A girl is missing in GP. Is she technically a girl? I guess not- she's 33 years old. In my mind, she is. Maybe I see her as young because I vaguely remember her from Junior High, and she's still that person in my mind. Her name rings no bells, her old friends, from what I can tell about the names on the Facebook group dedicated to the mystery of her disappearance, are also unfamiliar to me. At most, I recognize some of their last names; names I know meant "from the part of town you look first when your bike has been stolen".
The local media has given it next to no attention. Over a month ago, an article was in the newspaper, featuring a terrible photo and the write up felt snide and dismissive. Seems the girl had gone off the rails in the last couple of years and was living in the nasty underbelly of our small city, allegedly addicted to drugs, a person of the streets. She was last seen outside of the York, a scary slum hotel, crackhead central, and a truly evil corner of downtown in recent years, since that fantastic fucking boom blew through town. She was getting into a car. And not a word since.
The photograph that the paper ran was a terrible one, and unfortunately the most recent. It looks like a mug shot. I had no idea that this was the same person in my memory. It was only after I checked out the Facebook group that she came back to life, and I thought "HER?". Like I said, I didn't know her but still and all, I feel really attached to this story. I feel like my own friend is missing, or else I just am trying to relate to it. It must be a particular sort of hell not knowing if someone you love is dead, alive, hiding, or has been “sold” to someone in a different circuit to pay someone’s debt, possibly not even her own.
There are no thousand person brigades combing the streets looking for her, the way there would be for a missing child or a star volleyball player. I bring her up all the time, and most people have not even heard about it. When they hear where she went missing from, their concern stops cold and some say something harsh, along the lines of it not mattering, she brought it on herself, that if she was that far down in life already, she’d probably die soon one way or another. I don’t agree with that, obviously. She’s still a human being, and she has disappeared. She has a family who sounds bewildered and I can’t even imagine how worried they are. I realize that she was living in a different dimension with very different rules and consequences, but details aside, it could happen to anyone who's in the wrong place at the wrong time, anyone who makes the wrong enemy.
I feel sick, because at this stage, the silence speaks volumes and the simplest explanation is a horrifying one. It's been implied that some people do know more than they're telling, but for obvious fear they're not going to take that chance. I doubt there's a Witness Protection process for these people, but there's definitely a trap in a dark hallway for rats. Can't say I blame them.
I check the Facebook page all the time. I do it before reading my own messages. I wish I knew why. Nothing but a lot of pain and posturing goes on there, but I look at her pictures and I just wish something would come to me, and nothing ever does. There’s something about her, though. I like her smile. She looks like she's smart, too smart to have become the hot mess that is in her mug shot.
It took me a long time to actually join the Facebook group- I don't know these people and I'm not doing anything to help (other than obsessing about it), nor could I. I have to think all the right steps are being taken, but I also trust nothing that comes out of official sources when it comes to things like this. I've heard of some shameful cover-ups around here, where the police and witnesses, and eventually everyone in the downtown sub-culture know exactly what's happened to someone, and yet yellow ribbons still hang and devastated families still search. They are things that are too awful to admit to, I guess. To acknowledge that one thing would be to acknowledge it all, and that can’t happen, not in our town.
*** Immediately after writing this, I looked at the FB group and the latest comment tonight says there is now a second woman missing from that world. Here we go....
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