Ella Was

Ella was beautiful. Ella was fast. Ella was gone. Ella was never coming back.

If you asked someone—anyone, really, maybe even a random person you caught a glimpse of in Kohl’s with half-priced Christmas tree ornaments or a cable-knit sweater with a V-neck that you could tell was meant to show off the crevice of a cleavage, and grabbed them by the arm, asked them the question you always hoped that they would answer differently—about Ella Dillard, a look would wash over their face. The gaze that their eyes emanated would soften, melt with sympathy, and their lips would part without a word for a moment, and then they would say Ella was . . . Ella was a nice girl. Ella was a pretty girl. Ella was a missing girl. And then maybe they would notice the slope of my nose, the color of my eyes, the shape of my lips, and realize that Ella Dillard wasn’t just a missing girl to me, not just a nice girl, not just a pretty girl. That she was a girl who left something—someone—behind with the slope of her nose, the color of her eyes, and the shape of her lips to always remind her of someone who was never coming home. Her Christmas stocking, red and white, was getting dusty and smelled like old wood from so many years trapped in the attic, and there were unopened gifts hidden in the closet underneath the hems of winter coats and tucked behind the worn boots my father wore to trudge through the snow or the mittens tossed aside, flung from frozen fingers, and her favorite cereal was still in the cupboard, having expired three years ago, but my mother would’ve never let anyone eat it anyway.

That cereal was Ella’s.

Ella was a girl with honey-blond hair that she twisted into messily done braids with wisps of her tresses curling around her ears that seemed to glow underneath the gleam of the sun, and Ella was a girl with bright, green eyes that resembled the leaves of a walnut tree in the summer. I had those bright, green, walnut tree-esque eyes too but they never looked as good on me as they did Ella. Ella had eyes that twinkled, that glimmered, and that sparkled. Maybe my eyes did that too but then Ella was gone and my eyes became dull, unpolished, and murky. Ella was a girl with a boisterous laugh, one that giggled, one that made you laugh too. Ella was a girl who sang country songs in the passenger seat of our mother’s car, her bare feet propped up on the dashboard, her chipped, baby blue nail polish seeming to look beautiful on her delicate toenails, and her voice had a southern drawl to it when she sang that my mother never understood, the origin unknown and a mystery.

Ella was perfect.

And Ella was gone.

Ella was.

The word “is” just never accompanied her name anymore.

Because.

Ella was gone.

.

It was Christmas Eve when she disappeared, when she went from Ella Is to Ella Was, and she was with me, her glove-clad fingers wrapped around the laces of her ice skates with blades that glinted underneath the rays of the sun and clinked together as she walked, her footsteps crunching in the white, glittering snow, and she was smiling. She was oblivious. I was smiling. I was oblivious. I had my own pair of ice skates and I was holding them by the heels, rubbing the leathery material in between my cold fingers, and sticking out my tongue to feel the cool droplet of a snowflake falling on my tongue. I dropped my ice skates onto the snow, flurries emanating from around the blades and the sides of the shoe, and the tip of one of the laces had buried into the snow, as if it were hiding, as if it knew. I was peeling off my boots, tossing them in random directions, and I heard the humph of a man grunting behind me as my boot whacked against his shin. I heard Ella apologizing to him, I heard Ella telling him that I was just excited, I heard Ella wishing him a Merry Christmas.