The Missing Bride: a cellphone novel by Alysse Aallyn

Chapter 24 – Survivors

Silvery hair just coming in –
Glittering studs along the sides of her ears
Silver, not diamonds.
But those were Mirabel’s
Bony shoulders poking through her
Gauze shirt. The guru called
Shivasena and they
Plunged into Corpse Pose –

No one’s talking me into that –
I inched around – one student
Opened her eyes – gave me
The harsh look my inquisitiveness
Warranted. But I persisted – the skinny
Silent boy lost in meditation
Was my sister all right! No jewels, no makeup,
Cheapest beach clothing, bony bare feet
Scar on her lip fully visible.

The tears that sprang to my eyes told me
How much I’d feared that I would
Never find her. I closed them
Backed up against the stone-washed white wall
Tried to mentally connect with her.
What could she be thinking
Right at this minute?

She was the one looking fourteen
Years old, deep in dream land,
I find meditation
Annoying. I like my own brain
And don’t want to escape it.
I launched experimental thought volleys
Determined to make her feel
My presence. That project quenched my tears;

Opened my eyes and forced my lasers on her.
Her mouth quivered first –
One small tear slid from her eye.
I had reached her! I knew it. She stirred.
Eyes opened. My sister Mirabel took a
Long, long look at me.

I mouthed her name. She ducked her head,
Bowed deeply forward, then rose
To her feet. A ripple ran through
The group and the leader opened one eye
In displeasure.

She grabbed my arm
And began dragging me downstairs.
“My name here is Jace.”
Jace? Whose identity had she
Stolen? “Don’t run away from me”

I lectured her
Refused to unleash as if
She could melt back into the
Mirage at will. “I never will again.”
She squeezed me; “I knew
You’d escape him. I wasn’t strong enough.”
At the final lighthouse step
We burst into the sunlight.

“I thought you were dead,”
I hectored her. “You abandoned me!”
She pulled me into a big swing
Under an awning
Siblings swinging companionably –
If anyone cared to notice
One of them crying.

The crying one was me.
She said, “Jace was the name I bought
From some West side spa.”
So that explained her visits!
Scam not disclosed to me.

“I guess without my hair I thought
I was invisible.” The joke was on Mirabel –
Bald, at her thinnest – she’d
Magnified her true self so
No one who’d loved her –
Could ever mistake it.

“Why’d you give me
TO HIM,” I raged at her.
“How effing dare you!”
I clutched both her wrists
Where the purple blood beat.
“He wouldn’t kill YOU.”

She said with equal ferocity,
“He wouldn’t let me go unless-“
She hesitated. I was being
Managed. I can always smell it.
“Bur he killed Franny and Jane,”
I accused. Her eyeballs slid back –

This part of the story she thought
I’d never find out.
“But we can trap him,” she said.
“The two of us.”