Page 81 of Bound By Fury

Time feels like it’s moving in slow motion, Missy’s body hovering over my own, her trembling muscles vibrating against me. But slowly, eventually, the keys meander down the hall. Missy undigs her nails from my leg and releases my mouth, blowing out a shaky, uneven breath.

“Fuck!” Sam spits from somewhere behind the desk. “Fuck!” They bump into something, and again we freeze. “Fuck!” they say even quieter this time.

Missy climbs out from beneath the desk, and I follow, scooting across the floor until I’m once again peering into the depths of the cabinet.

“Flashlight,” I say, and Missy pulls out her phone.

This time I find her folder easily.

Beaumont, Fiona Amelia

We’re silent as we all stare at the file in my hands. The moment feels huge, like there’s no going back after this, like we’ll forever be bound by this night.

“Well?” Sam finally asks.

I open the front flap and flip past a couple pages. Immunization records and demographic info. Tucked between them is paper creased and smudged with something dark. “Oh,” I say slowly as I read it, glancing up at Missy.

“What?” She snatches the page from my hands. “Oh…”

“What?” Daisy squats down and peers over Missy’s shoulder. “Oh.”

Sam sighs and squats as well.

“Why does he even have this?” Missy asks.

“In her student file?” Daisy adds.

I take the police report and scan the words. Fiona Beaumont, Age: 17. “It says they made multiple attempts to contact her foster parents, but they never responded.”

“So there really isn’t anyone looking for her…,” Daisy trails off.

Fire burns in my belly. There’s a buzzing in my head, and I can’t quiet it. A missing brown girl, and no one gives a shit. Alastair Matsoukas squirreling this report away? Why?

I close my eyes. Will the static to recede.

When I open them, I place the paper on the ground and use my phone to scan it. We flip through the rest of the file, but there’s nothing we don’t already know.

I put the folder back, defeated.

“Well, what was the point of that?” I snap to no one in particular. Just the universe and the godforsaken stars that have rejected me. I don’t care that there’s nothing blatantly incriminating here, I still can’t shake the feeling that we’re so close to finding something damning.

“Well, let’s check the rest of the drawers just in case,” Missy insists, pulling the middle one open roughly, her hands shaking.

She pushes the files aside frantically, her breath coming faster and faster. When she doesn’t find anything, she slams that drawer closed and opens the next.

This one is nearly empty save for some random junk and a leather-bound portfolio. She pulls it out slowly, opening the cover.

It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Instead of folding out like a book with pages tacked into the middle, it unfolds like a map, until we’re laying it on the floor between us.

Inscribed in curling black and gold ink—names. So many names and lines and dashes. Some are scribbled out, some are circled. Small, illegible notes are written in stiff, slanted cursive along the margins. But there’s a clear path that starts and finishes the same way.

Four names circled at the top, and four at the bottom.

“Are those… lineages?” Sam asks, taking the notebook from me to get a better look. When they gasp, I already know why. “Harper,” they say. “Your name is on here.”

My name. Fiona’s. And many others that I don’t recognize.

Except, there: Adiola Cane.