by Kelly Murashige
I find out a boy’s gone missing from a flyer on a corkboard.
Had he disappeared a year or two ago, I would have found out from the news. For a while, I immersed myself in the goings-on of the world, afraid if I let a war, a bill, a cultural event pass me by, everyone would brand me ignorant, perhaps even maliciously so, and leave me in the past, where I arguably belonged.
Then, as the world grew bleaker and bleaker, I began distancing myself. I had to. I would have lost my mind otherwise. For the first time, I understood why my first boyfriend, whom I dated in our freshman year of college—the one you would later call a laughable centrist—so adamantly refused to keep up with current events.
It’s too much, he said.
It’s life, I replied.
Yes, I think now, staring at the missing boy’s smiling face. It is.
Once, after deciding to skip the Campus Life Christmas party in favor of staying in bed, I told you about my high-school classmate. The one last seen out by the cliffs, near the only lighthouse on the island.
Oh, I know that lighthouse, you said, careful to lift your head so your breath didn’t stir the hair on the back of my neck. You knew I hated that, because you knew me.
It always looked lonely to me, I told you. Now it just feels haunted.
Is it possible to be lonely without also being haunted? you asked.
I rolled my eyes and told you to stop philosophizing when we were supposed to be cuddling.
Really, though, I wondered. Was it really possible?
As I stand here in the hall, studying the flimsy poster, I decide it is. It’s possible to be lonely without being haunted.
He’s so young, this boy. Just two years old. If his family cares enough to post not one but two flyers on the library’s board—one on the left, one on the right, prominent enough to make passersby take a second look, worried they’re seeing double—surely, he has no ghosts. He’s far too young for those.
My high-school classmate who disappeared was two months from sixteen. He was practically a stranger to me, his name and face only vaguely familiar, but after, once he was gone, I began piecing him together.
He hung out with the uncool cool guys. The ones too nerdy and lacking in athletic ability to be properly popular but too smart to be bullied by the class’s elite. The recipients of begrudging respect, they were primarily left alone out of fear that torturing them in any way would result in targeted hacking and leaks of private photos kept hidden on their phones.
He dabbled in drugs. Hallucinogens, mostly. They gave him ideas, which he then used to invent the strangest, most quietly brilliant contraptions anyone had ever seen. Most of us had no idea he was interested in robotics, but those who did said it was frightening to know a boy so smart.
Two weeks in, I dreamed of him. Upon waking, I opened my blinds and stared out at the sky, as if I expected him to swoop in like Peter Pan.
I think I loved him, in a way, or else the idea of him, and was therefore convinced I would be the one to find him.
I’m not sure how I ever could have come across a missing boy, considering I only traveled between my apartment, school, my best friend’s house, and, on occasion, the local mall, but every time I was out, I scanned the crowds for his face. A part of me feared I would almost miss him, too fixated on that one photograph I had seen of him on the news to recognize him from any other angle, but I had this hunch that I would find him. That I would save him. Save the world.
By the time I met you, it was understood that he was dead. It had been years, and while the librarians hadn’t had the heart to take down his flyer, they occasionally had to cover up part of his face to publicize upcoming events. Book talks. Author visits. Things he’d never attend.
When I told you about him, you said you understood. Someone on your swim team had gone missing too. I asked for his name, certain we were thinking of the same boy. Then, when you provided a name I’d never heard, I wondered how many missing people there could be on one island.
Not much later, you too went missing. Just not in the same way.
We were mismatched from the start. When we lay in bed together, while your mind would be whirring, sorting and resorting and re-resorting everything you had to do the next day, I was quiet. Contemplative. Sometimes, you didn’t even want to touch me, afraid of shattering the world I was exploring in my head. While you were goals-driven, hellbent on climbing your way up the corporate ladder, I was a free spirit, more interested in creating something poignant than something profitable.
You brought this up once, after reaching the lookout you had chosen for our date. It was drizzling that day, your glasses left fogged.
I guess I just thought, you began, I’d end up with a doctor.
I turned to you, my eyes narrowed. When I said, It’s not too late, you feigned pushing me off the cliff.
This was before, of course. Before I told you about him.
It was funny, I kept thinking, that you had these aspirations for your partner and not for yourself. You had never been drawn to the medical field, afraid of getting your hands dirty. You preferred to keep your fingers on a nice, clean keyboard. Preferred to wear a mask not for surgery but courtesy. A bright business smile with no light in your eyes.
I hated your company and everyone in it. They got drunk. Played golf. Left each other ridiculously long voice notes. They were always convinced they were on the verge of a breakthrough, their sights set so high, no one measured up.
I didn’t like drinking. It muddled my mind. According to you, you didn’t like it either; you only drank when your bosses did.
Then, when you came home with this wild look in your eyes, I realized the rats in the race ran on all kinds of susbstances.
You gave yourself over to your company. A real good performance, with diverse investments. You put a piece of yourself into all that you did, and though I did that too, with the things I created, I did it mostly so I’d find myself.
We broke up right after your fourth performance evaluation. In all honesty, I had wanted to do it before but feared throwing you off. Adding to your stress. I hated your company. I didn’t hate you.
“It’s so sad, isn’t it?”
I startle. Turn my head. An older woman stands half a foot away, her eyes riveted to the flyer on the board.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and though I mean it as a question, a soft I don’t think I understand, it comes out as a statement. A tremulous apology.
“So many children go missing nowadays.” The woman shakes her head. “It’s such a shame. I’ll tell you something: This isn’t the world I grew up in. It certainly isn’t one I would want to raise children in.”
I think of the boy. Of his smile.
I think of my classmate. The lone lighthouse.
I think of you. Always. It’s been years, but sometimes, I wake up expecting to find you next to me. In my weakest moments, I think I would even take your ghost.
“Excuse me,” I say.
It comes out as a statement, just as intended.
I leave quickly, as if I am running from all the people I will never see again. The whole way home, I search everywhere for a face I recognize.
Then, finding no one, I take a breath, duck my head, and lose myself in a sea of strangers.
Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, Kelly Murashige is the author of the award-winning YA novel THE LOST SOULS OF BENZAITEN, as well as THE YOMIGAERI TUNNEL, which received a star from Publishers Weekly. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions. Though she can be shy, she loves obsessing over books, video games, and strange animals.
January House Literary Journal 
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