Missing Clarissa by Ripley Jones

Author:Ripley Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

BRAD

She’ll always be the one that got away. That’s how it works when someone like Clarissa dies young. It’s funny, but the thing I remember most about her now was how angry she was. I don’t think I knew it for what it was when we were together. But now that I’ve been angry for a long time myself I can see it. The fire in her, it wasn’t only ambition. It wasn’t love. Mostly, it was rage.

She wanted so much more than any of us could give her. She wanted more than this town. But we were still from here. None of us had the words to ask for something bigger. We knew there was a world out there, but we had no idea how to find it. And that pissed her off more than anything else.

I mean, this was before the internet. I guess some of the geeks were out there, hanging out in AOL chat rooms or whatever. LiveJournal? I don’t know. But it was nothing then like it is now. The news from outside came from magazines, newspapers, MTV. Stuff like that. Yeah, music videos—can you believe that now? You’re too young. You have no idea. Clar breathed all that stuff in like it was oxygen, but it still wasn’t enough. She knew what we had here was too small for her, but she didn’t know how to get anywhere else.

She talked a lot about moving to the city. Seattle first, and then New York. I guess—I guess I know who told her about New York. She never went there. I don’t think Joe and Marian have been outside of Washington State in decades. Maybe for a cruise. But probably not. They’re still waiting for her to come home. They took her to Mexico once, the summer before tenth grade. I remember because she came back with her hair in cornrows. She was so proud of herself. So tan. She must’ve kept those damn braids in for a month. These pink plastic beads at the end clacking together. She’d swing her head around so you’d be sure to hear them. That’s the closest she got to somewhere that isn’t here. That, and dreaming. I know she had big dreams.

Me and Jenny looked for Clar for a long time after she disappeared. I never told anyone, and I don’t think she did either, but we did. We used to drive around late at night together. Out to the coast. Out to Seattle. All the way down to Portland once. We got a crappy hotel room and stayed for a couple of days and walked around downtown talking to every street kid we saw. They were pretty nice about it. I guess because we didn’t look like parents. We looked lost.

We tried to get her case file—Jenny did, anyway. The cops wouldn’t have let me through the door. I was the only suspect. It didn’t do any good. The cops wouldn’t talk to Jenny either. I knew we weren’t going to find her.

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