A. M. Taylor - Forget Me Not

“Photos?” I asked, barely able to get the word out. I wanted to press pause, to catch my breath; everything was moving so fast, too fast. Two days before I’d stood in front of Elle, talking to her, watching her, worrying over her, and now Ange was talking about crime scenes and photos and I couldn’t quite figure how we’d got here.

“Yeah. He went up to the scene as soon as he heard about it. I must have just missed him yesterday when I was there. They wouldn’t let him take any until the scene had been cleared and the body—”

There were those words again. The body .

The color drained from the room around me and I was drowning in silence.

It was impossible for me to reconcile those two words with Elle. I didn’t want to slip into such anonymity so quickly and so easily. I wanted to hold onto her, as I knew her, for as long as possible, because I knew, so very well, and so very, very painfully, how quickly and easily that whole person would soon turn into an image, an idea, a talking point, and finally, just a memory.

One of the strangest things about when Nora disappeared—around the time of the media furor, anyway—was how present and not-present she was. She was everywhere. In every article, on every TV news show, she even made it into Us Weekly for Christ’s sake. But she was nowhere as well. There were no photos of a crime scene because there wasn’t one. The photo that got circulated to the media was the one taken in junior year for the school yearbook. She was just simply—gone. But Elle was being referred to as “the body” now. Stripped down to her most basic function. When I thought of Elle I thought of her either laughing while sucking on a milkshake aged sixteen, or staring me down hard-eyed while playing board games aged six. I didn’t want to replace that with this new image that was coalescing in my mind, based on scraps of information and an overworked imagination.

“Maddie?” Ange was saying, reaching over to lay her hand over my forearm. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, swallowing, “I’ll be fine.”

“So, Willard managed to get a picture of something that was left at the scene.”

“What was it?” I asked, suddenly sharp.

“It was this kind of symbol. In the snow.”

“Do you have a photo of it?” I asked.

“Not a good one, but Willard emailed it to me so that my paper could use it.”

“Can I see it?”

“Are you sure you want to?”

I swallowed, not sure if I could answer, not sure if I really did want to see the photo. I realized that it hadn’t quite sunk in yet; that I’d been skating over the surface of this loss, waiting for the ice to break under my weight and for me to fall through the frigid water below. I still couldn’t believe it, that all this was happening again, that Elle was gone, that Elle had been murdered. It felt ripped from the pages of a horror movie script, and yet I knew it had to be real because it all felt so familiar. I hated how used to grief Nora’s disappearance had made me, but I still wasn’t sure I was ready to confront the reality of Elle’s death, because doing so would chip away at my memories of her that were already starting to dim and distort.

The body .

The words echoed in my head and I shivered involuntarily as Ange said: “Mads, you want to see the photo?”

I could have said no, of course, but I didn’t want to give up so easily. Elle—a lot like Nora—had often demanded attention, and if there was any time she deserved it, it was now. So, I nodded yes, and Ange flipped her iPhone towards me after scrolling through her photos. I stared down at the screen.

“Does this mean anything to you? The symbol?” she asked.

The photo was taken at a strange angle, Willard obviously having tried his best to get the clearest shot, but all I could really make out was a symbol drawn into the snow the way a child does. It was the image of what looked like a compass, except that where the four points should have read N, S, E, W, every single one pointed to an “N.” I stayed looking down at it for what must have been a long time because after a while Ange had to clear her throat just to get my attention.

“You all right, Mads?” she asked.

“Yeah—” my voice caught on the word and I took a gulp of coffee. “Yeah.” I passed the phone back towards Ange. “It’s that compass thing the Altmans have at their lake house. Their granddad made it when Noah was born, remember?”

“What?”

“The symbol. It’s a copy of the ‘N’ compass at their lake house. You don’t recognize it? All of the ‘Ns’ represent one of the kids, right?” I traced my finger around the outside of the circle. “See? Nate, Nora, Noelle, Noah.”

“Shit, I didn’t even think of that. And we were just at the lake house on Sunday.”

She shrank down into her booth with a heavy sigh as Ruby the waitress deposited our breakfasts in front of us. I smiled up in thanks and noticed her glancing quizzically down at the phone in Ange’s hand. Ange quickly made the screen go dark and said: “Thanks, Ruby.”

“You girls need anythin’ else?” Ruby asked.

“Just more coffee, please.”

“Sure, you want me to keep it coming?”

We both nodded and with that Ruby went off to get us more coffee. Ange deposited the contents of her fruit cup over her waffles and then poured over at least three quarters of her jug of maple syrup. I watched as she began cutting up the waffles, adding blueberries and sliced strawberry to the forkful and then swirling it around in a pool of syrup.

“What do you think the significance is?” she asked as her dangerously loaded fork wavered towards her mouth.

I looked down to focus on my own plate, breaking off a piece of crispy bacon with my fingers and distractedly dipping it into my jug of syrup. I couldn’t get the words “the body” out of my mind. It was ricocheting off everything else I heard or thought, tainting everything, draining the world of meaning.

“I don’t know,” I said softly, wishing that I did. We were both quiet for a while until I asked: “So, did you get your article finished?”

She looked up sharply, her brown eyes coming into focus on me before she swallowed her mouthful of waffle and said: “Well, it’s my job, right?”

“I’m not judging you, Ange. Just wanted to know if you met your deadline.”

Ange flattened her lips into a straight line, picking up her phone again and looking for something on it. “It should be up by now,” she said. “Yeah, here we go. You want to read it?”

I nodded, reaching for her phone again and leaning back in the booth to read her article. As I did so a white noise roar screamed inside my head, drowning out the rest of the diner.

January 9, 2018

The body of a 17-year-old girl, Noelle Altman, was found just outside Forest View close to the side of the road just off Old Highway 51 in the early hours of yesterday morning, January 8th. She is believed to have died between the hours of 8 p.m. on January 7th when she was last seen and 7 a.m. on January 8th when she was found by a local woman who drove past and noticed an abandoned car.

Noelle was the sister of Nora Altman who has been missing from Forest View since January 8th, 2008 when her car was found abandoned in the same spot by a local police officer. As with the disappearance of Nora Altman, the police currently have no leads as to the murder of Noelle Altman, and are asking that anyone with any pertinent information to please step forward. They do not think the two incidents are connected and a spokesperson has revealed that the possibility of suicide has been completely ruled out.