The Girl and the Black Christmas

by A J Rivers

  Three hours later, I’m back at my house. Going through everything in the storage room was far more of an undertaking than I’d anticipated. Even calling it a storage room was generous. It was more of a locker piled with trash bags, labeled with little more than pieces of masking tape with names written across them.

  After writing out my intentions and signing the declaration of who I was, when I went into the locker, and what I was taking, the University allowed me to find Julia’s bag and claim it. I took pictures the entire time I was going through the locker and more of the bag in my house.

  I want to cover all my bases. If an issue does arise over my having the bag, I want to be able to chronicle every step of the way. Which would be why Sam is now staring at me through the computer screen, ready to act as a member of law enforcement witnessing my going through the bag.

  “Babe, you know I don’t have jurisdiction there, right?” he asks. “Even if somebody did pitch a fit, I couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’m not asking you to. I just want you here as a witness. People have a hard time arguing against a sheriff. The stuff was abandoned thirteen years ago. Technically, it doesn’t belong to anybody anymore. But it was once Julia’s, and it might tell us something.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Go ahead.”

  Using a pair of scissors, I carefully cut beneath the piece of paper wrapped around the top of the bag. I push the plastic away enough so I can look inside and see what the bag holds. It’s not very full, and a quick glimpse inside reveals just a few articles of clothing, a paperback book, a spiral notebook that appears to be from one of her classes, and a day planner.

  It’s the day planner that immediately catches my attention. I reach inside and pull it out.

  “What’s that?” Sam asks.

  “Her calendar,” I say. “It’s her schedule.”

  Unzipping the black fabric case, I open up the day planner and feel my breath catch in my throat.

  “Emma? What is it? Are you okay?”

  “She used it as a journal,” I tell him. “There are notes in here.”

  “Isn’t that what a day planner is?” Sam asks.

  “Yes, but I mean there’s more than that. She wrote down what she was doing every day, but then there are little messages. Thoughts. It’s like a tiny version of a diary.”

  “Does it say where she went?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “But I’m going to read it. Just because it doesn’t give me a road map doesn’t mean I can’t piece one together.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Thirteen years ago…

  Emma could still remember the first conversation she’d had with Julia. She remembered meeting her and how their friendship progressed. It felt as if they were getting close, as if they were bonding. But now that she was forcing herself to sit and think about it, she realized how little she actually knew about her friend.

  She knew what she thought were important things. Like Julia’s sense of humor, her favorite foods, the music she liked. What she wanted to name the dogs she planned to have one day. How much she hated raw vegetables but forced herself to eat them because she knew they were better for her than cooked. How much she wanted to have a family eventually.

  Those details seemed important, as if they had value. But now that she had talked to Julia’s parents, she wondered how much she actually didn’t know about her friend. Maybe all of those dreams and likes and dislikes were just surface level and didn’t give any insight into who Julia actually was.

  Emma had no idea she’d gone to a different school before coming to the University of Alexandria. Julia had never told her about any sort of unpleasantness or problems that she might have had in her past. She always talked about her parents as if they were wonderfully supportive and encouraging. She talked about her childhood and teenage years in glowing terms.

  Julia was smart and talented. She always knew what she wanted and was determined to go after it. She wasn’t conceited and didn’t brag, but she also didn’t hold herself back when it came to talking about the things she wanted and what she had done to get to them.

  And yet, she never talked about her study-abroad program. She never talked about what she’d planned to do with her life before she’d started thinking about cooking. It was as if there were two versions of this girl, and Emma only knew one of them. But now she was trying to find the other one.

  She had already gone to talk to as many of the professors as she could think of and had followed the same path from class to class that Julia would have. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing or what she hoped to find. But there was something in the back of her mind telling her to do it. To keep looking. At some point, she would find something.

  She just wished she knew what that something would be. She’d gone back to talk to Julia’s roommate, but Lynn had already left for the semester. The campus was emptying out. Everybody who might have information about Julia was draining away. The few people she was able to reach weren’t able to tell her much. It seemed no one really knew Julia Meyer.

  Many could recognize her when they saw a picture. Even more knew her name when they heard it. But what they said about her made it sound as if Emma was asking about a host of different people.

  Julia came from money and was nothing more than a spoiled rich girl.

  She was poor growing up, and only got to come to school because of a scholarship, but was really smart.

  She didn’t work.

  She had a work-study position.

  She was a nanny.

  She was an escort, but only the kind who went on dates and was seen as arm candy. Not the kind that has sex for money.

  She was promiscuous and known to be sleeping around with a lot of students and maybe even some of the University staff.

  She was a virgin who wouldn’t even go on a date with anybody who asked her, because she was too freaked out by any sort of relationship.

  And then there it was…

  She went to a different school for a little while but had to leave because she got involved with a teaching assistant who broke up with her very publicly.

  The relationship never even existed at all.

  Who was this girl?

  Was it possible she could have just walked away?

  Or was it just so easy to hide where she was, when no one knew who she was?

  Now

  “Lunch with Emma,” I murmur. I let out a soft laugh that doesn’t come from anything being funny, but an emotion too hard to define, much less express. “She mentions you in here.”

  “She does?” Sam asks. “What does it say?”

  “She’s happy I had you,” I tell him. “‘She’s trying hard to seem as if she’s okay, but I know she’s not. I’m glad she has her boyfriend.’“

  It’s hard to read those words now. And I’m sure it’s hard for Sam to hear them. Both of us know how that path ends. Even though we found ourselves here again, reading Julia’s datebook gives me a glimpse back in time. It puts me back into the mind of that nineteen-year-old still reeling from my father’s disappearance and my entire world getting flipped upside down.

  At the time, I did everything I thought I could. I did exactly that I believed needed to be done. That meant, at first, I clung to Sam as hard as I possibly could. It was what I wanted to do more than anything. I just wanted to curl up into him and make the rest of the world disappear. Sam could make it better. He could protect me. He could keep me strong until everything went back to the way it was supposed to be.

  But that’s not what I did. I held on close for a while, but it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. I had to break away from him or I would be hiding in his arms for the rest of my life. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want that. It was that I wanted it too much.

  I would have gotten through. But I wouldn’t be me.

  “What does it say about the day she disappeared?” Sam asks.

  “I’m still back a bit from that,” I say.
“There are some things in here I’m not quite understanding.”

  “What do you mean?” he asks. “Like what?”

  “It keeps saying visit. Like, ‘visit, three p.m.’ It doesn’t say where she’s visiting or who she’s visiting. Just “visit.” And then every time it says that, in parentheses it says “Mom, volunteering at the hospital.” Like with a colon in there,” I say.

  “Her mother volunteered at the hospital?” Sam asks.

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “And her parents didn’t live in the city. They lived a couple hours away. Why would she put in her day planner what her mother was doing? Unless that’s not what it means. Maybe it’s not what her mother was doing. It’s what she was telling her mother. Come to think of it, I remember her mother mentioning her volunteering. It almost looks as if it’s written as a note to her mother. As if she’s calling attention to it. But I don’t think she let her mother read her day planner. Especially not the notes she was writing. These definitely seem like something she wanted to keep just for herself. As if she needed to get them out of her head.”

  “And it doesn’t say who or what she’s visiting?” Sam asks.

  I flip through a few of the pages and shake my head. “No. It always says the same thing. Just ‘visit’.”

  “So, maybe she didn’t want her mother to know what she was really doing.”

  Later that afternoon, I brace myself for another phone call with Julia’s mother. She answers in a more pleasant tone, but I don’t carry a lot of optimism that’s going to last.

  “Mrs. Meyer, this is Emma Griffin,” I say.

  She lets out a heavy sigh. “I don’t have anything to say to you. I thought my husband and I were very clear with you the last time you called. We don’t want anything to do with your dragging up this painful time in our lives again.”

  “Please, just give me a few moments of your time. Just a few. There’s something I have a question about, and it has to do with you,” I say.

  She hesitates. “With me?”

  “Yes. Several times in Julia’s day planner from late October through the beginning of December―”

  “Excuse me?” Mrs. Meyer says. “Did you say her day planner?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It was one of the belongings left at the University in her student apartment. Your husband mentioned you didn’t take them with you, and said he thought they probably weren’t there anymore. I asked about them and they still had them.”

  “So, you took it upon yourself to take the planner?” she asks.

  “You didn’t claim it and it has been sitting in a storage locker for thirteen years,” I point out. “But that isn’t what matters. What matters is what I found in it and what it might suggest about when Julia disappeared.”

  “She didn’t disappear,” Claire snaps. “I don’t understand why you continue to insist on making this so much more complicated and difficult than it already is.”

  “Because she lied to you,” I say sharply, cutting her off so she’s forced to hear me rather than just hanging up on me.

  “What did you say?” she asks.

  “She lied. In her day planner there’s a note a couple of times a week that says ‘Mom: volunteering at hospital’.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Meyer says. “I told you, she was a remarkable person when she applied herself properly. In addition to her extremely heavy course load and her student organizations and activities, she also volunteered at the local hospital with geriatric patients.”

  “No, she didn’t,” I say.

  “Of course, she did. We talked about it all the time. She was so compassionate and wanted to make sure these people were given care and dignity, no matter what they were going through.”

  “Listen to me. Julia didn’t volunteer at the hospital because the hospital didn’t have volunteers,” I say. “I called them to find out more about what she did there, thinking it might have put her in contact with someone potentially dangerous. The administrator I spoke with said the hospital has not had volunteers in more than forty years. Not in any department. It’s a teaching hospital. Roles that were taken by volunteers are now given to the students. So she was telling you about volunteering, but those were lies.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you know of anyone she might have been spending time with without telling anyone?” I ask. “Someone she might have wanted to see, but would keep it to herself?”

  “What are you asking me?”

  “Next to the comment about telling you she is volunteering at the hospital, the notes say ‘visit’. There’s no explanation or more details. Just ‘visit’. Does that mean anything to you?” I ask.

  “I need you to stop,” she says. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to get out of this, but you need to let it go. Whatever happened to Julia can’t be changed now. It’s time to put it behind us and move forward.”

  She hangs up, and I tuck my phone into my pocket as I get out and walk into the coffee shop.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Seventeen years ago...

  Maybe this never would have happened if it hadn’t been for her.

  Maybe he never would have started at all, if it hadn’t been for that moment when he looked up and saw her for the first time. She started this.

  He shouldn’t have done it. He never should have allowed himself to venture that far. He should have kept it as nothing more than a thought.

  It wasn’t new, that compulsion that existed at the very depths of him. It was something he’d always had. For as long as he could remember, he’d wanted to know what it was like. But it was always an abstract. It was just a thought, something that hovered at the edges of his awareness, but one he could keep under control.

  She’d changed that. She’d taken what had once been only thought and turned it into a craving.

  That was the difference. The difference between someone who only wonders and someone who is willing to find out.

  The difference between thought and craving.

  Compulsion and completion.

  What had really changed wasn’t just that she suddenly existed in his world. It was more than that. She hadn’t just come into his awareness and made him want more than he ever had. She’d created something. Seeing her had brought every thought, every desire, every urge he’d ever experienced into sharper focus.

  It wasn’t just abstract anymore. It wasn’t just about wanting to know what it was like to hold life in his hands and make the decision of whether he would keep it safe or extinguish it.

  The moment his eyes fell on her, he’d wanted to know what every moment of the experience would feel like. The thoughts. The moment of making that final decision. Of knowing it was going to happen. Drawing her in.

  And for the first time, he’d wondered what it would be like after. That was the biggest change. The part that had thrilled him in a way he hadn’t expected. There had always been that question in the back of his mind. What would it be like when he was done? But he’d thought more about the logistics than he had anything else. He’d wondered what he would do. What he would say. How he would continue to exist in the minds of those who knew him as what they had always seen and not what he would become.

  But it was also that very shift that had fascinated him. They wouldn’t find out. He knew well enough to put the pieces together so they would never point to him. He would move in and out of the same circles. Go about the same life. And no one around him would ever know who was standing right beside them.

  He’d reveled in the idea of seeing the smiles and hearing the laughs. Those were even more important to him than the tears. The tears were expected. They were the reactions that people sought out when something like this happened. A life ended, and people cried for them.

  But if they laughed around him, if they smiled, it spoke of something different. Not that they had disdain for the life cut off. But that they were comfortable and believed they were with someone they could share that with.

&
nbsp; He’d suddenly been deeply immersed in curiosity about how people would react. The way it might change the perception of a person. How death placed a mask over virtually any face. He’d wanted to watch people mourn and witness them crawl through the jagged stages of grief. It had been like staring into the inner mechanisms of an old clock. He’d wanted to watch the gears churn through time and drag the second hand along until it counted minutes and hours and days.

  It had been because of her. Because he’d wanted to keep her. To preserve her. So he’d lived out his needs on the others and watched as little bits of the world fell apart around him. He’d gone unnoticed. Footprints in the snow. Warmth in the cold. A smile in sunlight. Just in the background and yet…

  And yet.

  Maybe it never would have started if it hadn’t been for her.

  He shouldn’t have done it. Not even once. No matter how much he’d thought about it.

  And he hadn’t.

  Not until her.

  But she’d taken what had been thoughts and turned them into a craving.

  It was more than he had ever experienced. The desire had always been there. For as long as he could remember. There had never been a time when he hadn’t wanted that feeling. When he hadn’t wanted to know what it was like. But it had always been at a distance. It had been just a thought, an abstract.

  Maybe he could have held it in.

  But now it had begun. It was in his heart. In his spirit. In his blood.

  He wanted to know every different way the world around him would react. Every question the police would ask. The way the reporters would tilt their heads. The words used in the headlines.

  Every one of them was just a little bit different. In that way, death could unmask as well. Unspoken biases appeared. Assumptions that should never appear and were crafted on no basis but the thin, teetering structures of personal preferences, misconceptions, and beliefs.