Dead & Forgotten

Ch. 18

"Cassandra, please come back!" I heard Mrs. Hank calling after me. I was thankful for her concern, but I felt that I needed to leave before I embarrassed myself again.

But I had to listen to her, so I came back. "Why, we're very surprised at you for saying something like that," she said. Mr. Hank nodded in agreement, a solemn expression in his eyes. Phoebe and the girls just stood there, speechless. "We always thought you loved our girls."

"I'm sorry," I said to Ariadne and Penelope, staring up at me with those innocently adorable blue eyes, which complemented my own and made me think of Rachel. Those blue eyes were something all right. 

"Well, if you really consider it, Cassandra actually does have a point," Mr. Hank said. "A lot of clues leading to nowhere for her. Is that right?" he said to me, and I nodded, "Hmm-hmm."

"I'm sorry....I shouldn't---you know, have said that directly," I apologized for what seemed like the trillionth time. I could apologize as much as I wanted to, but it probably wouldn't get me anywhere. I felt foolish enough to think that the Hanks would actually help me in this predicament and at least give me the answers I was looking for. They weren't really gonna do so; they'd just laugh at me or think I was a cruel psychopath. They probably would never trust me with their daughters ever again, and I wouldn't blame them for that. I felt that I deserved it. I would always feel lost, no matter what. If I couldn't rely on me to find the answers and do the right thing, then nobody else would. Not even the Hanks. But surprisingly, I was lucky....

Phoebe laughed and said, "Oh, stop apologizing, silly Cassandra Fuller. You are not to blame. Isn't that right, Travis and Bonnie?"  she said to Mr. and Mrs. Hank.

Mrs. Hank sighed and said, "I guess Phoebe and Travis are right. But how could you ever suspect such a thing, Cassandra? I'm rather surprised by that mind of yours."

I said to Ariadne and Penelope in a mockingly nice way, "I believe that you two are innocent. But can you please tell me what your relationship with my sister was like? Did you both ever get along with her?"

Ah, who I was kidding? I wanted to smack the living daylights out of them and try to suck the answers out of them! But I couldn't do that; if this were a movie or novel, I'd probably have gotten away with it. Okay, well maybe not, but I trusted my inner instincts, which told me I should never do that to these "sweet" young girls. 

"Well...." Penelope started off saying, but she cut herself off. Yes, surprisingly, even after not seeing them for two years I was still able to tell these girls apart. I always sort of had trouble differentiating them when I was babysitting them, but now that I hadn't seen them in what felt like forever, I was actually able to tell them both apart. Ariadne was the one whose eyes sometimes appeared to have a purplish tint to them, while Penelope was the one whose eyes were truly blue. So it was the eyes that made it quite simple to distinguish them. "I always thought she's been dead even before 1987."

"That was two years ago," Ariadne said. "We were only five."

"Cassandra, you're not implying that our two little sweethearts would actually do something that underhanded and inhumane, are you?" Mrs. Hank said softly.

"Oh, no I'm not," I replied, trying very hard not to sound like I was lying. Then I said to the girls, "Yes, Rachel has been dead for five years, to be exact. What happened in '87?"

Then Mr. Hank said, "Cassandra, do you by any chance remember Jerry Springfield?"

"Jerry Springfield. Hmm," I said as I started thinking about why that name sounded so familiar. A few minutes later, it hit me that he used to be one of our neighbors on whom Rachel had a crush. Her attempts to get him to notice her didn't always succeed too well---that is, until 1984. When she disappeared and then eventually passed, he realized he was such a "foolish idiot" for not returning her feelings back. After her death, his family moved to San Francisco to attempt to clear their minds and move on with their lives. Apparently, that didn't work. After a while, I answered Mr. Hank and said, "I think I may still remember him. Isn't he about eighteen or nineteen right now?"

"Nineteen years old and has begun attending Stanford," Mrs. Hank replied.

Wow, how time flies by! I thought. "So, there's no way to contact him at all now?" I wanted to know.

"We ask of Jerry Springfield because according to all you have just told us, we believe that Mr. Springfield himself might have been a tad responsible," Mr. Hank said. "We're not accusing him of being the culprit; my wife and I are just saying what we feel. Is that right, dear Bonnie?" He turned to Mrs. Hank, who replied with, "That is absolutely correct, Travis."

She continued, "Cassandra, Jerry is a commuter, so he should be at home when he is finished with classes. He lives on 125 Stanford St. in Stanford. That is his address."

As I wrote down the address in my diary book, I asked about Jerry Springfield. "What does Jerry Springfield have to do with Rachel's death?"

Phoebe then said, "Oh, honey, I am afraid that we don't really know the whole story. We would have to go over to his house and have a little talk with his family."

"Well, just from what you guys think you know, by any chance did Jerry ever hate on her?" I asked. I wanted to unravel the hidden answers, and I needed to know these things while I could. Because chances are, that might be a good possibility and a clear explanation leading to the details, which I needed, no matter how disturbing or shocking.

"Good question, Cassandra," Mr. Hank said. Nobody answered, but they all agreed that it's a possibility. "Now grab your jacket, sweetheart."

"Where are we going?" I said.

"We're going over to the Springfields," Mrs. Hank replied as she put on her jacket. "We need to solve this mystifying case. Phoebe, you stay here with the girls."

"Oh, but we insist we would like to come with you," Penelope said. Mr. and Mrs. Hank simply glanced at each other, as if they were trying to figure out what to do.

Marvin was the first person to make note of my absence, while everyone else was oblivious. It's quite obvious that he cared so much about me, and he began to go nuts when he noticed my absence. "Am I going fucking crazy?" he said to Donna, panicked. "She's not in your room!"

This was an hour before supper time, and usually around this time, everyone was supposed to be together in the building. No one was to be out of the building at all, not even without permission. Marshall Academy was just like prison, I tell you. Donna said, "That is kind of strange. That's so not at all like the Cassandra I know."

"She's your roommate; you're supposed to talk some sense into her!" Marvin demanded. "You've been at this school longer than she has; did you forget to remind her that no one should be off-limits before dinner time?"

"Look, just calm down, okay?" Donna said to him. "We'll get Headmistress Rogers." Which they did, and Headmistress Rogers made an announcement that there was a missing student in Marshall Academy Boarding School. It's amazing how quickly things were done immediately after they happened. Pretty soon, the whole school was out on a search party for me, which meant that dinner would be delayed a little.

When Marvin saw Jeanna, he said to her, "I hope you don't have something to do with this."

"With what, your girlfriend who just so happens to have magically vanished into thin air?" she said sardonically. "No, I had nothing to do with it. But thank God she's out of my hair!"

"Look, you may hate her, but Cassandra is still my roommate and my friend," Donna said to her in a snappy way. "You're in on this too, helping us find her, whether you like it or not. So just suck it up and move on."

Marvin smiled and winked at her as a way to say, "Congratulations for standing up to the bitch." Donna responded by doing a thumbs-up.

And I'm actually surprised that I wasn't really here for this part, even though I should have been, because the most surprising thing has just happened. And it was this. Jeanna said, "Do you know what? I'm tired of hating on the Fuller princess. I never thought I'd say this, but I actually feel like I am responsible for hurting someone's feelings for once." The even more surprising part? She actually sounded sincere when she said that, and Donna and Marvin actually believed her.