I know the police department of Sumter, South Carolina very well. It's a rather ugly building, erected in the late sixties when people decided architecture should be sterile and modern. Sumter itself is a drab city, a place that saw its heyday come and leave and never look back. I go there only to cover murders and home invasions, and those stories require interviews with the sheriff, and that means I must park in the visitor's spot and lug my camera and tripod inside and wait for whenever it is he decides to be ready.

I always sit in the same vinyl chair and stare at at the same things: an uninterested woman behind Plexiglas, a half-full gumball machine, a pamphlet written in Spanish. There's a wall of missing and wanted persons. I stare at them too, trying to imagine what their voices sound like and what their lives consist of. There's a black man, smug and unafraid. There's a tired mother behind on her child support. Another man wanted for touching children. And then there's Dale.

I can't stop looking at her. I feel her energy cut into me like winter wind without a jacket. What is it about this girl? She's smiling. Truly smiling. Smiling so deeply that I can feel it in my own face. Her hair is just slightly too big to be considered in style and that's how I know she's been missing for a long time. Eighteen years, the flier says. She went to a U2 concert the night she disappeared, and somehow I'm sure that she had a wonderful time. The bars were crowded that evening, no doubt. Was she happy that night? I bet she was. I just know from her picture that she was a happy person. Her eyes are brimming with warmth and that warmth is beginning to haunt me because I can't quite wrap my mind around the possibility that a person can simply vanish and leave no trail of bread crumbs behind. Oh God, I really can't stop looking at her. Find me, she says. Please find me. Someone knows exactly what happened to me. I churn out scenario after scenario and then suddenly--the door opens.

The sheriff's ready to do his interview. I snap from the screenplay I'm writing in my head and get up to greet him. I put Dale on pause. I take a break from her energy and go on with my day. But I know the next time I'm here my eyes will shoot straight to her face again. They always do.