Then the car came to a stop beside us, and one of them opened the back door. Then the passenger side door opened, and two boys climbed out. There were three men in the car that day - those two and the driver. I never saw the driver’s face, but I saw the two boys. They were older, and I noticed a varsity jacket hooked to the back of the passenger seat. I remember thinking they were college boys. The jacket bore patches from St Augustine’s.
The boys were laughing as they approached us. Missy told me to run, but I refused.
I said her name. I told her no. I told her I wasn’t leaving her.
She shoved me.
Hard.
“Rowan, run,” she said again. “Please.”
There are moments in life where you make a choice that rewrites you completely. That was mine.
I ran.
I didn’t look back. I didn’t scream. I didn’t think. My body just… moved. Survival kicked in, brutal and blind.
Someone followed me into the cornfields. I could hear his breath as he ran and his laughter. Then he started talking to me, trying to get me to come out. But I ignored him and cut across the field, the grassslicing my legs, my lungs burning. I didn’t see the fence until it tore into me. It was barbed wire, old and rusted, hidden by weeds.
It caught my leg and ripped.
I remember the pain—white, immediate—but I didn’t stop. I dragged myself through it, skin tearing, blood soaking my leg. I didn’t feel human anymore. I felt like an animal, all instinct and terror.
I fell. I crawled. I got up, then fell again.
I don’t know how long I was in that field. Time didn’t exist. There was only forward motion, and trying to get away from the danger following me.
I remember collapsing onto a porch. Wood splinters digging into my palms. I remember knocking—once, twice—before the world went black.
When I woke up, everything was wrong.
It hit me before I even opened my eyes. I knew immediately that something was gone.
Missy.
I didn’t remember running at first. Or the fence. Or the field. I just knew she wasn’t there. I knew it in my bones. In the empty space beside the bed. In the silence that shouldn’t have existed.
I asked for her. But no one answered. So I asked again.
That’s when my mother started crying.
She told me they found her by the creek.
She was dead, damaged. Even if she’d survived such a brutal attack, the damage to her body, her mind, would have been catastrophic.
I stopped being a sister that day. I became a survivor instead. And survivors don’t get comfort—they get questions. Suspicion. Silence.
It’s funny how quickly a person can go from being a victim to being viewed with suspicion. They called me unreliable, dismissed every piece of evidence I gave them until the system failed us.
The police investigation stalled. Evidence disappeared. Nameswere never spoken out loud. Lawyers descended before the grief even settled.
We were served with a gag order.
Do you know what it feels like to be told you’re not allowed to say the name of the men who murdered your sister?
That if you speak it, you could be sued. Ruined. Imprisoned, even?
Silence was enforced. And along with it, justice was stolen.
