Laura
Laura pulled the blankets up to her chin. It had been a very, very long night, though she didn’t think she could fall asleep any time soon. Watching the old clock on her wall tick very slowly to midnight did not help. Laura had spent hours trying to calm Charlie down after what seemed like a series of panic attacks prompted by the picture of him and Sarah at the homecoming dance, but now she was the one who needed calming.
When the picture popped onto the screen at the dance, Laura turned—and saw him gasping for air. She knew what to do—her mom used to get similar attacks when Laura was little because she was so afraid of flying. They’d consume her whole body, and it was really hard for her to calm down unless she could remove herself from the situation. So Laura grabbed Charlie’s hand and rushed him out of the gym and into his car. He was shaking all over, and Laura could tell he was afraid to say whatever was on his mind. He just kept apologizing and telling her he didn’t mean to ruin her time at the dance. Laura convinced him to let her drive his car to her house so he could drop her off, and then she helped him try to catch his breath by closing his eyes and counting to ten really slowly. That didn’t work, so she just sat with him in the car, rubbing his back and trying to help him count while breathing. After awhile Charlie calmed down, but the moment still clearly haunted him. Laura told him that no matter what he had to say, she could handle it. That’s when he finally said the first coherent thing he’d said since they left the dance: “I’m being pranked.”
Charlie didn’t say what the messages were, but he mentioned some email from a “Sasha” and some other messages from a “CO.” Now, lying in bed as her clock slowly crawled to morning, Laura couldn’t stop thinking about who was messing with Charlie, what they knew, and if she might be their next target. Would they use her to get to him? If it was someone at school, then they knew all about the fact that she was dating Charlie. If it was someone from outside school, then that seemed even scarier. What if it was a crazy relative of Sarah’s? Or some guy who hated Charlie from soccer? Charlie said the mystery person knew something about what happened to Sarah, but what if it was all just a joke to terrify him?
Laura knew that she shouldn’t get involved, but she couldn’t stop herself from letting her mind wander into detective mode. The obvious first question to be answered: who put that photo in the slideshow? It didn’t match the happy, active shots that came before, and the show seemed to be designed to linger on that moment for longer than the rest. Plus there was the look on both Charlie and Sarah’s faces—rage on his and fear on hers. Someone wanted to upset Charlie. That made Laura’s second question even more concerning: why?
* * *
Laura spent all day and night on Saturday thinking about the mysterious source. Whoever they were, they were totally raining on her parade. Things had finally been great with Charlie and his friends were warming up to her. Why couldn’t Laura just enjoy a few weeks of happy high school life without something totally bizarre getting in the way?
Charlie texted that he needed the weekend to focus on practice and training for a few big soccer games the following week, so Laura had plenty of time to let her mind wander. She didn’t have a conclusion about the source of the photo, but she did have thoughts on where to start looking. The first place was the yearbook committee.
Amanda wouldn’t have gathered the content for the video from dozens of individual people. If she had, there would have been a call for submissions on the activities bulletin or an announcement during the morning news. She must have gone to one place with a large collection of photos, and that place was the yearbook office. Laura didn’t know who inside that group might have a vendetta against Charlie, but she did remember an article about Sarah Castro-Tanner’s suicide mentioning that Sarah was in the yearbook club at Englewood. Maybe someone on the yearbook staff knew about Sarah’s obsession with Charlie.
Or what about the computer club? If anyone knew about hacking into files—such as the one with the slideshow or the ones that held the entire yearbook photo archives—they would be in that club. A totally oblivious teacher supervised the group, and rumor had it that they spent their hours after school doing whatever they wanted. A few weeks back there had been an unplanned fire alarm in the middle of an assembly on bullying. Everyone at school was whispering about the fact that it was the work of the computer club. Laura decided she would do some snooping around their meeting area to gather more information, but first she needed a cover.
Laura knew better than to ask Becca if she could write about what happened at the dance for the paper. Even she agreed that it was too intense for them to print, but maybe Becca would be willing to look past her earlier weirdness about the Sarah Castro-Tanner case and go for a little investigative, joint journalism project. They didn’t have to write about the investigation, but two clever brains combined had to be better than one.
Mind made up, Laura headed into the Chronicle office a little early that Sunday morning for the monthly weekend layout session. She knew it would just be Becca and her slaving over layouts on a weekend morning. Perhaps Becca would let Laura treat her to breakfast in exchange for agreeing to chat about this mystery. The office was empty when she arrived, though, so Laura sat down at Becca’s desk to text her about meeting at the coffee shop down the block. As she did, her elbow bumped into the laptop, lighting up the monitor from sleep mode.
Laura knew that the computer was technically Becca’s, but she couldn’t turn away from what she saw on the screen. There were a series of folders marked “YEARBOOK ARCHIVE,” only one of which was open: the folder labeled “FALL 2013.” The last semester before Sarah Castro-Tanner died. This was the exact folder that probably contained the slideshow’s final image.
Laura looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was coming, then quickly double-clicked on the folder. Her eyes landed on the very last thing she expected: nothing. The folder was completely empty.
She searched for the trash bin along the bottom right of the monitor and clicked on that next. Again, empty. Someone had deleted all the files.