Chapter 5: Lost and Found

Riley

I glanced down at my phone. It was almost 4:00pm. Where was he? I had been sitting in our usual spot in the library for half an hour. Lucas had never been late to one of our tutoring sessions before. I had texted him asking where he was, but had gotten nothing in response. There could have been a number of reasons why he wasn't there yet. He could have been talking to one of the guys on the lacrosse team. He could have been with Merritt. Or he could have gotten caught up talking about a paper or test with one of his teachers. Either way, he wasn't blowing you off Riley. I rolled my eyes, took a deep breath, and pressed the call button next to his contact information on my phone.

Of course it was his voicemail.

"Uh, hey Lucas. It's me. I mean, it's Riley. Riley Matthews. Which you know already because my number is saved in your phone. Duh. Anyway… I was just wondering where you were? I thought we had a tutoring session after school today? But… Maybe you misunderstood what I meant by 'see you after school?' Wait I didn't mean that in a sarcastic, snarky way, I just meant… God. I'm going to stop talking now. I'll be here until 4:30, but then I have newspaper, so just call me, or text me back if you can. Hopefully I'll see you soon, but if not, I'll talk to you later I guess. Bye." I hung up the phone and rested my head on the table in front of me. Why was I such as spaz?

I took out the latest book I was reading, The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway. I turned to the page I left off on and stared at the words. The longer I stared, the more the words started to look like a jumbled mess of letters. I shut the book and gathered my backpack from the floor. If he doesn't want to show up, then I don't have to wait for him. I pushed in my chair and headed towards the front entrance of the library. As I was heading out, Merritt Haynes, Lucas' girlfriend was walking in.

"Oh. Hey. The girl from the bakery. You're Lucas' tutor right?" Merritt asked, her tone polite and just a tad too chipper. Merritt was wearing a much-too-nice dress for a public high school and her hair was perfectly straight and shiny.

"Yeah, I am," I muttered, trying not to sound as annoyed as I felt by that 'girl from the bakery' comment.

"Sorry, remind me of your name again? Reagan?"

You have go to be kidding me.

"Riley."

"Riley, right! Sorry! There's this girl on the cheerleading squad named Reagan who kinda looks like you. Anyway, where's Lucas? I need to ask him something," she informed me, looking around the library for a nonexistent Lucas Friar.

"I thought that he might be with you actually. He never showed up for our session today. I tried calling him, but he didn't answer," I told her. She was doing a really good job of avoiding my gaze.

She removed her phone from her purse and started scrolling through it to what I was assuming was Lucas' contact page.

"Huh. Well, maybe he's just not used to you calling him. Let me try," she insisted, tapping the call button on her phone screen.

A few seconds passed before she looked at me and then turned away.

"Hey, sweetie. Just wondering where you are. I'm here with your tutor and she says you missed a session today. What's going on? Call me back. I love you," she said into the phone and then put it back in her purse.

"Well, I'm gonna go. If you see him, just tell him we can try again tomorrow and to text me if he needs anything," I told her, turning to walk out of the library.

"I'm sure he won't need anything, but thanks for offering. And thanks for sticking around waiting for him. You take your job very seriously." Was is just me or was her tone sort of… Hostile. Sarcastic. Unfriendly…

"Yeah, I do. I just… I really believe in him. I don't think people give him enough credit when it comes to academics you know? He's really smart and-"

"Don't you think I know he's smart? I'm his girlfriend. Of course I know how smart he is," she snapped. Well, well, little miss nice and friendly isn't so nice after all.

"No, I know. And I'm sure you know that he really loves books. And that his favorite is To Kill a Mocking Bird. And that he-"

"He told you that? He told you what his favorite book was?"

"He didn't have to. I listened to him. And I paid attention. It wasn't that hard to figure out." My voice was firm and sure of itself. I wasn't a big fan of confrontation, but I also wasn't a fan of letting someone I didn't even know walk all over me.

She looked at me then, very calm, but with a fire in her eyes that wanted me to know not to mess with her.

"You might think you know Lucas Friar because you've had a few conversations about books and the meaning of the universe, but you have no idea who he really is," Merritt challenged.

In that moment, a myriad of thoughts about what I could say to Merritt Haynes to put her in her place swam through my head. I could insult her intelligence, call her questionable names, deem her a terrible girlfriend. But that's not who I wanted to be.

"Maybe not. But I can say with absolute certainty, that I know what kind of guy Lucas Friar is. I know what he's capable of and I believe in him. So, you're wrong Merritt. I do know him. And I know that bothers you because you don't know him the way you used to." With that, I turned and walked out of the library, the door slamming shut behind me.

–

Since Lucas was a no-show, I made it to newspaper early that afternoon. When I walked into the computer lab Maya was frantically gathering papers and writing on notecards, muttering nonsense to herself as she did so.

"Maya, your crazy is showing," I teased,taking off my backpack and sitting in one of the computer chairs in the front of the room.

"Riley, my interview with Lucas is tonight, and I'm way underprepared," she muttered into her pile of papers.

"Well, you might have more time to prepare than you think. Lucas didn't show up for his tutoring session today. No one can find him, not even Merritt," I filled her in, checking my phone one last time to see if Lucas had contacted me in the ten minutes since I last checked.

"WHAT? Riley, we were really counting on this interview. Otherwise, the only people who are going to be reading this issue are Farkle and that guy obsessed with corn chips who sits in the back of history class and never talks," Maya complained, taking a deep breath and running a hand through her hair. She did that when she was stressed out, a fact I had learned about her a while ago when we were studying for an AP Literature test and she lost all of her notes on Wuthering Heights. The sheer panic on her face was enough to send both of us flying through her room, tossing clothes and books on the floor as we looked through every drawer she owned for any sign of those notes.

"I know, okay? I haven't seen him since right after lunch. I tried calling and texting him a bunch of times. I'd send a carrier pigeon if that was still a relevant form of communication," I explained to her as I dug through my backpack for a pencil.

"Well he was still here after school. I saw him in the courtyard with some guys I didn't recognize. They looked like they were from that prep school on the upper east side. Moneybags Academy or something like that. Their uniforms looked like they cost more than my whole apartment," Maya explained, bending down to pick up some of the notecards she had dropped on the floor.

My head shot up as soon as she said this.

"You saw him?"

"Yeah, the conversation they were having didn't look friendly. Lucas was trying to walk away, but one of the guys stopped him. It had a whole West Side Story, Jets versus Sharks vibe to it, except Lucas didn't have any backup… I didn't see anything after that because Marcy Foster was doing this weird thing where-"

"Maya! Focus, did you see anything else?" I wanted to know.

"No, nothing. Why? You think it's something serious?"

Well, when someone is in the courtyard surrounded by a bunch of angry guys, it's usually never a good thing.

"I don't know. But I'm going to find out," I announced. I grabbed my backpack and without another word, walked out of the computer lab.

For the past few months I felt like I was searching for the real Lucas Friar. When I finally felt like I had found him, he goes missing and I feel like I'm on the search for him all over again. I didn't entirely know why, but I felt like I owed it to him to find him once again, although this time in the much more literal sense.

–

I didn't know where to start. I didn't even know if I should be looking for him in the first place. Maybe he was just tired of it all. His friends, lacrosse, his life. Maybe he was tired of me and decided to take a break from everything. But I had this strange feeling. The feeling you get when you think you're missing something, but can't put your finger on what it is. And I couldn't just ignore it.

I decided to try the courtyard first. It was hardly a courtyard really. It was just a small fenced in area on the side of the school that had a few picnic tables and bushes. I had no idea what I was looking for there. It's not like I expected Lucas to be tied to a lamp post or something. But it was better than just wandering around aimlessly until he just showed up out of nowhere. The courtyard was completely empty except for the two freshmen sitting on the brick wall listening to music on their phones. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that would lead me to Lucas. Nothing except…

I bent down to pick up a page that had been ripped out of a book. I knew what it was as soon as I turned it over in my hands. I started reading, my eyes scanning over it quickly.

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

To Kill a Mockingbird. I looked back at the ground. There was a trail of pages leading to the back alley. I followed the pages, picking up each one until I ended up in front of the dumpster. The book had been tossed in a puddle off to the side. My heart was racing. I didn't know what I was going to find in that dumpster. Maybe it was nothing. But maybe it was something. Whatever it was… It wasn't good.

I took a deep breath and stepped closer, placing one hand on the lid. Okay. You're fine, Riley. You can do this. Slowly, I lifted the lid and stood on my tiptoes to see inside.

"Oh my God."

I stepped back and let the pages I had in my hands fall to the floor. Whatever had been going through my mind before I opened the dumpster was gone. What was happening now…. That was so much worse.