had become a crevasse. We weren’t even on speaking terms. She was just a girl I used to know. As kids do, I’d made new friends and sure, her rejection hurt and sometimes I’d look over the fence to see if she was outside, but I was a kid, just a stupid kid.
How was I supposed to know?
* * *
Photograph A: Photo shows a baobab tree and a girl beside it. On closer inspection, the girl’s feet are hovering about a foot from the ground. The girl is looking away from the camera. The back of the photograph reads August 2, Shurugwi, Zimbabwe.
[Note: Photograph provided by one of the girl’s family members, who asked to remain anonymous. For that reason, the name of the girl is also withheld.]
Photograph B: The central image is the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. On the far right of the photo, a girl is suspended in the air, her arms held in the distinct way described by many others, her face serene. Using the tower as a point of measure, she is approximately 1,050 feet in the air.
[Note: Image found on a website claiming it was manipulated digitally, however, no evidence of alteration can be found in the image itself. The girl in the photograph has not yet been identified.]
Photograph C: Photo of Trakai Castle, south of Vilnius, Lithuania, taken by Algimantas Serunis of Chicago, Illinois, while on vacation. A girl’s head and shoulders are visible above the westernmost tower of the castle.
[Note: The girl has been tentatively identified as Ruta Gremaila. Attempts to contact her family have been unsuccessful.]
* * *
When I was fourteen, Jessie showed up at the back door one night. I was blaring music and eating the last of the mint chocolate chip ice cream, knowing my dad would pretend to make a big deal about the empty container and my mom would roll her eyes at both of us. My parents weren’t home, and yes, I’ve wondered more than once if it would’ve made a difference.
“Yeah?” I remember saying.
“I was wondering if maybe you’d want to hang out for a little bit?” she asked, her voice whisper-thin, her eyes all red and puffy, like she’d been crying. Behind the red, though, there was a strange emptiness, a hollow where laughter had once lived.
I remember being surprised, more at her request than her eyes. Although I’d made new friends, she hadn’t. She skulked through the halls at school like a ghost. She sat alone in the cafeteria at lunchtime and with her shoulders hunched in class. She wore baggy clothing and kept her head down so her hair almost covered her face, and she always walked home alone.
“I can’t, sorry. I have a math test tomorrow I have to study for.”
“Oh, okay.” She stood for a minute, toeing the doormat with the tip of her shoe. “See you around then?”
“Sure.”
But I lied. There was no math test. I just didn’t want to talk to her.
* * *
Video footage of interview with Sheriff Joseph Miller, Brookhaven, Pennsylvania, September 9, 2008:
“No, none of it’s true. I have no idea why you’d even want to talk about it.”
“So why do you think everyone reported the same thing?”
“I don’t have an answer to that.”
“Maybe it’s because it really happened.”
[He glares into the camera.]
“Look, it didn’t happen. A bunch of kids ran away, a bunch more people got upset and invented some story about floating.”
“But didn’t three girls from your own town vanish?”
[His expression changes, and he crosses his arms over his chest.]
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you think that’s suspect?”
“Sometimes kids, especially girls, run away together. It happens.”
“And what if I told you those girls weren’t
even friends, didn’t even go to the same schools?”
[He sighs heavily, looks at some spot in the distance, and shakes his head in dismissal.]
“We’re done here. Some of us have real work to do.”
* * *
On August 2, 2002, the summer Jessie and I were fifteen, I was in the back yard on a blanket, staring at the stars, waiting for one to fall so I could make a wish. My parents were out at the movies, and other than the crickets chirping, the neighborhood was quiet.
Jessie’s kitchen door opened—it had a funny little squeak that all the oil in the world wouldn’t fix—and Jessie walked out into the yard. The lights in her house were off, and she was little more than a shadow flitting across the grass.
I hunched down on the blanket and watched through the hedges. She stood still in the middle of her yard for several minutes with her head down, her hands fisted at her sides. I thought about calling her name—I know I did—but then her hands relaxed, her arms extended slightly, and she lifted her chin to stare straight ahead. Then she lifted off the ground.
She was a foot in the air before I realized it wasn’t an illusion, before I was able to do anything other than blink. I scrambled to my feet, told her to stop, and raced through the hedges, scratching my upper arms all to hell in the process. I shouted her name and called out for my parents, for her parents, for anyone.
Jessie never looked down, not once. I stood right underneath her, waving my arms and yelling at her to come back, until my legs couldn’t hold me up anymore and my throat was too thick to speak.
My parents found me in the back yard when they got home. I was on the blanket, sitting with my grass-stained knees pulled to my chin, crying. I told them how Jessie just floated and kept floating until I couldn’t see her anymore, until she was gone.
I saw the disbelief in their eyes. My father went over to Jessie’s house, knocked on the door, and came back shrugging his shoulders after no one answered. My mom pressed her hand against my forehead, proclaimed I had a fever, and sent me to bed. I stayed there for three days.
Jessie’s parents told the police she ran away.
* * *
Video footage of an attempted interview on August 18, 2011 with John Gelvin from Brawley, California, whose daughter, Rosie, age thirteen, is still listed as missing. Documents show she was reported as a floating girl. Other documents show that Child Protective Services had been called on at least one occasion before Rosie’s disappearance, but no further action from CPS can be found.
“Sir, you said you saw Rosie float.”
“No. I didn’t. You’re mistaken. She ran away.”
“But I have a report here, a police report, that says—”
[He spins around and begins to walk away, speaking over his shoulder.]
“Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”
* * *
I tried to tell people the truth. My parents continued to blame the fever. When I told Jessie’s parents, her mother’s eyes filled with tears, the silent, terrifying kind; her stepfather told me to leave their house and never come back. They moved away a few months later and didn’t tell anyone where they were going.
People at school thought I was crazy, even after the other reports came out. Jessie was just another troubled kid who ran away. It happened every day. No big deal.
If I’d been an adult, if I hadn’t see Jessie float away, I wonder if I would’ve been as dismissive. Possibly. Probably.
I tried to tell the truth so many times, but no one would listen.
* * *
Graffiti on the side of a building in Rapid City, South Dakota, June 8, 2013, in the section of the city known as Art Alley:
SILENCE IS A FORM OF HELIUM
[Note: According to a local artist, who asked not to be named, the graffiti was originally written on the building in September of 2002, and she’s been repainting it as needed ever since. When asked if she knew the identity of the original artist or thought that the statement was related to the floating girls, she declined to answer.]
* * *
Eventually I stopped talking about it, about Jessie. I didn’t forget her, but it was too hard to keep trying to explain what I saw to people who refused to believe it. I finished high school, moved out of state for college, dropped out in my second year, and came back home.
When my parents decided to sell their house and move to Florida, I found a box of photos in the attic, pictures of me and Jessie when we were young, pictures of us holding our firefly jars, grinning crazy kid smiles, those smiles that scream innocence. Our eyes were filled with laughter and happiness and hope.
And I remembered her eyes the night she came over, the night I turned her away. We all have a secret spot, a tiny light, inside us, and it doesn’t take much to make that light go out. It doesn’t take much to extinguish that light forever.
As I carried the photos out to my car, I decided to do something. I’m not sure if I decided to do it for Jessie or for the others or for me, but I don’t think it matters.
I’m not a fifteen-year-old girl anymore, and I’ve spent years digging for proof, searching for the truth. Maybe now people will listen, and maybe they’ll start talking.
* * *
Excerpt from “A Study into the Phenomenon of the Floating Girls,” dated November 2002, author not cited:
Given a lack of concrete evidence to the phenomenon, and with evidence that a percentage of the girls were from troubled homes and had a history of running away, we can only conclude there was no phenomenon, only a strange set of coincidental circumstances.
It is also noted that there was a heavy incident of fog in the northwestern states, which may explain the visual oddities noted there.
Reports from other countries are sketchy at best with most being reported well after the disappearances in the United States, leading this researcher to determine that they were copying the phenomenon, perhaps in hope of cashing in on the notoriety. More research is needed.
[Note: There is no evidence that any further research was conducted.]
* * *
I live twenty minutes away from the house I grew up in. Kids still play in sandboxes, they still catch fireflies and run through sprinklers, they still promise to be best friends forever. At night, I stare at the sky and wonder if the girls are still floating. I think they are, and we just can’t see them.
I tell Jessie I’m sorry, but the words seem so fucking inadequate. I should’ve been there for her. I should’ve listened. And after, I should’ve kept talking. Hell, I should’ve screamed and shouted. But I didn’t.
No one did.
For Jessie
Tracy Richardson, Director
The Floating Girls Project
Baltimore, Maryland
2014
Take a Walk in the Night, My Love
He is a good man. Remember that. He is a good man.
* * *
There’s something in the bed, something that scratches your skin when you move your legs, and you whip the sheets aside, fearing an insect, or worse—a spider. Dirt, coarse and abrasive, clings to your feet and ankles, between your toes. You hiss in a breath, shake your husband’s pajama-clad arm.
Half-asleep, he mumbles, “What’s wrong?”
“There’s dirt in the bed.” Your voice is little more than a whisper.
He rolls over, wiping grit from the corner of his eye. “What time is it?”
“Just after six. Look,” you say, pointing to your feet.
He sits and untangles his legs from the sheets. No dirt there, only on your side, on your skin. Your arms break out in gooseflesh, even though it’s mid-spring and your bedroom is warm.
“Did I get out of bed last night?” Your voice is thick with unshed tears.
“Not that I’m aware, but you know me, I sleep like a stone,” he says. “Maybe you were sleepwalking.”
“I’ve never done that before, have I?”
He shrugs and shakes his salt and pepper hair from h
is eyes. “I don’t think so.”
The bright sunlight, welcome after several days of unceasing rain, makes the lines fanning the corners of his eyes and bracketing his mouth appear deeper than usual, makes the fifteen years between the two of you more than evident.
He takes your hand, but you slip free and swing your legs over the side of the bed. There’s a smattering of dirt on the floor as well. And in the hallway, and on the stairs. You make out the curve of a heel here, the smudge of a toe there. You pinch the bridge of your nose before descending, still clad in your nightgown. More dirt leads from the back door, which is shut and locked as it should be. Through the window, you see impressions on the stone patio as well.
Beyond the patio, the grass of the large, sweeping lawn shimmers with dew. Several acres separate the house, a brick two-story, four-bedroom built in a neoclassical style, from the towering pines at the edge of the property.
His footsteps are soft behind you.
“Look,” you say, pointing.
He takes your shoulders in hand. “Maybe … Maybe it’s ah … hormonal. You are turning fifty in a few months.”
You feel the smile softening his words and lean back against his chest. “So I’m getting old? Is that your official diagnosis, Doctor?”
He clears his throat, scuffs one foot on the floor.
“Healthy adults don’t just start sleepwalking,” you say. “They don’t. Not even with changing hormones.”
He kisses the top of your head. “Are you sure you don’t remember getting up?”
You bark a laugh. “For what? To go outside in the yard? It isn’t even trash day,” you say, regretting the words as soon as they’re past your lips. They sound absurd. As absurd as the thought of sleepwalking. And yet, a quick memory flashes in your head—you turning back the sheets and slipping from bed as quietly as possible, your fingers trembling and mouth dry.
He turns you round and kisses your lips, softly, sweetly. “If it bothers you that much, you can always call the doctor.”
“Not confident in your diagnosis?” you say, smiling a little.
He kisses you again. “Honestly, my love, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”
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