Never

I woke pretty early that day, which was unusual for me. I was surprised though, that I could not hear Shayla who had apparently not woken up yet. She had always been an early bird. And, sometimes, a night owl. She could thrive off very little sleep.

I got up and tread down the hall and to the guest room, where Shayla had crashed the night before for no particular reason. The door was closed. That was strange, she never slept with the door closed. Most nine year old's didn't. I checked the room, which was empty. Normally I would have left to search other parts of the house, but something had caught my eye. It was an open window.

The panicky part of myself said that she must be kidnapped, and that she could be dead or seriously hurt by now. The other part of myself said there were about a million other explanations that made ten times more sense anyway.

I thoroughly checked the rest of the house, hoping to find her in some, any, strange way. I never did. I went back to the guest room, just in case. Nothing. Even her usual pile of sketches and graphs that seemed to follow her were undisturbed.

I'd always known Shayla was an unusual kid, but would she really leave undeclared, and this early in the morning? No, she would never do that. Not to her older sister.

I went back to my room and called my mom, who didn't pick up. That wasn't unusual. Then I called my dad. Although he was often spammed with calls from his engineering directors, he'd never ignore a call from me. And I was right, after the first few rings, he picked up.

"What's up Lily?"

I bit my lip nervously, and then finally let the words spill over.

"I can't find Shayla. She's... she's not in the house."

My dad must have sensed the worry in my voice.

"That's alright, you'll find her. Have you checked the neighbors houses?"

No, of course I hadn't. Shayla didn't have friends in this neighborhood. She didn't have friends much anywhere. My dad knew that. So he must be worried too.

"Just call everyone in the neighborhood," he suggested. "Look through the house again. Me and Mom can always come home if need be. Okay?"

I didn't want to have to make my parents come home from their trip early.

"Okay Dad."

Then I hung up, too overcome with worry to realize I hadn't said much on the call. Usually I was much more of a talkative person. But I wasn't like that when it came to Shayla, or any of my family for that matter. They mattered too much to me.

After a few hours I knew for sure that Shayla wasn't at any of the neighbors houses. She wasn't at school either. Or down at the gas station I sometimes went to with her. I couldn't think of where else she could be. Shayla wasn't one to run off like that. Where could she have gone?

I thought I'd heard somewhere that you weren't supposed to call the police about a missing persons case until three days had passed, but I was very tempted, even after a few hours. Because in my mind, Shayla had to be found. We should stop the entire world if that's what it took.

I spent the rest of the day searching tirelessly and when night came I didn't stop. My parents came home the second day, and they weren't too scared to call 911 as I was. By the third day, the police were all over it, and there wasn't anything I could do except drive aimlessly around the streets, searching for a little orange head.

I lived my life like this for a while, hoping every day that Shayla would show up with her smile and a completely reasonable explanation. But as the days went by it was seeming less and less likely.

I eventually forced myself to go back to school, which was a welcomed distraction. Still, thoughts of Shayla were always there, creeping in the back of my mind. But then, four months after that one fateful day, the police came knocking at our door. I half-expected for Shayla to be there with them, but that was wishful thinking. Instead the officer wore a grim expression, and he said,

"The Shayla case is closed. We found her body yesterday."

I didn't hear a word after that. My life was forever changed. Shayla was dead, and it was all my fault. Days after that my parents tried to comfort me, and to explain to me what had happened. I didn't want their silver-lined words. I wanted Shayla, more then anything, and I was never going to get her, never.

She would never again wake me up in the morning to show me a new design she had worked on all night. She'd never again make me burnt toast and rubbery eggs for breakfast because "breakfast is the most important meal of the day!" She would never again put her glasses on my face and take a million selfies of us on my phone. I felt horrible for deleting all of those pictures. Right then I wanted every. Last. One.

I wished every day that Shayla could come back, somehow, in some way. I didn't go to her funeral. It hurt to know that I would never see her again. And that was the word that haunted me for the rest of my life. Every day I woke up, thought of Shayla. Never. Every day I made breakfast, thought of Shayla. Never. It was always that word, haunting and following me, and even when I had kids of my own I thought of Shayla often. So how was it that I couldn't ever shake that word loose, or even rip it off of me like a sticky bandage? It was a part of me, that word.

Never.

And every day it hissed it's profanities into my ear.