Chapter 25

Pre-note: LOOK! A PLOT TWIST! FINALLY! AFTER ALL THAT FORESHADOWING! -->

Chapter twenty-five, section one:

I didn’t look at it, at first.

At first it was just a phone, none of my business, because I assumed it had nothing to do me. I considered myself a moral person. I respected people’s privacy, people’s space, people’s things.

Then the text came through.

The cell was sitting right beside me, sitting on my desk next to my own phone, just a few inches from my elbow as I struggled through math questions. He must have put it down and forgotten to pocket it again before he left.

It beeped and glowed, and I looked over, out of habit and curiosity.

New Message

Fr: John Archibald

Jake, please have McCalden’s updates done for tomorrow.

My updates? Wait, my NAME?

Then another one came through.

New Message

Fr: John Archibald

Jake, please have Tuesday’s report reprinted. Emotion and adjustment pages were lost. Thanks.

That’s when I picked up the phone.

I don’t normally go through people’s things, I see that as breaking someone’s trust, but at that moment I didn’t think. Jake had been here a couple hours of ago, he’d left his phone here by accident, and maybe he trusted me to not look through it, but in at the same time these messages had just flashed across the screen right in front of my face.

I went back through the history. Apparently I wasn’t the only one Jake sent texts to, rather he used his phone often for work. There were long conversations between him and this John Archibald in particular, always about me, or rather, about my “updates” and “files.”

It took me a while to piece it together. If I had never found that folder on me in the hospital, I might have never figured out what was going on or even dismissed the texts, but rather it started to come together in my mind as I read more and more, and slowly but surely, my head became heavier and heavier.

Daily reports.

Monthly summaries.

Emotion sheets.

Adjustment pages.

My life recorded and analyzed.

I don’t know when I came to realize this fully, or exactly when I decided to see this for myself, but the next thing I knew I had my coat on and was out the door.

The night was surprisingly warm and still. A silence hung through the world as I headed through the school grounds. As I passed the parking lot I noted that Jake’s car wasn’t there. He’d left almost an hour ago and I wondered how long it would take for him to realize he’d forgotten his phone. I wondered if he’d wait until tomorrow to come back for it, or if he guessed I might go through it and instead would come rushing back at any moment.

I made it to the curb and started pacing back and forth, up and down the sidewalk in front of the school, but it didn’t take me long to understand where I was going. I paused and picked up my phone, calling a cab.

When the car pulled up, I slid into the back seat. The man sitting in the driver’s seat, in his dark suit and low voice, asked me where I was headed. I had to describe the building since I had no idea what the address was.

We came up to the big omniscient building clad in shadows. The man didn’t say a word about where he was dropping me off or why I was out at ten at night visiting an obviously closed building. Instead I watched the car drive away, the black easily engulfed by the night.

I used the number pad to open the double doors. I would never have remembered the digits from that one day Jake had taken me here if it weren’t for the fact they were so simple: 1 2 3 4. Then again, I had never even heard the word crime here.

 I wandered the sterile halls. It took me a couple minutes to remember how to get to the room, the room I knew I at least needed to start at. However, I stumbled upon it, instantly recalled the big wooden doors. Another set of numbers pushed into the keypad at the side and I swung the doors open into the Victorian-looking library.

Down that row and to the left, open the drawer second down; it’s the one dated Thursday, October 28^th, 2010. Find the folder with my name on it. Flip through the articles again and feel the tightening in my chest.

I shook my head, taking the folder and tucking it under my arm. I headed to the moonlit couches again, where, sighing, I flipped the book open and picked up the first article.