by Zhanna Slor
“She used to come here every day and use the computer,” he says, pointing to the aging desktop in the corner by a side entrance. “I’m not nosy or anything, but I think she was looking for art fellowships or something like that.”
“Really?” I ask.
Jared seems excited to have my attention. He perks up a little. “Yeah. I definitely saw her filling out forms with university names on top. I don’t remember which, but it looked fancy.”
“Did she ever come in with a tall guy named Tristan?”
He shrugs. “Not sure his name was Tristan, but he was definitely tall.” He stops to think it over. “I couldn’t tell if they were together or if he got friend-zoned. You’d think I’d be an expert.”
He is certainly right about that. He seems like he’s been friend-zoned a lot in his life. I can hardly believe my luck, after so much resistance for information, and I decide to take advantage of his chattiness. “Have you seen much of her lately?” I ask.
Jared shakes his head. “No. It’s been a few weeks now. She got some bad news or something on the computer, then she left and never came back.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I mean, I felt kinda bad for her. She looked really sad, and she doesn’t seem like the overdramatic type. I tried to give her a hug but she just kinda ran out of here.” His expression changes instantly from jovial to concerned. “Wait. Is she okay?” he asks.
I swallow the rest of my drink in one gulp and place it down on the bar with a shaky hand. “I don’t know.” Placing a five-dollar bill on the table, I stand to leave. “I’m guessing you don’t have her number?”
“I don’t think she had a phone. I let her use our phone a couple times,” Jared shrugs. Then, mulling it over, he adds, “Let’s just say if she did, I would have asked for her digits. Your sister is a hottie, sorry.”
I try not to cringe. I know my sister is pretty, but it is unnerving to hear it phrased like that and I can see why Anna didn’t give him her number; he does not have the best understanding of social cues. He is also clean-shaven, nervous, and dewy-eyed, like a newborn deer. Not her type at all. “What about her roommates? Did you ever see them?”
“Only remember the tall guy. Sorry. I hope you find her.”
As I walk to the door, I feel dizzy. Now that the last drink has settled in my stomach, I realize I’m more drunk than I thought. I sit back down on a patio chair and have the strongest sensation of falling. Something about Milwaukee turns me into my worst self. Or maybe, sometimes, you have to walk your way through a bad thing to get to a good thing. I don’t know. I’m no longer thinking straight. I have a cigarette and a water from my bag and try to sober up a little, but I am not very successful. I stumble my way back to Rose’s house and let myself in, heading straight for the couch.
MASHA
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A few hours later, I am nursing a massive headache when I hear a doorbell followed by a loud banging on Rose’s door. I assume it’s my dad again, that he has grown impatient and didn’t want to wait for me to call him. So when I go down there, I am very surprised to find Liam. In an actual coat and pants this time.
“What’s up with your phone?” he asks me.
I think about this. Does he need the real explanation? I choose not to give him one. “It’s dead,” I say. This is not a lie, unless you count it as one by omission. Although, it is a slippery slope. This is possibly why I never came back to Milwaukee, to avoid the temptation to be bad. I am terrible at avoiding temptation, if the last day and a half is any indication. “What are you doing here?”
“Rose told me you were staying with her.”
“I mean why are you banging on the door and calling my name?”
His face breaks into a grin. “You better thank me with a kiss,” he says. Then, when he sees my horrified expression, he puts his hands up. “I was just kidding, Jesus. Relax. I came because I know where your sister is.”
“What? For real?”
“Tao’s friends are at the trainyards. They’re leaving tonight.”
“So she’s there? She’s there for sure?”
“Tristan is there. Tao saw him somewhere and they got into a huge fight about the shit he stole, which Tao lost from what it sounded like, but I guess they made up because they’re going together.”
“Shit. What time is the train?” I ask, suddenly full of adrenaline. The blanket I had around my shoulders falls to the floor. A gust of bitter cold air rushes in and makes me shiver. Behind Liam, I notice his old white conversion van sitting impatiently in its fumes.
“I don’t know, man, do I look like a crusty to you?”
“Sort of.” I let my glance fall over his ripped black jeans and boots and stretched-out black t-shirt of a metal band he once drummed in.
To my surprise, Liam laughs. “Do you know how many times I tried to tell people how funny you are? No one believed me.”
“Would it be online?” I ask. “The schedule?”
“No, it would not be online,” he says, still laughing. “These guys guard their train manuals like gold. You better just go now and hope for the best.”
My brain works quickly, despite the mix of emotions I’m now feeling; excitement, relief, anxiety, exhaustion. I remember from old friends of mine that the yard to catch a freight train is about three miles south, somewhere near Second St., past downtown. I have no idea how I am going to get there at night. I am busy trying to mentally coordinate bus schedules and cost of fares nowadays when I hear Liam clear his throat. “Fine, fine, I’ll drive. Just don’t ever say I never did anything for you.”
Relief blooms in my chest. Maybe I hadn’t been entirely crazy to like this guy. “Thanks, Liam. I mean it.” I turn to grab my stuff and put on my shoes. I take my phone just in case, and a charger too. It may be dead, but it’s better to have it on me. Worst case I can always find a nearby store or restaurant with an outlet to charge it. Or maybe I’m scared to be without one, like everyone else. The new adult-version of a security blanket. It’s crazy how quickly you can get used to things. Not that long ago the idea of a phone you could carry in your pocket would have sounded like a trinket out of the Jetsons.
Once I’m in the hallway, and the door is locked, Liam puts an arm around me, and squeezes. I let him. “You’re lucky Melanie is still gone,” he says. And I’m so relieved he found Anna I don’t even ask him what I’ve slowly started to suspect: that Melanie isn’t just on a weekend getaway.
That she is, perhaps, gone for good.
MASHA
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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
It’s after ten-thirty when we make it to the trainyards. By then my nerves are totally frayed, my heart beating into my chest so rapidly I’m unsure how Liam doesn’t hear it. I’m not exactly a fan of dark, abandoned fields, or approaching groups of strangers in general, and here I am about to do both. I wish I could tell my dad the lengths to which I’m trying to help him—help Anna, really—but I know already I can never relay any of this to him. One heart attack was enough.
“You need to relax,” Liam says, laughing. “They’re like dogs; they can smell fear.”
“Hilarious.”
“Not a joke, actually.”
The moon is full now and slightly ominous, the wind cold and making the van sound haunted with its wails. I continue, unsuccessfully, trying to force down my panic. “How about you come with me then?” I ask Liam, finally.
He shakes his head, grabs a cigarette out of his coat pocket. I catch a glimpse of something long and shiny tucked under his shirt—a knife maybe? Part of me wishes I’d thought to bring something like that; David would have insisted, had he been around. “This way is funnier.” Then he lights the cigarette and turns off the car. “If you’re not back in fifteen, I’m leaving you here.”
“What a gentleman,” I say, and get out of the car. I’m officially on my own.
>
As I walk through the field, I tell myself they’re just kids wearing strange uniforms, filled with strange ideas about the world; lost, maybe, but nothing to be scared of. They’re no different than those who had come before them, people I’d known and talked to. There’s no reason to be so nervous! And yet, when I look down, my hands are shaking.
I slide my hands into my coat and focus on the task at hand: making it through the field without falling on my face. I don’t have a flashlight, so I meander bumpily through the field to a wall of trees, beyond which, I understood from Liam, is where I would find everyone. I’m lucky there’s a full moon. I can’t see any train tracks nearby, but I imagine they must be close since I can hear the low rumble of cars moving slightly back and forth, as if being adjusted into place on a rail. Eventually I get far enough to hear some hushed voices. Some are laughing, others deep into conversation. I walk over more loose branches and wet leaves until finally, a group of figures emerges into my view, along with a very strong smell of something flowery mixed with smoke.
“Is that a bull?” someone asks right away, starting to get up. I almost laugh at this, that they imagine I am some hired security guard meant to find them. My night vision is so bad I can only see the shapes of things, not what they are. Or maybe that’s been my problem with everything since I returned. Otherwise, shouldn’t I have found my sister by now?
“It’s just some girl,” a man’s voice answers, letting out a long cloud of smoke. From my brief experiences with drugs, it looks like they’re smoking opium. I see a lighter meet the edge of a butter knife, underneath a hollowed-out milk carton. Someone moves over and puts their lips over the spout and inhales. Another person stands up and heads my way. A girl in black overalls and dreadlocks tied up in a beige bandanna. Not my sister.
“Are you lost?” the stranger asks.
Frozen in my tracks, I look around, hoping that my eyes can focus enough to find my sister’s face. Or not. It will certainly be better if I don’t find Anna here. Would I even recognize her in this condition? With a mess of unwashed hair instead of curls, an assortment of torn black clothes instead of purple bows and purple shoes? I’d watched her grow from adolescence into adulthood online. I knew it when I left. There is always a cost of leaving—my parents had sacrificed home and community, my grandparents had lost everything they’d ever owned and known over and over again—and being distant from my entire family, including my sister, was the cost I’d agreed, silently, to pay. It was the cost I’d wanted to pay. I was never going to stay in Milwaukee. If only I had stayed in touch with her more, though. Maybe I could have convinced her to join me in Israel. Standing there in the dark, surrounded by half-empty beer cans and aggressively angsty homeless youth who liked to imagine themselves vagabonds or perhaps superheroes on the right side of history, I can’t help but wonder if leaving had been worth it. I’d had friends who rode trains when I lived in Riverwest, sure, but it was more of an amusing anecdote, not a decision, not throwing your life away. And none of them had ever been junkies.
But no, there’s no point in wondering. After what happened to June, nothing on earth would have kept me in Milwaukee. For so long, until David really, who had experienced far more death than me and spent years telling me it wasn’t my fault until I finally believed it, I blamed myself. It was easy to do, since everyone else had. Would I blame myself now, too? For the condition I might find Anna in?
Suddenly I hear a familiar voice call out to me, and relief blooms in my chest for a brief moment. Then it turns back into dread. Because when I turn and look towards who has called my name, my eyes fall on Tristan.
Just Tristan, no Anna.
He stands up, wiping his dirty palms on his dirty jeans, and heads my way. I find myself at a loss for words. I was so certain she would be here. There are 7,000 languages on earth (almost 1,000 of those are in Papua New Guinea alone) and yet, it’s hard to find the right ones when you need them the most. There’s a language in Botswana that consists almost entirely of five clicking sounds. So many options and yet we humans are constantly failing at communicating properly.
Tristan, now close enough that I can smell several weeks of non-showering on him, motions for me to meet him farther away from the group, near a cluster of trees. I follow him. He may not be my sister, but he is the closest I am getting to her at the moment.
I get straight to the point. “Where’s Anna?”
“Anastasia? She’s long gone,” Tristan shrugs. At least this time he isn’t pretending not to know who I’m talking about. This is a step in the right direction.
“Gone where?” I ask.
Tristan shrugs again, but he must know more than he’s letting on. The fact that he’s calling her by her Russian name clues me in that their relationship is more serious than I previously thought.
“We, uh…” he pauses, looking a little bit ashamed. “Didn’t end things on a great note. Whatever. It happens.”
“So you haven’t spoken to her? Then why were you at my friend’s house yesterday?”
He shrugs. “It’s still a good idea. Your sister is hella smart,” he says.
I find myself scowling at him, then fix my face. It won’t help matters to show my disgust. “Yeah. Just imagine if she put that brain of hers to good use.”
Tristan’s eyes narrow at me. “How do you know she isn’t?” he says. Then abruptly his glance falls on something behind me. I turn, and Liam is there.
I frown. “What are you doing?” I ask Liam, before turning back to Tristan.
“She’s fine,” Tristan tells me, starting to back away. “Stop looking for her. She can take care of herself.”
“I can’t do that,” I say. “She’s my sister.”
He softens a little. “It’s really cool how much you care about her. I wish I had someone out there looking for me,” he mumbles. Then he shrugs again, backing away some more until he is almost too far to hear. “But if she doesn’t want to be found, you have to respect that.”
He has a point, but not one I particularly want to admit to right now. Tristan seems, despite his ragged appearance, to be a nice and loyal person. So maybe Anna isn’t so confused after all. Of everything going on in Milwaukee right now, her actions appear less and less terrible the more I learn of them. Except for the stealing anyway. But everything else? My dad’s appalling behavior could explain a lot of it.
Abruptly, I hear the sound of sticks breaking, and then Liam is propelling himself beyond me. He stands between us, a nervous laugh tumbling out of his mouth. “I have to give you some props,” he says to Tristan. “I’m tough to surprise.”
“Can you give us a second?” I ask him, annoyed that he followed me out there, after I specifically asked him, and he declined. Why did he change his mind? And right when I was getting somewhere. “Go back to the car.”
“Fuck no,” he says. He takes out the knife I’d seen moments earlier and points it in our direction. Tristan doesn’t even blink. He must have already noticed it. He raises his hands in the air innocently.
“Is there a problem here?” He lets out an arrow of smoke and then drops the half-finished cigarette on the ground. My heart rate begins to speed up. I have to keep reminding myself this is my life, that I’m not watching a movie play out in front of my eyes. This is me in the woods at night with two angry guys who look ready for a fight. This is me using nothing but moonlight and the smallest remainder of nerves to keep standing upright.
“Yes, we have a fucking problem. I want my goddamn money back, you fucking junkies,” Liam says, pointing the knife at Tristan’s face in a manner that makes it pretty clear he’d never aimed a weapon at anyone before. I know from Krav Maga and watching way too many detective movies with David that someone could make one move on Liam’s wrist and grab it in less than a second. More, I don’t buy it. He isn’t a violent person. For a moment it makes me less scared, remembering this. I am level-headed enough to ask him what’s going on.
&nb
sp; Tristan sighs again. “Dude, you’re really not as interesting as you think you are,” he says. “Just because you were the cool guy in high school—”
“Can you put that thing down?” I ask Liam. “You don’t really intend to stab this guy for twenty bucks, do you?”
Liam snorts. “More like eight hundred bucks. She took it out of the drumhead in my closet when I was sleeping.” The ends of his mouth curled. “Like a whore.”
“She?” I ask.
“The fuck did you call—” Tristan starts.
“Yeah, I called your little girlfriend a whore, because that’s what she is,” Liam says.
“What? Are you talking about Anna?”
“Her name is Anastasia,” Tristan says. “She doesn’t like the name Anna.”
“Since when?”
“Since always.”
I move on to the more important questions: “Why would you keep that much money in a drumhead?” Then, confirming my growing suspicions, I ask, “Why was she there when you were sleeping?”
Liam shakes his head at me like I’m a moron, which, maybe I am. “Why do you think?”
As all the information begins to settle on me, I become more and more confused. Even knowing she was stealing, I hadn’t really considered how she was stealing. With the Craigslist scam, I assumed she would only come to people’s houses and report back to Tristan if it was worth breaking into. But now it looks like she took money from people herself. It sounds like something a stranger might do, not my happy-go-lucky kid sister Anna. I’d never once imagined her being able to use people like that. Or being involved with someone like Liam, who is his own type of addict, someone she would never have a future with. He was never letting go of his open relationship doctrine, it was obvious. Not to mention Tristan and his blue hair and his train-hopping. At least Liam had a house.