Dangerous Past

by Cobe Reinbold

  The bottom of the article was dated unlike any of the other ones. It was written a month after the last one, and posted on the page earlier today. I was mortified. How could Mady hide this kind of stuff from me? Of course, I knew some of the other girls were jealous, but I didn’t think they had ever taken it out on her. Lots of girls tried to hook up with me, but the thought of actually cheating on Mady was gut wrenching. They would text me apologizing the next day, blaming it on having too much to drink, when I knew they were completely sober. It hurt me that she hadn’t trusted me with this kind of stuff. I would have stopped it if I’d known.

  I stared at the post searching for what she’d hidden in it. If Mady set it up in the way Metrix explained, then there should be something to help us. I had to read it again.

  “Everything okay over there?” Kent broke my concentration.

  “Yeah. There’s another blog post up.”

  Immediately, they gathered at my desk. I read it again while they pored over the post. Mady must have left something for me in the post; it just didn’t jump out at me.

  “That’s heavy stuff.” Jason backed away from the computer.

  “Yeah, but look.” Kent pointed at the post. “She said she was reading some John Green book! That must be the book we’re looking for.” He grabbed his hoodie off the back of my desk chair and headed for the door. “You guys coming or what?” He stopped when none of us got up to follow him. Kent seemed really excited, and I hoped he was onto something.

  I got up and followed him to the door, Jason right behind me. Jessica just sat staring at a spot on the wall, not moving a muscle. Kent went over to her, sat down and put his arm around her.

  “Jessica, it’s going to be alright. We’ll find her in time and we’ll bring her back.” He rubbed her shoulders.

  Tears glinted in her eyes, but she stayed rigid as a statue, staring directly ahead.

  “It’s not that. I was…” she whispered. Her voice cracked. “I was one of those girls that day.” The tears streaked her cheeks and she buried her face in her hands.

  “What do you mean you were one of the girls that day?” Kent asked. He was strung tight as a bow, lifting his arm off her shoulders the slightest bit.

  “I was there when Hanna slapped her. The look on her face was terrible. She looked at me like I betrayed her, and I guess I did. Hanna just seemed so cool back then there was no way I could go against her and stand up for Mady.”

  It felt like someone stabbed me in the chest. I could hear every heartbeat and my eardrums were pounding in my head. I couldn’t believe I trusted someone who bullied Mady with her secrets. Jessica was probably the last person she ever wanted to know any of this.

  “You didn’t hit her, did you?” Kent asked.

  He seemed torn. Like he has to choose between his friendship with me and his relationship with his new girlfriend.

  “No, of course not, but I also didn’t stop it. Hanna was jealous of her dating Brian, and she thought if she intimidated her enough she’d break up with you for fear of getting beaten up. Then Hanna thought she’d have you all to herself.”

  It made sense in a strange way. Hanna was the girl who texted me the most, asking me to come over late at night, or pick her up when I wasn’t with Mady. I never thought she’d resort to violence.

  “Whatever. We need to the library before it closes. We can talk about it in the car on the way there.” I was surprised my voice didn’t deceive me. I think they all expected me to freak out on Jessica. But I needed to find Mady more than I needed to yell at Jessica.

  I urged Jessica to get up. We had to get to the library and find the book. It only gave us an hour to get in, find the shelf and row, find the book, and leave with it.” What if we couldn’t find it? What if someone had it checked out?

  We pulled up at the library ten minutes later. The Flankstone Library was perched on a tall hill just on the outside of the main street, so it had a great view over town. The only other thing further down that road was the radio tower. We walked in the front doors and the first thing I noticed was the quiet. My ears had a faint tinny ringing in them. Of course, libraries were supposed to be quiet, but this was almost eerie.

  “Hi there,” I said, walking up to the librarian at the front desk. She seemed young to be working at a library, she didn’t look much older than us. The librarian must not have heard us come in through the front door since she looked up from the book she was reading with a startled expression. “We’re looking for shelf two, row one.”

  “Row one is at the back of the library on the right-hand side, and shelf two is the second shelf of books.” She stood up and pointed towards the back of the library. Large windows overlooked the town below. “Do you have a library card? I don’t believe I’ve seen you in here before.”

  “No, we just don’t come to the library much.” Jason flashed her one of his million dollar smiles. “We have to get some books for a school project.”

  “Strange school project. Those are all the teen romance. Also, it’s summertime. I would know because this is my summer job.” She looked at us more intently. If she knew we were lying she didn’t seem to care, because before the conversation went any further, she sat back down and opened her book again.

  We left her alone, and I led the way to the back of the library. The library seemed well funded. There was a large skylight in the middle of the ceiling and everything looked new. There appeared to be thousands of books crammed into the building, and I was surprised I had never paid the place a visit before.

  We found row one and turned into the aisle created by the large book shelves. The shelves towered taller than me, and I started to wonder if shorter people just never read the books at the top. We found shelf two. I looked up at the hundreds of books and wondered how anyone found anything.

  “I guess we need to start looking for anything by John Green,” I said, still overwhelmed by the large number of books. I checked my phone. Forty minutes before closing. It seemed impossible. If we didn’t find the book by closing time, it would be another wasted night. Jessica seemed even more determined to find the book. We started scanning the titles on the shelves.

  Jessica took the bottom rows. The guys took the top ones since she couldn’t reach them. Before long we had amassed a large stack of books by John Green. We were in the teen romance section, so there was no lack of books. Now we were faced with another problem. How were we meant to figure out which book she wanted us to find? We decided we’d cross that bridge when we got to it after we got all his books into one big pile.

  We double checked the rows to make sure we hadn’t missed any. I checked my phone again, ten minutes left. We sat down in a circle and studied them one by one. We didn’t know exactly what we were looking for, but at that point I think we hoped something would jump out at us.

  On my third book, something did. As soon as I opened it, things started falling out. I thought they were pages from the book and worried I’d broken the spine. I started picking up the pages when I noticed they weren’t actually pages at all.

  “Guys, I think this is what we’re looking for,” I said, still gathering the fallen papers.

  What had fallen out were actually notes and letters addressed to Mady. Some were in an envelope with her address on the front, and some were loose with her name written in the top right-hand corner.

  “There they are,” I crowed in triumph. Instantly I picked them up and put them in my pocket.

  Footsteps echoed in the large room and I knew our time was up.

  “The library will be closing now.” The librarian popped her head around the corner, her eyes growing wide as she saw the mess we had made with all of the books.

  “Okay, we’ll just put these books away and then get out of here,” I said, turning around and standing in front of her to block her view, just in case Kent missed a letter or two.

  “You guys don’t know how to put books away properly, do you?” She sighed.

  “Don’t you just
put them back into the shelf?” I guess it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

  “No. You guys just go along and I’ll take care of this.” She stepped around me and walked over to the books. My heart raced. I hoped we found everything Mady wanted us to find.

  “Oh, John Green. Good choice,” she said, turning back to me. “You know, not many people have a passion for reading. I haven’t read John Green myself, but a girl read almost all of them a few months back. Said she really loved that one.” The librarian pointed at the book the letters fell out of.

  “Was her name Mady?” Jason asked as he stood up and looked at the librarian.

  “Yeah, that was her. Are you Brian?” She turned back to me. I struggled to hide my shock. How on earth did this girl know my name? I never came to the library, but she talked about Mady like she knew her.

  “Yeah.” I was still trying to figure out how she obtained that bit of information. “How did you know my name?”

  The girl hesitated for a second before answering. “Oh, Mady came in here all the time and she talked about you a lot.”

  The answer didn’t sit right with me for some reason, but I wasn’t going to dwell on it right now. We had what we came here to get, so it was time for us to head home. We rushed out of the library and headed home. By now it was just after 6 p.m. and Mom would be home anytime.

  I still felt strange about the girl at the library. Maybe Mady went to the library lots more than she let on, and they had forged a friendship. Mady told me she was going to the library whenever she had a big test coming up, or an assignment, but other than I didn’t think she made a habit of going. Thinking about it, I had never seen the girl around town before. In a small town everyone knew everybody else, so someone I didn’t know was kind of odd.

  I was still worrying over it when we pulled into my driveway and parked. Jason and Kent got out of the car, and I gathered the letters together and got ready to go inside. As I was about to get out of the car Jessica spoke.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her voice quivered. I glanced at her for a moment. She truly did seem upset, but I wondered if she was upset about what happened, or upset she’d confessed.

  “Go on.”

  “I knew it was wrong at the time, but you know what it’s like to feel you have to fit in. It’s exhausting, and in the moment, I guess I thought since I wasn’t the one hitting her I wasn’t at fault. I regret what I did now, and right when the news broke she killed herself I was disgusted with myself. I wondered if the bullying had something to do with it, and you should know it wasn’t the only time Hanna attacked her. I guess I should have put a stop to it, since I was one of the only people that knew. Now, I just wish I could take it all back.

  “Jessica, I’m not going to lie and pretend like it’s all alright, because it’s not. But, we have more important things to worry about right now, and we need to stay focused on finding Mady. If we find her, then she can decide whether she wants to forgive you or not.” I stepped out of the car. I couldn’t deal with this kind of drama right now.

  Jessica followed me into the house and up to my room. I took out all of the notes and letters we found in the library, and spread them out on the desk. Jessica, Jason, and Kent pulled chairs up beside me. It was a daunting task, all those papers laying there.

  “I guess we should put them in order by date, and who they’re from. I triple checked we had all of them when you were talking to the librarian, so they should all be here,” Jason said, picking one at random. I did the same, luckily it had a date on it, as well as the initials NL at the bottom written in cursive.

  I already had my suspicions the notes were from the person harassing her, and that confirmed it.

  “Let’s start with who sent them,” Jessica said, taking one of in an envelope and pulling it out.

  I nodded and started a pile for NL. We opened the letters and sorting them. The pile for NL was the only one, there had to be at least 15 notes. It would take us a while to read all of them.

  By the time we had gone through all of the letters, there were only two piles. The one for NL, and one other note by itself with no signature. I recognized the handwriting, it was from Mady.

  I put it off to the side, and we sorted the NL notes from oldest to newest, trying to find the first one. In half an hour the notes were spread out across my desk in chronological order, the note from Mady separated from the rest.

  My eyes shot open and my heart started racing at the sound of the garage door. If my Mom walked in it would be hard to explain all the letters. I gathered them up so the oldest was on the top of the pile and the newest was on the bottom. There were 17 of them in all. I had just retrieved all of them when Mom’s high heels clattered on the stairs.

  I shoved my handful of notes behind my back just as the door swung open. Jason and Kent were sitting on the bed doing their best to look nonchalant; Jessica perched on a chair in the corner on her phone

  “Hi, Brian.” Mom paused in the doorway. “Hi, everyone.” Her gaze encompassed my friends, who returned the greeting.

  “Hey Mom, sorry I forgot to ask if they could come over.” My heart was still pumping, but I didn’t think she was suspicious.

  “No worries, I’m going to go change and then I was thinking about going out for dinner.”

  “Yeah, everyone will be leaving soon anyways, so that sounds great.”

  She closed the door and I breathed a sigh of relief. I felt a bit guilty about not telling her what was going on, but somehow I just couldn’t.

  When the door swung shut my friends’ relief was tangible. I went the closet and hid the letters. We hung out for another twenty minutes quietly discussing how to proceed with the new information. Mom yelled up she was ready to go, so I went down to join her and everyone else left.

  Spending time with Mom was always nice, but this whole situation made it hard. I had to watch what I said every single time she asked me how my day was or what I did. I had no idea what she would think if she knew what I had been doing for the past two weeks.

  We pulled up to a local diner and walked in. We sat down and ordered and I decided I should tell my mom everything. I didn’t even take a second to think about it before I blurted out.

  “I don’t think Mady killed herself, Mom.”

  She looked up in stunned disbelief and put down her drink.

  “What do you mean, Brian?”

  “I mean, I don’t think Mady really killed herself. I think she ran away and left a note so no one would go looking for her.”

  “Why do you think she’s still alive?” Bewilderment coloured her voice.

  “I don’t know if she still is, but I don’t think she died the way we think. It explains why they never found a body. Maybe she was in some sort of trouble and she had to run.” I thought she was leaning toward believing I might be right.

  “Brian, you thought the same thing when they took you into the police station. I thought you’d made progress? You haven’t even talked about her in over a month.”

  Mom was right. I hadn’t talked to her about Mady in a very long time, and every time the subject came up I acted like I was okay with it.

  “Mom, I just have this feeling she was lying.”

  “Brian, she’s gone. When I get home, I’ll call Nancy and set a time up for you tomorrow. You can talk to her about everything you’re feeling and maybe she can help you work through it.”

  I held my temper. Mom was acting like I was her crazy son, and she didn’t know what to do with me, so she just sent me away to get help. I was sick of going to talk to Doctor Kim. Given what I knew now, I obviously wasn’t going to have a breakthrough with her, so I just let the subject rest, hoping she’d forget about it by the time we got home.

  When we got home I eavesdropped shamelessly and heard her through my bedroom door on the phone with Nancy.

  “I think he has had a relapse. Is that what you would call it?’ She was using her business voice which meant she was worried about me.
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  I sat on my bed and considered every single shred of evidence we had discovered so far and thought about showing it to her, to prove I wasn’t insane. I talked myself out of it just as quick. If she knew what was going on, she’d make me hand all of it over to the police. I needed to be the one who figured it out. I needed to be the one who rescued Mady.

  Mom rapped on my door and walked in without waiting for me to respond.

  “You have an appointment with Nancy at ten in the morning tomorrow. You should go to bed now so you’re not late.” She came over, kissed me goodnight and left, closing the door behind her. I hated how she just assumed I would fall in with her plans, like I had no say in the matter.

  I went to bed and lay looking at the ceiling. Pushing back at Mom and Doctor Kim wouldn’t get me anywhere. At some point I was going to have to tell my parents. I could see the situation going one of two ways. If things went well, I would find Mady alive. If things didn’t go well, we’d find Mady’s body. Either way at some point this whole thing would end and I’d have to fess up.

  I didn’t dream that night, probably because I couldn’t stop thinking about the letters in my closet. I didn’t think it was fair to read them without Jason, Jessica, and Kent, since they helped find them. That didn’t stop me from wondering what was in them.

  Before I knew it, the sun was peeking over the horizon. I don’t think I even got a full hour of sleep, but I shot bolt upright anyway. Mom was in the bathroom, so I called good morning through the door and started getting ready. Last time I was late for a meeting with Nancy, I told her the truth about why I was late. I couldn’t risk that again.

  I checked the clock and it was 9 a.m. I had to be at Nancy’s in an hour. I had a bit of time so I scrolled through my social media pages. I hadn’t paid much attention to them all summer, and there were a lot of notifications for me to look at. After a couple of minutes, I typed Mady’s name in the search bar. I always ended up doing that when I went online, I just couldn’t help myself. I knew every picture by heart, and of course she wasn’t going to post anymore, but her page held some of my best memories. It showed the Mady I knew, and loved, so going through it always made me feel a little bit closer to her. Mady was a fighter, and even if some person got their hands on her, she wouldn’t go down without fighting, and that gave me some hope.