Todd Strasser - Wish You Were Dead

Frank gave me an uncertain glance, clearly wondering what I was doing there. “So, how can I help you, young lady?”

“Were you the one who got the car from the stables?” I asked.

“Yep, that would be me.” Frank reached up under the car again.

“Do you happen to remember seeing a folded white napkin on the passenger-side floor?”

“Nope. Are you missing it? ’Cause we don’t take anything out of cars, even the ones that come in with more garbage in them than a sanitation truck.”

“No. I found it in the car this morning and wondered how it got there.”

“Well, we don’t eat in cars, either,” Frank said with a smile. “So it’s a hard one to figure.”

One explanation was that the person who’d slashed the tires had left the note. Once I’d seen that the tires were slashed, I’d never looked inside the car. But why would anyone slash my tires and then leave a note saying that people were still in danger and we needed to meet and talk?

There was another possibility, as well. “After you put the new tires on the car, you put the car in the lot next to the garage, right?” I said.

“Yep.”

“Was it locked?” I asked.

Frank stopped working and looked at me again. “Might have been, but I couldn’t say, Madison. I mean, it was just a napkin, right? No harm done?”

“No, Frank, no harm done. I was just wondering how it got there. That’s all.”

Frank gave me a puzzled look, as if he couldn’t understand why anyone would care so much about a napkin. “Sorry I can’t help you, Madison.”

“It’s no problem.” I turned to leave. “Sorry to bother you.”

“Say hello to your folks for me,” Frank called from behind.

I got in the Audi and left. At the intersection, I stopped at the light and looked in the rearview mirror. A purple car had just pulled into the gas station and Tyler got out, wearing olive green coveralls.

Str-S-d #11

This is the last blog I’m writing. I’m really scared. I wished three people would die, and now they’re all gone. I don’t believe anymore that it’s a coincidence. Someone’s been reading this blog. Someone crazy enough to do what I wished for. If you’re reading this right now, you know who you are. You’re the one person in the world who is always nice to me. But today in school you said something. I’m not sure you even realized what you were saying, but it totally creeped me out. Now I don’t know what to do. I could go to the police, but they’ll want to know how I know and then they’ll find out about this blog and blame me. The parents will blame me. Everyone will blame me. Everyone already hates me. But this is the worst thing that ever happened. Maybe I should kill myself. I could kill myself, but then someone would figure it out. I don’t want to be blamed for this. Even if I’m dead.

2 Comments

Realgurl4013 said …

OMG! This is the thing that’s been on TV! I saw it! You go to that school? Unreeeal!

ApRilzDay said …

I saw it, too. You HAVE to go to the police and tell them. What if those kids are still alive? What if that person has them? Even if it’s too late, do you want that person to GET AWAY with what they’ve done?

Monday 7:45 P.M.

WE’D ALL HEARD of schools being locked down, but this was the first time I’d ever heard of an entire town being locked down. At least, that was the way it felt. As soon as word about Courtney’s disappearance got out, everything went on total red alert. Some parents insisted on keeping their kids at home. And most of those who didn’t insisted on driving their children to and from school and then keeping them home for the rest of the day.

Not that anyone really minded. We were all scared. Three kids had disappeared. Even if we’d been allowed to hang out, nobody wanted to go into town, which was swarming with reporters and TV crews. There were a few kids who got off on being interviewed and seeing themselves on TV. But at school most people reacted coldly to the idea of using such an awful situation for any kind of personal gain or glory. Besides, after you told the media that you were really scared and definitely not going out at night or anywhere alone, what else was there to say?

There was a new message from PBleeker:

Think it’s a coincidence that the kids who’ve disappeared were three of the most popular in the grade? Check this out: http://www.journalnews.com/vtm/news/article/murder_unsolved

I was taken to the Web site of the Shawnee Mission Journal News , a newspaper that served a suburb of Kansas City:

ONE YEAR LATER MURDER MYSTERY STILL UNSOLVED

Every morning when Ellen Woodworth wakes up, the first thing she wishes for is to go back to sleep. When that doesn’t work, she imagines her daughter, Megan, coming into the bedroom and saying, “Hey, Mom, what’s up?” And then, every morning, Ellen Woodworth cries.

One year ago, Megan, a popular and vivacious senior at Shawnee Mission High School, disappeared from a party, never to be seen or heard from again. Her disappearance came roughly two weeks after her best friend, Molly Lincoln, mysteriously vanished after being dropped at her house by her boyfriend late at night.

A few months later, a hunter discovered Molly’s remains in some woods about five miles from her home. Aside from an undisclosed “mutilation” the police refuse to divulge for fear of compromising their investigation, her remains showed no other sign of trauma or poisoning and medical examiners were unable to identify the exact cause of death, although traces of an animal anesthetic called halothane were found on her clothes.

Despite repeated and extensive searches, Megan Woodworth’s body has not been found.

Sitting in her kitchen in this well-to-do suburb of Kansas City, Ellen Woodworth talks about what life has been like for the past year. “We live between misery and despair and hope. There’s no in-between. Sometimes I feel like I’m breathing, but I’m not alive. I’m taking care of things, but nothing makes sense. One of the things I hate most is how Megan’s brother and sister are suffering because I can’t be the mother to them that I once was.”

There are other frustrations as well. Despite the fact that Molly and Megan were best friends and disappeared within weeks of each other, the police have not been able to connect the two incidents. “Obviously, it’s very tempting to say the two cases are related,” says Shawnee Mission Police Chief Edward James. “But right now we have one unexplained death that appears to be murder, and one missing person. If we knew for certain that Megan had been abducted, or was the victim of foul play, we might be able to conduct the investigation differently. But we have no leads and nothing to go on. People ask, ‘Are you still looking for her?’ and our answer is, ‘Where do we look?’ ”

Ellen Woodworth shares Chief James’s frustration. “We both want to get Megan back and we both want to stop whomever was behind this from doing it again,” she said. “Chief James has given me access to all kinds of databases. I look at them all the time because they’re constantly being updated. I wish he could give Megan’s case more of his time, but he has a police department to run, and, of course, Molly’s parents need answers, too.”

Unlike Ellen Woodworth, Molly Lincoln’s parents do not vacillate between hope and despair. For them there is only despair. “We still can’t understand it,” said Howard Lincoln, a prominent Shawnee Mission lawyer. “Molly was a popular, fun-loving girl. Everybody liked her. Why would anyone do this to her?”