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Somewhere

by Emma Bailey

blessed_art_thou_among_women_2010.76.11.jpg

I'm a ghost. Vaporous, gray, floating between the boundary of "here" and "there." I am intimately familiar with double takes, second guessing. There are places I will always be, lurking. Look, there I am now. Do you see me? I'm always in that car. I'm always in that basement. I'm always here and not here, nowhere, anywhere, everywhere. It's never when, not why nor how, always where. And where is always there. Where, they ask, where did it happen? Where did he touch you? Where have you been? Where are you? Where?

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I. There

Journal Entry, 2014: I don't know. I wish I could remember.

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I am always There, on that basement couch, watching him change the channel. We bond over our shared love of documentaries. We watch the ones about conspiracy theories, hidden stories underneath the truth. We burrow deep below ground to find them, hiding from parental eyes, entombed in concrete, wood, mingled limbs. We need to go deeper, he says. I pull back, thinking of caves, crawlspaces, coffins. How deep, I ask. We need to go deeper, he repeats, firmly, thinking of cocoons, canyons, chambers.

I panic and reach skyward, clawing the air, pupils dilating as the light grows fainter. Suddenly there's soil in my mouth, worms on my stomach. My denials are suffocated by the layers of rock that pack me in. I am always saying no, but that word never means anything here. In this space, in this place, words lose their bite. I'm too deep. In too deep. He's in, way too deep...

I hear his parents walking overhead as their son stuffs me with dirt, burying me in their basement, all the while smiling absently, his face turned up to the sun.

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Experiencing and remembering are so far from one another. The more I try to reach for the concrete, the more permeable I become. What did I say? What did he say? Did we say anything at all? The record scratches and I jerk back in time, over and over and over.

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Journal Entry, 2021: I don't know how I feel about him now. I don't think I'm mad at him. I'm kind of mad at myself, for forgiving him. Maybe instead of forgiving him like I thought I did, I actually just grew numb, like the event calloused over. I don't know. I guess I feel stuck.

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Journal Entry, Undated: I don't want to view myself as a training ground for young men.

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II. Here

Text Message From [redacted name], 2019: All I'll say is that there usually isn't a good reason a guy his age is into teenage girls

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I am always There, in that passenger seat, watching him steer. We just moved him out of his apartment. I have yet to move into my dorm. There are no rooms left to hold us. We are nowhere, going somewhere. He is going abroad soon. I am staying here. Will you meet someone new over there, I ask. Will you stay the same there? Will you come back unchanged for me? He turns slowly, looks through me when answering. Maybe, he says, maybe. How far will you reach to keep me here? I hesitate, the implications heavy on my tongue. What do you need? I ask haltingly. He laughs cruelly, an answer as old as bones on his lips. You know what I need, he says. I know. I've been here before. I'm always here.

The words bubble on my tongue, trapped between throat and teeth. I bite down, hard. I know they mean nothing here. I signed a contract in a language I can't possibly understand.

But what if? some tiny but bold part of my mind asks. What if?

What if, the larger and far more timid majority of my brain echoes, starting to float up, balloon strings dangling just out of reach. What if...

But there will be no "what if." There is only what is, what was, and what is left behind. I cannot argue with what happened.

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And yet, I find myself almost every day wondering what happened, wishing it was definable. Wishing I had some landmark, some undeniable monument that I could photograph or draw or paint or stitch or etch or even just remember, in some small way, just something to tie a little red ribbon on and claim as my own. Instead, I'm left with these pieces, these fragments of memory and truth pinning me in place.

I just want a word for what happened to me.

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Journal Entry, 2020: I feel like a wounded animal that he plays with.

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Text Message from [****], 2019: You know I never want you to feel pressure to do or not to do something

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III. Everywhere

Journal Entry, 2023: Everything I write is for her. The girl I once was.

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There are things I will never know for certain. There is hurt in that, but there is also relief. I will not know. Perhaps it's better that way.

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Regardless, the question is still the same. It will always be the same.

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Where?

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I will always be There, with her. I am there with my fourteen-year-old self. I am there with my nineteen-year-old self. I hold her hand across the years. I read her words, her desperate attempts to understand. I understand. I am in the basement. I am in the car. I am with her. I am not alone. I am here.

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About the Author

Emma Bailey is a scholar and creative writer currently pursuing her M.A. in English at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her primary research area is contemporary horror film and fiction, with a particular interest in the convergence of the genre with trauma, memory, and the female form.

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