No one knows where you live, Johnny.
   Your mother is still strange in the way she sets a place for you at the table, just in case you can smell the butter melting on the beans and the gravy in the pan; in case you're out there in the night, afraid to come back because it's been so long.
   It doesn't seem like an eternity anymore. It's been so long it's like it was yesterday. Does that make sense?
   Colin missed weeks from college. He didn't know I used to follow him and wait for him in case he knew where you were. Colin loved you, Johnny. A group of English Lit. students saw you kissing that morning; but you know that. You were gone before you ever got the chance to hear it become ugly.
   Colin had no idea where you were. He would board one interstate flight after another and I know, because your mother told me, that it was Colin and his father's money that kept the search going for so long.
   I couldn't eat breakfast. Seeing your picture on the milk carton was too much each morning - and the television always seemed to catch me in the middle of dinner. Even in the restaurant where I worked, the radio would come on or someone would say, "Anna, have you heard the latest about Johnny?"
   I couldn't not hear it. One night I had to run into the kitchen and ask one of the guys to take orders for me. I cried and I cried just because a customer waiting for take-away picked up a newspaper with 'Grisly Remains of Missing Youth Found' taking up the front page.
   But it wasn't you, Johnny. Oh God, why did it have to be like this?

Colin's funeral was the most painful experience I have ever known. Come Wednesday morning, it will be a year. It was the coldest day, the cruelest wind. Colin's body had been flown back from Western Australia; the decomposition, the ant bites, the bullet wound all hidden by the beautiful oak coffin. Colin's father had flown back from Holland and looked so grey, so far beyond any sadness I could feel. I wanted to, I still do. I will never grieve enough for Colin.
   No one knows where you live. No one knows that I see your face in my mind, that I still feel the thorns of the single pink rose you stole for me that day. "Anna, I'm sorry," repeats itself over and over again in my head and no one understands why I burst into tears, why I hide in the toilet at work. I still hear myself telling you to go, not willing to listen to you, hating you, calling you a fucking faggot to your face. I hear it so loud and so clear sometimes that I can't hear anyone else, that I have to press my thumb against the billspike on the counter and say, "I'm sorry, sir. Could you repeat your order?"
   I loved you, Johnny. In those five weeks we were actually together did you have any idea how much I loved you? God, I lost my virginity to you - gave it to you - because I knew you would recognise it as the most precious thing I had to give. Fucking Christ!
   Did you ever know that I was one of the girls who saw you kiss Colin? I felt so betrayed, so stupid. If it had have been Amanda you kissed, or Kerri -
   I hated you so much because I had let you have me. God, I wanted you to die. I hated myself; hated loving you, still wanting you.
   I know I was the last person to ever see you, Johnny. I threw the rose back in your face and I screamed for you to go to fucking hell and never come back. Your disappearance and Colin's suicide are all because of me. I will never be sorry enough, you hear me Johnny? Never!
   Your mother expects me for dinner tonight. I'm standing in the dark with my suitcase, watching her through the window; setting your place, setting Colin's place, setting mine. But none of us will be there, will we Johnny?

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