The next morning, I wake up and every single thing that happened last night replays in my head like a movie. I lie on my bed and go through the scene again, the few moments just before the nurse took Max up to her ward. I check the time. It’s nine. I’ve slept for almost four hours. My parents must’ve left for the store already. They didn’t even try waking me up. Strange. Normally, my parents doing something like this would cause me to worry. But all I can think about is what Max said just before I left her: “Find me on Facebook.”
I go downstairs and jump on the computer. I try logging onto my Facebook account and it’s still inactive. I sigh and shake my head. I’m so annoyed — but whatever. I set up a new email address so I can set up a new account in Facebook. I find Max and send her a friend request. I stare at the little find friends icon. Nothing. Another second passes by. Still nothing. I refresh the page. I tell myself to calm down.
There it is. She’s accepted my request.
She messages me. It’s a comment about the fact that my page is entirely empty — no profile pic, no photos, no friends. She asks me if I just came onto Facebook for the first time ever. I respond by saying:
Me: Any chance u remember what happened to Frmda62? I mean what he told you happened to his FB account?
Max: ???????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: . . . so u ARE frmda6?
Max: Em, how the hell did you find me last night??
Me: That was just a coincidence. I didn’t ‘find’ u — just a crazy coincidence. I didn’t even have a clue it was you until I heard you tell ur story 2 Joyce @ the hospital.
There’s no response for like over an entire minute. I type and ask if she’s still there.
Max: Yeah. I just . . . Wow!
There’s a pause.
Max: So, tell me again — what were you doing at the park at that hour?
Me: Let’s just say there’s still some rope in my backpack.
Max: NO!!! Hey! You should be in this hospital with me!
Me: What’s it like in there?
She tells me about the other patients in the ward. There are seven others, a real mix of older and young people, both men and women. She has to do some kind of group session with them later, so she will probably get to know them a little bit.
Then she suddenly remembers my problems as Frmda62. She messages me about stories she had read on a website about how people tracked down their lost phones. The site is called Reddit and she embeds a link in the message. Reddit acts like a community bulletin board where people post all kinds of stuff, including questions relating to just about anything. I click on the link, and I see a story from a girl in New Jersey who asked readers for help locating her lost phone. She got a ton of advice about tracking apps. She got her phone back!
Max asks me if I have a cell phone tracking GPS app on my phone. I don’t. I went online the night the police came to the house and tried to track my phone using the suggestions I found on my wireless provider’s website — but they were useless. She asks me if my phone was connected to any cloud storage. Some guy in California found his phone because pictures the thief took of himself using the phone were automatically uploaded to the owner’s cloud account. He used clues from the pictures to track down the thief. If whoever has my phone takes any pictures using the cell, it might help me find out where they are. I tell Max that I will go look.
My phone is connected to service called Lockbox. It automatically backs up my phone with any changes I make in my contacts, photo gallery or even my phone log. It takes a couple of seconds to log in. I whisper the word “please” out loud.
There are a bunch of pictures that have been uploaded since my phone went missing. I recognize the pictures that were used in the fake Facebook posts: the yearbook pictures of my VP and Ms. McAdam and one of the gun. There are a couple of pics of two guys posing with the gun.
Max messages me:
Any luck?
I let her know.
Awesome! Any clues you can use?
The excitement I felt when I discovered the pictures is starting to fade. The pictures of the guys were taken at night, so it’s dark. They were shot from a balcony, and judging from what I can see in the background, it looks like they’re on the second floor. I can just make out some of the storefronts across the street, but not any of the words on the signs. I squint to try to figure out the pictures on the signs. They’re blurry, but the one that is the clearest looks like an animal of some sort. A buffalo maybe? The store next to that one has a stick figure person on the sign.
I Google Image search “buffalo.” Of course I get a billion unrelated images of buffaloes. I try “buffalo store” and “buffalo restaurant” — more useless hits. I give Max the bad news. A bunch of pictures. Two guys. Some blurry signs. Nothing of any use.
“It’s okay,” she writes. She instructs me to post the pictures on Reddit and ask people if they recognize the signs. She tells me to write about what happened. People love to help out if someone’s been badly wronged.
I follow her instructions. It feels like a total long shot, but I guess I have nothing to lose. It takes me almost thirty minutes to create an account, upload the pics and write my story. Now I guess I wait.
I message Max again.
Me: So how are you really doing in there?
Max: *shrug*
Me: Talk to any1 from home?
Max: Spoke to my mom. Kim’s coming by later.
I take this to mean that her mother won’t be visiting. If it were me in the hospital, my parents would be worried out of their minds. You wouldn’t even be able to keep my parents away with all the security in the world. It drives me crazy, but I guess it’s better than them not caring. I feel bad for Max.
Me: That’s great.
Max: Keep me posted on what happens with Reddit.
I look through Max’s pages on Facebook. She has almost a thousand friends, three times as many as I had on my old account. Most of the pics are of her and her girlfriends. For someone who’s had it so rough for the past six months or longer, she doesn’t have the usual dark or moody posts that you see on so many girls’ walls. Just based on what you see of her online, you’d think she was doing fine. I do notice that sometimes there are gaps in the posts, a month here, a month and a half there. In almost all the photos, she’s wearing long sleeves. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed that if it weren’t for what I saw at the hospital yesterday.
I check the Reddit page. There are already two responses! I’m excited, until I read the comments. Two people tell me that my “situation sucks” and to “hang in there.” I surf aimlessly on the net. I come across a story on Yahoo about a post that has gone viral on Instagram. It’s a picture of two graves with two heads superimposed onto the tombstones. One is VP Selvadurai and the other is Ms. McAdam. Mr. S is wearing a turban and Ms. McAdam is wearing a hijab. The picture’s been photoshopped very poorly. There are black Xs where their eyes should be. The caption reads:
MCI students stay home tomorrow — You’ve been warned.
The short blurb states that this picture showed up on Instagram from the account of Emerson Yeung and that police are investigating. The home phone rings, startling me. I check the call display. It’s the Toronto police.