I. "What do you mean she''s missing?" I watched frantic ants descend upon a nearby apple core and a face-down slice of pizza. A renegade splinter faction marched across the parking lot with tiny bits of food on their backs. The raccoons must have been in the garbage behind my office again, and I made a mental note to report it when I got back inside, but of course I forgot. "She''s missing," Molly said, her exasperation creeping in through the receiver. "I don''t know how else to explain it to you." "She''s not missing." Above all else, I knew two truths about Julie.

The first was that she was the most stubborn, most determined person I''d ever met. And the second was she loved attention. Julie would never be missing. She might go dark, intentionally disappear herself for a few days here or there just to make sure someone noticed. A pop quiz: "Do you love me?" That she was capable of. That I believed. But missing, as in milk cartons and posters and hounds in fields, no way. I told Molly as much.

"What year do you think this is? Milk cartons?" "That''s my point. People don''t go missing anymore." "What? What world are you living in?" I''d been asking myself that question for a long time. I didn''t have an answer for her. "She left her house last Friday morning to go hiking and she never came back. Tristan filed a Missing Persons report. They have a team out looking for her." "Looking where?" "Acadia National Park.

" "How''d you find out?" "He called me." "He called you?" "I don''t know why me, Elise, so don''t start." Tristan was Julie''s husband. None of us had ever met him. They had gone to the same high school and reconnected when Julie returned to her gloomy Massachusetts hometown to take care of her sick mother. They got married before her mom died, so she could be there. The ceremony and reception were held in someone''s backyard. We were sent two pictures from that day.

One of them cutting a two-tiered, pale yellow cake topped with sugared daisies. The other was of Julie standing in a patch of generous sunlight, smiling with her head back, like she was mid-laugh, or the weight of her happiness was too much for her neck. She wore a birdcage veil. It was a shock to all of us. It might have been the shock of our lives had she not gone missing. "What do we do?" I asked Molly. "I don''t think there''s anything to do. Just gotta wait.

And prepare ourselves." I dug into my back pocket for my lighter. It was a white one. Julie once told me white lighters were bad luck. I cleared my throat, "It''s been how many days? Four? Five?" "I thought you''d be freaking out." "Have you told Mae?" "Are you smoking?" she asked me. "No." "Yes, I called Mae first because I thought she''d be the calm, logical one.

She was very upset. I know because she said she was very upset." Mae was hardwired to think showing emotion was bad manners. She had a sensitive nature, but she tried her best to suppress it. She never wanted to put anyone out by acknowledging she had feelings of her own. An airplane groaned somewhere above the clumpy gray clouds. The rush of nicotine distracted me, and I missed something Molly said. "Sorry?" She scoffed.

Molly was the funny one, so it was easy to forget when she wasn''t being funny she was being mean. She was capable of empathy, but on a case-by-case basis. Childhood bone cancer had taken her left leg below the knee, and sometimes she joked that''s where all her patience had been. "This is serious." "I know," I said, the lie leaving a chalky residue in my mouth. She wasn''t missing. This was classic Jules. She could fool Molly and Mae, but not me.

She and I were made of the same stuff. It was the special sauce of our friendship, and the curse that made it turn ugly sometimes. Molly described our passive aggressive fights as "tangos." Mae would frown and say, "There''s only tension because you two are so similar." When things were good between us, we would brag about our similarities, say we were soul sisters. When they weren''t, we both knew, it was like spitting at a mirror. There were times when I fantasized about vanishing. Chucking my phone into a sewer grate and taking the train to who-knows-where with nothing but a stack of cash.

Cutting my hair with dull scissors in a shitty motel room. And if I had thought about it, Julie thought about it, too. During one of our late-night dorm room confessionals, we bonded over obsessively imagining our own funerals. Which exes would show? Would they cry? Who would cry? Who would give the eulogy? What would they say about us? Would our parents ever move on? "We''re so fucked up," she said, giggling into her beloved pufferfish pillow. "If I die first, will you give the eulogy?" I asked. "You know I will," she said. "And I''ll make it all about me." The end of my cigarette was pure ash.

I flicked it into a nearby puddle. I didn''t know what else to say to Molly. In a few days Julie would resurface and exonerate me and my lack of reaction. "What do you think happened?" I asked. "You really want to know?" "Yeah." "Honestly, Lise, I think she''s gone. I feel like she''s dead. I looked up the park and it''s all woods and cliffs and ocean and she was there by herself.

Alone! I don''t want to be negative, but I have to say it out loud or I''ll explode. Don''t tell anyone. Especially not Mae." "I won''t," I said. "And Julie''s not dead. Don''t worry." I told her I had to get back to work, said I loved her and would call her later. After we hung up I walked around back to check the garbage bins.

Raccoon-ravaged. Trash everywhere. Possessed by some dormant Girl Scout goodness, I went to turn the bins upright. I leaned over with my hands outstretched, and beyond the tips of my fingers I noticed movement. A wriggling. White spots. The spots swam in and out of the banana peels and half-eaten sandwiches, the fuzzy avocados and open containers of yogurt. Maggots.

I thought I should scream, but I couldn''t muster one. Instead I backed away slowly, as if from a crime scene, until I was far enough to safely turn my back. Still, I felt like they were on me. That maybe one had burrowed in through the bottom of my shoe, crawled up my leg, my spine, and was now perched on my shoulder, waiting to climb into my ear and, eventually, eat my brain.