My sister, Frances, disappeared last Thursday, but we aren't going to put up any posters. We know exactly where she is. There's no milk carton necessary.

    The rest of the town is beginning to panic. They are certain that this is the beginning of a missing-child epidemic. One mother proposed building an underground shelter to hide the children until the kidnapper was caught. The mayor voted it down.
    We need this money for parking lots, he explained.
    The town is angry with us. They feel as if we are not doing enough to find Frances. They feel that we are in a deep state of denial. Some people are even convinced that we have killed Frances and hidden her body inside our backyard swing set.
    But there is no body. There was no hiding. They will never find her.
    My neighbor Cynthia has made it her one-woman mission to find Frances. She claims she will not rest until my sister is found and returned safely, which is a shame because it looks as if she really needs the sleep. The circles under her eyes are devouring her face.
    I have spent most of the past few days watching Cynthia from my bedroom window. She is forever outside, carefully picking her way through our shared lawns, looking for some sign that Frances is still around. At times she brings out her Pekingese, who is named Muffin, and attempts to use her as a tool.
    Find Frances, she says to Muffin. Be a good girl for Mommy.
    Muffin usually answers by lying down or peeing on the tufts of dead summer grass. The grass has been dead for weeks, but the ground sucks in any type of liquid it can get. It is Nature's withering alcoholic, and Muffin is the supplier.
    I watch Cynthia desperately toiling for an answer, sweat dripping down her face and sliding onto her Hello Kitty T-shirt. She is looking for a sign, a reason, and I can't help but feel sorry for her. I'd like to tell her to stop looking, to take a cold bath and put tea bags on her shadow-cast eyes. I'd like to tell her the truth, but she would never believe me.
    My mother caught me watching Cynthia yesterday morning and frowned.
    That woman is a nuisance, she snapped, always digging up our grass.
    The grass is dead, I remind her.
    Less to mow, she shrugged.
    Cynthia never noticed either of us and just kept digging. Captain Hook with two good hands and not a Lost Boy in sight.

I have been staring at a bottle of salad dressing for three days. It sits on my mother's bureau, deprived of its dignified labels and necessary refrigeration. My mother has torn every bit of paper from the outside of the bottle so that it is easy to see what lies inside. It was French dressing once, I believe, the kind that is more red than orange and makes your eyes squint when you taste it.
    The bottle sits next to a pile of home and garden magazines, lying lazily on top of an ugly doily that my mother thinks gives the bureau a little class.
    Helen, she always says, a little lace goes a long way.
    My mother does not know that I sneak into her room to watch the bottle. I am forbidden to look at the bottle unless she is there to supervise.
    Nine-year-old girls are tornadoes in pink sneakers, she frowns - they destroy everything they touch and then dance away.
    I keep telling her that I'm 11, but she never listens.
    The bottle is beautiful right now, sparked by the sunlight that peeks through my mother's lace curtains. The contents swirl around gracefully, looking for an impossible exit. I pick up the bottle and watch the pink bubbles bounce off the sides, sliding into each other with tiny explosions of pain. I bring the bottle to my eyes and squint very hard, hoping that in some way I can see my sister floating inside. Once I thought I caught a glimpse of her hand, but it was just a piece of old French dressing falling from the lid of the container.
    We liquefied Frances three weeks ago, and she has been in that salad-dressing bottle ever since. I suggested that we put her in my mother's crystal vase, but my mother disagreed.
    She might stain it, my mother huffed. It's Waterford, all the way from Ireland. You just don't risk a piece like that.
    She found the half-empty bottle of dressing in the refrigerator and smiled. This will be perfect, she said, it just needs a little rinse.
    I watched as she peeled off the labels and ran the bottle under hot water. There, she said, that will do fine.
    For my mother, this was a victory. She had been planning this for weeks, and things were working out beautifully.
    I should have suspected something when my mother started feeding my sister Knox gelatin at every meal. She started by telling Frances that Knox gelatin was the secret for long hair and nails, and Frances, eager to keep growing out the five-dollar haircut that my mother had forced upon her, quickly agreed to down a glass or two at each sitting.
    My mother's plan had begun.
    After a few weeks, my mother suggested that Frances stop eating altogether.
    Your hips, she said are beginning to sprout hips of their own.
    Frances was mortified. In reality she was as skinny as a crane's leg.
    But girls always listen to their mothers.
    My mother put Frances on a gelatin-only diet. Frances took in about fourteen boxes of gelatin throughout the day. She was wasting away to practically nothing, and she had quite a bit of trouble standing up strait. She seemed too wobbly as she walked, her gelatinous body swimming. Standing sill in the doorway to catch her balance, she gazed at me with jellyfish eyes, her body motionless yet always in motion

The gelatin diet went on for a month, until Frances was so weak she could hardly get out of bed. On Thursday morning, I heard her call out to me.
    Helen, she wailed, my hands are melting.
    I ran into her room and saw that her fingers had started sticking to her sheets. They had taken on an elastic quality and were beginning to ooze over the sides of her mattress. The pink pastel rug below had become a rain bucket, capturing drop after drop of gelatinous Frances and clinging to her for dear life.
    I carefully lifted up her white comforter and saw that the bed was swallowing her whole body. Her toes had melted together, becoming one large toe with five tiny purple-painted toenails.
    I wanted to call for my mother.
    I did not want to call for my mother.
    Frances smiled at me through tired lips that were beginning to coast down the sides of her face.
    It feels so pretty, she whispered, so very pretty. She smiled at me again. I am the Melting Queen, she said softly. Her eyelids began sliding down, covering her notorious twinkle. She sighed heavily, and parts of her lungs started to spill over the bed.
    My mother calmly entered the room and saw what was happening. She scooped Frances up and brought her into the bathroom. She filled the tub with hot water and placed my melting sister inside. France immediately dissolved, faded, her sticky nightgown rising to the surface wile her body vanished into the tub.
    My mother and I knelt in front of the tub, parishioners where there is no God, staring at a bubbling mass of pink liquid as it oozed in and out of the nightgown sleeves, searching aimlessly for a form.
    A tiny splash hit the tub as a tear fell out of my mother's face. She turned to me with mascara-dripping eyes and whispered, Helen, go get me something to put your sister in. They she sniffed and quickly shook her head. I was immobile, still standing over the tub, slack-jawed, speechless.
    Close your mouth, said my mother fiercely, and get me something to put your sister in.
    I walked into the kitchen with only one though pulsating in my mind
    We had just liquefied Frances.

I can't say Frances didn't have it coming to her, because she did.
    She was four years older than me, just starting high school. Her breasts had come in over the summer, and the neighborhood boys were starting to notice how pretty they looked under the sleeveless sweaters she always wore. Thanks to the gelatin's effects, her five-dollar haircut had grown out into long blond locks that curled just at the edges.
    She was gorgeous. It drove my mother crazy. Not crazy in a jealous sense, mind you, but crazy with fear. Frances was too perfect, too beautiful. Her laugh was too charming, Her walk was too adorable. Her body was too bronzed. She was at the peak, and she was just starting out. My mother saw her going nowhere but down.
    Helen, she explained to me one day, perfection is a time bomb. Eventually it explodes in your face and you're left with nothing but reality and a bad complexion.
    My mother knew all about being perfect. She was perfect, too. She was named Miss Wyoming 1979. She had long brown hair and big green eyes that looked like lemon-lime soda, golden, bubble and sweet. She gave her interview on neutering pets. The judges were blown away. She performed "Yankee Doodle Dandy" on a unicycle while juggling patriotic sparklers. She was America.
    She didn't even place in the top 20 of the Miss America pageant that year. She later blamed it on faulty lighting.
    The lights were up too high, she often reflects, they made me look to pale.
    I remind her that she is pale, that we're from Wyoming, that the Miss America pageant is in February. She always frowns.
    Beauty knows no season, she explains.
    There are times when I think my mother sill believes she is Miss Wyoming. She will walk to get the mail with her back arched and her head pointed straight up in the air. Her legs crisscross like fighting eels as she slinks to the ugly plastic mailbox to grab the daily bills with her long acrylic nails. She is saying, look at me. She is laughing. She is beautiful.
    I miss Frances.
    My mother constantly tells me that she is doing the right thing.
    Helen, she says, if it weren't for me, your sister would be a the mercy of the wolves. Men would take advantage of her. Women would despise her. And when she settle down, she'd probably let herself go, and that would be a shame.
    She patted my pin-straight hair. Lucky Helen, she mused, you don't have to worry about any of that. Yes, I say slowly, lucky lucky me.

There are days when Cynthia rests more than normal. She sits upon her steps, gripping a coconut doughnut, talking to Muffin in a highly intellectual manner.
    I believe, she says to Muffin, that this coconut was shipped through Costa Rica. Import and export- it's a fascinating economical configuration, isn't it?
    Muffin never replies.

My mother has turned the couch cushions over at least seven times today.
    The sunlight makes them fade, she explains.
    I ask her about curtains.
    Curtains, she frowns, only hid what is beautiful.
    The refrigerator runs and runs, and my mother and I sit on the turned cushions and let our bodies save the couch.

Cynthia has begun to wear a T-shirt with France's picture embalmed on the front. She wears it every day, in the hope that someone will recognize the beautiful blonde on it.
    The picture that she has of Frances is lovely one. We took it last year on our trip to Lake Watauga. She is smiling in the sunlight, her blonde hair ignited by the summer haze.
    Cynthia never takes the shirt off, and there are times when I wonder if she'd like to switch places with the face on the front.
    I wonder what it is like to wear my sister's face all day. I imagine Cynthia standing in front of her mirror, watching Frances smile. I wonder if she speaks to her, asks her for the answers. I wonder if Cynthia ever makes love, and if she does, does she wear France's face? I want to ask her, I want to have her tell me what it's like to play Frances for a day, but she is too busy for my questions. It has been three weeks of glorified insomnia fro poor Cynthia, no sleep and yet never awake.

The heat has become unbearable, to the point where the smell of frying ChemLawn has completely engulfed the neighborhood. Miracle-Grow has sold out at the Super Kmart, but I have not seen one miracle yet.
    The children of the neighborhood are relaxed in their central air-cooled homes. Their mothers have almost forgotten about "the kidnapping," and most of them are pretty certain that Frances is dead. Mr. Walters, who works the deli counter at the A&P, offered my mother a free meat tray if she wanted to hold a good-by ceremony.
    My mother refused. She hates cold cuts.
    My mother also refuses to turn on our air-conditioning because she is afraid that Frances will freeze. She stuck a 25-year-old fan in my bedroom but prefers to keep herself cool through margaritas and menthol cigarettes. She won't smoke around Frances.
    Her asthma, she explains.
    I wonder what liquid asthma feels like. I imagine it is much like drowning, without the relief of death.

Cynthia has started selling her valuables in order to earn money to fun her Save Frances campaign. She asks my mother to donate $500, but my mother refuses.
    Money, she rationalizes, cannot bring her back.
    Cynthia assumes that my mother has gone crazy with grief and simply rubs her hand upon her shoulder, as if to say, it's all right, you've lost your mind.
    But I'll find your daughter.
    There are times when I catch Cynthia staring up at the night sky, her fingers running along the crease of her T-shirt where France's smile turns upward. She pats the shirt and sighs, perhaps wondering why she is looking so very hard for a girl who never even knew her last name.

Two days later, my mother moved Frances from the bedroom into the kitchen. The heat was just too much. A quarter of Frances had evaporated.
    Evaporation, my mother wailed, I hadn't even thought of that.
    With a Goldilocks mentality, my mother placed Frances in the refrigerator. Not too cold, not too hot. Frances sat on the shelf next to a giant jar of pickles. I was glad. Frances loved pickles.
    I checked on her every fifteen minutes, just to make sure she hadn't evaporated any further. I wondered what parts of her had faded. Her hand, her leg, maybe her hair. I hoped that it was only her toes. Toes are useless anyway, and Frances hated sandals.
    My mother has just purchased a $200 designer tablecloth to hide the nicks in our kitchen table. I miss the nicks. Some things are better left uncovered.

Cynthia is standing in the street, buzzing with the streetlights, swinging her arms in a helpless direction, wearing a faded T-shirt of a faded girl. She tilts her head to one side and gazes toward the sewers, scouring the dirty grates for a pink ponytail holder or a stick of cinnamon gum. She is losing the battle.
    I decide to step back from my window and breathe. At times I forget what breathing really feels like, a and I have to remind myself through long, hard inhalation. After about four lung fillers, I make my way down the stairs and out the screen door, where the summer moths have gathered for a porch-light convention.
    I stand upon the concrete steps watching her through the windows I was born with. She notices me standing and shifts her gaze in my direction.
    At night, she says, it's easier to see things.
    I shrug.
    You miss her, she asks, don't you?
    Nice shirt, I reply.
    She sighs and looks down at the faded Frances. I messed it up in the wash, she explains, that's why her hair looks a bit green.
    Oh. That is all I can say.
    Stupid bleach, she frowns.
    Cynthia, I ask her, why are you going through all this trouble?
    Why aren't you? She replies.
    I freeze with honesty and kick a pebble toward the sewer.
    There are times, Cynthia continues, that I really think she'll walk up to my front door and say trick or treat, and I won't have anything to give her.
    We stare at the dying streetlight and the glow that it casts on the cracked blacktop. I wonder what Frances had ever given Cynthia.
    She never knew your last name, I tell her.
    Yes, she says, but she knew my first, and that is what matters.
    Cynthia's eyes fill with watery goo, sticky with the residue of overdue sleep. I think of Cynthia's empty house, her lack of boyfriends, her refrigerator stacked with leftovers, as if to say, please come eat with me, I have so much left to give.
    I think of Frances in the sunlight, her smile glowing under the serenity of July skies, her eyes dancing. We are both in love with her in a way...in the way that she is everything, every girl, every beautiful stream of daylight, every answer, every secret, every sister.
    She is the reason to believe in perfection.
    Cynthia sighs and sinks to the pavement. When Frances was here, she explains, there was always hope.
    Together we click our tongues and wait for the fireflies to fade out, so that we can stop looking for sparks in the darkness.

I have been staring at a salad-dressing bottle for three weeks, and I can see her dancing inside. She is the cream in the center of the cookie, smooth and pale and soft. There are times when she bubbles, and I swear she is calling me, calling me screaming, daring me to pull her out.
    I cannot watch her bubble anymore I steal her from the refrigerator sanctuary, check the halls for my mother and execute the plan.
    The bottle is cold in my hands, and wet. Some of Frances seems to have condenses along the lining of the cap. I rub it through my fingers and hold them to my nose. They smell of French dressing and sweet, sugary honey. I pass my fingers to my lips and taste. I have found her escape.
    I quickly rip open the bottle and begin to pour it down my though. France oozes down, past my 11-year-old molars and into the darkness of my insides. My mother catches me midway, but she cannot stop what I have started, Frances is in me, running through my blood like a mouse on the subway tracks, scurrying along to find safety, to find home.
    My mother screams and wails and finally just sighs, knowing that here is nothing she can do. I am the savior now.
    The glass bottle is empty, and we are safe.
    Well, says my mother, as she sighs and takes a seat at the kitchen table, at least I know where she is.
    I smile as Frances seeps into my organs. I want to tell Cynthia, to press against her T-shirt and let her feel my sister safely melting inside me. I want to run to the bathroom and set her free, liquid salvation down a porcelain bowl. I hope she comes out blue. That is her favorite color.
    When she leaves me, and I send her on her way, I will tell her to look after my goldfish and I know she will.
    My mother is tired, Miss 21st place, all that work for nothing. I wonder if she still has her batons.
    We sit together at the kitchen table, dreaming in opposite directions.
    Well, she says finally, what do you think of this tablecloth?
    Together we stare at the black-and-white swirls that cover our old kitchen table.
    I feel France bubbling once more. I rip the cloth from the table and toss it on the pink linoleum floor.
    There, I reply, now it is beautiful.