not about angels { isla/meri }

I looked all over the house in her usual hideouts—the backyard, the basement, under the kitchen table, under the coffee table, the corner of the living room where we keep her blanket—but Penny was nowhere to be found.

It’s not like her to run away like this. She’s a border collie, aren’t they supposed to stay and protect their families? Isn’t that their thing? My mom used to tell me stories about when I was just starting to run all the time, when Penny would guard the perimeter of the yard to make sure I didn’t go too far. One baby step off the edge of the grass and she’d cut me off, her black body shoving me firmly back into my parents’ line of sight. She was a puppy then, and definitely thinner (too many handouts under the dinner table had changed this), but she was a horse compared to me.

She loved us, right? I am convinced that dogs can love. Maybe even more than people since they can’t think badly of you, right? Different cultural standards. She loves us, present tense.

So why would you run away?

I better start looking for her before the panic sets in. Although who am I kidding, isn’t it setting in already? I can already feel my throat narrowing, my breath struggling to take hold in my lungs. It’s that animal part deep down inside of me that I can never seem to control when things start to go wrong. Like when I’m watching the Games, and one of the cannons goes off. A little voice that says, ”It’s one of ours.” Penny is missing. Someone stole her. She’s lost. A Peacekeeper got her.

She’s dead.

No! I scream in my head with such imaginary force that tears burn at my eyes. I refuse to believe the worst case scenario. Penny is a good dog, and a smart one, and even though she’s too fat to run as fast as she used to, no one’s going to try to catch her anyway. Everyone likes dogs. No one would hurt her.

Maybe she’s just taking a walk. I slip on my shoes and set off at a fast walk down the road, my feet clogging a one-man army cadence against the sidewalk. I try my best to imagine myself as an experienced detective, or a bounty hunter. A solo search party, since Mom, Dad, and my brother are at work. Just the three of us: me, myself, and I. I crane my neck to get a better view of the backyards of the houses lining the road—maybe she’s looking for other dogs there?

”Penny! PEH-NEEEEE!” I push two fingers against my tongue and send out my best whistle. It probably isn’t loud enough—my dog is just about deaf at this point.

After trying for like fifteen minutes without any luck I see the cemetery up ahead. Its black fence is taller than me and pointy on the tips of the bars—are they trying to keep live people out, or dead people in? I shiver at the thought. I hate these places. Sure, the black bars of the fence are probably far enough apart for a dog to slip through, but would Penny really want to go in there? I’m not sure that she would, but the more I think about it the more I’m sure that if that is the one place I don’t check, that’s the one place she’ll be. That’s how these things work, right?

I suck in my fear with a breath of humid air and push the gate open.

I can’t count the headstones. There are too many. So many people dead, some old and some young, way too young. Are there more dead people than living people? I guess it would be optimistic to think that at least they’re better off dying here than dying in the Games, but that doesn’t make me feel better. This place gives me the creeps. I hope Penny isn’t in here. This would give here the creeps, too.

I guess I believe in ghosts in the way that most people believe in them—only in cases when they want to. Some people want ghosts to be real so they can talk to their dead grandmother, or say goodbye to someone they lost. Me, I don’t want to believe in them right now. I want them to go either up, or down, or nowhere. Just as long as they’re not here. But so far, there’s not a soul—living or dead—to be seen.

Hang on. There’s one.

There’s a girl, sitting in front of a tombstone. Suddenly I feel intrusive, like I’ve walked in on someone when they’re naked, vulnerable. She rises to her feet and I take a step back, not wanting to be seen. Even though technically I have every right to be here, graveyards belong to the mourners. I’m just a searcher.

What if she’s seen Penny?

Acting mechanically on this glimmer of hope, my feet set off in her direction. She leaves through the gate and one moment later, I open and close it behind me. I could have yelled for her to stop but it feels like something about the cemetery has shut me up, rendered me mute. So I resort to following her out of a graveyard into the streets, like some creep.

”Hey um, eh-excuse me?” I stutter nervously. ”I was wondering, have you seen a black and white dog about this high?’

I flatten my palm to demonstrate a height about as tall as my knee, but then I see the tears on her face. Shit. ”Oh, uh. Sorry. I’ll just, uh--” I stuck a thumb over my shoulder in a get-out-of-here motion, but my feet were frozen to the pavement. ”Sorry. Um, are you all right?" I’ve cried a lot in my life but never about people in the cemetery; I wasn’t sure how she felt but I could guess it wasn’t 'all right'. But what else could I say? Regardless, I found myself standing in the same spot, hoping desperately that there was some way I could help her—or some way she could help me.