"I'm feeling a little like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn," Adam complained as he tripped over a tree root.
Adam and I were making our way through Gemili Apple Orchard, "That means we are on a great adventure, right?"
"No. It means we are going to bury a dead cat to cure our warts. Why did we have to meet here at midnight, any way, Drew?" Adam groused. He was an earlier to bed person and never really understood my night owl behavior.
"The note said to meet at midnight under the twelfth tree in the twelfth row. We just need to walk walk a little more," I said trying to stay upbeat in the face of Adam's grumpiness.
"And why do we care about this note?" Adam's voice was pitched high and whiny.
I stopped walking and swung around to face Adam. He was taller than me, and his shadowy figure loomed darkly over me. I couldn't see his face clearly in the dark, but I aimed my gaze where I thought his eyes would be. "Look, I didn't ask you to come with me. You can turn around now and go wait in the car. I'll meet up with you in half an hour and take you home."
Adam sighed heavily, "No. I'm going with you. Someone needs to have your back."
"Whatever," I said quietly and continued walking carefully through the dark.
When I had opened my locker at the end of school today and noticed the note to meet in the orchard to at midnight, I thought it was a joke. But then I went to Newspaper Club, and Mrs. Bednarz was talking about Deep Throat. (Apparently he was this inside source who knew about Nixon's involvement in Watergate.) Anyway, I started wondering if this was a source who wanted to help me find out what had happened to Rebecca..
Gatlin High School is your typical, cement block and brick high school built in the 1960s and crumbling ever since in the center of Gatlin, Virginia. It's just a tiny, boring town in the middle of Virginia. Nothing ever happens here, so much so that the police are often so bored that they have to make up reasons to justify their jobs.
Last month though a girl I used to go out with, Rebecca Harold, stopped coming to school. I thought she was sick, maybe with mono or something, but when I texted her, she didn't respond.
Of course the rumor mill was running on overdrive. People were saying Rebecca was pregnant, and of course that made me nervous, so I went by her house to see her. Her mom answered the door and got all weird when I tried to come in to see Rebecca.
"Drew, what are you doing here?" Rebecca's mom asked me sharply when she opened the door.
"Is Rebecca home?" I asked politely, "I haven't seen her at school lately."
"She's not here," her mom said more loudly than necessary, and then she shut the door in my face.
What else could I do, but leave? But that didn't stop me from worrying about Rebecca.
Adam and I arrived at the twelfth row and turned down the muddy, grass path between the trees. It was even darker along this path because the trees blocked out the light from the moon.
"Oh gross!" Adam hissed as his sneakers sank into the muddy tracks left behind by a tractor. "This is disgusting!"
"Come on, Adam, we are almost there. We just passed the 9th tree," I urged him forward, but he was busy swiping at the mud on his shoes.
He leaned against a tree and removed one shoe and began whacking it on the trunk to remove the mud, "I'll catch up," he promised.
I left Adam there and continued on. I passed two more trees and arrived at the twelfth tree in the row. The tree branches were low to the ground and fat apples hung heavily from every branch. Nothing moved. The trees blocked any breeze and the warm night grew stifling.
"Drew? Is that you?" A timid voice came from behind me. I turned, but I could see only darkness.
"Yeah," I answered, "Rebecca?"
"It's me," Rachel whispered into my ear, and I turned, reaching out for her, but again was met with only darkness.
"Why are you messing around with me, Rebecca?" I said angrily. I was a little creeped-out in the dark and not being able to see her.
"Drew, I just wanted you to know that I'm all right. You don't have to worry about me. My parents put me in a private school."
"Why didn't you return my texts?"
"My parents took away my phone," she appeared in front of me a dark shadow.
"Why, Rebecca? Everyone is saying you are pregnant," I blurted out glad that she could see my face turn red.
Rebecca laughed sadly, "They never could come up with an original thought."
"Rebecca, are you okay?" I could tell by her voice that something was really wrong.
There was a long pause, and I could hear her breathing in the darkness. "The truth is, Drew, I -- I tried to kill myself."
"What?' I reached out to hold her hand and caught her wrist. I could feel the scar tissue which hadn't been there a month ago. She pulled her arm away.
"Rebecca, why?" I felt horrible. How could I have not seen how unhappy she was? Why come she had never talked to me?
"It's hard to talk about, Drew. I just felt lost for a long time. Like I was just slipping away, and I felt like needed to do something drastic to wake up. I can't really explain it better than that I just wanted you to know that I'm okay. My mom told me you came by, but I was at my psychiatrist. I'm going to St. Paul's Academy now. I couldn't go back to Gatlin," she stopped talking abruptly as if she's run out of courage.
I struggled to find words to say. Everything sounded wrong inside my head, so I said, "Thank you. Thank you for telling me."
She squeezed my hand, "Thank you for not forgetting about me, Drew. It means more than I can say."
I squeezed her hand back, "If I were to come by your house tomorrow--?"
"I'd like that. I really would, " She held my hand silently for a few seconds. "Thanks for meeting me, but I gotta go. I had to sneak out, and my parents will freak if they find out I'm gone." She slipped away in the darkness just as I heard Adam coming up the path.
"Don't tell me, no one showed up! We came all the way out here, I ruined a perfectly good pair of shoes for nothing, and I'm exhausted," Adam groaned.
"Yeah, let's go. I need to get home and get some sleep, I've got a date tomorrow."
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