It finally hit me when I got home, I actually had a good day at school.

It wasn't hard to see why, Emma and Sophia hadn't been at school today. It didn't seem like they were sick either, as whatever had happened had left Madison too shaken up to bother me either.

Whatever blessing it was, I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. I unzipped my backpack where I had left it by the dining room table, and pulled out my homework for Quinlan's class, since I might as well get that done now.

Or at least I was about to when I heard somebody knock on the door.

I put my pencil down and walked over to the door, I got about halfway there when they knocked again and rang the doorbell. "I'm coming!" I shouted at the door.

Opening up the door, I wasn't sure what I'd find, but two unsmiling police officers, and a police detective—assuming that the guy with the unflattering mustache wearing a cheap suit with a badge clipped to his belt was a detective.

"Are you Taylor Hebert?" The detective asked me.

"I am." I said, my voice shaking.

"Is your father home right now?" He asked.

"No he's not." I replied. "What's this about?"

"Would you please call your father and have him come home?" The detective said, practically ordering me.

"I can, but what's this about?" I asked again.

"Go call your father please." The detective ordered, again.

I quickly realized that I wasn't going to get any more answers out of the cops, and walked back into the kitchen to where the phone was, one of the cops following behind me.

"Can I have some privacy, to talk to me dad?" I asked. My heart was beating a mile a minute. I didn't know what could have brought the cops down on me like this or why but every minute around them made me more and more nervous, as if I would accidentally say or do the wrong thing and end up in prison, or worse.

The cop following me just grunted and waited by the door to the kitchen, as I closed it behind me to call my dad.

With a shaky hand, I pulled the kitchen phone off the hook and dialed Dad's office number.

"Brockton Bay Port Authority, how may I direct your call?" Came the voice on the other end of the phone. I knew her voice, that was Anna, the receptionist at Dad's work.

"Hi Anna, it's Taylor, is my dad there?" I asked, almost certain that the phone would pick up my heart pounding like a jackhammer.

"Hi Taylor, it's good to hear from you." She said, "I think your dad is just packing up to go home. Do you still want to talk to him?"

"Please." I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. The phone started playing the hold music for the port authority. After a few seconds, I heard a click on the other end of the phone as my dad picked up.

"Taylor, what's going on?" He asked. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, but there's cops and a detective asking for you." I said.

"What?" Dad asked. "Did they say why?"

"No, just that they wanted to talk to you." I explained.

"Okay I'll come straight home Taylor." He said. "Taylor, this is very important, don't say anything to them until I get there."

"Okay." I said into the phone. "See you shortly."

I hung up the phone in the kitchen. As if I was on autopilot, I grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water from the pitcher in the fridge.

I figured that I could at least be a bit productive while I waited for my dad to get home, and pulled out my geometry homework so I could at least get something done.

As I pulled out the worksheet that Quinlan handed out, it was like all knowledge of Geometry had left my brain. Was the clock in the living room always so loud? I could hear the floorboards in the living room creak as the cops walked around it.

I tried as hard as I could to put that out of my mind and focus on my math homework. If a right triangle has a hypotenuse of 60 inches and one of the legs has a length of 48 inches. How long is the remaining leg?

Okay, I could do this, I just had to use the Pythagorean Theorem—Assuming I could concentrate over the racket my heart was making as it tried to hammer its way out of my chest.

After what seemed like an eternity, I finally heard dad's car pull into the driveway, and listened to him practically sprint into the house.

"I'm here!" Dad shouted. "What's going on?"

I walked out of the kitchen into the living room, where an out of breath and disheveled dad was red faced with rage and towering over the police detective.

"Mister Hebert, my name is Detective Smith with the Brockton Bay Police Department, we'd like to ask your daughter a few questions as part of an investigation." The detective said.

I… what? Why did the cops want to talk to me? Did the trio start a rumor about me that got the cops involved?

"Is my daughter going to need a lawyer for these questions?" Dad asked.

"I don't know, do you think she does?" Replied the detective.

I could see Dad tensing his arms, his temper building up inside of him. And then with a seemingly iron will, he ground out through his teeth. "I think I am going to call a lawyer. Get him in here while you interrogate my daughter."

"You do have the right sir." Said Detective Smith. "But right now your daughter is merely a person of interest, not a suspect. If you want to pursue this, that could change things."

I saw the tension bleed out of dad further. "Fine. You can ask her your questions, but I want to be there."

"Of course Mr. Hebert" replied the detective.

From his jacket pocket, Detective Smith pulled out a portable audio recorder, switched it on and hit the record button.

"This is Detective Andrew Smith, interviewing Taylor Anne Hebert as part of case 1361" he said into the recorder. "Present with me is Miss Hebert's father, Daniel Hebert, along with officers Anderson and Reid."

"Miss Hebert, were you at home on the night of October 9th?" He asked me.

"I was." I replied.

"Was anybody else home with you that could attest to that?" He asked.

"My.. my dad." I said.

"Did you have any friends over that night? Any visitors?" He pushed.

"No… it was just me and my dad." I replied awkwardly.

"Did anybody at all come by that night?" He asked.

"Not that I recall." I replied.

"Outside of school, have you had any contact with Sophia Hess or Emma Barnes in the past 3 months?" He asked, pressing on with the questions.

I… what? To me a good day is a day where I never had to see either of them. Why would I talk to them outside of school?

"No. None. I avoid them whenever possible in school, why would I talk to them outside of school?" I replied, a little bit of snark creeping into my voice.

"I see." The detective said, suddenly sitting up in his seat. "How would you describe your relationship with Miss Hess and Miss Barnes?"

"They bully me. Call me names, pour stuff on my seat, talk negatively about me within earshot, send hate mail, steal stuff from my locker and backpack." I said.

"Have either of them threatened you?" He asked.

"The hate mail would often tell me to commit suicide if that's what you mean." I replied.

"Let's come back to that a little later, Miss Hebert." Detective Smith replied. "Have either of them attempted to intimidate you into a quid pro quo arrangement?"

"Into what?" I asked.

"Did either of them threaten you with violence if you did not do something for them?" He asked.

"No." I replied. "Not that I wouldn't put it past them to do that, but no, they didn't."

"Would you be willing to give us a sworn affidavit that you had no contact with Miss Hess or Miss Barnes on the night of October 9th?" He asked.

"Um… yeah." I replied.

"Well I think that about wraps it up. Thank you for your time Miss Hebert." The detective said, his tone sounding much warmer than I had before. "Here's my card. If you are contacted at all by Miss Hess or Miss Barnes, even if it's to send you more 'hate mail,' reach out to me immediately."

With that, the detectives and the two cops let themselves out of my home. The tension that had built up inside of me when they had been here rushed out of me and I practically collapsed onto the sofa.

"Taylor…" my dad said. "Why didn't you tell me?" He asked.

I just knew this was going to be a long conversation.

School was… weird after that. Emma and Sophia never came back to Winslow, and nobody really knew what happened to them.

The bullying had come to a stop not long afterwards. The teachers had suddenly started noticing it, and Madison had been scared by something or another that she had taken to avoiding me at all costs. I wasn't exactly about to complain about that.

I hadn't heard anything more from the police after that, I did go in and give a statement under oath to somebody from the District Attorney's office, but I never heard back from them.

"…so of course now everyone on PHO is calling Shadow Stalker the next Gavel. But unlike Gavel she supposedly had a minion who was…. Taylor, are you even listening?" Asked Greg.

"Huh? Sorry." I replied. "So what have you found about Gavel?" I asked.

Does it bother me, not knowing what happened to Emma? Why she turned on me like that, and then why she suddenly vanished? It does. But I think that I'm better off not knowing.