"We're hoping that somebody saw something; somebody knows somebody that was driving along there that can tell them about this, and we just need that one phone call or that one e-mail or that one person to come in and see us and give us a little piece of information," Roberts said.

I move to Boulder, CO to start graduate work at Naropa University. Alyssa comes with me. She’s unusually close with her mother and talks to herself and cries for most of the day and night. She was Keith’s girlfriend for three years. He still claims he made her cum so hard she passed out and fell off the bed.


She gets a job at a bagel place, someplace where it’s terribly obvious that she doesn’t belong. When she comes home she knits these dramatic shawls that remind me of homeless people.

I spend most of my time smoking dope my brother slipped into my bag, dope I didn’t know I had until I was in Nebraska. When I go grocery shopping I blast Radiohead on my headphones and I only shop at night, high, after crying. I go shopping almost every night.

On the drive out we stay at a Howard Johnson’s. There’s only one bed and I really think we’re going to do it. We drive the rest of the way with my leg shaking and her head staring out the window. In our studio loft apartment we both sleep on a deflating air mattress. One night the tips of my fingers crawl along her thigh and I rest my chin on her elbow. She smells of coconut and vanilla and her skin feels like butter. She rolls over and then whispers. You must be very lonely.

The next night I make chicken flavored Ramen noodles with half a green pepper and spend $18 on a bottle of Gordon’s Gin. I like sucking up the noodles with chopsticks and pretending they’re nourishing. I get high and eat my food and drink one third of my gin.

Alyssa climbs down from the loft. She turns on the stove and heats up water before crunching up a pouch of oriental flavored Ramen noodles. She sets the crinkled pouch on the counter, walks into the bathroom and closes the door. When she comes out most of her water has evaporated.

I write twelve pages of poetry and fall asleep on the toilet for forty-five minutes with my pants around my ankles and no shit in the toilet. Alyssa wakes me and then closes the door behind her. That night I am too drunk to climb the ladder to the loft.