Everyone Yearns for What Is Missing

Everyone asked his or her children where their sibling Jan was. The children were gathered around a vacuum cleaner on the twelfth floor of the office building where everyone worked.

The children were Jody, a sanctimonious thirteen-year-old with a penchant for fart jokes who had recently become a famous child actor; Star, the one-time ten-year-old with a heart of gold before he or she ripped it out; and Journey, an eight- or nine-year-old chocolate thief who had absconded from juvenile detention while awaiting trial. Jan was a six-year-old and very much like everyone’s spouse in that he or she was missing.

The children looked toward the windows when everyone asked. Two of them were open. The children had been commanded not to go near them.

Everyone ran to the open window on the left and looked down. Below was a plaid jacket lying atop the bushes along the side of the all-glass building. The jacket looked too large to be Jan’s, but everyone wasn’t sure. The spouse had bought the children many things everyone didn’t recognize.

“What was Jan wearing?” everyone asked.

The children shook their heads in ignorance.

Everyone looked down again at the jacket. Everyone would have preferred to be examining the vacuum cleaner, but it was already full, what with a hand--an adult hand--extruding from the bottom.

“We’ll have to go down now,” everyone said, “all of us. I can’t trust you.”

Jody wheeled the vacuum cleaner before him or her “in case it was needed,” he or she said, as the children followed everyone to the exit.

“Our children,” everyone heard his or her coworker Sam say from his or her office.

Everyone veered away, chose a different route. Everyone had not expected Sam in the office over the weekend. Everyone did not want the children to see Sam. Sam had a crush on everyone and often made untoward advances. Everyone wanted his or her departed spouse back and did not want complicating factors. Star would be heartless in a divorce hearing.

Everyone opened the door to the hall where the elevators resided.

“Hello there,” everyone heard Sam call. Everyone let the children go into the hall before him or her, then looked back. Sam stood in the doorway to his or her office decked in a bathrobe that was open, beneath which only Sam’s underwear showed. Everyone closed the hall door, pressed the down button on the elevator bank.

“Who was that?” Journey asked.

“The office paramour,” Star said. Jody nodded.

Everyone gave Star a disapproving look.

“What?” Jody scolded. “You think we don’t know?”

Outside, the children scurried down the sidewalk, Jody pushing the vacuum on its hind wheels. Journey rushed into the thicket. The plaid jacket sunk into the bush’s leaves.

Star, kicking at the branches, made his or her way into the bushes as well.

Everyone asked them to stop, to come out. And then everyone asked if they saw Jan.

The children laughed.

Jody abandoned the vacuum, took off all but his or her underwear, and dove into the thicket as well, as if it were swimming pool.

A light came on above. It was from the twelfth story, one of the open windows.

Everyone looked up. A body stood in silhouette looking down at everyone. Everyone couldn’t tell if it was Sam or Jan.

“Don’t jump,” everyone cried. “Please don’t jump.”

The silhouette jumped.

Everyone Loses a Jacket

Everyone stood at the window looking down at Harvey. He seemed to be flying. Harvey held out his arms and let them ruffle like two empty vacuum cleaner bags in the wind. As he moved closer to the earth, his arms took on weight, the air filling up space with his jacket.

It was not enough.

Everyone would have heard the splat if Harvey had not landed in the bushes and if the sound of the wind had not been so powerful twelve stories up. Everyone held on to the window’s edge, not wanting to fall. Everyone was uncertain what to do. No one had arrived at work yet except everyone. Everyone watched and waited. Harvey did not seem to be moving--only his jacket, unfurling in the wind.

Everyone backed away from the window and took out his or her cell phone. But he or she did not call emergency. Harvey had jumped voluntarily, as if he knew the result would not be death and he was now waiting below for everyone to come to him.

At the bushes, everyone found the jacket just as he or she had seen it from the office above--wanting to take off, like a bird whose boneless wings were too shapeless to effect flight.

“Harvey,” everyone called, but no one called back.

Everyone dialed emergency.

The jacket held on to a twig, pleading for someone to recover it before it was stolen by the wind.

“My coworker,” everyone said into the phone, “he jumped.” Everyone felt as if he or she had stood at the bushes looking at the jacket before. Everyone crawled into the shrubs. Perhaps, Harvey had slipped into them.

Everyone gave his or her location to the emergency operator.

“Is he alive?” the operator asked.

“I don’t know,” everyone said. “I can’t find him.”

The bushes held all the city’s trash of the past two hundred years: Styrofoam cups and Popsi Cola cans, giant chocolate bar wrappers and a program from the local playhouse for its updated production of a medieval play, a copy of Lestie’s Illustrated Newspaper and a rusting horseshoe.

Everyone was confused. So was the emergency operator.

Everyone stood up. He or she was at the center of the bushes, his or her head above them posing like a bowling ball on the top shelf at a bowling alley. The jacket was beside him or her, still gripping the twig. People everyone knew were entering the building--Alice and Sam, a person in a plaid jacket not unlike the one beside everyone in the bushes. Everyone turned to look at the jacket again.

It was gone.

Above everyone, the jacket floated. It appeared to be flying, up, up, up.

Everyone Fails to Avoid Distractions

Everyone took the Internet’s advice and began thinking about SEO words and phrases everyone could use on his or her blog. Everyone was looking for the meaning of life, so everyone needed words and phrases that would interest the meaning of life.

The meaning of life liked Popsi Cola, so something involving refreshment was in order. “The taste that refreshes,” everyone wrote in his or her blog. “The taste that refreshes,” everyone wrote again, “Popsi.”

“Leisure, success, and happiness,” everyone wrote. The meaning of life liked leisure, success, and happiness. “Fit and tan people smiling,” everyone wrote, thinking of the photographs on the meaning of life’s blog, “holding Popsi Cola, the taste the refreshes.”

“While on motorboats,” everyone added, for it was obvious from the photographs that the meaning of life liked those too.

And so that the Internet could properly file the information, everyone added, “Plaid jackets,” and linked the phrase to a photo of the meaning of life, poolside, with a plaid jacket draping off the lounge chair on which the meaning of life lay.

The meaning of life also liked business and sales, so everyone thought about what business and sales words might appeal to the meaning of life. There was a patio deck beside and beneath the meaning of life in the pool photo. It consisted of pinkish pea-graveled cement. Perhaps, something about patio sales was in order.

Everyone should have ignored the thumping. Everyone was writing a blog entry.

Everyone had specifically opted to write not during lunch but at home, at night, after the kids were in bed and the dog done barking outside, so that he or she could focus. Everyone needed to find the right links and tags to add to his or her key words and phrases. Everyone needed to optimize the blog so that the meaning of life would find it and be motivated to comment, because the meaning of life so much enjoyed, for example, Popsi Cola, the taste that refreshes, and would want to know more. “What do you think of Popsi Cola, the taste that refreshes?” everyone would have asked, had he or she continued to write. “Is there any soda that compares?”

Instead, everyone turned.

The vacuum cleaner was behind everyone.

The vacuum cleaner should have been in the laundry room, not in the dining room where everyone’s desk was. Then everyone remembered: everyone had left the vacuum in the hall, where everyone had had to vacuum up dog puke. The dog had not gone to bark outside. It had puked and gone to everyone’s room to pretend death.

Everyone stood and went to the vacuum.

“In here, lunkhead,” the vacuum called.

Everyone looked around the room--at the small dining room table of mammoth thickness and six equally pompous charts, the bowl of oranges atop the table, the cheap chandelier from which what looked like clear plastic knives dangled. There were no closets in which to hide, and the room, expunged of the usual hobgoblin of papers and dirty dishes, offered no decent crevices.

“In here, lunkhead,” the vacuum called again. And then it shook, almost jumped.

Everyone looked down. A hand was protruding from the vacuum’s mouth.

Everyone tipped the vacuum over, shook the hand, pulled on it.

“Ow,” the vacuum said. “I’m not going to get out like this.”

Everyone danced a bit, uncertain what to do.

“Don’t just stand there,” the vacuum said.

Everyone ran to the garage, sorted through his or her tools--wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers, lug nuts--grabbed the whole box, returned to the dining room, and began dismantling the vacuum.

The vacuum sighed impatiently.

“You know how many weeks I’ve been in here?” the vacuum asked.

Everyone strained to pull the bag loose. It was jammed. Opening it was like opening a window on a glass skyscraper. Everyone had to use the full force of his or her arms, and still opening it took an inordinate amount of time, as if everyone were playing a game of hide-and-go-seek with an abstraction.

Harvey pushed the bag up with his hands, unveiling himself. Harvey was everyone’s boss at the janitorial job everyone had had cleaning random office buildings.

Everyone stared. Harvey was covered in dust--and he smelled. Dog puke caked the shins of his pants.

Harvey sucked in the warm air of the room.

“Finally,” Harvey said. “You finally listen.”

“How’d you get in there?” everyone asked.

“How do you think?” Harvey grumbled.

Harvey sat down at the computer, let out a breath. “I got to write some e-mails,” he said, “let people know where I am.”

“Of course,” everyone said. Everyone still wasn’t sure how Harvey had managed to get in the vacuum, but he or she didn’t want to risk angering Harvey by asking again. “You want something to drink?” everyone asked. “You must be thirsty.”

Harvey read what was on the screen. “What is this crap?” he asked.

Everyone Seeks Sleep Solutions

Everyone couldn’t sleep because of what was in the bushes. What everyone had found in the bushes was a plaid jacket everyone had once seen in her or his spouse’s closet. The spouse denied having seen such a jacket, let alone owning it. The jacket was similar to one that J. D. had been wearing when she or he fell from the twelfth floor of everyone’s office building. Everyone had gone to look for J. D. and had found only the jacket. Everyone wondered what relation J. D. might have had to everyone’s spouse.

When everyone could not sleep, everyone often got on her or his computer to talk with the Internet, everyone’s closest friend, especially now that everyone’s spouse had left her or him. The Internet knew all of humanity, including everyone’s spouse, though it refused to state exactly where everyone’s spouse had gone.

Instead, everyone had had to rely on rumor and innuendo. In the process, everyone had discovered that her or his spouse had run off with what she or he and others called the meaning of life.

Everyone had then begun a search for the meaning of life. Everyone had begged the Internet for the meaning of life’s whereabouts. The Internet had complied, but it refused to force the meaning of life to talk with everyone. The Internet claimed it could not work that way. It asked everyone, How would you like it if I tried to force you to talk with someone you didn’t want to talk with?

Everyone had come to see that if everyone wanted to talk with the meaning of life, everyone would have to encourage the meaning of life to come to her or him. And so everyone had started a blog novel, with the hope that it would attract the meaning of life.

But the jacket--and its relation to J. D. and everyone’s spouse--everyone could not let it go, not even at night, when everyone was tired and wanting to sleep. Everyone asked the Internet to show her or him plaid jackets it had collected over the years. The Internet happened to be a connoisseur of plaid jackets. It had thousands--perhaps millions--the Internet wasn’t sure. The Internet was obnoxiously rich. It had millions of everything.

Everyone had to narrow the Internet’s search. Everyone asked for plaid that featured only the colors red, green, and white. The Internet had plenty--it still didn’t know how many--but none of the ones it showed everyone were quite the jacket everyone was looking for.

Everyone asked the Internet what it knew about J. D.

The Internet was evasive. It gave everyone J. D.’s birth year and a list of some addresses J. D. had lived at but nothing else.

The Internet had provided similarly useless or defunct information about everyone’s spouse.

Everyone suspected that the Internet knew more, and everyone was miffed. The Internet would tell everyone oodles of stuff about people everyone had no desire to know more about, such as Olympic gold medalist Bryce Janner or socialites like Nicky Riché, but when it came to things that mattered to everyone--affairs that might affect everyone personally--the Internet clammed up.

Everyone wanted to smack the Internet, but everyone restrained her- or himself. Everyone knew how the Internet could be, how it could shut down over the slightest disagreement. One good pop in the face, and the Internet would go off. This was a great irony, of course, since one of the things the Internet collected in bulk was gory photographs, which it often showed to others. The Internet was a bit kinky--actually, very kinky. Everyone generally turned the Internet down when it tried to show everyone such photos.

Everyone asked the Internet what it knew about the meaning of life. It was an old question. The Internet often gave the same response. But the Internet had been little help with the jacket and even less help with J. D. and everyone’s spouse, so everyone was desperate for something about which to converse.

This time, the Internet offered something different.

It offered, in fact, the jacket.

The Internet showed the meaning of life reclining on a patio lounge chair next to a swimming pool. The sun glistened against the meaning of life’s skin, tiny shadows where water droplets from the pool still resided. The meaning of life was wearing sunglasses and looked both incredibly cool and incredibly hot. As usual, the meaning of life wore a smile, a smug one that bespoke its position among humanity: The meaning of life had everything everyone could ever want and knew it.

One of those things was the jacket. It was lying beside the meaning of life’s torso, cast there as if it were something the meaning of life put on and took off at the pool every day of the week with barely a thought.

Everyone saved the photograph to her or his desktop.

Everyone opened the photograph in the computer’s picture viewer, blew it up, examined each pixel as if it were a contest prize monogrammed to the inside of a Popsi soda bottle cap. The pixels were beautiful--each and every one of them.

Everyone couldn’t sleep, and everyone didn’t care.

Everyone Faces a Dilemma

The body was face-down atop the bushes. Everyone walked toward it with certainty, as if he or she were recovering a vacuum cleaner hose needed to complete a custodial job. Everyone was amazed no one else had come for the body. Others had seen it fall--coworkers everyone knew and probably some passersby. The building from which the body had fallen was downtown. Hours had passed. There had been restaurant eaters and bar hoppers and moviegoers and bookstore fiends to contend with. A body shouldn’t have been able to lay atop the bushes so blithely without someone becoming upset.

The body had on a plaid jacket. Everyone had seen the jacket only a few times before. The jacket had been in everyone’s closet soon after everyone had gotten married. Everyone was uncertain whether the jacket belonged to his or her spouse or whether it was intended as a gift to him- or herself or whether it was in fact reserved for one of their eventual children. The jacket did not seem to fit within the parameters of everyone’s spouse’s usual tastes, and it certainly didn’t fit within the parameters of everyone’s.

And then the jacket disappeared.

That had been so long ago now that everyone was uncertain whether the jacket was real.

When everyone asked his or her spouse about the jacket, as everyone had a few times before the spouse had left everyone, the spouse denied its existence. “Why would I have such a thing?” the spouse had asked. “I hate plaid, and so do you.”

Everyone grabbed the jacket from atop the bushes, and the body slipped down into them. The jacket tore. Everyone had only a handful of it, as if everyone had pulled a handkerchief from the bushes’ pocket.

The bushes were thorny and full of poison. Everyone pondered whether to go in and, if so, how far. Everyone wondered if the body belonged to the person everyone thought it did. Everyone had concerns. Everyone pondered calling the authorities. Everyone wondered whether the authorities would have concerns and whether those concerns would involve everyone.

No one seemed to have noticed the body, and now it had disappeared into the bushes. The authorities might wonder how everyone had known it was there. The authorities might not believe everyone if everyone stated that he or she had seen it fall. So many others had seen it fall. So many others had been around and had passed it by, but no one had mentioned it. No one had called.

Everyone considered the act of calling an ethical dilemma. Everyone hated ethical dilemmas.

Everyone wished that he or she was at a computer so that everyone could contact the Internet regarding what to do.

Everyone did not recognize that the dilemma did not really involve ethics. Everyone’s reason for not calling the authorities was, in fact, cowardice. Everyone did not think about how if he or she could not risk calling about the body, everyone could not risk what was necessary to find the meaning of life, as he or she desired. If everyone had listened to his or her former coworker Harvey, everyone would have known that finding the meaning of life involved giving up one’s life.

Harvey would have told everyone that whether to call was not an ethical dilemma. Harvey knew a lot about ethics because religion and philosophy were what Harvey liked to talk about with the Internet. Harvey often mentioned religion and philosophy to everyone.

Harvey was a custodian. Harvey owned a vacuum cleaner. A vacuum cleaner could gather a body from the bushes. A vacuum cleaner could make a masterpiece of a mess.

Everyone did not have a vacuum cleaner at this moment.

Everyone wiped at his or her brow with the plaid handkerchief. Everyone did not go into the bushes. Everyone was uncertain whether the body was inside them. The handkerchief seemed like something everyone had seen in his or her closet soon after everyone had been married. Everyone’s spouse had denied the thing existed.

Everyone threw the handkerchief into the bushes.

Everyone Experiences Mechanical Difficulties

Everyone felt guilty about giving her or his child Journey a black eye. Everyone had given Journey the black eye because she or he had seen inside it an ex-coworker named J. D. J. D. was obsessed with budgets and rules and was something of a jerk. In Journey’s eye, J. D. was wearing a plaid coat and galoshes and was carrying an umbrella, and J. D.’s clothes were all wet.

J. D. was not known for originality. Whatever everyone did, J. D. did as well. When everyone waved, J. D. waved. When everyone ate a banana, J. D. chose to eat one then as well. J. D. was annoying.

J. D. had been wearing the plaid jacket when she or he, after falling from the twelfth floor, landed in the bushes beside the sidewalk at the bottom of the office building where everyone worked. No one had seen J. D. wear such a jacket before, so everyone and her and his coworkers were not sure if it was actually J. D.

Everyone had not been one of the people to go down to the sidewalk to check if the person who had fallen was actually J. D. and whether J. D. was wearing a plaid jacket. Alice had said that she would check, and a few others said they would go with her, but everyone could not recall anyone returning to confirm her or his findings.

Everyone suspected now that J. D.’s appearance inside Journey meant that J. D. was calling out to everyone to go to the sidewalk below the office building to look at J. D.’s body and to recover the jacket. J. D. had lost either a body or a life, and now it had become everyone’s job to find it, just as it had become everyone’s job to recover her or his spouse who had run away after finding the meaning of life. All sorts of people were asking for everyone’s help. Everyone wasn’t sure how many others J. D. had tried to reach before her or him, but everyone suspected she or he was one of the last, since everyone and J. D. were not really friends.

Everyone looked inside Journey’s black eye. Journey’s black eye looked back at everyone. J. D. waved. Everyone knew what she or he had to do.

The ride to the office was twenty-five minutes and involved many lane changes, which did not please the car, so it stopped. It did so at the point where it was supposed to enter the freeway. Already, it had been going twice as fast as any human could run, and everyone was asking it to go twice that speed. Everyone wanted too much, which was what a really good car cost. This car with peeling green paint was not that car. It was not too much. It was less than that, and thus it was fed up.

Everyone slid from the vehicle and walked around it, staring. Everyone opened the hood. Everyone could not tell the difference between a working engine and a nonworking one. A nonworking one did not have blood spurting from it the way a nonworking person would.

Everyone thought of J. D. Everyone had not seen blood spurting from J. D. because everyone had not gone down to the sidewalk to check on her and him. Thus, everyone could not be certain whether J. D. had a working body or a nonworking one.

Everyone raised her or his head. In the distance--maybe six miles--the office where J. D. and everyone worked rose like an old mother complaining about her back, which is to say it sat forward on the flat landscape as if ready to topple the way J. D. had.

Everyone Sees Something in Journey

The next time everyone saw his or her former coworker J. D., it was inside everyone’s darling child Journey. J. D. had been inside everyone for several weeks, and before that J. D. had been a coworker. Journey did not seem to everyone to be a very good darling for J. D. to reside in. J. D. was excessively rule and budget conscious, while Journey cared only about chocolate, budget be damned.

When Jeremy was inside everyone, everyone had at times felt a ping in his or her heart, as if he or she had replaced a two-hundred-year-old painting of Methuselah by an unnamed master of the medium with a half-life-sized photo of the pop star David Bowie by a third-row concertgoer or of the rapper Iggy Azalea by herself. The Methuselah painting seemed like it might be worth $5092, which everyone needed desperately for a down payment on a car, but the Bowie or Iggy photos aroused in everyone a longing for his or her spouse because Bowie’s cheeks and Iggy’s eyes looked like their child Jan’s, which in turn looked like everyone’s spouse’s. Everyone’s spouse had left him or her about six months previously.

The best child to have hosted J. D., everyone figured, would have been Star. Star had a literal heart of gold. On weekends, everyone’s darlings Jody and Journey and Jan sometimes played hide-and-go-seek with Star using a metal detector.

The part of Journey in which J. D. came to reside was the left eye. Journey complained of pain, and everyone tried to clear it. When everyone reached into his or her eye, however, Journey cowered. Everyone pushed Journey to the floor and stared. That is how everyone found J. D.

J. D. was slightly larger than Journey’s pupil. The invader was wearing a plaid jacket and galoshes and was carrying an umbrella. No matter, J. D. was soaked as the way his or her clothes stuck to his or her body attested. Journey’s eyeball was wet.

When everyone stared into Journey’s eye, J. D. stared back. If everyone waved, J. D. did too. If everyone raised a finger, so did J. D.

Everyone grabbed a piece of toast and ate it. So did J. D. Everyone took his or her shoe off and tapped it against his or her head. So did J. D.

J. D. was annoying.

Everyone thought carefully regarding the best means by which to remove the invader. Sharp metal objects like tweezers and forks seemed too dangerous. Fingertips might have worked, but Journey wouldn’t stand for them. Water only seemed to make J. D. wetter. And a toothpick could have introduced a splinter, as everyone knew from the Sermon on the Mount, though everyone was unaware of the sermon’s biblical origin, believing it to be the work of his or her coworker Harvey, who had recited parts of it one Sunday while they were cleaning an office.

The only way for everyone to capture J. D. he or she realized was to join him or her. Everyone instructed Journey to open the left eye as wide as possible. “I’m going in,” everyone said, pushing his or her two hands against Journey’s top and bottom eyelid as everyone tried to squeeze in the right foot.

It was in this manner that Journey ended up with a black eye and bloated face, as Journey later explained to others.

Everyone Falls in Love

And then it happened--someone jumped or fell. Fell was more likely. Everyone did not know. Everyone had not been there. Everyone had been at her or his desk in her or his office on the twelfth floor doing tax returns while pretending to archive architectural details for the Dasney Amusement Park Malls, for whom everyone worked--this week, changes to the animatronic John Quincy Adams at the mall in the town in which everyone lived.

John Quincy Adams was not very popular. He had been settled on because some people did not like Ronald Reagan while other people did not like Bill Clinton. Dasney Amusement Park Malls was trying to galvanize interest, make the robotic John Quincy Adams relevant to people’s lives enough that they would want to listen to him speak. His voice predated audio recordings. No one knew much about him. He was exotic. This, the Dasney executives in charge of covering bad decisions had argued, should have made John Quincy Adams popular.

Now Dasney was putting John Quincy Adams in Hawaii, because many surveys said people love Hawaii. Having Adams speak presciently about the fiftieth state, the Dasney executives in charge of rendering bad decisions believed, seemed a spectacular thing for a robot to do.

Everyone heard a scream and a clank and clunk against metal. Everyone was uncertain which had come first or whether they had happened at the same time. Everyone was more focused on the response of her or his body--the sinking of the stomach, the quickening of the heart.

It had finally happened, everyone thought--people opening and closing and opening and closing that screen door all day every day for four weeks, and finally someone had fallen. The window was too large for opening and closing, the office too high up. “What an idiot,” everyone thought.

Everyone rushed to the open window but didn’t get too close. Everyone came for the spectacle, though everyone didn’t want to see it. Everyone felt sick. The other employees were there too, milling around, staring. Some stood on the ledge looking down--idiots all, everyone thought.

“Who was it?” everyone asked.

Others asked too.

“J. D.,” Sam told people. “It was J. D.” Sam was crying. Everyone had been trying to avoid Sam because she or he had a crush on everyone. But everyone had never seen Sam cry. Everyone was moved beyond sickness.

Others claimed J. D. also. J. D. spread through the office, became ubiquitous, a part of all employees’ souls. Everyone had never cared for J. D.--J. D. was too taken with budget numbers and was a know-it-all--but J. D. became part of everyone as well.

Everyone looked around for J. D. to make sure. Everyone did not see her or him. The supposition seemed possible, even likely.

Then Alice, poised at the window frame looking down, said, “It doesn’t look like J. D.”

Others looked for J. D. too, but J. D. was inside them, where she or he couldn’t be seen.

Everyone wanted to step to the window and look, confirm or deny what Alice had denoted. Everyone didn’t dare. That window was death waiting to happen. Everyone had four children to care for and a spouse who had run off that she or he hoped to cajole back.

“J. D. never wore shirts like that,” Alice continued.

“That’s not a shirt like that,” Pat said. “That’s J. D.’s jacket.” Pat had a penchant for fashion but was chronically near sighted. Everyone wasn’t sure what to believe.

“That’s a shirt,” Alice insisted. “Since when did J. D. have a plaid jacket?”

“J. D.,” Sam moaned, as if her or his heart were broken.

Everyone put her or his arm around Sam. Everyone couldn’t believe it. But J. D. was inside everyone, and everyone found her- or himself changing, transforming, becoming something loving and lovable. Everyone was scared.