Annalisa

She's sitting next to him, on a plane, reading something in a file. Something upsetting, he's guessing, from the way she's chewing her little finger. Annalisa used to do that, when she was upset. Put her finger in her mouth and chew on it. She tilted her head to the side and scrunched her eyebrows together the same way too. But not any more. Annalisa is dead.

She's put the file down. The man next to her, her friend, brother, partner, cousin, co-worker, whoever, he doesn't know, turns to her and asks if she's okay. She shrugs and picks at her finger nail polish. It's dark blue like her eyes, like Annalisa's eyes. Now that he looks at her, she looks a lot like Annalisa. Different hair, dark instead of red. Same long, slim body. Same unladylike way of sitting, feet up on the seat, legs crossed, shoes off, slumping forward a bit, elbows on knees. But Annalisa is dead.

He knows Annalisa is dead. He nailed the box shut, covered it with dirt himself. He put her in the box. She needed to be punished, to learn her lesson. He was going to let her out, later, once she learned her lesson. But she wouldn't stop scream-cry-yelling. He hated it when Annalisa scream-cry-yelled. She wouldn't stop. He started to think she would never stop. He didn't need that. Things wouldn't be right if Annalisa was scream-cry-yelling all the time. He could take the box to the backyard, bury it and no one would know. She wouldn't even know. So he did. So Annalisa is dead.

The girl on the plane isn't Annalisa. He knows that, for all they look alike. She's different; they aren't the same at all. The other one, the man who's with her, he can tell they know each other, asks her what's wrong.

"I hate this. I hate these cases. Why do I keep getting put on them?" She's talking more to herself than to him, and she's upset. He can't tell if she's angry or sad. Maybe both. Annalisa was like that sometimes. Angry, sad and mad all at the same time. But Annalisa was loud when she was like that, yell-cry-screaming. But not anymore. Annalisa is dead.

He realizes he's lying to himself, mixing Annalisa up with someone else, like those times when he thinks she's alive and he sees her. He hates it when that happens, thinking he's found her again but not. Annalisa was very quiet, shy even, when he first met her. She only started to be a loud girl, a bad girl when he brought her to his home, their home. He wanted to marry her, so they could be a nice, perfect family. But she wouldn't learn, wouldn't let him teach her how to be a good girl, so their family would be perfect. Now Annalisa is dead.

The girl is talking to the man next to her again. "I get it, I'm good with kids, you're good with kids. A child is most likely to respond to a team of a male and female, versus two men or two women, because it'll remind them of their parents. If not, then we have a better chance of reaching them with someone one-on-one. They'll respond better to someone in the in their twenties to early thirties because that's the age of their parents or to someone in their early to middle twenties because that's the babysitter age, and they'll seem more like a friend than an authority figure." Her partner, from work he guesses, looks at her, confused. "Just because I understand it, doesn't mean I like it. Child abuse is on my list of things I don't do, along with walk down dark staircases with no light, and anything with snakes. You know that!"

The partner takes one of her hands and squeezes it. The girl is glaring at him, angry at him, he thinks. Annalisa had glared at him like that sometimes. "I know," he says, "but J.J. and everyone else doesn't. And even if they did, you'd take the cases anyway. Or go crazy if you didn't." She doesn't argue. She leans all the way forward and puts her face in her hands. Annalisa did that too sometimes, once she scream-cry-yelled herself out. It made him feel guilty when she looked like that. Like he didn't love her. Like he was doing something wrong. But he hadn't. And Annalisa is dead.

He knew Annalisa was dead. He really did. It was just that he got confused sometimes. And he missed her. Not her scream-cry-yelling, but her quiet little girlnesss. Annalisa was dead, but he wanted her back, because he was lonely. So he started getting confused. He'd see her, Annalisa, in a crowd of girls, girls who would be about the same age. The shy quiet one, the one who cried for her mother when she fell, the one with bouncy red curls. They all were Annalisa, but not quite. There was always something, some nagging part of his brain, that made him remember. Annalisa is dead.

The girl sitting next to him has opened a notebook, and is writing in it. Writing a list of names, with numbers next to them, she draws a box around it, stares at her handiwork. He can read the names and the numbers next to them, but doesn't know what it means: 'Annalisa- 9yr, Annaliese- 10yr, Anna-12yr, Lisa-11yr.' Names and ages he thinks, names and ages. Some of them look familiar, but he's distracted with seeing Annalisa's name. He wonders if it's his Annalisa that the girl has written down. But why would she do that? Annalisa is dead.

He feels so very confused. He remembers the time, the first time he thought he found Annalisa again. Same quiet shyness, same eyes, same hair, same age, same name, almost, same Annalisa, so he thought. He tried to do better that time, thinking God had given him a second chance. He tried again, to teach her to be a good girl, tried his hardest to be nice, even when she was scream-cry-yelling. But it didn't work. She wasn't Annalisa after all. So he put her in the box, and nailed it shut, buried it in his yard. She wasn't Annalisa. Annalisa is dead.

The girl is drawing spirals on her piece of paper now, randomly, no pattern, not writing anything down. She seems distracted, preoccupied. Her partner keeps trying to talk to her, but she doesn't really answer, just nods, or shakes her head. Eventually he gives up, and looks at his own file folder. He can hear her singing something under her breath, but can't hear the words. Annalisa did that sometimes, when she was sad, to cheer her up he always thought. Maybe the girl was doing the same thing. She's drawing stars, instead of spirals now. He notices she's left handed, just as Annalisa was. But Annalisa is dead.

There were more, girls who were about the same age as Annalisa, looked like her, had names similar. He brought them home, tried to teach them, but it was always the same. The same scream-cry-yelling. So he would put them in the box, bury them, and no one knew, most likely they didn't even know. He was so lonely, he missed his Annalisa, his quiet, shy Annalisa, not the loud, bad ones who scream-cry-yelled at him, not the ones who weren't really Annalisa. It got worse with every Annalisa-but-not-Annalisa he found; he knew they weren't really her. He just got confused. Annalisa is dead.

"I don't understand it," the girl sitting next to him says, "four girls, all dead, buried in a guys backyard." Her partner looks at her, startled because she's talking again.

"From the autopsy and the shape of the boxes they were in, it would seem as that they were buried alive," he comments, glancing at the file in his hand.

"Not helping." She's upset again. "How do you do something like that? Burying someone alive, forcing them into a box, digging a hole, and then stick the box into it, and bury them. What kind of a sick person can do that?" He's been listening to them talk, but now he realizes something. He looks at the girl's boxed list of names again. Reads them carefully, and then searches his memory, listens a bit more to the conversation between the two. Then he realizes that it's he they're talking about. Him and Annalisa, he and all the girls who weren't Annalisa. The ones he put in boxes, nailed the boxes shut, buried them. Alive. Annalisa is dead because he killed her.

The girl, the girl who isn't Annalisa, said that someone had to be sick to do that, bury someone alive. He did that. He's never felt sick until this very moment. It never full dawned on him; he killed Annalisa, until this moment. And the girl sitting next to him, who isn't Annalisa, and her partner, are looking for him. He wonders what he should do. Should he say something? They'll take him to jail, or maybe even kill him, but right now, he wants to die. Because Annalisa is dead. Because he killed her.

The seat belt lights flash on. The girl, the one looking for him, the one who isn't Annalisa, puts her shoes back on. Her partner puts his file in his bag. She closes her notebook and puts it in her purse. He takes a deep breath. She's singing under her breath again, but this time he can hear the words.

"Hold on,

Baby you're loosing it.

The water's high,

You're jumping into it.

And letting go, and no one knows,

That you cry, but you don't tell anyone

That you might not be the golden one.

And you're tied together with a smile,

But you're coming undone."1

He let's out the breath he didn't realize he's holding. Inhales again, exhales again, just keep breathing he tells himself. The plane is about to land. He taps the girl, who isn't Annalisa, on the shoulder. She turns, and looks at him. He opens his mouth, and says:

"Annalisa is dead. I killed her."

1 "Tied Together with a Smile", recorded by Taylor Swift