by Bart Hopkins
Paul preferred Apple. He respected what Steve Jobs had created; it reminded him of himself: strong. Apple had the strength to do things their way and they worked hard at perfection.
In a few seconds he had all of his regular sites open: Marketwatch, Linkedin, Facebook, and CNN.
He followed up on his most recent investments and work-related news. His perfectionist nature drove him to check regularly, at least daily, and sometimes hourly when he was in the middle of something big.
The market waters were calm tonight—no financial vessels lost out at sea. The Paul Harris lighthouse would remain vigilant, but he was confident that no beacon of life-saving light would be needed tonight.
Facebook, however, was a different story. It felt like there was a tsunami somewhere under the surface, waiting to be released.
Paul noticed right away that his friend count had dropped yet again. His jaw tightened involuntarily, and he squinted as he digested the change in numbers. He couldn’t be certain—he hadn’t thought to take note of how many friends he had before—but he was at 470 friends. At least five people had un-friended him, and maybe as many as ten, though he couldn’t be sure. He briefly considered reviewing his friend list and identifying who it was that was now missing.
Ah, it’s probably just one of her bitch friends, he decided. No point in wasting my time … giving them the satisfaction.
He had a dozen notifications and three messages waiting for him.
The first message was from his co-worker, Seth Barnes. Paul called him Little Napoleon. He was the boss’s executive assistant, the exec, and the type of guy that would stomp all over people to advance himself. Seth routinely abused his position, delivering directives under the guise that they were from the boss. Understandably, life was pretty miserable for the staff at times. If they didn’t make such great money, they’d probably all bolt.
Of course, he doesn’t pull any of that shit with me, Paul mused.
Paul had already made his name at DeWitt when Seth started working there. He’d proven himself through his actions, his reliability, and judgment. Seth’s resume, on the other hand, consisted of his daddy being friends with Mr. DeWitt.
But that wasn’t why Seth kept his distance from Paul.
No. Seth had tried to manipulate Paul at work one time…
Once.
…that night, Paul paid Seth a special visit at his house.
Paul found himself both delighted and disgusted. Seth was weak and pathetic and had squealed like a little girl from the start. Seth had called in sick the rest of that week. When he did return, he kept his distance from Paul, only speaking to him when necessary. Sometimes Paul heard Seth’s voice shake a little bit when he spoke to him. He was certain that if he pressed him, he could make Seth piss his pants.
Paul smiled to himself, thinking about it, and opened the message.
Paul – Mr. DeWitt would like you to prepare a briefing on upcoming takeover potential on Monday.
He furrowed his brow slightly when he saw the sender’s name for the next message: Northside High School Class of 2004. That was his high school, but he’d never heard of the Facebook group.
Fellow graduate of Northside High School Class of 2004,
It’s hard to believe, but it’s already been 10 years since we graduated.
It’s time for us to get together, catch up, and celebrate our world domination…
Northside Class of 2004 ROCKS!
He groaned inwardly at the cheesy, excessively happy message. He could only imagine one of Northside’s blonde cheerleaders typing it … or cheering it.
Paul could see now that someone had created an open group on Facebook for his graduating class. Somehow, he had already been made a member. He didn’t mind—he found himself curious about what people were up to—so he began clicking on some of the more than 200 people that were also members of the reunion group.
Some people were exactly the same—ten years hadn’t changed them at all. Others were virtually unrecognizable. It was fascinating, looking through their profiles, discovering the changes.
There was Leslie Fuller, formerly Leslie Erickson, formerly head cheerleader, formerly and currently blonde, bubbly, and lithe. Every picture involved the beach or mountains, form-fitting outfits, and a giant smile full of whitened teeth. Same.
And Stan Sullivan, their Northside Joe-All-American high school quarterback and class salutatorian. He was born with money and by the looks of it, continued to make his own or lived off of daddy’s wealth. From his pictures, it looked like he had traded the old football jersey for a new uniform that consisted of polo-style shirts, khaki shorts, and sunglasses that could regularly be seen resting up on top of his head. Same. As. Always.
Paul chuckled to himself, spotting John Cusack among the group members. John’s name was an endless source of amusement to classmates. John claimed to hate sharing the name of the actor, but Paul thought he secretly enjoyed it. John was the king of the Goth crowd back then. Clad almost completely in black, with only the occasional glint of silver from chains and buttons, he and his companions could be found under the giant Oak tree across from the school, smoking and looking forlorn. His pictures revealed that he had taken giant strides toward normalcy. Good for him.
Stephanie Wheeton, class valedictorian, had traded in her thick glasses for contacts and had either grown tits or bought them. Paul guessed that they were purchased—biological change of that magnitude after high school seemed doubtful.
She’s all grown up, Paul thought, chuckling aloud this time. He scanned through her photos, noting that she had made them all publicly visible, and that the collection was noticeably absent of pictures taken prior to new glasses and new boobs.
Completely relaxed and loose, removed from real life and engrossed in Facebook, something caught his attention: a picture.
He wasn’t prepared to see her again. It had been such a long time…
(since high school)
…but she hadn’t changed much. Her eyes were still the same intense blue, with an ever-present hint of laughter, only now they were accentuated by the slightest sign of aging: smallish wrinkles. Except, Paul thought they served to make her more attractive than she was in the past.
He was kind of shell-shocked—her picture was right there—listed under friends on Stephanie Wheeton’s profile page.
He sat back for a second, closed his eyes, and concentrated for a moment, reached deep into his mind, and envisioned his sophomore English classroom.
From the rear of the room looking forward, the door leading to the hallway was on the right side of the room. The wall on the left was lined with windows that looked across the lawns in front of the school. There were several trees and park benches, pretty, yet with an air of academia. It was easily the best view of any classroom in the building, and more like a college campus than a high school.
(Inside the classroom, the view was even better…)
The desks were well kept, though they were aging. They were a combination of wood and metal, and had these ridiculous baskets underneath the chair that weren’t useful for anything except giving the person behind you a place to rest their feet.
Paul breathed in deeply … he could smell the classroom. Despite the age of the building, despite the varying levels of hygiene amongst the students, he could smell that room. And he could smell her.
It made sense, really … Stephanie was a borderline genius, and English was her favorite subject. Why wouldn’t she reach out to her old teachers? They no doubt felt the same way about her.
Jennifer Newman, he thought, and whistled softly. Ms. Newman…
Chapter 9
Rose
Rose was looking through Mary Beth’s pictures again.
She couldn’t see everything—Mary Beth had her privacy settings set to prevent that—but she could see a lot of what she needed to see … wanted to see.
Children—her grandchildren. A boy and a girl.
The boy, whose nam
e was Ryan, looked like his father, Tom. She’d learned the names through picture descriptions, so she couldn’t be certain. But they felt right. Especially Ryan.
Ryan looked a lot like Tom, all brown hair, friendly eyes, and broad smiles. Rose had never met Tom, but there was kindness in his face. She left things vague when she shared her situation with Sara and Melinda, but the truth was that it had been more than twenty years—two decades—since she’d seen Mary Beth. And she had never met Tom.
Chelsea was her granddaughter’s name. She looked friendly, like Ryan, but sassy, too. She looked like Mary Beth…
…Which meant she looked like Rose.
She clicked on the different albums, taking her time, soaking it up.
Chelsea’s 8th Birthday
Moving Day
Christmas 2012
Ryan’s first tooth
Ryan lost his first tooth
Our New Puppy!
On and on, there were easily thirty or forty albums of pictures. She opened every one, read every caption carefully, and then read it again. She pored over everything two, three, and four times.
She watched Ryan give a huge, squinty smile to the camera, lone tooth glistening with the flash. Then she saw him years older, same huge, squinty smile, this time with a full set of teeth minus one. Superman outfit for Halloween. Playing with their puppy.
She watched Chelsea ride a tricycle, then graduate to a bicycle. She was there for Chelsea’s first tea party, surrounded by little friends dressed up like princesses in pinks and purples. Then a cast, a broken arm from the bicycle. Then back on the bicycle without the cast.
Tom’s new job and their first real vacation.
Mary Beth going back to school—completing her degree—becoming an accountant. Rose cried at that album, at her daughter’s accomplishments.
Bumps, scrapes, trips, toys, birthdays, events, pets, and family—she saw it all. She was engrossed in every detail of their special moments. She almost—almost—felt as if she were part of their lives.
Melinda and Sara knew about the pictures, and that she’d trolled Facebook to find her daughter. They didn’t realize, however, just how obsessed she had become, and that she looked at those pictures every waking moment, sleeping only in fitful bursts between work and Facebook.
When she dreamed, it was imaginary conversations with her daughter and grandchildren and son-in-law. Tom called her “Mom” and they all laughed together. Family.
While she slept, images she’d perused and memorized that day played like a reel-to-reel movie in her mind. They were scratchy, fuzzy mental interpretations. Sometimes she was in the pictures. Always they were bordered in Facebook blue and gray.
She sometimes tossed and turned in the cool dark of night. Fitful sleep. Only semi-conscious, her fingers would seek out the crease in both arms—absentmindedly scratching the faint scars where the scabs had been—from the bad time in her life. Flickering memories, like a horror movie, of when she used to shoot up…
Then she’d sit bolt upright, disoriented, afraid she’d awakened in her own past, gone back to the drugs and the booze and stealing things for drug money. Sometimes she’d sit awake shaking, rubbing her arms; she’d pile blankets on herself those nights.
But it didn’t help. It wasn’t a cold that blankets could help. It went all the way to the bone and the heart, and yielded an emotional hypothermia.
Eventually, she’d pull her laptop close and power it on. Open Mary Beth’s Facebook page. Smile to herself when she saw Mary Beth Connor (Mary Beth Murray) across her daughter’s cover photo. Only then did she feel some warmth.
Connor is a nice name, she frequently thought.
For several weeks, she felt complete. The pictures filled the large void in her life that had become more pronounced each year. They answered the question that always lay hidden just beneath the surface: what happened to Mary Beth?
She thought it would be enough, the knowing.
As she cyber-stalked her own daughter, Rose became more and more proficient at using social media and the Internet. Wikipedia was her new source for information. She could LOL and BRB and she could LIKE. She had caught up to about 2008 technology, give or take, which she’d always avoided. She found it wasn’t too bad, and could only now admit how fully nervous it had made her in the beginning.
Sara asked her at work, “Rose, do you know if you can get blood out of a shirt?”
Rose promptly replied: “No idea … Google it,” and shrugged her shoulders.
Sara’s mouth dropped open into a comical “o” and remained that way for several seconds. Then they all three laughed until Melinda cried, clutched her side, and begged them to stop … said she might pee herself.
Mary Beth’s timeline remained hidden, and her about tab revealed little more than her name. The pictures, however, contained enough in the descriptions to make pinpointing their location pretty easy.
One picture had the couple standing outside of a beautiful restaurant, which dominated the right side of the picture’s landscape. The left side of the portrait revealed low hills. It looked like, maybe, there was a hotel or bed & breakfast type of place nearby. The description said: Anniversary dinner at our favorite restaurant! And, barely visible, in cursive writing above the door: The Wingate Lodge.
When Rose was a child, she was raised by her grandmother, Josephine, and every evening they would settle down in front of the television for Josephine’s evening shows, Rosie and Josie. Johnny Carson, Dynasty, and Dallas were standard fare, but grandma’s favorite was Family Feud. Clear as day, Rose could still hear “Survey says!” and then the bell when the marquis boards flipped, revealing answers. Strange what your mind holds onto, she thought.
She punched the name of the restaurant into Google, said “Google says!” out loud, and hit enter, half expecting to hear the Family Feud bell.
Google told her there were over 9,000,000 hits, and her heart sank. Could it be? she wondered. She had thought the name seemed quirky, unique.
“Might as well be McDonald’s,” she said out loud, shaking her head.
Upon closer inspection, she realized that many of the links were far from a perfect match. They merely contained elements of her search phrase. Billy Wingate died yesterday at his lodge … or Wingate’s Winter Lodge, come hunker down with us…
She scanned the page and clicked next.
Scanned another page and clicked next.
And on the third page, she found it. She knew it was it. They had a thumbnail image of the showcase window from Mary Beth and Tom’s picture. Her blood raced when she saw the location.
Fredericksburg, Texas.
They were close—so close—two hours. Less. She’d even been through that area, though it was ages ago, when she was a child, maybe.
Connecting the dots was too easy—the seed was planted—and she realized that simply knowing was no longer enough.
I could go see her. Go see Mary Beth, and my grandkids…
She chewed her lip until it was tender and ached. Scenarios played through her mind. Why should Mary Beth forgive her for leaving? She wasn’t a great mother when she was there, and then she disappeared completely. Mary Beth was twelve years old when she left, a tough time for girls...
But, won’t she want to see me, too? she debated internally. Even if it was just to tell Rose what she could go do with herself?
That seemed reasonable. Realistic. People weren’t robots—they needed closure. Her daughter would be no different.
Maybe.
She returned to Facebook and opened up some more of Mary Beth’s albums. Looked at her favorite pictures of her daughter. Focused on one of her at the graduation ceremony. From the smile, you’d think nothing had ever gone wrong in her life. It was honest and clean.
“And cleaner is better,” Rose said out loud and laughed.
Chapter 10
Susan & Jason Donahue
Susan was having a great day at work.
It was busy, but ther
e was a pleasant rhythm to the day, and she attacked everything with a smile. The standard routine took shape: call patients to the examining rooms, take vital signs, and prepare and update case files for Dr. Reynolds. She cranked through it, smiling, laughing, and staying ahead of the daily struggle. She paused now and then when her phone vibrated with new Facebook alerts.
She had floated through the last few weeks on cloud nine. Jason was “stuck” doing duties that kept him “inside the wire,” and not out patrolling with his team. He couldn’t give her all of the details, and she didn’t want them, but it was indefinite, and she knew he was disappointed. Jason was active—even though he’d deny it—and naturally heroic. Always opening doors, changing tires, or helping elderly ladies carry groceries. Do the right thing, he always told Daniel, and he meant it with every ounce of his being. She wondered at his impeccable moral fiber—he could have invented Boy Scouts.
He wouldn’t complain, but Susan could make some educated guesses at how Jason’s daily routine had changed, sans superhero action requirements.
Workouts would be harder, longer, more intense.
Distraction at mealtime, meals punctuated with frequent tapping feet, and bouncing knees, rocking the chow table.
Could probably be found pacing around the camp at night.
Restless, always restless…
He won’t be sad, she thought, but distracted, itching for action. She almost felt guilty for being happy—not!
Best of all, they were Skyping and Facebooking every day. She didn’t like to see that unsatisfied look in his eye—knew it bothered him—but she was secretly ecstatic that he wasn’t “in the shit” like some of his Marines might say. If he was online with her, it meant he wasn’t doing anything dangerous. Well, just being there was dangerous enough.
It was (almost) as if they were together again. She found herself checking Facebook several times each hour, looking for new messages. Those little red flags above the messages bubble brought a smile to her face and were a call to action, spurring her thumbs into motion.