I was sitting in the middle row seat of a red minivan that had just been parked in the loading zone of a local junior high school, which was up on a hill.  I was there as part of a carpool– some people got out, and another few got in.  The main objective in my mind was to pick up my sister as part of this carpool, so I was sure to count the available seats in the van to ensure there was a place for her.  More time seemed to go by than I expected it to take for her to show up.  I moved toward the front passenger seat and discovered that several other people had gotten in, some of whom were standing in the aisle between the seats.  It was too crowded.  Something just seemed not-right.  Then my mom showed up and was sitting next to me.  I fumbled with both my own and my mom’s phone to try to call my sister.  I struggled to remember her number off the top of my head, but I knew it was in my mom’s phone, listed in her contacts.  I found it and dialed.  The call ‘picked up’ but I only heard silence on the other end.  I said “Hello, Samantha? Are you there?” but got no reply, and then the call hung up.

I decided I ought to go inside the school to look for her, thinking maybe she was just stuck somewhere, in detention or something like that which would have explained the silence on the line.  I did some searching through the hallways, then turned a corner and discovered a few Asian ladies who appeared to be working in some small adjacent offices with large glass windows.  One of the ladies asked me if I thought having sanitary conditions everywhere was a human right.  I thought for a moment, then said “No,” plainly, as I considered that to be a privilege or a preference.  She quickly replied “Well, now it is,” like my belief about it was irrelevant anyway because of some new government edict that had gone into effect.

I decided to then head back to the car since I had spent some time searching but had not found success in locating my sister.  I also realized that I did not have my phone with me, so that potentially could have been a problem in the event that my mom had perhaps suddenly found her– how would they let me know?  So I went outside the door, through the loading zone, then just kept going downhill.  I considered the possibility that my sister was at the other junior high school on the other side of town, so I thought that was the next logical place to look.  On the way down it was like multiple levels of hardscape terraces– flat sections followed by relatively large drops.  After about five of them I was at the street level.  

I got into the drivers’ seat of a silver Chevy Trailblazer, then sped through a flat residential neighborhood with windy streets and big expensive homes.  I made a few turns, recognized the area and kept the general location of the destination in mind in order to take the most direct route.  Looking to my right, I saw a street going in the intended direction on the other side of the side-yard belonging to a particular house I was driving by at the time.  It appeared to be linked by a paved walking path, so I decided to take the chance to drive on that paved path between the sections of lawn.  It was a successful move, but the homeowner was standing by and yelled at me as I went through, “Hey! That’s not part of the street!”  I paused briefly, slowed down and double-checked for damage, shouted back an apology and a promise to not ever do it again.  As I got moving on the street again one of the neighbors was also outside and he had apparently observed the situation.  He was much more lax kind of dude, saying something to the effect of “No harm, no foul, bruh.”

I got going again and was then on foot.  The road started turning uphill slightly, then made a “Y” and each direction was unpaved.  I saw large rocks scattered on each surface, in addition to the gravel and loose dirt, and thought that these paths might be too treacherous even for the Trailblazer, especially since they were also wet from recent rain.  Suddenly I saw a guy just sitting there on my right.  He began speaking with a very odd cadence and about things I wasn’t particularly concerned with.  I gathered he was a different type of guy, probably on the autism spectrum.  I had a moment of lucidity like I knew I was in a dream on a quest, and was beginning to lose patience with the whole thing, so I asked him directly, “Can you help me find my sister, man?”  He paused and said, “Awww, well, aww, I have an angle on that… awww, a right-angle, actually…”  I turned to walk away like I didn’t believe whatever he said would be clearly helpful, but then he finished succinctly.  “She’s gone… It was an overdose.”

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