Dead and Departed

Chapter Seven:

Miya's dad slammed the door as he came in. Miya set down the box full of junk that she'd deemed trash-worthy and had been lugging down the stairs.

"How did it go?" Her dad asked.

"Just fine, dad." Miya said. "No break-ins, no stalkers, no murderers, nothing out of the ordinary."

"You can't blame me for trying to keep you safe."

"I know," Miya sighed. "But next time, can I not do chores the whole time you're gone?"

"Patience, Miya." Her dad patted her shoulder, walking past her and picking up the box full of trash-worthy contents. "You'll get your chance. I'm assuming this is for the trash?"

"Yeah."

Miya's dad nodded and walked off to dispose of the items. Miya stepped back toward the stairs to go up to her room and relax when—

She fell flat on her face.

"Oww..." Miya sat up. She'd slipped on a book. Miya picked it up and thumbed through it, wondering if this was something she'd absentmindedly put in the throw-away box. But no, she'd never seen it before in her life.

That was for sure.

The book wasn't even readable. The letters on it didn't even look like letters, or any other language Miya had ever encountered, and she knew from experience that nothing else looked like this. Her dad had tried to teach her more languages than he himself knew, but it became pretty evident that the only languages Miya could ever learn were Spanish and English.

Speaking of her dad, this book probably belonged to him and fell out of his backpack when he came in. Miya should probably return it.

But...

She had nothing else to do.

Why not?

Miya went to her room and splayed out on her bed, grabbing a pencil and paper from her nightstand. Flipping to the first page of the book, she held her pencil up, poised to write the translation and...

Nothing.

There was absolutely no way to decode this. No reference letters, no nothing.

Miya slammed her head against the book, hearing something crinkle. Raising her head, she frowned. None of the pages had been wrinkled. She closed the book. There it was again. The crinkling noise.

Then Miya realized. Of course. It was something in the spine. Reaching into the tiny gap in the spine, Miya pulled out a slip of paper.

Miya sighed. How cliche. Seriously, it was too cliche.

On it was something written in the code. Only this time, the letters were written over it.

September. That's what it said.

The word itself didn't give much insight. Miya's birthday was in September, but it was just a month. However, looking at the relation between the letters and symbols...

Of course! The symbols of the code represented the basic shapes of each letter, only with two central shapes of circles and dots.

Miya copied down the first few sentences of the written book and traced over her copy of the symbols. It still read gibberish. Sort of.

Eno dnasuoth owt htnin rebmetpes

September ninth, two thousand one. Two days away from the 9/11 terrorist attack. About 4 years ago.

The same attack that killed her mom.