Paying the Piper

Fifteen: Normal for One Week

For the next few days, my life revolved around a few things: the news, school, and dreams. I steadfastly refused to go into the woods, even just as a shortcut to get the mail.

Police and search teams had been scouring the Potomah Regional Forest after they removed the body not yet positively identified, though locals assumed it was Lydia Silver, the girl who had gone missing a few weeks ago. Police were loath to claim it was she, however, because she was found at a distance from where she had last been seen, but which likely meant they should've found her when they first began searching—before she would have gone as far.

And strangely, I felt cheated in some way that the police had no obligation or intention of informing me of what they discovered. Since I had turned in the body, I felt like I had forged a connection with her last moments, even if I had just been imagining what it would have been like. Still, it was an intimacy I couldn't explain. To not be offered closure on the case made me feel odd. So I had to turn to the news for more information like everyone else.

On Monday morning, the paper finally officially named her.

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Missing Cloquet Girl, Lydia Silver, Discovered in Potomah Regional Forest

Thirty-seven miles from where she was reported missing, the body of Lydia Silver was discovered by a Gendormi resident.

According to police, the cause of death is still unknown, though a wound was noted on her body. Authorities have not revealed whether the wound was natural or if foul play is suspected.

"We're not saying anything at this point," police chief Doug Hughes stated. "There's a lot of wild animals in the forest. The wound could have easily come after her death as been the cause of it."

Lydia Silver had gone hiking with a couple of friends on August 26. She apparently went missing in the night sometime. Her friends were unable to find her in the morning and could not say for certain when she wandered off. A large search had been conducted, but it had focused within a twenty-five mile radius.

Two weeks after Silver went missing, the search was called off. Nothing connected to her had been found.

The coroner's office will be performing an autopsy on the body.

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I wondered how many days it had been to Lydia Silver. Had she only been missing a week, even though a month's time had passed for the rest of us? I read and reread the article and browsed the internet news articles as if their words held the secret on how to turn back time.

However, I couldn't turn back time. And it was time for school—for a school that now knew about my expulsion from my last school. Would everyone now be saying nasty things to me the way Quentin had?

My parents offered to let me stay home from school another day, which was very tempting, but I had already missed so much schoolwork. And delaying my appearance could have the opposite effect, making it a bigger deal when I reappeared.

So I squared my back, bid my parents goodbye, and went to my carpool with the Janowicks like always.

Hannah had apparently been bursting with her unanswered questions, for she shot off three before I was buckled into my seat.

"Are you okay? Why are you limping? What was it like finding a corpse?"

As I did my best to satisfy her curiosity, reminding myself to keep my story consistent about hitting my head and losing track of the days, I wondered if my disappearance could actually be a blessing in disguise. Maybe everyone would be so focused on that, and Lydia Silver's discovery, that no one would remember my past.