Page 66 of Bound By Fury

“I don’t know all the details, but when I was looking into Fiona, trying to figure out what happened, I found this.”

She cuts to the next slide, and my fingertips start to sting. There’s an unnatural breeze lifting the hairs at the back of my neck. I look around to see if anyone else notices, but it seems like it’s just me. Always just me.

On the screen is a screenshot of a picture of a newspaper from 1989, the title in big, bold letters.

LOCAL PRIVATE ACADEMY SEARCHES FOR MISSING PREGNANT TEEN

“How… what… I—”

“I know.” Her look cuts straight through to my core.

“Fiona didn’t talk about her time with her mom much. From what I gathered they were always on the move, never staying in the same place for more than a few weeks. Her mom had mental health issues, always felt like the end of the world was coming. She said her mom left her though. Went out to work her shift at Waffle House and then just… never came back. Wasn’t long before CPS picked Fiona up.

“It seems like maybe her mom ran from the school and had her baby and then just… stayed gone… until the trouble finally caught up with her.”

I shake my head. This piece of the puzzle, it doesn’t feel like it fits.

“What a coincidence though, for them both to go missing.”

“Is it?” she asks, and I rear my head back.

“What are you trying to say?”

“You tell me.”

I couldn’t tell her even if I wanted to. I don’t know anything, and every time I think I might be starting to know something, the rug gets pulled out from under me yet again.

I shrug. “I have no idea. It’s just… it’s sad.”

Her mouth pulls down in a slight frown, but she displays no other visible emotion as she hits the next slide.

“Anyway, she got her foster family to agree to send her here, and she packed up her trash bag and came to the mountains in search of her mother.”

“Why would she think her mom would be here?” I ask. I think back to her blog posts. She said she never missed her mother. So who was she lying to? Missy, or herself?

On the new slide is a candid picture of Fiona looking up at the bell tower of Lee Chapel, her hair blown into her face and her lips bent into a smile.

“Why does anybody do or think anything stupid? Because the reality—that her shitty mom is probably dead in a ditch somewhere—was too painful for her to bear. So she was grasping at straws. Chasing her own tail.”

Is that what I’m doing? Grasping at straws?

I draw spirals like cryptid appendages around my notes. “What happened once she got to campus?”

She appears so happy in the photo, it’s hard to look at her and see anything troubling about her backstory. It’s impossible to tell that only months later, she would drop off the face of the earth.

Missy adjusts in her chair, her eyes trained on the floor.

“I wasn’t so sure about her when she first got here… we were roommates.”

I raise my eyebrows.

She rolls her eyes. “Not everyone is a nepo baby and gets their own room, Harper.”

I mouth the words nepo baby in confusion.

“We were both scholarship students, and we liked some of the same things. The field hockey team and the cheer squad practiced on the same field, and I had a, uh, friend on the team, so we hung out in the same circles as well. Eventually we became friendly.

“There were things about me that no one else here seemed to understand, but she did. She didn’t shy away from me like so many people do just because I’m not afraid to speak my mind…,” she trails off, and I can tell that wherever she is, it’s not here. Her eyes are distant and cold.