I dream of you sometimes.

Erratic and impulsive, just like in life, I never know when you might show up. When I might close my eyes, attempt to lose myself in the merciful black, only for your face to click into existence like an intrusive thought. Like an unwelcome visitor, your foot wedged in the door, coercing your way inside my mind the way you always did.

The dream, though. It’s always the same. Walking into the bathroom at night, bare feet cold on the slick white tile. All the lights off as I stare at my reflection in the vanity mirror—only it’s you I see, not me. It’s you: haunted, strange, features murky like old bathwater, rippled by time and the lukewarm memories. Eyes like sea glass, foggy and unfocused. The kind we used to collect at the beach. You’re eighteen in my dream, the age you were when you disappeared. Forever young, eternally perfect, preserved in amber like an ancient relic. No matter when you come to me, though, always, every time, you stare at me and I stare back. Always, every time, I see your face instead of my own. Every tilt of the head, every twist of the neck, like the mirror is glass and you’re right there, right in front of me. Twenty-two years spent trapped on the other side.

Mocking me, miming my movements. Unattainable yet somehow still within reach.

I just wish I knew what you were thinking. I wish I had access to that beautiful brain of yours so I could wade through the folds of it and finally understand.

So I could dissect it, dissect you: Natalie Campbell, my beguiling big sister.

Instead, in my dream, I extend my fingers and you extend them right back. I reach out to touch you, to prove to myself that you’re still real, but before I can get to you, before I can feel your skin on mine, you turn to fog in my grip and waft away like the wind.