I woke beneath the covers, bright morning sunlight streaming through the fabric, tinting everything in sight a lilac haze. My tired eyes squinted in protest as I emerged from the warm pocket beneath the comforter. My mouth was cottony texture and the air passing through my nostrils burned. I reached for my humidifier that sat beside my bed, but felt nothing but cold, wooden floorboards. With a groan and a great heave, I stumbled out the warm haven of my bed, storming out of the room and down the hall to my sister’s bedroom where the missing humidifier would once again, magically make its return at her bedside.
Her blankets were piled in a pink heap atop her bed, her matching pillow lying on the floor. A pair of my jeans lay strewn over her laundry basket and her nightgown sat beside it on the floor of the closet. Her book bag, adorned with pins and stickers and dirt scuff marks, sat slumped over, contents spilling out beneath her desk. The chair was pulled out, facing the door as if it were staring at me and the desk lamp cast its yellow glow on a sheet of chemistry homework, marked with her messy scrawling.
I marched over to the heap on the bed, “Sarah, I swear if you touch my humidifier one more time...and clean up your roo-!”
Nothing. I clutched a handful of cold, untouched comforter and a light, flowery scent wafted up from the bed where she once laid, but Sarah was nowhere in sight. I spun around, looking at every inch of the room, hoping maybe I’d missed her somewhere. I was startled by the sudden screech of the alarm clock at her bedside. It was six thirty in the morning. I nearly tripped and fell in my hurry to shut off the alarm, but it still crowed in my head long after it had stopped.
I ran downstairs to the smell of pancakes and eggs and morning coffee. Dad sat at the table, lazily turning a newspaper page. Mom was doing dishes while peering at the tv in the corner of the kitchen.  A large woman holding a raw chicken was squawking something in a southern drawl on the screen.
The seat at the end of the table where Sarah usually sat was neat and empty. A plate of pancakes sat in front of it and a brown lunch bag sat next to a still glass of orange juice. Mom turned to me and shut off her cooking show. “Can you please tell your sister to get her butt out of bed? She’s going to be late and I’m not speeding her to school again.”
I swallowed the hard lump in my throat. My mouth became even more cottony. A sense of panic swelled inside me as I realized Sarah wasn’t going to come down for breakfast. “She’s gone”
Mom whipped around, shutting off the sink. Dad stopped fiddling with the morning paper. “I checked her room, she’s gone. Her desk light is on and her homework is still out and she’s gone.”
Mom turns completely towards me, embodying the word ‘nausea’ as she leans against the sink with her back, baffled. We were a typical family in a small neighborhood in a wealthy suburb. Nothing bad ever happened in town, let alone to us. We were the very definition of ordinary. Sarah was the most ordinary of the bunch. She was blond haired, blue eyed and a shy little thing. She always did what she was told and had good friends and was the pride and joy of our school's swim team. She came first in dive competitions almost every meet.
As we froze in the kitchen, all processing what I had said, the phone rang, cutting through the thick air like a knife. Somehow, mom had made it to the phone, without me taking notice right away. She clutched it with both shaking hands, and nodded and shook her head frantically as she spoke, answering one word at a time until she hung up. Her eyes were full of tears, glossy and distant.
“Did they find Sarah? What is it?” Dad drills.
Mom shakes her head, gasping for air through sobs. “They found her...”
After that phone call, we were never the same family again.