Surfacing, Only To Recede Back Into the Depths

Ashley...oh, how my mind kept wandering on about this girl. I had, basically, all day after writing that post to do nothing else but obsess; Troy was working on that car and I was stuck up at the shop with little else to do. So I kept digging.

I thought back to all my training, especially when I was a repo agent. If you could go through their trash - the paper stuff, not the actual garbage, you could learn more about them and their habits and get leads. So I dragged all of her stuff into the office, laid it all out on the desk, and started thinking.

I looked at maps of the schools she went to and cross-referenced those with property records from the area of people with the same surnames, including the aunt's last name I found on the card. I found a local woman with the aunt's name, so I searched for her. She owned a company with a website, so I just shot her an email through the site. I figured that was the most unobtrusive, least odd way.

But then I started thinking about the photo album and how she'd listed everybody's name under the photos. I remembered seeing something about her "California family," so I went back to the album and started looking at pictures.

There wasn't a city written anywhere in the album. California's huge, and the surnames were fairly common. I kept looking. And then I hit gold: a picture of an "Uncle Jeff" who happened to be wearing a company shirt.

I Googled the company name and there was a link for "our team." Clicking on that, I saw the man I was looking for in name and photo. When I checked the White Pages for his full name and city, two numbers came up. One was the shop number and the other was his home. I checked the property records to make sure it was a residence and then I called the number. Nervous, I waited as the phone rang about 10 times. An answering machine picked up. What an odd message to leave: "My name is Stillie and I live in ___. I'm trying to get in touch with the family of Ashley Paige because I found some things that belong to her. They're personal items like pictures and stuff from grammar school and thought she might want them. You can give me a call back at..."

For hours all I could do was wait impatiently. And then, a phone call.

I had gotten in touch with the correct family, and it was her aunt that called me. We had a pretty long conversation, actually, about who Ashley was, her troubled background, her 'gypsy' lifestyle, and her influence on her cousin (that woman's daughter). She said she didn't know where Ashley was, but she was sure she was okay. She said she'd call Ashley's favorite aunt - the one whose name was on the card - because they were pretty close and she'd for sure know where Ashley was. One of them would call me back. She couldn't believe I would go to so much trouble for a bag of water-damaged pictures. I told her it was because I couldn't imagine living my life without mine.

My biggest fear in this endeavor was calling family - making real contact - only to find out that she was missing or had been murdered or something. Of course, the family could either be grateful and want the items, or mad that I dredged up all the hurt but I was seriously afraid that might be the case. When I found out it wasn't, I was quite relieved.

Several hours later, I got a phone call from an in-state number. It was Ashley. "Hi. I'm Ashley. I was instructed to call you?" She sounded a little put-out at first.

I told her who I was, where I was from, and why I was calling her. I told her all the items I had, and what all was contained in the bags. Her voice perked up and she seemed pretty happy. I was all proud of myself for doing what I thought was the right thing by finding her. She asked me how I got them and I told her, although I was a little bit of a liar when she asked, "Did you say this came out of an old car you bought? Where, and what kind was it?" (we bought the car with no title as a salvage vehicle and, honestly, who knows if it was on the up-and-up. i didn't want to be blatant about a possibly stolen car.)

I told her, and then there was silence. I could feel the tension in the space between our phones. In a frosty, flat voice she said, "You can throw it all away. I thank you for going to so much trouble but I don't want any of it. Throw it out."

I started to say something about it was okay, it was no problem, and that if it were mine, I'd want it back, but the line had already gone dead. She'd just hung up on me.

Just out of curiosity, I used a friend's out-of-state cell phone to call her number back today. The phone she used to call me from was a convenience store's indoor line.

My mind can't stop going over all the possible scenarios about why a girl would run all the way across the country from her hometown, make stops midway, and then end up back to the place she originally ran to, and was perfectly willing to erase every last bit of her existence. I make up all these stories about her: about her past, her adventures, her traumas, and her travels. I keep seeing her face - that last picture in her file folders that wasn't totally bubbled and melted where she was smiling, perfect hair, natural makeup, hope still glimmering in her eyes of the future to come after high school - and try to imagine how it went all wrong. I picture her in my head, strung-out, sallow and pale, hair all chopped and dyed a color unbecoming for someone of her fair complexion. I imagine her being in unsanitary living conditions, with abusive men, her morals and values slipping into a pocket of her mind so far in the past she's not even sure she ever even had them, just so she can survive. The torture she puts herself through is the only way to stop the madness in her head - temporarily - but it's better than being home and it's better than being dead and it reminds her so much of being in her real home that it's a comfort but not the same and, in many ways, safer.

And out of this small experience, a work of fiction is born. Loosely based on a true story, this fabricated one is the only way I can let this go. I'm bothered by it more than I should be, so I have to purge it.

I am done poring through her belongings, piecing together an adolescent life that seemed picture-perfect and, probably, that's exactly what it was: only in the pictures. The smiles in those photographs were a mere moment in time captured forever. People rarely take photos during their tumultuous times. I can't see all the bad stuff that went on behind the scenes so, although the certificates and awards and physical proof of academic achievement exist, I can never guess about what was really going on besides that. I can only imagine what happened to her job at Lowe's, whose welcome packet was tucked in amongst all the papers. Neither can I guess what happened to her car, an older Honda whose long-expired insurance card was found in a file folder too. It doesn't matter now. It's all going to go into a 55-gallon drum at the storage lot where we dropped the car, and it's going to get burned along with trash we've pulled out of other cars.

I've decided to save one of the wallet-sized school photos, edges yellowed from water and sun, scratches exposing the orange and white emulsion under the image, just to use as inspiration as I write my story. Maybe I'll even PhotoShop it if I decide to one-off self-publish it and use it as cover art.

Just as quickly as Ashley came up to the surface of the sea of millions of faces, she began sinking back down, swallowed up by the population where everyone looks alike and nobody has a name; ghosts, if you will. Ashley has disappeared, again.