Hidden Abnormality

30. Sludge Water

Chapter Thirty

  More time passed, wishes were trickling to a stop, people were no longer disappearing. Reporters were getting stories to keep them afloat for years while most other people started to go insane from all the weird –crazy– things happening.

  People stopped publicly questioning where their family and friends have disappeared, and others began making graves for the missing. My parents had given up calling to ask if she was back, Solomon stopped texting her phone, and Uriah stopped trying to make me feel better about her disappearance.

  Everybody all disappeared at once on day one. Day two nobody went missing. Day thirteen wishes were still happening. The only sliver of relief the people of this planet got was on day sixty-three. On this particular day, all the random things from children and young adults alike disappeared –the cats, the houseplants, the tails. It was like they never happened. Most people wouldn't have believed they had even happened if it weren't for all the reports and video footage.

  Some smart child or young adult must have wished that once everybody else's chaotic wishes came true, everything would return to normal.

  I was simply glad nobody had wished that we forget the people that had gone missing. Yet, every day that passed my memories of Jazabelle continued to get foggier and foggier. So I wasn't so sure that somebody hadn't wished we forget memories of them to create some sort of... bubble that saved us from our grief.

  Just yesterday I asked Uriah about Jazabelle and he had no idea who I was talking about. I showed him her picture and his eyes lit up like fire. "Right," he had said. "Gosh, how did I forget your sister?" I was positive we were forgetting memories of the missing.

  I had stopped searching for my sister on day twenty-two. Searching for her was futile. I was looking in the wrong place. The Ozzoma. I had to be searching for the Ozzoma. If I found them, I would find her.

  My lock screen was a picture of Jazzy I had taken when she was eating ice cream at Minny's. The screen after I unlock my phone is a message to myself. A note, really. Jazabelle Mestiere, thirteen, Ozzoma Planet.

  So far as I could tell, nobody was forgetting the person missing. They were forgetting the memories they shared. Uriah had forgotten meeting my sister which in turn, had him forget her name. Once he saw her picture it was like his brain suddenly remembered her name and who she was. But he hasn't remembered anything else. Not the nickname or the teasing. It was like he only knew the shell of who she had been.

  Being related to her must have made it harder for me to forget every memory we ever shared. And it wasn't like a black abyss in my head where memories of us should be. It was like she had just been erased. Instead of sipping hot chocolate together, I was by myself. Instead of talking at Minny's in a booth, I was drinking something and staring out the window without her.

  Without Jazabelle my life was dull. Boring. Nothing ever happened. I didn't want that to happen. I didn't want to forget my sister.

  I had been searching crazy things on the internet that probably had nothing to do with my search, but somehow I had found a lead. This weird blog that was scat crazy. The backdrop was blue, like the color of 12z's skin, and there were a handful of weird symbols every now and then with phonics and definitions in parentheses beside them.

  I had searched that page up, down, and backwards for a clue as to who created it. There had been a signature at the bottom of each paragraph. It was obviously a fake name. Something akin to a pen name.