I Found My Sister’s Diary After She Disappeared
After half a year of this, after no leads and no promises of ever receiving any, I returned to the apartment. I didn’t have any ideas or plans or even purpose; I just wanted to be in her room, among the things she loved so much. I picked up broken light bulbs and held torn sheets; I ran my fingers over rough, broken pieces of wood, and I cleaned her favorite unbroken mirror. I studied it, trying to understand why she loved it so much. I felt like if I could just understand, she would come back. She would come back and say, “You understand,” and I—we would all—appreciate her broken shit and we would help her collect more of it and she would just be back. But the mirror wasn’t that special, not as beautiful as I first thought. Something was obviously wrong with it, because my reflection looked off. Maybe that was why she loved it, because it distorted one’s image. But this was more than distortion; my eyes looked bigger and darker (and they were dark brown to begin with), and the movements were…off. If I tilted my head, the head in the mirror tilted, but like half a second later. Delayed, like someone was mimicking me. I lifted my left arm. The arm in the mirror lifted, but not immediately. I made a silly face. The face in the mirror copied, but not as well. I smiled. The face in the mirror did not. “What the…” I breathed. I was so upset, I thought, that my mind was being ridiculous. Playing sick games. The old glass in the mirror was definitely warped or something. I sighed, considered breaking the mirror, then thought better of it. Emma would be devastated if she came back (I no longer said “when” she came back) and saw that it was destroyed. She loved it as it was; it was broken in its own way and I didn’t want to break it more.
I looked around her room, and suddenly I remembered the secret drawer in her broken wooden dresser. I had not thought of this months ago. If I had, I would have told the police to search it. I felt horrible that I had forgotten something so potentially important, but I also had a feeling that it didn’t matter; Emma wasn’t one to keep secrets. At least, not until she began acting like the opposite of Emma. The dresser was broken, so everyone who had been in her room when she was gone assumed it was part of her unusual collection. Behind one of the drawers, though, was a second drawer. I pulled out the first drawer, wriggling it from side to side to get it loose, and there was a thin piece of splintered wood behind it. As I stared at it, I heard a faint tapping sound. I turned around, and saw my reflection in the mirror. It was only the lower half of my reflection, since it wasn’t a full-length mirror. I stared. I lifted my foot off the ground, watched in the mirror as the foot lifted—but a second later. I shivered. I shook my head and told myself to fucking calm down and I removed the splintered piece of wood from inside the dresser. Emma’s journal was in there. I had always known she had one, because she would often write in it—not privately, but outside on our little porch, or when we went to a park, or while she was in the living room with the TV on in the background. I never asked what she wrote about, and never tried to find her diary while she was out of the apartment. I felt like that was a betrayal. If she wanted to talk to me about something important, she usually always did. But after the yard sale that day she got the mirror, I had no idea if she ever wrote in her diary. She may have. I don’t know what she did in her room. I heard her giggle, and talk, but I could never make out her words. If she had been using drugs, I would hopefully find out now. I doubted that, though, because, unless she was somehow making them in her room (ludicrous), how else would she get them? She never left. Until six months ago.