In a separate statement, the police department made it clear that despite the family’s fears they do not yet suspect foul play. Nora is a popular, smart, and tenacious young woman by all accounts, and there is no evidence yet that she left the area under anything other than her own steam. Nora Altman is described as being roughly five foot nine with dark brown, almost black hair and blue eyes. Anyone with any information regarding her whereabouts is asked to call the number below.
When we were about six or seven Nora decided that the only popsicles she would eat were the red ones. They didn’t seem to have a flavor; they were just red the same way red M&Ms are just red too. Anyway, from then on she only ever ate the red popsicles. Even when we were seventeen. I didn’t care what color I had; as long as I had one, I was cool. Nora was like that about a lot of things. Single-minded, determined. Tunnel vision, I guess is what you’d call it. I used to laugh at her refusal to try any other flavors because it meant she often went without one, even when there were other colors available and I was happy sucking down on a blue one, or whatever else was available, but she was so sure of herself, so intent on the right-ness of her choice that her lack of desire to try something else seemed almost admirable.
By the time it came round to picking out colleges, Nora already knew where she was going to go. She’d known since our freshman year for Christ’s sake. It was absurd to me that she would limit her choices so much by only applying to Carnegie Mellon, but she was just so damn sure of herself. Of her choices. She’d been singing forever, and had appeared, more often than not as the main character, in every single musical theater production our high school had ever put on. It was pretty exhausting being her friend, to be honest. Me, I had about a thousand different ideas of where I wanted to go. I wanted Northwestern and NYU, Columbia and Stanford, Berkeley and Vanderbilt. By which I mean I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted. I was just as big a mess back then as I am now, I just used to have more options available to me. I laughed at Nora’s certainty about Carnegie Mellon just as I’d laughed at her red popsicle decree. She didn’t need any backup. She didn’t need options or choices—she knew exactly what she wanted, even before the rest of us realized we were expected to have formed some sort of opinion on our future selves. That is, of course, until she had all her options taken from her. Until her future went from certain to nonexistent.
I can’t untangle lost-Nora from alive-Nora; they’ve become the same person so much that every memory I have of her is blighted, dimmed by the fact of her being gone. Sometimes I can see her as bright and clear as a summer’s day. She stands in my mind in full technicolor, a riot of color saturation. But most of the time the way I think of her is the way I think about the time when we lost her. They’ve become one and the same, and in a way it’s like losing her all over again. Just as I was robbed of my best friend, I was robbed of my memories of her too.
She got in of course. The letter came, in all its cream-colored glory, heavy with anticipation and congratulations, Carnegie Mellon somehow the only people in the country who didn’t realize what had happened to Nora. Nate showed it to me and Ange, his face grim but somehow determined, and I tried so hard to work out what he was feeling; did he think she was still out there, desperate to be found? Or maybe desperate to remain lost? It took me a couple days to realize that he’d just come to the same conclusion I had. Because in that moment, when I saw those words, “Congratulations, Nora Altman, and welcome to Carnegie Mellon!” I just knew. I knew she was gone for good and not because she didn’t want to be found.
It’s exhausting coming up with synonyms and euphemisms for dead. We had to use so many in those first few months when she was simply gone. Missing. But that was the first time I let the word enter my vocabulary. It was the first time I realized she wasn’t just a space in my life. Someone hadn’t simply thrown their hand into the ring and snatched her out of our lives. Someone had killed her.
The impotence I felt in that moment and in the months, years, that followed doesn’t even bear describing. It was all-consuming. It’s one thing to realize your best friend has been murdered; it’s a completely different thing to watch, from the sidelines, as those in power, those with control, fail at almost every turn to find or apprehend the killer. To refuse even to admit that she has been murdered. It is, apparently, very hard to find a killer when you can’t even find the body.
So, it was that impotence, that dreaded powerlessness that I was thinking about when I parted ways with Ange at the diner, and instead of going home to crawl back into bed as I probably would have done ten years before, I got into my dad’s car and drove out to where Noelle’s body had been found and Nora’s car had been abandoned all those years ago. My hands gripped the steering wheel ever tighter the closer I got and by the time the flickering yellow police tape came into view a low buzzing hum had taken up residence throughout my entire body.
I tried to breathe deeply, pulling over to the side of the road and staring out at the desolate scene. There was nothing much to see, but just a few yards away I could make out the ribbon tied to one of the nearby trees. It must have been replaced a thousand times, but there had been one there ever since Nora went missing. I could still remember the discussion of what color ribbon to choose; the mundane back and forth between yellow and blue barely cutting through the cloud I’d been drifting through since she disappeared. Finally, I’d had to shout, yell, my voice catching on the words, that it should be purple. I was the only one who remembered it was her favorite color.
I got out of the car and walked towards the police tape before looking around me and slipping underneath it. There was nothing to see, really. I followed a very small path into the woods, but the recent snow meant everything had been covered over. Willard must have been quick to get even his low-quality photo. I stopped walking after a while, aware that I was just getting ever deeper into the woods, and with no real reason. Whatever it was I was looking for, I thought, I wouldn’t find it here.
I heard the crunch of the snow coming from behind me before I heard his voice.
“You shouldn’t be here, Fielder.”
I turned around to see Leo standing at the edge of the clearing. He was with Bright, both of them dressed in their blue police uniforms.
“Didn’t you notice the big yellow ‘do not cross’ line down at the road?”
“I didn’t come from the road. I was just taking a walk and came across it.”
Leo rolled his eyes at me. “Don’t lie to us, Mads. I recognize your dad’s car. I saw it every day in the high school parking lot, remember? Just like everybody else.” Just one of the many downsides to having a parent as your high school principal.
I grimaced. “Oh, right.”
“What are you doing here, Maddie?” Bright asked gruffly. Bright and Serena had been together for almost all of high school and even into college before they broke up, and I like to think he held a certain amount of affection towards us Fielder girls. He never really said much to me, but then he never really said much to anyone, so I didn’t take it too personally.
“I just wanted to see it. I’m sorry.”
“How’d you even know where to come? I didn’t think details had been released yet.” Leo’s chest was puffed up in indignation, his face a caricature of concern.
“Ange,” I said simply. I didn’t add that an article detailing the existence and nature of the crime had already gone live on the Madison Journal’s website.
Leo groaned and turned away from me as if disgusted, kicking at a small drift of snow. Bright and I caught one another’s eye, but I looked away quickly. He just stood there, arms crossed against his broad chest, jaw set firmly against the cold and the crime scene, determined to remain as stoic as ever. I’d seen him like this countless times before: impassive as a rock in