Francesca

SOLSTICE

I CAN HEAR THE CLAMOR from the lawns, the microphone being tested, the boom of the speakers. I'm nearly ready to make my entrance. This is my moment. I am the moment.

I'm feeling a lot better now. I'm feeling much calmer about everything, honestly, now that those beastly birds have gone. I... lost myself there for a brief spell. But I'm not going to dwell on it.

I've done my affirmations. I've haloed myself with sacred mist. I've rubbed clary sage into my pulse points and placed four separate crystals into the velvet pouch attached to my necklace: rose quartz, tiger's eye, and selenite for calm, citrine to ward off negative energy. I've performed a quick Qigong facial massage. I'm feeling so much more grounded.

I've also had five shots of vodka. It's from the emergency supply I keep in a bottle that previously contained the dragon-fruit-rose pick-me-up beauty water I get sent from Erewhon in LA. Vodka is a really clean spirit, so it's the best if you're going to drink anything. Oh, and I used it to wash down a couple of the little pills I keep inside my old Ayurvedic tea tin. Sometimes the most important thing is that you regain your equilibrium. It doesn't necessarily matter how you get there. Yes, I have certain lifestyle guidelines for myself but no rules: rules are dangerous!

I practically float down the steps and out onto the lantern-lit lawns. The guests milling about look glorious in their willow crowns, their white garments. As expected, the willow sculptures look stunning. Best of all is the glorious wicker archway that the guests walk through as they join the celebration, as though they're passing through into another realm.

It's perhaps a teeny bit hotter than ideal, but that just adds to the overall sense of otherworldliness, of transcendence. I am certain that this will be a night everyone talks about for years to come. My moment of greatest triumph. I have created something truly beautiful here, in this place that has always been my sanctuary—

A little poison dart of a thought: she's here, somewhere. The bitter interloper at the feast. I search carefully among the faces in the crowd. Where are you, Sparrow?

No sign of her. Then something occurs to me. I actually let out a little gasp of surprise at the realization, so loud that a couple of guests turn to look at me. I have been looking for the wrong person. Even though I know what she looks like now from seeing her on the video—the blonde hair, the sharp fringe—I've been looking for a sixteen-year-old girl with long dark hair straggling down her back and a yellow slip dress. Just as she was on the last night I saw her.