The only place I ever knew was the house I grew up in, looking out the same window every morning to follow the same routine of school, play, and sleep. During the summer, my routine cut down to simply play and sleep, but I wasn’t alone. I met Riley in elementary school before realizing we lived in the same neighborhood; our adventurous, imaginative personalities instantly clicked. I found myself outside with her everyday, coming up with the craziest ideas to express our creativity as children with all the time in the world.

At the curious age of nine, my best friend and I loved laying on the pavement and tracing each other in different shapes with our favorite colors of chalk. Our street was quiet to the point where my mother felt comfortable enough to fold the laundry or wash the dishes inside as we played, but she made sure to check on us frequently. Regardless of the transition from winter to spring, the clouds found a way to cover the sun almost every day, casting an unsettling gloom amongst the rows of small brick houses. When the occasional car would pass, Riley and I picked up our chalk and moved completely out of the stagnant road, a rule my mom instilled in us since we started playing outside. As a silver car passed, my mom poked her head out from the second story window:

“You girlies okay? Need somethin’ to drink?”

“We’re good, momma!” I replied.

We picked up our chalk and walked back; the vibrant pavement reversed the effect of the dreary sky. I pushed my hair back with my pink headband and started tracing Riley again, but was interrupted by an engine in the distance increasing in volume. The vehicle came to a halt as one of the doors swung open, but I assumed they were unloading groceries, as most of my neighbors did on Sundays. Riley giggled as I traced between her fingers and I couldn’t help but join her. To my surprise, a man appeared in my peripherals with the kindest eyes, drawn in by his curiosity over the pavement and seemingly our embodiment of youth. 

“What are you girls up to this cloudy morning?” he calmly asked.

“Making her a star!” I replied with excitement, but in deep concentration.

Riley’s smile was infectious; the last face I saw before I was ripped away from her. Digging my heels into the pavement, thrashing my body, and exerting all the energy and noise my small body held couldn’t keep me from being thrown into a car in a split second. Our piercing screams alerted my mom and she burst through the front door barefoot, charging at the car with a deadly panic behind her eyes. She broke into a sob as she grabbed onto the door handle in attempt to rip it off the hinges, but he had enough time to get in and lock it. The car took off. 

She burned a description of the car and plates into her memory as she dialed 911. “My baby!!!” she shrieked, collapsing to the ground with Riley in her arms. 

Her voice echoed through the uninhabited streets and the horror swallowed her as she watched my brand new yellow chalk roll into the sewer.

✶✶✶

My mom lays on the floor with her face towards me, analyzing my every breath and muttering the words of a prayer under her own. A month has gone by since I’ve slept in my own bed, and after the past thirty days, I thought exhaustion would eat away at me and I would fall into the deepest sleep I’d ever known. 

Why did he take me and not Riley? Was I gonna live with him forever if no one found me?

The calmness he embodied when taking me from the people I love, but lacked when confronted by an officer for speeding, undeniably resulted in my rescue. The inconsistencies of his story as to why he was rushing home, and my pink headband lying in the backseat, brought me home that night. I never found out what happened to him after the arrest, but I think life is easier not knowing, not depending, not investigating. 

✶✶✶

I never left my hometown because my mom couldn’t afford anything else. I grew up in the same house after I returned home, but I never expressed my artistic abilities through chalk again and stopped wearing headbands. Riley’s parents insisted that the neighborhood was “unsafe,” which seemed to have proven itself, and they moved away shortly after I was found. Doctors diagnosed me with dissociative amnesia even though I was only nine, since they were concerned of my inability to recall any detail from my life between dropping my chalk and my mom embracing me for the first time after the incident. I gradually became open to the idea of wanting to remember what happened to me, but the time and money spent on trying seemed worthless. My story was told to me through professionals in the most digestible terms for my adolescent mind, but I never understood their reasoning for doing so as I matured. 

In the following years, I developed a debilitating hyper-awareness to people, interactions, and sounds, and mom developed a hyper-awareness towards me. I went to therapy from that day on and eased off as I went to college, which began the phase of living away from my mom for the first time. She did everything in her power to make my life feel as if it wasn’t defined by one man, but the involuntary comprehension of my past made unfillable holes in my head and heart.

Leaving my mom behind hurt us both, but she only wanted me to find true happiness wherever that hid. I promised to call her everyday. I took my experiences with me to Michigan State University, and in attempt to stop them from defining me, I desperately searched for inspiration. Since I thrived in my high school writing courses, I figured declaring an English major would help me discover a passion or maybe even lead me elsewhere. The first week of classes began: 

“A Theory of Adaptation by Linda Hutcheon takes a look at the development …,” my professor droned on. 

I closed my laptop after the lecture with a rush of clarity and made the impulsive decision to not pursue the path I originally saw for myself. A few students around me weren’t even awake, which restored my sense of belonging in a way. I headed back to my room, panicking over the entire concept of needing to know what I want to be at this age, but also with a desire to have my life laid out already. I noticed a mother and her young daughter in the distance walking their dog, and part of me wished to be that carefree age … obviously not all of me. Without recognizing the significance of my awareness at the time, I spent the rest of the day fighting myself internally to the point of a raging headache. 

Would that even be useful? I would have more perspective than a lot of people, though. There’s so much more to the career; I don’t think I could face it.

I took up until the last day of the course enrollment period to straighten out my options, while also understanding the risk of waiting until the last minute to make up my mind. I switched into an Introduction to Criminal Law course after deep contemplation and prayed for a positive outcome. On my first day of the lecture, I felt slightly behind from my time spent in the other course, but my professor made himself known to me in a sea of students, which eased the transition. He summarized the journey of his career until this point, and as if my life story was being projected through my eyes, he told me a traumatic event sent him down this path too. In my chest I felt some form of reassurance brewing that I hadn’t felt in a long time.

The next year, I declared a criminology major.

I took my degree, my newer sense of belonging, and gained intelligence back home to be near my mom, but was able to afford my own place near the busier part of the city. Reconnecting to her while starting the pursuit of a possibly huge career in criminal investigation seemed too illusory for my own life, but the firm belief that I grew into of everything happening for a reason helped guide me through the somewhat unfamiliar territory. I finally felt secure enough.

✶✶✶

Waking up without daylight peaking through the blinds is the only way for me to not feel guilty about someone’s daughter spending another minute displaced from her home. The feeling has eaten away at me for weeks now, but I sense closure coming any day for the girl I used to be and for that suffering family out there. My last two weeks were spent working with other law enforcement agencies and gathering any possible information that could help lead to a breakthrough. Just as I grab my keys to go to the station, my phone rings:

“Nora, head straight to the scene,” my boss says on the other end. I struggle to pick up on the tone of his voice.

The vehicle matching the description from a witness call was seen pulling into a driveway around thirty minutes from the station last night, so the house was put on high alert until granted a search warrant. At the earliest hours this morning, they found the girl. To no one’s surprise, he ran. Hopefully he speeds.

Once I arrive at the scene with a few members of my law enforcement team, the hairs on my neck stand up: a subconscious reaction to the familiarity of the case.

I step inside and proceed to gather evidence from the house, noticing a hanging doorknob at the front of the house and cracking, molded floorboards as we split up. The condition of the house leads me to believe it was inhabited for decades: a hotspot for crime. As I continue searching I find a few hidden compartments where items, fingerprints, and DNA could easily hide, but leave each room empty-handed. In the guest room, I forage through the closet to recover a cardboard box of questionable paraphernalia. My interest peaks and I feel compelled to search through the box, digging my hand all the way to the bottom. Calling over a couple other investigators, I extract some interesting tools, an empty picture frame, and a stuffed animal with a long strand of brown hair attached. Our girl was brunette.

“Let’s bag this. Send it off to the lab to be sure,” the other investigator said.

I continue searching through the box in hopes to bring justice to any other girls like me, but no luck. We get to the last few rooms, struggling to find any other strands of hair or even fingerprints. He must’ve known what he was doing. I notice an unchecked door at the back of the scene and I gravitate towards it curiously. This door has no knob and molded stairs leading to the backyard, a muddy one.

Footprints.

“Nora, we got one!” yelled someone from inside.

I rush back, sighing of relief at finally gathering some substantial evidence, and eager to bring everyone outside to document the muddy footprints. A trail of them leads to the side of the pavement that connects to the backyard. Again, we split up to identify any possible hiding spots, when I notice a foreign object barely sticking out of the sewer near the house.

A shoe.

With my gloved hand, I extract the shoe, remembering what I once let roll down there. I run over to the muddy footprints to hopefully match them with the shoe. 

We got him. 

The past fifteen years of my life come up into my throat, letting barely any air pass through. I look up at the vibrant sky, reversing the effects of the dreary pavement.