Page 4 of Finding Our Reality

Secretly, I pray that it’s nothing more than a bad report card. Or a credit card bill for a maxed-out account that she didn’t want me to know about it.

But I also secretly hope that it’s more.

A question. An answer. A smoking gun. A clue. A remnant telling me what happened. Telling me where my sister went.

I take a deep breath and tug it open. I peek inside, making sure there isn’t anything that could hurt me. It looks like papers and an ink pen or marker. Carefully reaching down, I grab some papers and pull them out.

Correction: Pictures. Not papers.

The first picture slices through my heart with a chainsaw. And it only gets worse from there.

There’s a total of six pictures, and unfortunately, the background in these pictures is familiar to me. Why? Because I’ve seen it before. In the picture tucked snuggly away in my case file on Carrie.

It’s Trey’s mobile home.

Same couch. Same coffee table. Same tilted framed poster of a stoner movie on the wall.

There’s my sister, with her beautiful blonde hair, her beautiful blue eyes, and her timeless grace. She’s not high in this picture. She’s sober. She’s sitting on the couch by herself, perched on the edge, watching someone in the distance, not looking at the camera. It’s a candid. There’s no smile on her face. No joy in her eyes. She looks serious and impatient.

She looks like she’s jonesing for a fix.

The next two pictures show she got what she wanted.

She’s high as a damn kite. Her face is contorted in ecstasy and her fingers twitch in front of her, palms wide, knuckles bent at odd angles. She looks lazy and lopsided, like her body is a wet noodle. Trash is sitting by her in one of the pictures. His hand is on her thigh. I have to swallow back my vomit. I haven’t seen that repugnant shit’s face in so long, I was nearly lucky enough to forget what it looked like. The other picture shows her spread out across the couch, laughing. It also shows half of Trash’s body and half of someone else’s body, but I can’t make out the face.

Pictures four and five have me seriously concerned.

Seriously.

Carrie is passed out cold in both of them. In picture four, she’s sitting up on the couch pressed between a guy and a girl I don’t know. They are acting like bookends, keeping Carrie’s body upright. Her head lobs to the side, and her mouth is slightly ajar. The guy is holding Carrie’s hair back so you can see her face. The girl is smiling, like she’s posing for a school picture. Next to the girl is Trash. Picture five is the exact same set up, except a new guy has joined the picture. They’ve laid Carrie’s head straight back and, in that position, her mouth has opened wide in automatic reflex. The new guy is standing over her, behind the couch, making an obscene gesture with his hands. His hands are folded in front of his crotch, like he’s holding his penis, making it look like Carrie is giving him a blowjob. He looks somewhat familiar. Maybe I’ve seen him someplace before. In the far corner, you can see Trey, watching and laughing.

Picture six is what kills me.

Kills me.

Makes my heart stop beating.

In fact, I rub my palm against my breastbone, checking for a pain reflex the way paramedics do, praying the panic stays deep down in my body. I would be sobbing uncontrollably if I weren’t in such dire shock.

Picture six shows my unconscious sister being raped.

Her unconscious body is folded over the arm of the couch with her bare ass in the air, panties and shorts gathered around her ankles. Her face is smushed against the couch cushion and her hair is tangled across her eyes. One arm lies above her head, and the other arm dangles limply off the couch. A man is standing behind her, gripping her hips, pumping into her. This guy is different. Not one of the guys from the party.

How do I know? The clothes.

Well, what I can see of his clothes, that is.

He doesn’t have a shirt on. Because of the angle of the couch’s arm, he’s having to squat a little bit and bend forward across her back. All I see is skin. He either took his shirt off or lifted it up to his chest, out of the view of the camera. But he did keep clothes on his bottom half. Brown leather belt, khaki pants, black boxer briefs, and brown leather loafers.

This is a guy who doesn’t belong in Trey’s trailer. Dude is dressed like an investment banker. Like a school principal. Like an accountant. Like a lawyer. Like a store manager. He’s dressed like every single man I pass on the street every single day of my life.

And he’s raping my sister.

I pull the picture closer to my face, inspecting the man for details. There’s something on his upper left leg, on the side of his thigh. A scar? A birthmark? Whatever it is, it looks like the letter J.

I flip through all six pictures again, fingers trembling uncontrollably. They’re familiar in one other way too. The bottom corner shows the date and a series of letters. The exact same letters that are on the picture Ry gave me all those years ago. I mentally count out the weeks. That date is about six weeks before Carrie disappeared.

Carefully stacking the pictures to the side, I reach back into the envelope to grab the marker. Except it’s not a marker. It’s a pregnancy test.

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