The Vanishing of Brandyn Taylor

Dead end. Again.

Rachel and I stood outside the other book store feeling even more confused; they'd not been able to help us either. I was starting to feel like it had been a waste of time and money coming here. I knew exactly what my mother would say about it, she would say we had been on a wild goose chase. As we stood there, trying to think what to do next, I looked around me. Was I starting to be paranoid, or was there a man over the road looking at us? I looked away, telling myself to stop being so daft. But I couldn't shake the feeling that he really was watching us. once before, a few years ago, I had been convinced that I was being stalked. It had lead to a lot of therapy sessions, and a poor innocent man being accused of following me. I didn't want a repeat of that situation.

"Keira try not to worry, we still have Mrs. Riley's call yet. Hopefully she came up with something."

I wasn't feeling as positive as Rachel was, not anymore. Dead end after dead end was taking its toll on my positivity. I looked back over the road, the man had gone, which made me breathe a sigh of relief. He wasn't watching us then and I was just being paranoid. I didn't mention him to Rachel, she probably already thought I was falling to pieces, I didn't want to add to that. The man was probably just looking at the book shop, or someone else. No, I would put him out of my mind. Nobody here, over six hours away from where we lived, could possibly know us. (Unless....... No, no, stop it, I told myself, that IS paranoid thinking.)

"Shall we head over to the campus then boo, have a coffee before we get started?" Rachel asked me.

Coffee sounded good. Coffee sounded like a plan, maybe the caffeine hit would help my brain work and come up with a idea of what to do next. We got back in the car again, and started to head back to the campus. I had felt a bit of a fraud walking about a university when we weren't even students there. It was only a matter of time, surely, before someone questioned what two non- students were doing wandering about. We couldn't go unnoticed indefinitely, but then again with the amount of students there nobody could know every one of them. I was sure that when we started asking questions we wouldn't have too long before we were asked to leave though.
The call from Mrs. Riley came before we arrived back at the university. Rachel had pulled over the moment I had said "Hello Mrs. Riley," and was patiently waiting for me to hang up, and see what news we had, or didn't have.
Before I had even ended the call I had started to cry.

"Rachel I don't know what's going on anymore; there's no records of the boy ever having been here either. Mrs. Riley said she asked around several departments, for advice or information."

"I really don't know what to say, I was sure she would have found something out. How can there be no records of him ever having been here?"

"I don't know, but I'm starting to feel like I'm going out of my mind. What the hell do we do now? We've come all this way for nothing."

"Do you want to still go around the staff rooms?"

"No, not now. There doesn't seem any point, Mrs. Riley has already asked several departments."

"I don't know what to suggest boo. I can't think of anywhere else here that might be worth checking out."

"Me either. I'm sorry I dragged you all the way here for nothing."

"It's not as if I would have been doing anything at home. Plus you didn't know we wouldn't find anything out. How about we go somewhere else for coffee, and think what to do? We could make the most of being here and do some sightseeing or shopping?"

"OK." Was all I could say.

I felt, at that moment, that if I said anything else I would just burst out crying again. Rachel used her phone to search for the nearest coffee shop, and even tried cheering me up a bit by buying me a slice of carrot cake, my favourite cake.