Sunlight was filtering through the trees with a greenish haze. However, lost in memory, I was seeing orange. The air around me was in flames, exploding with color and nipping winds as fall grew near. You could taste that autumn was in the air. My eyes were half closed as I imagined my favorite time of the year, so different from the sweaty and sticky heat of summer now. I preferred drinking water than breathing it, but I had to admit that I liked having an excuse to be outside of my cluttered room. School was out and I could finally sleep in the mornings. I was planning on afternoon classes now that I was done with highschool. Anything to make sure I was not up before the sun was.

“Hmm...college. The place where ramen noodles and hopeful teens go to die.” I think that the prospect of this made my parents happy for two reasons, the first one being that I would get all my junk out of their house and go clutter a dorm room instead…

“Ugh! Get away!”

I swatted irritably at the buzzing insects dive-bombing my puffy hair.

...And the main reason being that I was their second child, but would be the first to get a college education. I sighed, leaning back against the tree I was lounging beneath. Lincoln Park was busy this time of year, mainly with kids fresh out of school, like me. I watched as two girls laughed, one whispering into the other’s ear as a boy walked by. Their pale shaking shoulders became toned brown and their long, fluttering blonde hair transformed into frizzy halos surrounding me and my sister’s heads. In this memory we sat on a bench, turned sideways to face each other with our legs pulled up and crossed in front of us, knees pressing together.  

“C’mon tell me! I won’t tell Mom and Dad I promise!” I begged.

My sister snorted. “I’ve learned my lesson on what that phrase means to you! If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell Mom or Dad,” she said triumphantly. I scowled but agreed. Her eyes lit up and she bit her lower lip nervously, or perhaps she was trying to bite back a smile, as she described what had happened. They were fooling around. Running and laughing, having the best time. She trusted him with all her heart. My younger self rested her chin on her hands and listened eagerly, begging for every detail, every ounce of emotion, drinking in the story like it was water. I blinked and watched with an ache as the memory washed away and I was seeing the two pale blonde friends gossiping once again.

I felt the tug of a smile on my lips, only to be cast away as a spider dropped in front of my face, dangling from its silk invisible to me like a magic trick. Repulsed, I jumped up from off the tree, shuddering. “I hate bugs,” I muttered. If there was one thing that you could trust about bugs, it’s that they’ll always find some way to get to me and freak me out. This thought made me recall other memories that weren’t quite as happy as the benches. Memories where the trust had leaked out of her eyes and the determination out of her mind. Why, I’m not sure, but I don’t care. She’s different and that’s that. I sighed again, content to be ignorant.

I allowed my eyes to flutter down once again and watched what I could see of the clouds through the maze of branches and leaves. Through half lidded eyes and my face towards the sky, I observed them race one another across their blue track. Suddenly, movement caught my eye, yanking me from my tranquil state.

She was running. However, it wasn’t with the casual meandering that most joggers have, or the determination that others will. It was clear that she was not used to running, yet there she was. It was busy in this park, everyone laughing and yelling and kids playing with one another. Yet, through all this noise, I heard her cry. My heart stopped.

“Clary! Clary where are you? Has anyone seen my daughter??”

“Speak of the devil,” I choked out. I was falling into a daze, my frantic sister’s panic not reaching me as I made my way towards her.

“Okay, okay, Alandra, it’s okay. It’s fine. We’ll find her. Where was she last?” I was the harebrained one. I was the one who was supposed to screw up and lose things. Not my calm, cool and collected sister.  

“She...we wer...were...this morn...this morning...well we wanted...I was…she –”  

“Alandra!” My yell made her eyes snap wide and she froze like a deer in headlights. There was no trace of the sister in my memories and I felt a twinge of anger in my chest. How can you change that fast? How could you become a different person? I clenched my jaw. Not now, Liddy. Focus.

“What is happening? Right now? Not this morning, where was Clary last with you?” Breathing heavily, it seemed like my deliberate speaking brought her out of her crisis state.

“We…um...after lunch decided to come to the park. I last saw her at the playground.”

“Uh...um. Okay...when?”

“Maybe...maybe ten minutes ago?”

“What? You watch her, like, 24/7. What happened?”

“Oh...I uh...got distracted…”

This blundering, unprofessional lie was coaxing the squirming little beast in my chest. How could she lose her daughter? Shock and anger fought for attention while I pondered over the thought that she, full time mom, could expect me to accept that vague of a response when Clary was missing. Not to mention that she could ever get distracted from the person that had become her entire world. Frustrated, I pushed it to the back of my mind. It wasn’t important. We could figure that out once we found my niece.

She was only three! She couldn’t possibly have gotten far...but I was only a teenager and wasn’t very educated on the lives of toddlers and how fast they could travel when determined to catch that butterfly. A classic young girl obsession that, from what I had been told months ago, was quite the struggle for my sister to manage. We tried to give Alandra space after the last holidays...she left quite dramatically with the final statement of “it’s my child and my life!” Not one of us could argue with that, so we talked strictly over phone for the last couple of months, though it killed my parents to not see their granddaughter.

I put my hands on my sister’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. They were starting to water and if she started crying, I would start crying, and that wouldn’t help us.

“Okay, Alandra listen to me. How far could she possibly get in ten minutes?”

Alandra shrugged. “The playground is right behind me. If she was determined...she could have gotten to the lake.”

“Oh God, no!”

For once I was glad that the park was crowded, because now there were plenty of people to ask if they had seen a three year old black little girl walking by. She was wearing pink today. You haven’t seen her? Could you tell me if you do? Thank you so much.

These questions were ready to pop from my mouth to just about anyone. I ignored Alandra, who was staring at the ground, and decided to take action.

“Excuse me, have you seen - ”

“No!”

Alandra’s head snapped up, eyes growing wide with fear and shock as I tried to speak. She pulled me away from the confused teenager I had turned to. His brow furrowed, a fringe of blue hair falling over his eyes, but he shrugged and put his nose back in his sketch book. I threw my hands in the air and raised my eyebrows with an exasperated, “What, Alandra?”

“Just...no. We can find her on our own.” She threw a few furtive glances that the people closest to us who began to stare.

Jaw agape, I looked at my sister whom in the past was willing to ask just about anyone for help, throwing her trust upon them as if she had known them her whole life, not three minutes. Yet now, looking at her, I knew that there was something adversely wrong. Yes, I knew she was different, but who was this person? Her head was pulled into her shoulders as if she wished the ground would swallow her. Her usually innocent eyes were shaded with worry and distrust as she watched the people around her.

“Look Alandra, whatever is going on in that head of yours, you’ve got no right. Your daughter is missing. We need to find her. Now suck it up and come on!”

She froze, her eyes’ defenses finally breaking and the tears that swam in her black irises began rolling down her cheeks.

“You don’t understand,” she whispered. Then, quickly wiping off her tears, she plastered her brief moment of weakness back up. She began asking people around us the same questions that were running through my head as I struggled with my roller-coaster emotions. I watched her through narrow eyes, noticing how she clenched her fists and took a deep breath before speaking to anyone. I felt a pit in my stomach of raw and hard emotion, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

As we turned to walk in the direction of the lake, Alandra looked me in the eyes and I grew too captivated by them to look away.

“Do you know what it’s like to lose everything you thought yourself to be? When you lose everything about who you are for one person?”

I felt a sharp knife slice through my chest and shock and worry began to bleed out, where before there was only confusion and anger. She was hurting. But a seed was still there, a fiery rage that kept whispering “there’s nothing wrong with her...there’s nothing there...she looks fine”. I did my best to try to ignore it, but it still jabbed at my thoughts.

“Um...no?” I responded.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice hardening. “That’s what I thought.”  

Taken aback, I let Alandra walk a little farther ahead of me as we kept to our track. Finally, as we got closer to the lake, we heard a call behind us. A woman, one of the first people Alandra had asked about Clary, was making her way towards us, two of her own kids in tow. But in her arms she was carrying Clary, and Alandra burst into tears. Clary was chatting excitedly to the woman, but once she saw her mother, her interested in the new lady died down and she reached for her.

“Mama! Mama I - I catch pretty - ”

“Butterfly?”

Some of the tension in my chest broke upon seeing Clary nod, bouncing her entire little body in the process, and seeing she was alright. My shoulders relaxed and I went forward to vehemently thank the woman because Alandra was too busy smothering Clary to do so.

She smiled, waving off the thanks. “It’s nothing, honey! I know that if I were in the same boat with my little ones I’d want the same done for me!” I laughed and nodded in understanding, though I didn’t understand personally. However, she did just find Clary, so for that I was grateful.

When the woman had walked away, I turned my attention back towards my sister and her daughter.

“Mama! Mama I see daddy!”

Suddenly, everything inside me froze. My heart, my anger, my throat. It all went still in the sense of time stopping in panic. I saw him. And so did Alandra.

“Are you two still - ”

“No.”

Her voice wasn’t firm. Her voice wasn’t unsure. Alandra told me her marriage was over with no emotion what - so - ever.

“Were you two...talking when you lost Clary?” She nodded stiffly. Something that should be so heart-breaking wasn’t bringing any visible emotion to Alandra, but with her eyes down, I knew that deep down her worst fears were beginning to take form. My ignorance was selfish, because what we thought would just be a minor parenting dispute on my sister’s end all those months ago was now a broken marriage and a broken woman. As she said, she was lost, but she won’t be as easily found as a toddler chasing a butterfly.