Page 52 of Make No Mistake

Fourteen

We were sittingaround my computer with notes spread around us when Aubrey walked in.

“Hi, Jay.” She set her bag down at the table and sat on the arm of the sofa next to me. “What are you guys doing?”

I picked up my notes and showed her what I had so far. “I interviewed the other two girls, so we’re putting it all together. We’re going to put up a map of where the locations have been with images of the site that a newspaper photographer took.”

She took the papers from me and began looking through them. “You think it’s a tall male? That doesn’t exactly narrow it down.”

“No, not really, but we’re also listing the time of the attacks. Maybe people can help us make a list of people that have legit alibies and who can’t be accounted for.”

“You think people will be truthful?”

I nodded but Jay shrugged. “They could contribute names of people they don’t like to try to get them in trouble or they could help cover things up, but it’s worth a shot.”

“Are you printing this in the paper?” She handed me back the stack of papers.

“That was my initial plan.”

“But I thought it could cause issues.” Jay interrupted. “While the interviews would be good to print, there’s too much speculation that goes with them. Also, I thought that if Mac started something new, it would look better for her project, and we wanted something that people could contribute to.”

She nodded and waited for us to explain.

“I’m starting a blog, anonymously. Obviously, there will be people that know it’s me, but the majority of the school won’t. I want to set up a discussion page for people to talk. Also, I want to try to arrange a group for people that want to coordinate groups to walk with.”

“I thought you were concerned with vetting people.”

“I was.”

“But since she’s not organizing it through the paper, and it’s an anonymous blog, there will be little to no repercussions on her if something goes wrong. It won’t be a school sponsored thing. She’ll simply provide a space for people to organize amongst themselves.”

I nodded with Jay, and Aubrey looked pleased.

“Sounds like this has been thought out.”

I shoot her a look. “Just because Jay’s involved, you agree.”

She mirrored my look. “I’m glad you’re not doing it on your own is all.”

“I’ll make sure she stays out of trouble.”

“I’m holding you to that.” She stood and walked into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

After a few more hours of work, we had the blog set up. The home page was the map with the locations and times of the attacks marked. Then, we had a page for each attack with abridged versions of the girls’ interviews. We had two pages for readers to comment on. One was for discussion and the other was to organize groups.

“Now we just need to get people to the site.”

That was what I’d been most worried about. We needed this to go viral through the school.

“I’ll send it to Mallory and Aubrey to post on their MyPages. Who else do you know that have large followings?”

Jay thought for a moment. “I can post it, and I’ll send it to some of my friends. Hopefully it will spread organically.”

“Can you track that?”

He nodded and pulled up a site. “This is the backend of the blog. We can see traffic and clicks here. If we don’t get enough spread in the next twelve hours, we’ll have to figure something else out.”

“Maybe one of the columnists can write about it.”