By Christine Robertson

It’s December, and I’m dancing in the bathroom, barefoot, dressed in my World’s Best Sister nightshirt, about an hour late for work. Lynyrd Skynyrd blasts from my phone. That soaring crescendo in Free Bird where the vocals peak, and the guitar goes wild. I should get ready, head to the office disguised as a responsible adult, but the music crawls up my skin, alive. It just feels so much more damn important. 

The phone rings. I send it to voicemail, bob my head like a chicken, belting into my toothbrush. 

Then it rings again. 

A voice I don’t know is on the other end. It says “Miss,” and my name, and tells me it’s sorry, and has terrible news. 

They found a body.

It’s my brother.

I book a flight from LAX to Miami. Stumble through the airport, drowning in loudspeakers and fluorescent lights. I pass a woman I know holding a cup of coffee—fat baby beside her in a stroller. And hours later, in a cheap rental car, I drive to the place where they lifted him.

*

I’m on a forgotten knoll off the shoulder of a road. A chain-link fence stands like a sentry guarding the parking lot behind. The road’s too wide for the few cars that speed by. It’s quiet. Industrial on one side, mobile home park on the other. Too quiet.

The Florida sun presses down. The air, thick and damp. The cop says they dragged him, dumped him, drove off in his car. They don’t think they’ll find it; it’s probably already in pieces. 

No one can tell me if he was still alive when they left him. There’s no way to know. All I do know is they found him in the morning, and he’d been dead awhile. 

It would have been dark out. 

Black. 

Stitched in silence. 

Was he scared? Did he suffer? Did he die alone? 

I search for answers I don’t want like his life depends on it. Stare at the mound, dried grass crumpled like discarded paper, desperate for proof. Something I can make sense of. Even a sign he was really here. 

There’s nothing but a gum wrapper. Half-buried rusted tuna can. Decades-old cigarette butts. 

Then behind a blade of grass, I spot a lighter. It’s red, plastic, chipped at the edge, but it looks new. I rub my thumb across the smooth surface holding it too tight. Look up at the sky, cruel blue with swollen clouds, secretive and still. A witness refusing to speak. The air won’t move, and I can’t breathe, and I want to leave, but I don’t want to leave him.

I force myself to drive to a hotel and lie alone in the dark while the world lights up. Outside, there’s a holiday boat parade. Red and green lights flicker through the window. Music blares. People laugh, slurring, loud and loose on the obsidian sea. I press a pillow over my ears, shielding myself away from the festive roar, and try to sleep.

The next several days I return to the knoll, but he’s not there. He’s nowhere and everywhere. I whisper-cry his name like a spell. Wrap myself in his laugh—that crack in his voice when he tried to sing. I hide in his crinkly eyes and mock accents, and a grin that warmed the entire world. 

Then I pull myself away, and head toward a rent-a-car place next to the airport. 

When I pull into the driveway, a bird the size of my palm bounces in the path. It chirps. Once. Twice. Three times. 

Its eye locks on mine.

Time stops. 

And just like that, it flies away.

I follow slowly at first, but as it moves ahead, my feet move faster and I’m on a street I’ve never seen before with no idea how far I’ve run. My chest burns and I gasp for air. 

It darts around a corner and disappears. 

I stop. 

Completely alone. 

There’s only a dead-end fence. A silence of sky and air so loud it throbs in my ears. I’ve no idea how to move or where to go from here. Every second he moves farther away, but I know if I keep running, I’ll find him. There’s no way he could have gone that far. 

*   *   *

Christine Robertson lives in Los Angeles. Her recent work has been published in Club Plum and Eunoia Review, and she is a two-time contributor to The Sun’s Readers Write. She holds a BA in English and French from UCLA and currently studies creative writing as part of the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. She can be found online at christinerobertson.com.