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IX. Mything PersonsThe Missing Young Thousands, thousands. But what is it to be "Missing," or for that matter, "Young?" Arrogant street corner beg-beers. Clumsy bacchanals at dusk. They'd flood The City May and June. Rings in their navels, nether parts; cheap tattoos. Faded-to-rags funereal coats and black costumes of lived lives bought or stolen from thrift shops. The Missing Young disappeared, most of them, at the first scholarly summons of September. Returned to shiny hallways and airy classrooms baring pierced skin, scars, tattoos: testimonials of orphan nights spent sleepless on benches in the DARK TERRIBLE CITY. Many just vanished -- poof! -- into the vast yawn of The Nation.
The Missing Girl Up night browsing The Network. Search "The Missing Girl." Thousands of references, citations, sites, blogs. What-have-you. One site displayed a three-dimensional replica of her bedroom as she left it -- or was taken from it -- 20 years ago. 3D model based on photographs and original magazine stories of The Missing Girl. Dreams courtesy The Missing Girl's diary (once upon a time, before the public blog, there was the private notebook or diary, handwritten). Intimate details. Opened roll of cherry candy in her dresser drawer. Chosen by Losing Our Sons and Daughters (LOSD), and with family's consent, turned into poster-child for The Nation's lost children. Her photograph graced covers of The Nation's magazines. She could have passed for fourteen or twenty, depending on the mind observing. Actual age in photograph: sixteen. One of The Missing Young. Narratives evolved. Keyboards tapped theories of the Missing Girl's whereabouts. Weekly 'sightings.' Anonymous millions imagined adventures with The Missing Girl. Believed their home-grown narratives. Probably. Uncorroborated, implausible stories and "eye-witness" accounts. Strange nobody ever thinks to bring a camera. Then again, She comes upon you like a ghost, brief sighting, matter of seconds. The Missing Girl would be no longer Missing, nor particularly Young (in all the 'sightings' she's a teenager, or early twenties) In real time she'd be thirty-six, thereabouts. Nevertheless, speculators probe The Network. Digital shades of Might-Have-Been. <top>
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