Suddenly, in my hands' journey along the wall, I felt a point of paper. It interrupted the trail of my hand with a pinprick to my finger. I paused and then yanked at it. At first, it was tight, but with another hard yank, it came forward into my hands.
How could she have known that I would find this? Emma seemed to know everything about me. Things I didn't even know. She knew that I would look and look until I discovered her reason for calling me here. And yet, there was nothing I really knew about her. I knew that people liked her, with her perfect teeth, smile, and sensual mouth. Men adored her and often found themselves drooling and tripping after her no matter where she went. Many a man that I had known and liked found that they’d liked me too, but once they’d seen Emma, their heads were turned irrevocably. She had the classically desired high cheekbones and long wavy, reddish-brown hair. To my detriment, she was just as enticing in spirit as in appearance.
Emma had this laugh that would make you want to laugh too, no matter what it was about, and it drew everyone in until they were crowded around her. My parents had worried that I was becoming a bit obsessed. “I am not a lesbian,” I remembered telling them all through high school. It was true, but they weren’t convinced. Eventually, they stopped asking, but I knew it continued to unsettle them. I didn’t want her to make love to me. I only wanted her to see me. Truly see me. And if someone like her were to see me, then I would be worth something too.
I wouldn’t be silly old me with the dull hair and the thin, non-sensual lips. I had a laugh that did not light up the room and draw others in or hair that bounced or cheekbones that held their height. I had only books, words, and desperation that seemed to cling to me like the mist, keeping others at bay as I clawed and begged for what I wanted. What I needed.
The letter. It was a fresh white envelope, although it was slightly scratched by the roughness of the stones. On the back was written the words 'Find me' in Emma’s beautiful, sloping, girlish handwriting. She had not changed it ever since we were in high school. Some people might find it silly, but it had always thrilled me for when I would see it on paper in my hand, then I knew that she had written to ME.
See if you can find me. It will be well worth your effort. At the end, we can go for cocktails, just like you’ve been wanting to for so long. We’ll wear our best outfits and hold our heads high as we clink glasses with the best of them at the place you love but can’t go alone to. You need me. Good luck with your search!
Emma
I held the white, crisp letter tightly in my hands until I could hear that satisfying crinkle of paper. It was my letter. Mine. And now, I must seek her out, to find just exactly she wanted me to find. Everything else was now forgotten, and now I sought what I so desperately desired in the depths of my core. She was going to take me out. We were going to go out together and ‘clink glasses with the best of them’ as if we were flappers out on the town. Kindred spirits. My heart yearned for that gleaming gift she now held out before me. In the haze ahead, I could see the cottage, and it was tinier than I expected. But as the sole figure in the mist, it felt imposing, and it took up all of my vision.
It continued to look familiar to me in a sharp, fleeting way, but since I couldn’t place it properly, I let the thought drop to the side and moved forward. I had my desire ahead of me, so close now. This was certainly what she wanted me to find. She was always hiding little somethings in strange places, and in this case, it was herself. I never really knew why she did it, but one thought I had was that she enjoyed the puppetry of it. I always obliged with my soft cloth movements, easily led by her strong strings.
The closer I got to the cottage, it felt like the building of a climax, the penultimate scene in a book when you finally get to figure out what the main character was doing all this time. Not that I could ever be any sort of main character to anything. But it felt nice and strangely fresh to think of myself like that. I pushed open the door. It creaked eerily. How appropriate. I smiled. I called out her name, so used was I to the search, the constant search for my beautiful, uncatchable Emma.
