Authors: S. Stevens
Tags: #General, #Fiction
“Who’s out there? Sadie?” He blinked.
“Alex, I really need to talk to you. Seriously. Please,” I implored.
He hesitated far too long. I started doubting my judgment in coming to his house. But I needed his help. I was pretty sure he was the (A) in the text message.
“It’s not about you, or me, or Lucey or anyone. It’s about Mr. Ellison. I think he needs our help.”
“You must be dreaming. Go back to sleep.” He moved to close the window.
“Alex Holman,” I hissed. “If we were ever friends at all, you have to listen to me. Now I know I’ve been a jerk, and I’m sorry. But please let me in. It’s freezing out here.”
He stared at me, fascinated, as if I were one of the frogs he loved dissecting in Biology. When I began to shiver visibly, he closed his window and turned on his light.
I rushed to his kitchen door, and there he was, in navy sweat pants and pulling on a gray T-shirt, his blonde hair all messy.
“Did I wake you?” I asked, unnecessarily.
He grunted. “Double sessions in basketball. I’m tired.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“Working the night shift.”
“Good. Alex, I need you.”
Puzzled but compliant, he led me to his kitchen table, where we sat and I showed him the strange text messages.
“I think they’re from Mr. Ellison. He hasn’t been at school since Monday, you know.”
“I know. I have him for English, too,” he glared at me, obviously not ready to forgive and forget. Still, he was intrigued by my mission. He studied the first text.
“‘Ginny, all is fine’,” he read out loud. “‘Needed a break. Back in a few days.’ This could be from Mr. Ellison, but it doesn’t make sense. His wife’s name is Ginny.”
“So maybe he sent it to me by accident. What’s weird about that?”
His sleepy sea-glass green eyes focused. “She died a few years ago. I remember my mother went to the wake – we go to the same church,” he explained.
“Hmm. So either he’s losing it, or it’s some kind of hidden message. Let’s come back to that one.”
“Sadie, obviously it’s a hidden message. For some reason, he had to be secretive when he wrote it. Probably someone was watching him or was going to see the messages. And that person must have thought Mr. Ellison’s wife was still alive. So this was sent to say something’s wrong.”
I usually hated it when he was smarter than me, but right now I welcomed it.
Hoping to impress him, I told him what I’d figured out so far about the
Anna Karenina
reference, and how when I’d dozed in my room, a faint memory came to me. I remembered Adrienne giving Mr. Ellison the texting lesson in his classroom a few weeks ago. He’d said his middle name was James. So JE could be him.
“So he used JE instead of DE again so he wouldn’t tip off the person watching him. Hardly anyone would know JE is Mr. Ellison. And now we know why he sent the messages to you – because he had your cell number,” Alex noted. He was warming up to our challenge and less icy to me as a result.
“But let’s figure out the rest of the
Anna Karenina
thing,” he continued, leaning in toward me and plunking his elbows on the old wooden table. “What happens to Anna and Vronsky after Italy? I kind of skimmed parts of the book,” he admitted.
I closed my eyes and thought about this, muttering to myself as I tried to recreate the plot in my head, finally coming to a conclusion. “Basically, after they leave Italy, where they were happy, and go back to Russia, Anna is scorned by society for having an affair, while Vronsky continues living a normal life.”
“And? Come on, there must be more,” he encouraged.
“Well, she was housebound -- a prisoner in her own house.”
“So maybe Ellison’s saying he’s a prisoner, if he’s like Anna, and Tony Lord is Vronsky, so he’s free to do as he pleases.”
“That’s it! Alex, you’re the best.” He blushed. “But wait. So does this mean Mr. Lord actually kidnapped Mr. Ellison? Would he really do something so terrible? I mean, they don’t get along, but why would he actually kidnap him?”
We sat, chins on hands, thinking about this.
“He is a little sketchy, you know,” Alex offered. “One day in music class his mood changed so many times, I thought he was bi-polar or something.”
“You really think so? I admit he’s unpredictable but I just figured he picked whatever personality seemed best for what he wanted at the time. Although he definitely got weird when Mr. Ellison threatened to tell the principal Lord wanted to bring in an outsider for the part of Bella. Mr. Lord seemed determined to get a hugely talented Bella for his show, like it was a Broadway production or something.”
“I know why,” Alex said slowly. “A while ago, I was waiting for Jocelyn in Mr. Lord’s room – she was in the bathroom fixing her face or something – and I sat down at his desk since no one else was in there. He had a job description on his desk for director of the Central Massachusetts Music Hall. I only noticed it because he’d drawn a big red circle around part of it.”
“What did he circle?”
“Something about the applicant needing to have director experience, preferably of original shows.”
“Son of a—he was always trying to get us to create our own show, even from the very beginning. So it was for his benefit, not ours.”
“Okay, so he wanted an original show, and he wanted a stunning lead, but Mr. Ellison threatened to interfere with the stunning lead, so Mr. Lord kidnapped him. It kind of fits,” Alex summed up.
“And, don’t forget, you said the Music Hall wanted directorial experience. Getting Mr. Ellison out of the way so Lord was the sole director looked better for Tony too.”
We paused to consider our next step.
“Should we go to his house to see if he’s locked up there, like Anna was metaphorically?” I asked. “It seems unlikely,” I added, half to myself.
“No, there’s something else in there. Read the line again about Snopes. I might know what he means.”
I picked up my phone. “‘Have retreated to my secrt place to think with ab snopes,’ it says.”
“I know who that is. It’s not a real person. It’s Abner Snopes, the lead character in William Faulkner’s short story,
Barn Burning
. I read it for Ellison’s class in September. We got to choose any short story and I chose that one.”
“So he knew that you would understand this clue. He’s pretty clever, isn’t he?”
“And don’t forget he knew I knew about Ginny, too.”
“Yeah, I guess I couldn’t have solved this without you. That’s probably why he said to make sure I don’t forget my friends.” I smiled in a way I hoped he would take as an apology. To my relief, he smiled too. We sat back in our chairs, sighed at the same time, and laughed nervously.
Our brains were fried and we couldn’t figure out the Abner Snopes clue, so we decided to take a break. We sat on his living room couch eating Sun Chips and talked, and talked, like the old days. I told him all about
Twilight
and he told me all about basketball. He was one of the starting forwards and already a leading scorer, just a few weeks into the season.
“That’s really great, Alex You’ve wanted this for so long. I know I should have said that a long time ago. I’m sorry.”
“You already apologized. No need to go overboard,” he said, seeming embarrassed.
“I did?” How did I not notice such an important moment?
“Outside my window, when you were desperate to get into my house,” he reminded me. “Maybe you didn’t actually mean that one,” he said in an accusing voice.
“Well, I really mean this one, okay?”
He nodded. “Let’s get back to work.” He started to stand.
“Wait.” I grabbed his arm, which was warm and more muscular than I remembered. “Can I ask you something?” I didn’t really want to ask, but I had to know. He sat back down. “What happened, with you and Lucey? And what are you going to do? I mean, I know what happened, but how? Were you two secretly dating or something? Was it a one-night stand? An accident? Well, I’m assuming it was an accident, I mean you couldn’t have wanted that--”
He put his hand over my mouth, making my lips tingle. “Sadie, shut up, and I’ll explain.” I nodded and he removed his hand.
“I’m not the father. I never even slept with her. I just said I was so people would stop saying Mr. Lord was the one. That was torture for Lucey, having everyone think she’d slept with her teacher, and I felt bad for her. I mean, it’s bad enough to be pregnant in high school, but then to have everyone thinking that on top of it…well, I just wanted to help her out.”
Relief oozed through me, making me light-headed. He wasn’t the father!
“I didn’t realize you two were such good friends,” I said, not even caring if I sounded jealous.
“We got to be friends when I was going out with Jocelyn. Lucey’s not as bad as you think – as we both used to think – once you get to know her.”
“So—so you two planted the rumor?” He nodded. “Good job,” I said, impressed, “I’ve never seen news spread so fast at Crudup.”
He smirked proudly. “That was easy. Lucey texted Jocelyn and Kristina before school and by first period they’d texted all their contacts--”
“—who texted their contacts, et cetera. Geez, why didn’t you just make an announcement over the school PA?”
“That would have been inappropriate use of school equipment,” he deadpanned. “We were going to post on Facebook, but decided that was overkill.” We laughed, probably too hard given the seriousness of the topic, but it felt good.
“Oh, so who is the father? Do you know?”
He shook his head. “I have my suspicions, but she’s not saying. And I didn’t push her.” Of course he didn’t. Alex had to be the most noble guy I knew. Maybe the most noble guy anywhere.
“It has to be Nigel,” I blurted out, unable to match his nobleness.
He shrugged. “That’s what I think, too. Maybe he’s afraid if he admits it, he’ll get kicked out of the foreign exchange program, and maybe he would.” He stood up.
“Alex, wait. What about you? What’s going to happen to you, since people think you’re the father. What did your mom say?”
He blushed. “Believe it or not, she hasn’t met with the principal yet. It’s been hard with her work schedule, and she doesn’t know why he wants to see her so badly. I kind of suggested to her that it wasn’t a big deal and not to rush into the meeting.” I’d never known Alex to lie, although this was more bending the truth. “He leaves messages here every day but she doesn’t always get them.” He looked at the window, which was black with night.
“They can’t expel you or anything though, right?”
“No. As far as I know, there’s no rule against premarital sex in the student handbook.” His attempt at a light tone failed. “The coach is pissed off at me though. Says I’m not being a good role model for the younger players, and he’s thinking about suspending me for a few games. Or worse.”
“Alex!”
“Look, can we stop talking about high school gossip now and figure out how to save our favorite teacher?” He reached out a hand, which I took, and yanked me off the couch.
“Let’s re-cap,” he said, surprising me by taking charge once we settled at the kitchen table again, which I was glad for. Suddenly, I was exhausted. “The first message, about Ginny, was a tip-off that something was wrong. The second message says that he’s a prisoner somewhere. It says good luck in the show and all that – that was probably because he knew someone else would see the message. And we already decided that I’m the friend he wanted you to remember.” He smiled slyly, as if he really liked that part. “That leaves us with the Ab Snopes line--”
“Which must be the clue to where he’s being kept!” I interrupted. “Okay, so tell me everything about Abner Snopes.”
Alex gave me a brief synopsis of Faulkner’s short story, which sounded pretty boring. We didn’t find any clues in his summary. We sat in thought again, Alex tapping a pen against the table.
“Why is it called
Barn Burning
?” I asked suddenly. “You didn’t even mention a barn.”
“Oh, the story starts with a barn on fire. I guess it’s a catalyst in a way.”
I fiddled with my bracelets. “Hmmm…a barn on fire…a barn burning…a burning barn…burning barn…Alex, burning barn!” I wiggled in my chair.
“Huh?”
“We have a burning barn in Smalltown – the Burning Barn, at the old Burning Farm, the one with the big trout pond.”
My excitement swept over him and his face lit up. “That’s the pond where Mr. Ellison fishes with his friends! He talked about it in class once.”
“And he said he was going fishing when he left school on Monday! That must be where he is. So, what do we do now?” Instantly wired from solving the mystery, and for being involved in an actual kidnapping case, I couldn’t think straight anymore.
“I guess we should call the police.”
Alex dialed 911, absently lifting his shirt and scratching his stomach while he waited for the dispatcher to pick up.
“Hi, Mrs. Cole. It’s Alex Holman. Listen, this is going to sound crazy, but we – my friend Sadie and I – think Mr. Ellison, the English teacher at the high school, has been kidnapped.” He paused to listen to her response and frowned into the phone. “No, this isn’t a prank, I swear.” Pause. “I know it’s three in the morning.” Pause. “Please let me talk to a police officer?”