To Those In The Periphery

Millie stood in her wedding’s reception space, resplendent in her sparkling white gown, just as she’d always dreamed, gazing out at the beautiful decorations, noting every perfect detail in this one peaceful moment. The chairs were pushed back from the tables at odd angles, mostly toward the walls and windows, but sat empty. A choking feeling crept up her throat and she forced it back down. From the corner of her eye, she could see Sara outlined by her side. She didn’t look over. Knowing Sara stood there was enough, it would always be enough. It gave her strength and courage.

“Friends,” she said, in a loud clear voice that carried through the room, it sounded softer than it might have, had the room been truly empty. “My new family, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being here tonight.” She paused, waited. She could just make out the softest notes of applause, as if someone had finished a speech in the next building over. Her hands shook and she clasped them together in front of her.

“I was 14 the first time my parents lost me,” she went on, glancing at Sara for strength. “We went to the beach, a family vacation, and I loved it. Oh my goodness, we had so much fun. On the drive down to  the coast, we got a flat. I helped my dad change the tire on the side of the highway, cars whipping past, he kept getting stressed, worrying that we’d get clipped by a bad driver or that the spare wouldn’t hold air. I kept joking with him, kept him calm, kept him laughing. He loved me, so much, I could feel it in every look and hear it in his little exhales. In that moment, I couldn’t imagine that he would be here…” She paused again, chest tight, glaring out at the empty chairs. It hurt. It hurt so much, but she could get through this. Sara reached out and brushed her bare upper arm, sending a warm tingle up to her shoulder. Millie smiled out at the crowd, so Sara could see it.

“Two days into the trip, we had our little camp set up, chairs and a blanket down by the water. Sun high in the sky, seagulls cawing and swooping overhead, little waves rolling up the sand. Such a beautiful peaceful place, I built a sand castle with my little sisters, helping their tiny hands get the towers to lean just so.” Her sisters. Their perfect round faces. She hadn't spoken with them in years either. Her chest tightened again and she plowed ahead. “I… uhm…. I looked up to the dunes and saw the oat grass waving. You know what I mean? The tall stalks with little tufts on the end. They swayed in the breeze, all willy nilly, each one seemed to dance to its own tune, but all in harmony, somehow. I walked up the beach to get closer to them, stood at the foot of the dunes and swayed with them. I got lost in that little moment, ha one of my ‘fireball hippy chick moments’ that Sara always makes fun of me for, but secretly loves.”

A gentle susurration of laughter wafted through the room, again as if from a great distance. Another brush on the arm from Sara. Millie smiled back at her audience of unfilled seats.  

“Then my mother came running up the beach, shouting for me, calling my name. ‘I just saw her, just there,’ I remember her just screaming at my dad and pointing right at me. I called to her and waved, but they looked past me.” A pained stillness gripped the whole room now. Millie clenched her fists tight and exhaled, but kept. “I called out to her again.” She couldn’t hold it back, a little sob jumped out of her and she pressed a fist to her mouth. “But she didn’t hear me. That was the first time she didn’t see me.” She hung her head for a moment. “Oh god, I’m sorry, it’s a wedding and this is so sad.” A little laugh jumped up to her lips, and she shuffled her feet trying to reset. “We’ll get to the happy stuff, I promise. This all just needs to be said first. We get lost.” She held up a lock of her brazen red hair, “Even the tall, badass human fireballs, like me, can get lost.”

“Super hot fireball,” Sara chirped from Millie’s side. From the empty chairs came another soft ripple of laughs and a few muted hoots, even a hollow chant of “Fireball. Fireball.” She smiled so hard and so bright that it hurt her face, giggling.

“So that was the first time,”Millie continued. “A few minutes later they suddenly found me, but they seemed shocked about it. Like, they were already starting to forget who they’d been looking for. And then it got worse. I realized that other people were struggling to see me. My sisters stopped playing with me, stopped asking where I was. I tried to explain it, went to therapists, got more and more desperate in those moments through the years. No one believed me. I faded… and I faded… until everyone forgot about me. No one could see me.”

She paused.

“I got a job, working remotely, like so many of you, trying to contribute to a world that couldn’t see or hear me. I was gone. Here on Earth, just like them, but… missing.” She paused for a longer than she intended, lost again in a familiar abyss. No sensation to orient around. No contact. Her hand tingled and she looked down, it looked limp and empty, but the tingle let her know that Sara was there. She raised her eyes and beamed out at the crowd. Sara beamed at her from the corner of her eye. “Sara found me inspecting the apples at the grocery store. I touched every one of them, probably bruised a few. I just had that rage… raging at all those people in the store, ignoring me, not seeing my form. One of those petty things you do when you know that no one will ever notice that you’re there. But Sara did. She asked, ‘You gonna take one of those home eventually or just feel ‘em all up?’” Millie laughed at the memory, hearing the crackling of her overworked vocal chords. “I dropped the apple and nearly fell to the floor in shock. She helped me up and started explaining things to me. She introduced me to you all. She brought me into this truly bizarre family. You beautiful humans out here on the periphery of perception. You brought me in, saw me again, loved me again. And I just…” 

The sob attacked her, grinding up from her chest, she hunched forward and curled her body around the pain of overwhelming gratitude. She sobbed like that for a moment before Sara slipped into her arms, sending a tingling sensation through her whole body. As ever, she couldn’t see Sara’s form head on, she appeared like a human shaped cloud fog. But. When Millie turned her head as far as she could to the left, so that Sara was just visible in the corner of her vision, Sara’s outline solidified and clarified. Millie could see her short cropped black hair, moussed into a sloppy mohawk for the occasion, and a finely cut men’s suit. Millie felt another surge of appreciation.  

“I love you,” Millie said to her, over and over, “I love you, I love you.”

Sara nodded and held her, they swayed together. Gentle applause came up from the chairs. 

“I love you, too,” Sara said, her firm voice coming to Millie as a distant whisper. “Forever.” 

Millie nodded and swayed for a moment then gently stood up straight. Grief and gratitude churned in her stomach and became a broiling mass of determination. She looked up to the ceiling for the first time since she’d begun her speech and saw the crowd. Fifty or so people, all different ages and races and shapes. All of them disappeared when you looked right at them, but swam into focus in your peripheral vision. They walked through the world, unseen and unheard, except on the edge of every crowd. Every crowd except this one.

Millie dropped her gaze back down to the seemingly empty chairs, knowing that it would help her voice reach them, pierce through this god-forsaken aberration.

“We may not know how this happened,” she said, suddenly calm. “And we may not know why our parents and siblings and spouses all forgot about us, why the world forgot about us. But we know we’re here. We know we’re not dead. We’re not ghosts. We still experience the world, feel its seabreezes, and taste its apples. We know what we are to each other,” she shouted. “Family.” 

She glanced up as they applauded, enjoyed their smiles for a moment. Then glanced to Sara and saw the mirrored spark of determination. The spark she’d fallen in love with.

“We’re not just the Missing,” she shouted out to the chairs. “We’re not dead. We’re not ghosts. We eat and breathe and feel. We’re still here. We. Are not. Victims.” 

She paused. Let them bask in it for a moment.

“We’re fucking super heroes!” She shouted, stomping a foot and raising a fist in the air. “Superheroes!!!”

The crowd roared, quietly, then Sara swept in and plucked Millie up off her feet, catching her in a tingling kiss of such intent concentration that Millie almost didn’t feel it on her lips. She thought that her heart might explode with love and happiness. It was a perfect moment, a perfect beginning to a life she could never have dreamt up, but intended to cherish.