My Sally Michaels

I would walk to the river every weekend with Sally Michaels. We would hold hands as we skipped down the road singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” We would belt it out so loud it would be earsplitting to the neighbors. Sometimes it would rain and we would catch the falling drops in our mouth, but most the time it would shine so bright that we would have contests to see who could look at the sun the longest without turning our head to blink away the polka dots in our eyes. She was my best friend then and we were inseparable. Sally and I were like two peas in a pod. We would finish each other’s sentences and dress alike to the point of being unnoticeable as ourselves. Sally was a silly girl. She could always make me laugh. She would bend over backwards or do flips on the trampoline like an acrobat. She would be the one to initiate karaoke at parties by singing “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”

She and I both had long thick flowing blonde hair, stunning ocean blue eyes and a favorite pair of paint stained jeans we wore that year to camp when we both fell in love with Mason Charlie Jacobs. We never told each other that we each kissed him in the summer of 82. We had seen each other behind the coke machines, smooching him up. I had my eyes open when I saw her standing there with her hand on a nickel pushing it into the slot of the vending machine, and I saw her there with him the very next day kissing him with her eyes open. So I know she saw me, however we never came out and talked about it, I think it was a secret we both obviously knew we had, but we just thought it would be best to not speak about it.

We were Sally and Becca; which was like pork chops and applesauce to some people. I was all Sally had. Her mom left her with her father when she was born and her father was just a dead beat who still lived with his mother. Sally always told me that I changed her life. She’d say, “I am never going to let go of you Becca, you have changed my life for the better.” I never really knew what that meant. I could just assume it had something to do with the slump she was in with her family life.

Sally was so beautiful, much more than me. That is what I have believed since kindergarten when we first shared our lunch’s together out by the swing set. Ever since I can remember, she had a porcelain looking face that looked like she had permanently painted on rosy cheeks. Her lips had always been the color of red like the poisonous apple from Snow White. Her hair was softer than mine; she said she brushed it a hundred and one strokes every night before bed and a hundred and one more in the morning before breakfast. Maybe that was why hers was so shiny and straight and mine looked dull and kinky.

Even though I would insist that she was so much prettier than me, she’d look at me and roll her eyes as she’d say, “Ha, you’re the pretty one Becca. Don’t flatter me with lies.”

My Daddy Paul had always liked when Sally would come over. He didn’t mind that she was around making racket with me or eating dinner with us. I thought for sure he wouldn’t want her over so much since we had not a lot of money and we didn’t need another mouth to feed every night. But Daddy Paul was so fond of Sally and took her under his wing like his daughter. He took us clothes shopping, took us to movies, bought us candy, and popped us popcorn as we sat on the couch watching Top Gun and drooling over Tom Cruise.

Daddy Paul would always take Sally home around 11 p.m. in our 1965 beat up Chevy truck that smelled like rotting leather and gasoline, just in time to call each other at midnight and watch Growing Pains together as we snickered about which of us would grown up to marry Kirk Cameron. But every once in awhile, Sally wouldn’t call me, and then in the morning she‘d tell me she forgot or fell asleep. Daddy Paul would sometimes tell me that she fell asleep in the car so not to expect a phone call.

Daddy Paul was my mom’s second husband. My real dad died when I was just one and so Daddy Paul adopted me as his own and then my brother came along four years later. He was a strong man that never liked to discipline me. He had soft hands that would hold mine when we were grocery shopping or walking through the Whitmore-and-half mall.

Eventually though, Sally and I faded as friends. She’d walk past me a school, barely glancing at me with her head to the floor. She didn’t acquire a new friend, no, that wasn’t the problem, and now I wished it was. Our junior year was hardest. Applying for colleges, or deciding what else to do after graduation. I was sure that Sally would be a shoe in for Harvard to be a lawyer or NYU to be a doctor, but she wasn’t even looking at her options. She wouldn’t talk to me and tell me what was wrong, and now that I think about it, I had spent so much time trying to be like her, I never saw what was going on right under my nose. And after awhile, Sally wasn’t showing up for school. I’d sit in math and stare at the back of Jason Coal’s head and then look to my right to an empty seat and desk where Sally normal would sit.

The news would come on at night, and tell me that Sally was reported missing by Daddy Paul. He said that he took the initiative because he knew her family wouldn’t. But I have to admit, I never thought Sally Michael’s was missing. I thought she knew exactly where she was and when she wanted to come home, she would. She had probably run away from her home because of her dad or something. Why she didn’t run to my house was weird. She always ran here. She’d tiptoe out of her house after Daddy Paul dropped her off, and she would climb in through my bedroom window at 1 a.m. and sneak under the covers with me as we would snicker about being rebellious and possibly getting caught in the morning.

Yet, something seemed different about this. Daddy Paul kept telling me, “She will turn up somewhere Twitter-bug. And if she doesn’t, then we will just have to move on.” This wasn’t too comforting. I wanted Sally back in my life now, and no one could tell me she wasn’t coming home at least sooner or later.

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The years passed without a word from her. And I can’t begin to describe how college was without her near me. Daddy Paul paid my through college, said it was because he loved me and Sally would have wanted me to go and become the best detective I could. I was doing it for her. If no one else was going to find her, I would. I went all four years to get that degree before I could start my own investigation into finding her. I had searched everywhere in 1991. The last place I looked before giving up was my Daddy Paul’s old Chevy truck. He had that towed away to the junk yard when I was a junior, right when Sally went missing.

Theodore Linchard’s Junk Yard was about two minutes away from Whitmore where we lived on the top of Pickle Hill on South 86. Theo looked at me scratching his head as he said, “I still have that truck tucked away in the storage area that your daddy rented five years ago to store it in. Can’t think why he wanted it in there and never bothered to ask. I have an extra key here, you sure he won’t mind you rummaging in it? Naw, of course he won’t… what am I thinksing. You run along there Becca, its number 86 along the Wish-wash river bank. Don’t tell your Daddy I gave you the key, he’d curse me out… put everything back where you found it Bec.”

86, 86, 86- amazingly, that number haunted me for so long that you’d think eventually it’d lose meaning. But 86 still rang clear to me as I walked along the river that Sally and I would soak our feet in on those hot summer days.

I crossed the path to the storage sheds where I found 86. I pushed in the key and turned it with all my might. Holding my breath until I was blue in the face, I squatted to the dirt beneath me and pulled up on the handle until the door flung open. There it sat, “Old Red” with disintegrating black tires worn down to the axle. The back window was smashed and I could see the rearview mirror dangling by a thread of plastic. Daddy Paul always had hay and whatnot hanging out of the back, but now the six foot bed was clean as a whistle; not speck of dust dirt or hay. I strolled my finger tip down the edge of the truck as I found my way to the passenger side door.

That is when I saw her. She was decomposed, but knew it was her. Sally Whitney Michaels, the same one that I had grown to love as a sister.

“I had hoped I could tell you one day. Maybe explain myself. But as the time went on, I couldn’t break it to you.” Daddy Paul was standing in the door way to the storage unit when I turned around. “I am sorry Becca. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. It was the only way I could get her to keep her mouth shut. She screamed a lot, telling me to stop. But I just pressed on, raping her because I had to satisfy my own needs. I went too far, I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

Daddy Paul said sorry a lot to me after that, especially since I found enough evidence to prove him guilty in the raping and murdering of Sally. I have to say that there has never been a prouder moment in my existence then putting him behind bars for life without parole.

I guess it is devastating when you find out your parents are just human and make mistakes- even if they are unforgivable.