Somewhere Only She Knows

The year Janie disappeared was the year I went cold turkey on nearly every temptation around me. Caffeine, sugar, alcohol, the stashed packs of cigarettes in the back of my closet. I kept my screen time to a near impossible limit a day, stopped bingeing on dumb Netflix series, and deleted dating apps.

I did what I'd said I planned to do every single goddamn year, a lifetime of resolutions bundled up together. It was my senior year at William James High in Northberry, New Hampshire. I was an adult, and I'd prove it. Every day, I picked up my neighbor Jack and we sat in groggy silence, approaching the monotony and familiarity of the day. Jack was more popular in school than I was. I kept to myself, had a few friends, but mostly spent my time in science labs preparing college applications, and working at the dairy farm in town.

The farm was where I first really met Janie Robinson. She'd been a year behind me in school since 6th grade, but mostly kept to herself and her circle, and wasn't someone ever on my radar at all. She was also working at the Moore's dairy farm to earn some extra money after school. I helped to sell eggs, chicken, and produce from the stand and to maintain the cleanliness of the barn. She typically worked the ice cream service throughout the summer, taking a break during the school year.

Now, I avoid dairy, meat, and eggs, and keep my diet to strict and simple salads, soups, and grain bowls. Everything nearing bland and always consistent, the stability that I am aiming for in my life also appearing on my plate.

Janie Robinson's disappearance was the only thing of note to happen in Northberry within the last many years, where a sense of quiet low-key stability seemed to be in constant, abundant source. And that this void was something that happened to a student who seemed to represent quiet stability was what truly frightened me. I'd always had an acceptance of hardship, no nonsense approach to anything that came my way, but the events of that year, no matter how much I continue to misunderstand them, have flung my trajectory and sense of path to an unseen, worrisome direction.

Most people around here whisperingly believe that Janie killed herself. Her car was found empty near the falls, and this of course makes absolute sense. The only thing is, as someone who had pleasantly worked beside Janie for two years, I could see no reason why a bright, kind, seemingly positive young girl would do this, and no body has been found.

If Janie did jump to her death, her body has yet to be found. If she did jump, she plunged herself into oblivion and us into a void that has destabilized myself and the entire town.

Last week, I finally got the courage to go to the Falls. The roped off areas were no longer, and traces of tire tracks all but faded. I sat and thought about the way that she laughed with me about the dumb complaining customers, her penchant for only wearing jewelry that she'd made herself, her mode of transportation over the summers (bicycle).

Janie’s vegetarianism stood out in a farming town. I noticed the Moore’s occasional eyerolls at her packed salads, the lunches that she ate merely feet away from the slaughterhouse. Otherwise, she fit in and flew under the radar, excelling but not overachieving, participating but not shouting.

I knew her since elementary school, and she’d always been a steady part of the class, a dependable science lab partner, kind and quiet but able to crack a joke or too.

Nobody prepared you for how to act when someone like this, a quiet staple in your life, is someone that you now must refer to in the past tense. The words that I used to speak confidently are now turned on their heads, and I, myself, cannot find my way back to the stable center of simply being.

The Moores are currently looking for a replacement summer farm hand. The help wanted signs near the checkout stare at me forebodingly, a constant reminder of what used to be. Handwritten on light blue paper with the farm’s seal beneath, Theresa Moore sighed sadly when putting them up. “Of course, how could we ever find an adequate replacement,” she whispered.

Bob Moore, typically loud and gregarious, has been a quieter presence in his daily duties on the farm these days. Head down, he picks and plants, feeds and cleans, day in and day out. Both Bob and Theresa approach assigning me tasks in a more scatterbrained way than usual, almost forgetting that I am here. I assume that they, too, cannot wrap their heads around what we lost.

In a way, I am increasingly, too, thankful for my job on the Moore’s farm. To work each day with my hands and living soil and animals is measurable, clear. Each day I am reminded of the cycle of life, its brutal and beautiful truth found in displays of dying sunflowers and moldy peaches, chickens and eggs for sale, milk going bad on the shelves. How quickly these things wilt, how precious, then, it is to look at them, how lucky we are to know an intricate beauty gone in a moment.

Yesterday, I woke early to run, the heat bearing down less intensely in the morning. I quickly downed water and got ready for work. Bob asked me to water the tomatoes near the edge of the forest. The small red beginnings.

This job has brought a sense of purpose to my life, an early glimpse at the responsibilities of real-life adulthood. And I cherish it, though I now feel lopsided without my former co-worker. The Moores are silent and traditional, and though they’re welcoming enough, they haven’t spent much time trying to get to know me. This leaves me now feeling alone and overworked.

The grass is green and fresh and the tomatoes are ripe and ready to be picked. I prepare myself for a long day. And then, I get a message from a number I never thought I would see in my inbox again - Janie’s. Horrifyingly, it reads simply “You’ll never guess where I am”. My hands shake - so she must be alive? I respond: “OMG. Where? Please tell me. We have been going crazy looking for you.”

Janie: “LOL stop worrying. I am having the time of my life. I joined this awesome group of people living in a camp in the woods behind the Moores”.

What.... this doesn’t sound like Janie, or like anyone with a stable headspace.

I’m not sure what to do. After my shift ends, I trek into the forest like an idiot, but I need to find her. What I find after twenty minutes of walking IS what looks like a campsite, a tent and fire, but no one around except...wait...a sheep, cut open horrifically and placed on a stake by the fire. I take a step back. I try to call Janie but it goes to voicemail. I don’t know what to do but run through the forest, hoping that I find Janie. Eventually, I see her...with her face taped and tied to a tree. When she sees me she tries to scream and point in the right direction. And I see the Moores, holding an axe. “There’s no need to worry,” Bob says.

“Give me one good reason to trust you,” I yell indignantly.

“Haven’t I always treated you girls honestly,” he says. I run and pull Janie’s mask off and try to get her off of the tree before Bob runs up to me. “Help, they are running a cult here! They’re killing farm animals for sacrifice! We have to run!” I don’t listen to anything else but fight for my life to untie her and run away as fast as I can, never looking back.