Brian,1

When I met Emily she was drunk. That's not entirely true - I'd met her around campus several times, through mutual friends, but she never seemed to remember me. The first night she actually spoke to me, she was drunk. She'd thrown a huge part for her birthday, and only guys had shown up. After she laughingly rejected all of them, they went home angrily, and I was the last one.

"Shit," she said, because she always cursed like a sailor, and then she laughed. "I'd ask for a ride home but I guess you're just gonna get mad you can't fuck me either." She sat down on the floor in her dress and laughed a little harder.

"I can walk you home, and I won't try to sleep with you."

"Thanks," she said, and then she looked me in the eye - or tried to. "Thanks . . . Ry . . . Bri . . ."

"Brian."

She hiccuped. "That's unfortunate."

"The name Brian?"

"Maybe it's nice for you, but it's bad for me."

"Well, it's not your name."

"But it's yours."

She seemed pleased with her logic, but it irritated me. "Let me walk you home before you pass out."

She leaned on me as we walked back to campus and halfway home she realized I was sober. "So you don't drink at all?"

"Not at all."

"But why?"

"I'm a Christian," I said, and right away I felt awkward for saying it. I never got used to explaining myself that way. She laughed again.

"That sounds horrible."

"Well you were seventeen until an hour ago, and you're drunk. That sounds pretty bad to me."

"Don't be an asshole, Brian."

Later on people would tell me I had a Savior Complex and that I was only attracted to her because she was a wreck, but I disagree. She was beautiful, and I was attracted to her because she seemed so happy and confident, and completely open. We sat in the lobby of her dorm for two hours that night talking, and the next day I hated myself because I assumed she'd already forgotten me completely, but she hadn't. We saw each other a lot after that, and I pursued her, which only seemed to irritate her.

Her birthday was in January and she finally caved in May. "I guess you're the nicest guy I'm ever gonna land," she said, which is probably the least flattering thing she could've said to me, but I took it. And then a funny thing happened. After months of trying to win her over, once I had her, I wasn't so in love. Her openness seemed naive, and the happiness she showed to the rest of the world was just a facade. Behind it she was normal, and insecure, and often unhappy. I fell out of love as fast as I'd fallen in it, but she kept on falling.

She wasn't that heartbroken when it was over. We kept talking and it never got awkward, and I grew to enjoy having her as a friend. I started dating again and she started dating again and that was when it got ugly. The next man broke her heart into a million shattered pieces and I was the only one able to pick up the pieces, but I couldn't do it. She stopped talking to me, stopped talking to everyone, started drinking every night, and then every day, and then one day I stopped hearing about her at all. It was like she vanished.

In the six years I knew her, Emily disappeared twice. The first time, after the man that broke her heart, she was easy to find. She had me listed as her emergency contact. It was sickening to find out, of course, that years after we broke up she hadn't found anyone she trusted more than me, but I was blinded by my joy at the fact that she was still alive. Here, when I look back, I can see the Savior Complex explanation making a lot more sense. The man she was with at the time left her because she was too much of a mess, and I ran to help her. But she wouldn't take my help.

"I'm not gonna be like that anymore," she said. She got a tattoo on her arm to remind herself of the incident, she cut back on the drinking, and she started getting happy. Really happy. This time it wasn't a facade, it was real, honest, down-to-her-core happiness. She was more attractive than ever, but she wouldn't take me back. I only asked her once, the week before she disappeared again. "Brian," she'd said, "I love you more than life itself. But it didn't work. I'm not putting myself through that again." And then she gave me a hug and we went on like nothing had happened. It didn't even feel like rejection.

The next week she disappeared. My phone haunted me - if I left it in the next room for a minute I'd run back and grab it, in case she called. I was afraid she'd fallen off the wagon, that she was on a binge somewhere, that she was sleeping with strangers or getting in trouble with the cops again, and that I'd get a call from the police one day saying they had found her, and I was her emergency contact. After a few days, though, I started to wish I'd get that call, because at least then I could go get her, and bring her back, and help her back on her feet. Instead I had nothing.

Janet, 1

Emily and I used to text all the time. She'd tell me stories about her boss, like the time he chased a man down the hallway screaming, "Where's your fucking tie?" or the time he asked the in house counsel whether or not he could give the college interns alcohol as a bonus. I'd text her about my job, too, little things that made us both laugh and helped us get through our shifts. Emily always said there are a hundred little things that can bring you down every day, and also a hundred little things that can lift you up, so you might as well focus on the good things and make the choice to be happy.

We used to live down the street from each other downtown, and we saw each other almost every day. Then she broke up with her boyfriend and moved out, to the beach, and she seemed happy with her new life. We started working out together, running on the beach, so we could be sure to see each other. Mondays and Wednesdays were our running days, and Saturdays we'd work out on our own before catching a movie together. Her new life was full of new boys: boys she liked, boys she didn't like, boys she wished would like her. She'd never been single before, and she was enjoying it. She would joke that she didn't like to buy her own dinner more than once a week, but it was starting to get her in trouble, because she was going out with boys she didn't like just so she wouldn't have to be alone. She never said if she was sleeping with them, and I wouldn't know. Emily never lied, but she'd go to great pains to avoid talking about something she didn't want to have to lie about.

One Wednesday I got in an accident on the way to see her at the beach. I was fine but my car was not, and I had to cancel. We texted for a while, and the last thing she told me was how happy she was that I was okay. I put down the phone to talk to the officer and when I picked it up there were no new messages from her. I figured she'd found a date in the last twenty minutes, since her phobia of being alone seemed to grow by the day, and I brushed it off.

I didn't hear from her on Thursday, either. Or Friday. I called Lee to see if he'd heard from her, and he hadn't either. I would've called Brian but I didn't have his number, so I waited until Saturday and then I emailed him. Emily didn't have a circle of friends, she preferred to be the glue that held several different people together. Brian hadn't heard from her either, and he was worried because they had plans for that evening, and she never bailed.

The three of us went to her house, where her roommate told us she hadn't seen her in a week, and that she didn't care to. We sat on the steps and debated what we should do until her roommate kicked us off. "Go to a restaurant or something," she said, "Don't sit on my fucking porch, do something with your lives."

Brian suggested we go to Chipotle, and Lee and I laughed. It was her favorite place. She used to text me in the middle of the day on a Monday saying she couldn't wait until Friday, which was the day she set aside to go to Chipotle. For a girl who had free dinner at nice restaurants all over Los Angeles every night, she had pretty low standards, food-wise. So we went to the closest one, and the guy at the register recognized Lee. They usually went together.

"Where's your friend?"

"I dunno, man, when was the last time she came in here?"

"Last week. She didn't come in yesterday, it was weird. I thought Friday was her day."

We looked at each other and shrugged. We ordered. Brian paid for all of us without asking, to avoid humiliating Lee, who didn't have a job, and because he was morally opposed to letting girls pay for themselves. When he pulled out his wallet I caught him checking his phone and I smiled.

"It's weird, right? I keep feeling some phantom vibration. Like she's texting me. But she's not."

He turned bright red. Before I ever met him Emily told me that Brian couldn't hide his embarrassment. "His ears almost glow," she'd said, and looking at him in the middle of Chipotle I could see what she meant. It wasn't just that he turned red - although he did - it was more that you could almost feel the tension radiating off him. "I wonder where she is," he said.

We sat down. No one ate. Lee spoke first. "We should call the cops."

"No," said Brian.

"No," I said.

"Why not? No one's seen her. This is what you do, when people go missing, you call the cops."

"Don't say that," I said. I glared at Lee. He glared back.

"They won't look for her," said Brian. He was staring at the ground so intently I was afraid to interrupt his gaze, the same way I'd be afraid of waking up a sleeping lion.

"Of course they'll look for her," Lee said. "She's young and pretty and white. We'll get her on the news or something, start a search party. Why wouldn't they?"

"They won't," Brian said, and he got up and threw his burrito away uneaten. Then he froze and stared into the trash, too ashamed to pull it back out. I don't think he was hungry, I think he was sorry to throw away something that reminded him of her.

Lee looked at me. "What's his problem?" he whispered. I shrugged. It wasn't my place to explain it to him. If Emily hadn't said anything it was because it was one of those things she didn't want him to know.

"Brian," I said, "There's no harm in calling the police. Why don't I do it? I know the most about her, anyway, so they won't need to talk to you unless they're really going to look for her. If they're not going to look for her, then you don't ever have to talk to them."

He was still staring into the trash. "They're going to drag her through the mud," he said. I put my burrito, still wrapped, in my purse and walked towards him. I gave him a hug, something I'd never done before, because I thought Emily would've wanted me to do it. She was a big fan of pretty much all physical contact, forever complaining about having to sleep alone or needing a hug at the end of a long day. I could only reach halfway up his torso, and the hug became an awkward slow motion thing where I stuck my face into his chest and wrapped my arms around him while he stood there, immobile. I turned around and Lee was standing up too, squeezing his burrito so hard it was coming unwrapped and pouring rice through the aluminum foil.

"Does someone want to fucking fill me in?"

Brian had known Emily since she was seventeen; I'd known her since she was nineteen; Lee had only known her for a year. Brian had seen her go through hell and back, and I had only heard about it. It was looking like Emily had tried so hard to put it all behind her that she hadn't mentioned it to Lee at all.

"No," Brian said, and broke free of my awkward half-hug to storm off. I didn't follow.

"What about you?"

"If she wanted you to know she would've told you," I tried half-heartedly.

"She can't tell me if she's dead in a ditch somewhere now can she?"

"Don't say that!"

"Why won't you call the police?"

"I will."

"Bullshit. I will."

I felt my chin trembling. All I could see was Emily's face the night she confessed she liked Lee. She was still with Dave then, but anyone with half a brain saw that it was over, long over, and when she met Lee she walked around with her face lit up like a Christmas tree. Even after she broke it off with Dave nothing ever happened between them, because she said it would be like waking up from a dream. "Real life is too hard, Jan," she told me. "What we have right now is beautiful. It makes us both so happy. Why make it real?" I didn't know how Lee felt about all that, but it was obvious he was still head over heels for her. But then again, so was Brian. So were all the guys she'd ever been with. I didn't want to bring Lee down to reality.

"Please don't call them, Lee. I promise I will."

"I deserve an explanation."

"You're not her boyfriend," I said, and the moment the words were out of my mouth I was so ashamed of myself I wanted to die, just dissolve right there on the spot.

He pulled out his phone. "Please don't."

"Don't talk to me," he said.

"I'm so sorry."

He dialed.

"Please, Lee."

"Then tell me."

I thought of Emily, beautiful smiling Emily, who had the hardest life of anyone I'd ever known but who was still so happy. I figured if she could be happy after all of that, she could get over me telling Lee what had happened to her. What I was really thinking was that she was either dead or she had run away, and either way she wouldn't care, but I couldn't acknowledge that thought.