Eleven
The next afternoon at 4:30, I woke up to my wailing alarm clock and groaned. I had had an especially hard time getting to sleep the previous night. Talking with Darlene and Tansy hadn't answered many questions, just stirred up new ones, and they had swarmed around my head relentlessly.
I slipped into my work outfit and tied my hair into a ponytail, not bothering with makeup. Foregoing makeup was something I didn't frequently do, but it wasn't my intention to impress anyone that day. I didn't want to do anything except go back to sleep, and I shot a longing look at my bed before I left. As I walked to work, feeling disheveled and very conscious of the humidity that very quickly made my forehead bead with sweat, two young men caught my attention. They were just two regular guys in their mid-twenties, not particularly handsome or nicely dressed. It wasn't the look of them that necessarily caught my attention, but their muttering as I walked passed.
"Damn girl, you are beautiful," one said, and I caught his gaze as he shamelessly stared.
The other one pretended to be struck into stillness, looking at me with wide eyes as if he couldn't believe how beautiful I was. It was silly, and I wondered if they were mocking me, because this had never happened to me before. I couldn't help my shy smile as heat rose into my cheeks and I muttered an embarrassed, "Thanks."
"Seriously, you are be-YU-tiful!" he called after me when I was a few buildings past them.
I blushed harder and when I walked into work, I was beaming. What was coming over everyone? Whatever it was, I couldn't help but like it. I went to clock in and as soon as I walked into the back office, I was confronted by Harrison. "You're not wearing any makeup today," he commented.
My smile faltered and I avoided his gaze as I punched my time card. "Yep," I answered, noncommittally.
"You look nice," he said. When I peeked over my shoulder at him, I noticed his stare that almost seemed hungry. I didn't like that look on his face one bit. Maybe I didn't like what was coming over everyone after all.
"Thanks," I muttered, trying to sound polite without giving him the wrong idea. Before he could say anything else, I retreated into the hallway and headed for the bar. As I stocked the bar, Tracy, a brunette waitress with a cute Southern drawl, came to chat with me.
"Did you hear?" she asked.
"Hear what?" I asked back.
"Liz has gone missing!" she exclaimed, then lowered her voice when a few customers glanced our way. "Two detectives came in asking questions. And there is a rumor going around that she might have relapsed on drugs!"
I froze, too stunned to reply. So it was true. Liz was missing. I could no longer hope that she was in rehab and that Darlene was just a crazy witch-lady.
Tracy seemed to like my surprise, enjoying the fact that she was the one to deliver a little tidbit of gossip, and mistaking me for one of the other snobby waitresses. "I knew she was an alcoholic, but I had no idea she was a drug addict. I can't say I'm surprised," she went on.
This wasn't harmless gossip, and I was not another snobby waitress. I wanted to grab her neck and shake her, but of course, I wouldn't do that. Instead, I gripped the bottle I had been about to put in the wine fridge a little too tightly. "Go away, Tracy," I said flatly.
Her mouth fell open a little and she stared stupidly at me. I had never stood up to her or any of the other waitresses before, no matter how much trash they talked, but she had crossed the line.
"I said, go away." I spoke the last between clenched teeth and found myself gripping the bottle even tighter.
Her jaw suddenly clamped shut and she twirled on her heel. She went hurriedly to tell another waitress my bad reaction, no doubt, but I didn't care. I continued to stock the bar without giving her another glance. As I put the bottle in the wine fridge, I noticed a crack in the bottle going from top to bottom. Did I do that? I thought, before I shook my head and laughed at myself for even thinking it. Regardless of how the crack had happened, I decided the wine might not be safe for consumption and put it aside.
When everything was stocked and cleaned two times over, I rested an elbow on the bar top with my chin on my hand. My good mood was dead and gone. I was tired from lack of sleep and already over being here. I wondered where Liz was, and against my will, I imagined her being chained in a dark cell. I tried to wipe that image from my mind and hoped that she was somewhere safe.
My eyes focused on a young customer making a beeline toward me, and I hadn't realized I had even been looking toward him till he was only a few feet away. He looked like he might be under the legal drinking age and I sighed heavily, not looking forward to this interaction.
"Hi, can I see your ID?" I said before he could spout a drink order at me.
"Well, I'm not here for a drink," he said, giving me a weak smile. If a smile could look dead tired, that's the smile he gave me. Probably the same smile I had that day. "But I wanted to see if I could ask you a few questions about my sister, Elizabeth Black."
This was Liz's brother? I stopped to give him a good once-over. His hair was dirty blond and cut short, and his eyes were innocently wide and brown. Though young and baby-faced, he was very handsome. Besides being uncommonly good looking, I could see no similarities between him and Liz. I also noticed the tiredness in his eyes and stance. He looked exhausted, like he was trying to make normal expressions and gestures, but hardly able to manage it. A young person his age shouldn't act like that, but I guess if your sister were missing, you would.
"Yeah, I know your sister," I said, then quickly added. "She's a friend of mine."
He seemed to perk up at that, not in actual happiness, but in anticipation. "Well, have you seen her?" he asked.
"Not in over a week," I said, frowning. I wanted to tell him more, but what could I tell him? All I had were suspicions and out loud, they sounded crazy.
He slid into a stool and put his face in his hands, elbows resting on the bar. I thought he might be about to cry, but when he wiped his face with his hands and looked up, he revealed his red, tearless face. "Look," he said, looking straight into my eyes. "I know you probably know about Liz's alcohol problem—" then he huffed, "and her drug problem, but I do not believe she would just run away without telling me. My parents, maybe, but if she could, I think she would tell me if she was leaving town."
I nodded, but kept eye contact, though it was hard to look at the raw sadness in his eyes. He must be wondering if she had been kidnapped, as I was wondering the same thing.
"She even called me in the middle of the night," he continued. "But I just thought I'd call her back in the morning. I just feel like, if only I had picked up, maybe she would still be here—I don't even know why I'm telling you this," he said, shrugging and finally looking away.
"She called me too," I said, then wondered if I should have admitted that. "It was while I was working on Monday night."
"Me too!" he exclaimed, then slumped lower in despair. "She called me at like—" he glanced through his phone for a moment. "One thirty-two in the morning."
I scrolled through my call list as well. "She called me at one twenty-nine." We met each other's wide eyes.
"Did she leave a message?" he asked.
I shook my head sadly.
"Me neither!" he said, sounding exasperated. "Why wouldn't she have left a voicemail? If something was wrong, why wouldn't she tell anyone?"
Because she knew she was about to leave, but she didn't know how to say goodbye or explain where she was going? I guessed. If she was calling people, she must've known she was leaving. Had Caymnaburus let her call her friends and family before he took her away?
"I just hate that the police seem to think she must have just gone on a drug spree and skipped town. They think there is a possibility someone might have kidnapped her, but they don't seem very worried about it."
"Hey," I said, and with some effort he met my eyes again. "I don't think she skipped town to go on a drug spree, and I'm going to do everything in my power to find her," I said. I was glad I could say that with complete honesty even if I didn't want to tell him all my thoughts about her disappearance.
One corner of his mouth perked in a slight smile. "Thank you," he said quietly. I smiled weakly back, and I felt a sort of kinship between us then.
A young couple parked themselves at the bar, just a couple seats from him, and I asked him if he would hold on a moment while I served them.
Liz's brother nodded and waited patiently while I got the drink order of the couple, who found it hard to keep their eyes off each other. I served them their drinks as quickly as I could and went back to the young boy with wide, brown eyes. I noticed that though they weren't the same color as Liz's, the shape of their eyes was similar.
"My name is Henry," he said quietly.
"I'm Cara," I said and we awkwardly shook hands over the bar. I stood there for another moment, running through the past couple weeks in my mind and trying to decide if there was anything I could tell him. There wasn't.
"Okay," he said suddenly. "If you can call me if you hear anything, I'd appreciate that." After scribbling a number on a napkin, he smiled weakly and was gone.
The following couple of weeks I practiced magic with Darlene and Tansy in all my spare time.
Darlene explained to me that magic came from the energy of the earth, and with much practice, you could bring the energy into yourself. She had a few names for this energy: the life force, cosmic energy, but she most frequently called it the universal force. I imagined that bringing the universal force into yourself was like pulling on a thread of energy from the ground and bringing into your chest, winding it in an already existing ball of yarn inside yourself. Once you were able to collect the energy from the earth and combine it with your own energy, the next step was to hold it. If you didn't hold it, the energy could unwind itself out of you as quickly as you brought it in. Magic could be done simply by bringing in the universal force and willing things to be so, like lighting candles, shutting doors, and more. If you didn't hold onto the universal force, you could still use magic, but your magic would be more or less unpredictable. Darlene had stressed that practicing unpredictable magic was not something you wanted to do. Maybe instead of lighting a candle or shutting a door, you'd set the whole room on fire or slam the door right off its hinges.
Darlene said that it had taken her many, many years to become one with the deities through rituals and through that to become in tune with the overall life force. With all her practice, she had learned how to wind the force into herself and hold it. Tansy had learned to wind it into herself and hold it, also, but she said she couldn't seem to bring enough energy into herself yet, which was why her abilities were still just a fraction of her mother's.
When I first collected the universal force into myself and held it, which I imagined was like closing a door with my ball of energy safely inside myself, and lit a candle with the point of my finger, Darlene and Tansy had been in shock. Tansy had just about exploded into cheers and praised my natural ability, but her mother seemed more than a little uneasy. I couldn't be sure, but I think she was afraid of me being able to collect energy without doing rituals or praising the deities.
I realized that the universal force manifested itself as the familiar buzzing sensation through my body and that I had been in tune with it the moment the curses had been lifted. I explained that to Darlene, who was obviously relieved to hear this.
"I believe when you were very young, the universal force was cut off from you with a curse. Now that you know the absence of it, you can identify it that much easier," Darlene explained. "Even that being said, I think you are especially in tune."
"That makes sense," I admitted. "But why would someone want to put that curse on me?" The very thought of the demon in the woods sent shivers down my spine, and I heard rats screeching in my head. I was forever going to be scared of rats now.
"I don't truly know, but my best guess is someone, maybe that shadow in particular, was trying to hide you. You were blocked from your own abilities and the life force, and in turn it blocked you from most people's notice. You said that people seem to see you differently now that the curses are lifted. Maybe being completely separated from the universal force almost shields you from people's notice. Like maybe they can physically see you, but not physically feel you. It probably has made people you've come in contact with feel disconnected from you and in a way, see you differently. I wish I had met you before the curses had been lifted, because then I'd have a better idea of what it was like."
"I see and feel her completely differently," Tansy told her mother, then looked toward me. "Before, you felt strangely absent. When I looked at you, it was like I could see you staring back at me, but I couldn't feel your gaze. You were like an empty vessel. Not really, but that's what you felt like. Now, I can feel your energy stronger than I can feel most other people. It's polar opposite."
I used to accidentally scare people all the time, I suddenly remembered. Walking in line at a restaurant, I would startle the person in front of me when they turned and saw me there. No one seemed to notice me until I was in their face. It made me angry that someone would put a curse on me that had changed my life so much. I tried to tell myself that it was over now and I should just be relieved. I could be normal now, except maybe even better! I was learning how to do magic. Who would have thought my life would go from so boring to so exciting?
"Hmm, very interesting," Darlene said. They were both staring hard at me and I caved into myself a little bit at their ogling. "The beauty people are suddenly seeing in you must be the beautiful, pure light that shines out. The very existence of life," Darlene explained.
"Though you are really pretty anyway," Tansy added with a smile.
I smiled back. Is it strange that I believed all of it, except the very last part?
