A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

Piper Hanaka is your age. She’s two years older than me. She’s a
senior, practically engaged to some guy she’s been dating since
freshman year. Rumor has it, they’re going to different colleges next
year. They’ve decided to break up before they go. Neither wants to
hold the other back and, if it’s meant to be, I’ve overheard her say, it
will be. It sounds very mature, and also stupid as shit. But it means
that in exactly eight months from now, Piper Hanaka will be single.
Not that she’d ever want me.
Do you remember Piper Hanaka? You used to be friends. I don’t
remember that. She told me once, all cloak-and-dagger-like in the
hall. Just sidled up to me at my locker and said she had a dream
about you. I went mute. I didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing.
Then she said, “Do you want to know what it was about, Leo?”
I said, “Okay. I guess.”
She told me about her dream, how the two of you were trying to
pick all the woolly bear caterpillars up off the street. You did it so the
cars couldn’t drive over them. You’d gather them in the palms of your
hands, then run them back to the trees. You’d set them on the
leaves, watch them walk away. By the time they reached the end of
the leaf, they were moths. They could fly. In her dream, you were still
six.
I thought it might mean something. I thought her dream might be
premonitory, like you were dead and you’d turned into an angel with
wings, and were flying to heaven.
But as it turned out, it was just a dream. Not all dreams mean
something.
She said, “I still think about her, you know? I, like, think about how
we used to hang out when we were kids. I wonder if we’d still be
friends if she never went away.”
Went away, she said. Like you had some choice in the matter. I
didn’t hold it against her. She’s the only one who ever talked to me
about you in a way that wasn’t brutally honest. She’s also one of the
few who doesn’t give in to the herd mentality and make fun of me.
Piper Hanaka used to live across the street from us. You and she
used to ride your bikes on the sidewalk, do cartwheels, play house,
climb trees. I don’t remember any of it. Any knowledge I have is
secondhand from Dad.