The Vanishing of Brandyn Taylor

Take down.

As I lay in bed later that night, I couldn't get thoughts of my stalker out of my head. I hated the way my brain would wait until I was dog tired, and wanting to sleep, to start replaying things over and over.
I wondered, now, if the boy had got involved with some bad people, maybe he'd been selling drugs or something. It would give a possible explanation of why he vanished; maybe he'd had to disappear quickly, maybe he couldn't tell anyone for our own safety. This guy following me might be from a drugs ring, perhaps following me to see if Brandyn and I met up somewhere. If I was lucky, and I rarely was, he wouldn't want to cause me any harm, and was merely hoping to discover Brandyn's whereabouts. If I was unlucky then maybe he wanted to kidnap me, hold me to ransom to flush Brandyn out from his hiding place, wherever that might be.
It seemed very unlikely that him following me was merely a random coincidence, but I supposed it was another possibility. Both options were probably less far fetched than the mafia, or MI6 etc. One thing was certain: I knew I would never make a good private investigator!
I tried making a mental list of things to do, with the hope that perhaps organising my messy mind might help me sleep. I would call back to the library in the morning, and then retrace my steps back around everywhere I'd already asked if they'd seen the boy. This time I would give them a time frame, as Tim said - it might jog someone's memory.
The police seemed to be doing nothing other than dragging their heels, and i was certain they still weren't taking Brandy's vanishing seriously. They probably got hundreds of missing persons reports every month, maybe most of those missing people turned up somewhere later.

I suddenly realised that in all the events of the day I had forgotten to look Brandyn's mum up not he internet. Annoyed at myself, I knew I wasn't going to be able to sleep with that still on my mind. I went to the living room and powered up the laptop again. Half heartedly I began searching social media sites, and search engines. I didn't really expect to find anything, so when one social media site gave me a result, with a photo of the boys mum, I almost whooped in excitement, only remembering Rachel's was asleep just in time to not wake her up. Clicking on the profile I saw it was last active a few weeks ago, which seemed a bit strange as that could be about the time the boy went missing. I figured not to think too much of it, and sent a message asking her to contact me as soon as she was able to. I didn't mention anything about Brandyn being missing. Mainly because I was now paranoid that someone may be watching my, or his mums, activities online. Who knew who had hacked her account, and I didn't want to give any sensitive information away. For those same reasons I decided not to include my phone number in the message, nor my email address. I hoped his mum would reply directly back to my message.
While I was on the laptop I decided to check my emails and see if there was any regarding Brandyn being missing. There wasn't. All I had was junk offering me double my money if I signed up for an online casino. Shutting the laptop down once more, I headed back to bed.
There seemed little point in sitting up doing nothing; at least if I was in bed I was resting, even if I couldn't actually sleep.

The next morning I felt grouchy. I had slept in and off, the broken sleep not being enough to recharge my body very much. It was as if my body was objecting at me trying to make it move. Laying in bed for a few more hours was very tempting, but I had things I wanted to do. I wasn't one for sitting around waiting at home when I had places to go, i much rather get out, get the things done I wanted to, and then see where the day headed after that. If I was sitting about at home knowing I had things to do, I'd just feel unsettled until I went and did them.
I'd walked to town and back so much lately, I was thinking I could walk there blindfolded at this point. I liked the exercise of walking though, I only usually got the bus if it was raining, I was short on time, or feeling unwell.

The ground was still free of snow, it raised my hopes that maybe we had seen the last of the snow for this winter. Walking along my mind kept coming back to thoughts of why Brandyn might have vanished like he did. Maybe he had been caught out in the snow, but then if that had happened he would have been found by now. Was there a link between him going missing, and his mum not having logged in to her social media? What if they had both gone missing?
Now that I had that thought in my head I knew I wasn't going to be able to let it go. I had no idea what her address was since she'd moved, so there was really no way I could find out if she was missing too. I couldn't decided if it would be more odd they'd both vanished, or less. If they were in fact both missing, it would mean that the boys mum was caught up in whatever it was he himself was caught up in.