What Happened at East Houston Street

Chapter 2

Stephanie was baffled as to why she couldn't speak to the young lady, who had only just appeared to her mere seconds ago, the same girl who was just immediately across the large street from her, barred by early morning New York City traffic. She physically could not utter a word. The girl, standing directly to her left, just continued her curious gaze, almost knowing intuitively what the frazzled girl was trying to convey. As if the day couldn't get any stranger, the next event brought the weirdness to a whole new level.

Stephanie felt a tight grip on her right wrist. After that, her body went into panic mode. Trying to see where she was being taken, her eyes straining to focus on street signs and storefronts, was all she could do.

She didn't see the three missed calls and two voicemails that she had on her phone from Joe, her employer, inquiring as to whether or not she was coming into the print shop that day. She didn't see her sister, Sarah's, red face after she had just climbed the five flights of stairs, two at a time, to Stephanie's East 7th Street apartment, opening the door with her spare key, only to find nothing out of place and no sign of her sister.

The throw pillows on Stephanie's sofa were coordinated big to small and the dishes were laid on a rack to dry on the kitchen counter. No drawers hung ajar after being hastily searched. No window glass on the floor as if someone had broken a pane to gain entry from the rusty fire escape. These sights would have been disturbing but also comforting to Sarah, indicating an explanation for her sister's sudden disappearance. Instead she was faced with more questions and all of the concern she had felt previously during her race to Stephanie's apartment was now a full on storm of worry and panic. Where could she have gone? Under what circumstances would she just go away without letting her older sister, her best friend, know?

I can't lose her too.

Since they were girls left to fend for themselves in Worcester, a big rundown town in Massachusetts past its prime, Sarah and Stephanie had always been a team, sharing clothes and making sure the other always had half of whatever food they could find. Their mother died when Sarah was 9 and Stephanie was 7. Their Uncle Rich, who had been granted custody, stopped working shortly thereafter. He expected the state to pay him for taking care of the orphaned girls. Instead of using the monthly living expense stipend to cover the girls' basic necessities, he would belly up to the Blue Rhino, the local watering hole, and begin drinking in the morning and wouldn't stop until the evening. On days that the monthly stipend arrived in the mailbox, he'd buy a round of drinks for all of the patrons at the bar. He was neither a nice nor mean man, just indifferent to the girls, as if they were a piece of furniture in the fourth generation home he owned on the outskirts of the city. The home, though spacious and once stately, was old and cluttered. Stacks of photo albums and unopened mail sat on window sills, blocking the sun from shining inside, leaving the parlor dark and musty.

The girls would wait for the school bus that would pick them up at 7:05 every morning to get them to the school's cafeteria just in time for the free breakfast. Oftentimes, the mini muffins and bananas in the morning was the only sustenance they would get all day. The head lunch lady with the pudgy red face, yet kind eyes, would sometimes look away when Sarah would store two extra apples or pears in her school bag to share with her little sister later at home, happy to know that they wouldn't starve to death in their uncle's hovel. Their Uncle Rich, having been born and raised in Worcester, had a well-known reputation as a lazy drunk. Most people in town knew that those two girls were not his first priority.

Sarah had become so accustomed to surviving her meager life with her sister by her side that she would sometimes forget that they would one day grow up and leave their 7 and 9 year old bodies for those of 24 and 26 year olds. They might go to different colleges, make different friends, fall in love in different cities, and make families in separate homes. Sarah didn't bother thinking so far ahead into their futures because her priority was always the next 24 hours and how to make it through. She didn't have the luxury of planning things, only reacting to whatever the day would throw at her and her little sister. Stephanie had always been her first priority, so facing the current situation with her missing sister and an uncertain outcome was Sarah's absolute worst nightmare. She always feared something horrible would happen, but she still wasn't prepared when it was occurring now.

Turning on her heel to walk back out of the apartment with the intention of going directly to the police station to file a Missing Person Report, Sarah decided to glance around the living room one last time. Her eyes swept over the music magazines stacked neatly on the coffee table. She saw Ed Sheeran's face with freckled cheeks and a lazy eye staring back at her from the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. She glimpsed the recently watered potted fern on the window sill. She brought her fingers to lightly touch a miniature frame that held an old photo of the two sisters, Sarah holding her mother's hand and Stephanie cradled up high on her mother's hip. The girls couldn't have been more than 4 and 2 years old. The three stood in front of a red brick row home with warped purple window panes and cream-colored shutters.  Though she had seen this photograph before, she never really stopped to inspect it thoroughly.

Now, looking closer, she realized that she knew that building. When she first moved to Boston, she would pick up any job she could find. For about three months, she had worked the evening shift at the cafeteria at Emerson College. She had passed that stately brick row home during her walks to work so many times from her dingy apartment in Brighton down through Beacon Hill. She always admired the colonial brick homes of Beacon Hill, so detailed and rich in history and color. Sarah would oftentimes imagine who would be lucky enough to actually call these places home. To make herself feel better she would envision a wealthy family, where the father was a cheating, miserable hedge fund manager who's Ponzi scheme was on the brink of being uncovered by the feds. The mother was a 46-year-old hypochondriac who had hundreds of acquaintances, but none of them were true friends. Then there were the kids. A16-year-old girl who was on the verge of failing out of Buckingham Browne and Nichols School and the 13-year-old boy who was secretly being surveilled by the FBI for frequenting homemade bomb making websites. Basically, their entire world was on the brink of collapse, even if they lived in a beautiful row home on Beacon Hill with a private garage and a rooftop terrace.

Sarah knew her thoughts were unkind and wrong, and, if she could remember her mother well enough before she died, she imagined that she would have said the same thing to her daughter. She'd tell her to be happy for their good fortunes and to not covet their possessions or wish them ill will. Deep down Sarah knew that most of the people living on Beacon Hill were probably perfectly lovely people with happy families and happy lives. Good for them, she'd whisper after passing the last beautiful old home on Joy Street before making the turn onto Park Street, where the buildings became less residential and more obtuse and concrete.

Still tracing the outer edges of the mini frame, Sarah's thoughts wandered a bit more. She recalled more of those early memories with her mother and little sister. They would get off of the public bus and walk a ways up a slow incline paved in uneven bricks. Her mother would always carry a large tote bag stuffed to the brim with supplies they would need for the day, ranging from sweaters and mittens to homemade turkey sandwiches and baggies of apple slices. They would find a sunny spot on a bench or the grass and relish in the buzz of the traffic on Beacon Street and the whooshing of the bicycle tires that would pass them on the park's pathways.

On nice days, the grassy area would soon become a hub of recreation. The girls would watch teenagers kicking a hacky sack back and forth to each other or tossing a Frisbee around the sky. She would take little bites of her sandwich, while secretly wishing she could have a life one day where she would do things like play in the grass with friends in the sun. Sarah and Stephanie were once allowed to try tossing a Frisbee that landed too close to their bench. The girls flung the disc a few times back and forth, usually resulting in an off course trajectory and skidding over the rough bricks of the sidewalk. Sarah would jog to grab the Frisbee, halting at the edge of the grass before stepping onto the paved path, careful not to disrupt the bikers and walkers. She would mumble quick and shy apologies if she did get too close to bumping into someone who was on their way to work or maybe to meet up with friends for lunch.

Sarah realized that she had so many more memories than she originally thought, they were just pushed back into her psyche, overshadowed by all of the more difficult life events that happened after her mother's death. As the months turned into years, all of those sunny, peaceful days in the park sitting between her mother and little sister were clouded over by memories of missing the bus home after school, which meant the girls had to walk over an hour through pothole filled roads where bits of loose gravel would pelt their knees as cars sped by. In the warm months, the girls would finally arrive at the crumbling front porch covered in an uncomfortable layer of sweat, their tickling hairs stuck to the sides of their face. During the winter months, they would huff with visible breath up the front path, toes and fingers numb and stinging. Sarah would fumble for the door handle, praying that it was unlocked. Uncle Rich never trusted the girls with a spare key, so entry into the dank home was never a guarantee, which scared them more in the cold, dark early evening. Wild with the need for warmth, Sarah would hoist Stephanie up to the back kitchen window, where the latch was conveniently broken. Her little sister would barely have enough strength to push the window up enough for Sarah to prop the rest of it open with a long pipe that she kept hidden behind the tool shed. Repositioning Stephanie on her back, she would lift the younger girl up and through the opening. Less than a minute later Stephanie would appear at the side door, letting her cold sister into the musty eating area. They would eat stale dry cereal in the dark of their bedroom and huddle together on Stephanie's twin bed, even though there were two beds in the room. The girls needed to hoard each other's body heat to fight the draft seeping through the old windows.

This is how it always was, Sarah and Stephanie hitting roadblocks in life and figuring out how to get around them together. For the last 17 years they had been each other's job references, emergency contacts, personal bank accounts, and biggest fans. Whatever one of the girls had, the other did too, no hesitation or questions asked. Now Sarah was faced with a pit in her stomach and a heavy heart because she had nothing without Stephanie. She had to find her little sister, her best friend, no matter the outcome.