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Conor
It was safe to say that I wasn’t sleeping.
Not that I particularly tried. Every moment that Aurnia was missing was a moment when I should be out looking for her. That meant day. That meant night.
The bags under my eyes deepened as the days and nights went on. I hadn’t seen them for myself; I didn’t have time for mirrors. Not that I would have been brave enough to face one even if I had. It was Mason who told me this. Occasionally it was the women he brought back to the loft above Dublin Ink. Though when we hadn’t found Aurnia after a week, they stopped appearing in the kitchen each morning. Rian, when he finally started talking to me again, told me this as well.
I was sure my hair was greasy. Strands no longer fell over my stinging eyes after several days. I didn’t need to corral it back before putting on my motorcycle helmet. I couldn’t remember if I bothered changing shirts. Though I was sure whatever I was wearing stunk like shit.I felt like I had a fever all those days I spent looking for Aurnia with no luck at all. My skin was clammy. I was covered in sweat like I’d just awoken from a terrible dream in a gasping start. Except it was constant. And my dream was a nightmare. My nightmare, a reality.
My fingers shook and it only got worse as I continued not to sleep, continued not to eat. It was whiskey that sustained me. Whiskey that gave me my only reprieves in those early hours of the morning where I passed out on the couch only to toss and turn. Whiskey kept me sane.
Or at least, kept me from going insane.
After leaving the bank, Rian silent and brooding, Mason trying to be positive, hopeful, the three of us had stopped on the busy sidewalk.
“Alright,” Rian said pointedly to Mason. “I’ll check her old school.”
I didn’t know her old school. I didn’t even know if she was in school or not.
Mason said, “Right, and I’ll go by that park she likes on the east side.”
I’d never heard Aurnia talk about a park. The only park I knew she’d been to was the one by her father’s house with the dead grass and rusted merry-go-round where I’d forced her onto my motorcycle.
The two of them rattled off a dozen places each they could think of where Aurnia might be before turning to me. I scratched the back of my neck awkwardly.
“I’ve got a place to look,” was all I said.
I drove to her father’s house and knocked on the door.
“Aurnia’s not here,” her father said.
“You told me that last time.”
He showed me to her bedroom. He stood in the doorway as I stepped inside. I stared at the empty bed where she slept. It sagged horribly in the middle. It was lumpy and I was sure if I kicked at it with my toe a cloud of dust, or worse, would emerge. She’d grown so used to an uncomfortable bed that she couldn’t get comfortable on mine. The reveal of why she slept on the floor in my apartment stabbed at my heart.
I glanced around the room for what I told myself were clues about where she would have gone. I wanted to see a piece of her. I needed something to grab ahold of. I realised I knew so little about Aurnia despite the grenade she’d thrown on my life. I hadn’t allowed myself to know more.
And now she was…
“Gone,” Aurnia’s father said, slurring his words as he gripped the doorframe to keep from falling. “See?”
I left the filthy, horrible house with a heaviness in my chest. I sat on my motorcycle across the street for over an hour as my phone kept buzzing.
Checked the art museum Rian texted.
Checked that pizza place she loves Mason texted.
Checked the skate park where she said she had her first kiss Rian said.
Checked the bakery she swore had the best soda bread Mason said.
More and more kept coming. Checked here. Checked there. Checked places I’d never heard of. Checked places that were completely foreign to me. Each text was painting a different part of Aurnia’s secret life. Each text was more painful than the last because I saw how little I knew. Because I felt how much I wanted to know.
When I returned to Dublin Ink, I found Mason and Rian huddled together over some sketches Aurnia had left in the parlour. I stood there at the door, numb and feeling hopeless, as I watched them. What would I see in the drawings? Nothing. I would see nothing. Mason and Rian could remember this conversation or that, could point to something she said the other day, the other week. I could do none of that.
I knew Aurnia liked Lucky Charms.
I knew Aurnia had a little freckle at the dimple of her lower back.
