“Hey Petra, Gulliver.” They looked up at Wilha as she approached and smiled, slight as it was, to see her.

“Wilha, where have you been hiding?” Gulliver asked in his deep, Peter Steele voice.

“I’ve been around.”

“Haven’t we all?” Mischief glimmered in Petra’s eyes as she cast a coy glance to Gulliver.

“Say, have you seen Calei?” Wilha’s eyes strayed from Petra and lingered on the statue of a man holding an umbrella.

“What? Trouble at home for the little lovebirds?” Gulliver gave a lopsided smirk to Wilha until Petra drove an elbow into his ribs. “What the hell was that for?!”

“Show a little tact. ‘Fraid not, honey. She hasn’t been around the usual places. Have you asked Jakob?”

“Um, no. Jakob and I don’t really talk.” Her voice trailed off into nothing.

“Well, you know how Calei is, Wilha. Sometimes she just goes off for a while and doesn’t say a word to anyone. She’s a big girl.”

“I know, but I figured she would have left a note or something for me. So I wouldn’t worry.”

“Well, stop worrying. You need to take your mind off things. We’re going to see Sylvia’s Ghost at La Luna tomorrow night. You wanna come with? “

“Thanks, but I’ve got stuff to work on. I gotta go. See you around.” Wilha turned to leave.

“Take care, honey. If we see Calei we’ll let her know how much she has you worried. Guilt can do great things for your sex life. Right, Gulliver?” Gulliver squirmed a little bit and blushed under his make-up. Normally the idea of Gulliver blushing would have made Wilha crack a smile, but she had too much on her mind tonight.

She walked along for a while and thought about hopping a bus home. Nah, she thought. It wasn’t too cold and the walk would give her time to think.

She opened up the beat-up She-Ra lunchbox she liked to use as a purse and pulled out a pack of Marlboro menthols. Flipping the top open, she pulled out one of the cigarettes and lit it with the Betty Page Zippo that Calei gave her for her birthday last year. As she put her stuff back, she looked at the lunchbox, little bits of rust showing where the paint had flaked away over the years, and smiled a little bit. It amused her to think about the mall stores selling these same lunchboxes as “retro” for $20, when she got hers for $2.95 at K-Mart when she was in third grade. This box was the real deal and saw a whole lot of PB&J and Capri-Sun before it got stuck in the attic because “big girls don’t carry lunchboxes,” as she told her mother only a year later. It wasn’t until Calei came into her life that she found the simple joys of childish things. She had that effect on people. Everyone who knew Calei saw some kind of wonder in how she loved little things. One day when they were at Wilha’s parents house, they were going through the attic looking at all the sundry crap that Wilha had accumulated as a kid. That was when Calei found the old She-Ra lunchbox and feel in love with it. She told Wilha how cool of a purse it would make. Suddenly, after all these years, she saw her third grade lunch box in a completely new light and she carried it ever since.

“Damn it!” she hissed to herself. No matter what she did, she couldn’t stop worrying about Calei. It had been three days. One morning Wilha got up and went to her job as manager of a little alternative clothes boutique in Pioneer Place and when she came home that night, Calei was gone. Not so strange, since she was prone to take off and visit friends when she had time to kill, which was infrequent but not uncommon. Her job as a freelance graphic designer gave her a flexible schedule, but her current job was pretty time consuming and she was under a deadline. She wouldn’t have left town. Wilha made some phone calls to some friends of theirs in the hopes Calei was hanging out somewhere to clear her mind. Sometimes she needed to do that during a big job to “keep her perspective fresh.” No one had seen her. Well, nothing to be done tonight, she thought. Wilha went to bed that night and had some troubled dreams. When she got up in the morning she had a nagging feeling something was wrong. At one point she thought about calling the police, but Calei would kill her if it turned out to be nothing. Besides, what did the police are about some missing little Goth girl, who had a habit of wandering of anyway? They couldn’t, and probably wouldn’t, do a damn thing. So she went on with her life, but still couldn’t stop worrying.

She looked up and realized that she was in front of Ozone. Well, it was time to suck it up and swallow her pride. She had to talk to Jakob whether she liked it or not. Jakob was Calei’s brother and a complete asshole. At least to Wilha. Somehow the two of them just immediately hated each other for no apparent reason. He was just another grunge-era slacker trying to do as little as possible until the “big break” when his band was discovered. Wilha was always the first to point out that a band has to get gigs before they can get discovered. And it certainly helps when they don’t play crappy bubble-gum punk and call it “innovative, high energy pop-rock.” Her nickname for Jakob’s band was “Stink 182”, which always got a secret chuckle from Calei, even though she hated the fact that they couldn’t get along.

Wilha stepped into the record shop and looked around. The place smelled like incense, jasmine or something like it, and “A Curiosity” by My Scarlet Life, one of Calei’s favorite bands, was playing in the background. Jakob was at the counter ringing up some skinhead for a couple of ska CD’s. She stood off to the side and waited ‘til he was done. As the skinhead left, Jakob saw her standing there.

“What do you need, ‘Morticia’,” he jibbed at her.

Aside from you to come up with a more clever insult? she thought to herself. She had to keep this as civil as possible. “Have you seen or heard from Calei?”

“What? Did she come to her senses and take off on you?”

“Look, she’s been gone for almost four days now. She didn’t leave a note or anything and I’m worried about her. Do you know where she is?” Jakob got serious.

“I haven’t talked to her for, like, two or three weeks. Did you two have a fight?”

“No, things were going fine. I left for work Wednesday and she was home working on some sketches. When I got home she was gone and I haven’t seen or heard from her since.”

“She does this sometimes. Look, if I hear anything I’ll call, but you better do the same.”

“I understand. . . and thanks.”

“For what?”

“For being human to me for a change.”

“She’s my little sister and all the family I’ve got. I couldn’t take it if something happened to her. I may not like you, but I know you feel the same way.”

“Yeah, all right, later.”

Wilha turned and left Ozone, feeling a little weird. It felt strange for him to be nice to her. She lit up another cigarette and started walking home again. It was about twenty minutes before she reached 21st. She turned and headed up 21st toward the apartment on Johnson she shared with Calei. As she was walking the chorus from “A Curiosity” came into her head.

One Saturday night Wilha and some of her Goth friends were invited to a party just a few blocks from St. Mary’s. So they went and were kinda bored. It was a bunch of faux-intellectuals talking “philosophy-for-dummies” and trying to impress all the petite little Goth girls who didn’t know Faust from a faucet and swallowed their bullshit like they swallowed anything else, like it was the most delicious thing in the world. But Wilha saw through their crap and they, wisely, avoided her. She was proud of the fact that she was better read than most of these idiots and had, unlike many of the other girls here, more purpose in life than to be a sperm receptacle for these mentally deficient predators. She as about to grab her friends and leave when she saw her: a beautiful, black-clad goddess. Her heart skipped a bit and she though she might have a heart attack if she didn’t look away, but she couldn’t. Her goddess wore a long skirt, form-fitting velvet blouse and a suit jacket to top it of. With her make-up and hair, she couldn’t help but feel that Death had stepped off the pages of Sandman and that Neil Gaiman had to be hiding in the rafters pulling the strings on his wondrous creation. But this girl, this goddess, was real. And she had to meet her.

Wilha was no stranger to the thought of being with another girl, and had toyed with those feelings over the past year, fooling around with some of her friends. But she had never felt like this for a girl. Her heart racing, her palms sweating, unable to tear her eyes away from her. But she couldn’t move. It was like she was paralyzed until this exquisite girl looked right at her and it felt like a bolt of lightning shot between them. And she knew this dream girl felt it too. Something pulled them together and they started talking. The night flew by like a blur. She left her friends at the party and slipped of with Calei. They ended up at Wilha’s house and had to sneak in so her parent’s wouldn’t catch them. That night was the first of many times that they made love and it was the happiest night of their lives. From that moment on they were almost inseparable, spending every free moment together. They moved into their little apartment together as soon as they had the money. Calei put her natural artistic skills to work and made quite a name for herself in a few years. Wilha worked part-time jobs and went to college. Somehow they managed to scrape by, but they were always happy together.

Wilha looked up at the marquee of the Cinema 21 as she walked by. They were showing a revival of Andy Warhol’s Dracula, one of Calei’s favorite movies. She kind of wondered if she might be inside, watching the movie over and over, watching Udo Kier lap virginal blood from the floor like a depraved animal. Probably not. One more block and just around the corner, home. The Marcella Apartments, their home for the past six years.

She pulled her keys out of her box and opened the front door. Their apartment, an unassuming one-bedroom, was on the fourth floor and it was a walk-up. Slowly, she trudged her way up the steps until she reached the door to their apartment. She stood there for a second, listening for any sound of occupancy, hoping Calei might have come home. Nothing. Her keys turned sluggishly in the lock as she let herself in. Inside, the apartment was dark. She flipped on the light and set her box down on the coffee table. The light on the phone was flashing, message. She checks the machine, one message. She hits the button and grabs a bottle of water from the fridge as it plays. Great, it was her mother nagging her about visiting her grandmother in the home. That place was way too depressing, even for her.

Now she definitely needed a cigarette. The pack in here box was empty, so she went to get another from the bedroom. Empty too. She could walk down to the Plaid Pantry down the street, but she was tired of walking. Well, the cigarette fairy’s not going to bring them to me, she thought. She grabbed her box and headed out the door. She opened the door and screamed, as her heart jumped into her throat. Calei was just outside the door, fiddling with her keys, which she dropped, startled by the door suddenly opening. Wilha slumped against the doorframe and tried to catch her breath.

“Where the hell have you been!? Why didn’t you tell me where you were!? You can’t call!? Don’t you know how worried I’ve been!? God, I don’t know if I should kiss you or slap you!” Calei stood up, keys in hand, and stared at her for a second. She looked a little worse for wear. Her clothes were dirty and torn slightly and she could use a shower.

“Are you done? I’d like to come in.” Wilha stepped out of the doorway and motioned Calei in.

“After you.” Calei walked in and set her big black bag she always carried on the floor and slumped onto the couch.

“Now, should I answer those questions in any particular order?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass with me. I’ve been worried to death about you. Where the hell have you been.”

“I needed some inspiration for the mural I’ve been working on. You know, the forest landscape. So I headed out to the woods and got lost. I wandered around for a couple days before I finally found a dirt road. It took another day before a car came along and gave me a ride back to town. So, in case you can’t tell, I’ve had a bad week and don’t feel like being yelled at.” Wilha started to feel pretty bad for yelling at her.

“Oh god, I’m sorry. Are you okay? How did you survive out there for a week with no food and water?”

“Thankfully there was a stream running through the area I was in. And I actually had some stuff to eat in my bag, so don’t ever complain about how much crap I carry in here. Let’s see you survive off what’s in your little lunchbox there.” She mustered a wry smile. “But I’m starving. All I really had was a couple bags of cashews, some Skittles and a couple ClifBars.”

“Some people would have just gone to the library and looked at pictures of a forest for inspiration. But not you, oh no. You have to hike off and nearly get yourself killed. Go take a shower and I’ll make you some mac and cheese or something.”

“That sounds good.” Calei got up and started heading for the bathroom, undressing as she went. She stopped just before walking into the bathroom. “I’m really sorry I scared you. I’ll try not to be so flaky from now on.” Wilha walked over and hug her.

“I love you the way you are. But, next time you want to tromp off to the woods for inspiration, let me know. I was a Girl Scout, after all.” They both laughed and Calei went take her shower. Wilha turned and went into the kitchen to make something for them to eat. She suddenly realized that she never went out and got cigarettes. Oh well, she thought, Calei hates it when she smokes anyway. Maybe it was time to quit.