This short starts so abrutly I thought I had the printed pages mixed up. The title, But I Can't, is embedded mysteriously in second row of frames. At first glance the title appears to be a dramatized portion of the story, but on reading, is completely out of context. The story focuses on the relationship between two girls during their middle school and teen years. The narrative seen through the eyes of one of the girls, as she relates the story to a group of friends.
The story is organized in soft bubbles delineated by background shading rather than lines. The story begins with a dialogue between several characters in word bubbles but is then narrated in solid blocks of text that are the same size as the frames themselves. This gives the feeling of a very close first person voice. The rounded frames are punctuated here and there with objects: a picture frame, computer screen photos, and a newspaper clipping. The objects stand out in sharp contrast next to the marshmallowed images.
The characters in the pictures are all fairly nondescript sweatshirt-wearing, long-haired teenagers. The only character who really stands out is the lost mother. She is wearing a very low cut blouse with ric-rac trimming and has on bracelets and rings. Her face is animated, and her hair falls loosely across her chest. The narrator is a long-haired girl whose gender doesn't really become absolutely clear until the second page, where she is seen younger, in a school uniform skirt get-up. Interestingly, though they are all so seemingly similar, clearly the friend in question was the odd man out. She was made fun of, picked on, teased. She is "too boyish and weird for everyone" (2). But aren't they all kind of goofy and boyish and weird looking, too? Great way to show the stochasticity of meanness and alienation.
The narrative sets out to describe a supernatural experience and ends up telling a story about a girl gone missing, never found, and leaves on the page, a great aching for her. The ambiguity of the characterization and of the tale allow the reader to ruminate about loss- especially the kind concerning folks who have drifted out of our lives for one reason or another, or those, perhaps, that we took for granted.