“She was always curious about famous people’s suicides and death, now I know why.”
Every night at exactly one o’clock a.m, Carter got out of bed and checked on his twin sister across the hall. He made sure she was okay, that she wouldn’t try to kill herself that day, or he would be a supporting shoulder for her to cry on.
On the twenty fourth of August, when he walked out of his room, a poster of Troye Sivan hung on the door, whereas it was usually beside Alyssa’s bed. He quickly ran into the room to find that she wasn’t flung across her bed in a strange sleeping position. His heart skipped beats when he caught a glimpse the bottle of sleeping pills half empty, lying on her bedside table.
Once he checks all over the house, he returns to her bedroom to finally find the writing on the poster. In the bottom right corner of the “TRXYE” poster, is Alyssa’s neat handwriting:
“My happy little pill, take me away.”
It quotes “Happy Little Pill” by Troye, and it leads Carter to her bedside table with the pills. He now realizes that it’s now filled with skittles, something he told her was a temporary cure for depression. Under the bottle is another piece of paper:
“You have twenty four hours to find me.”
He immediately scrambles into his room and finds his cell phone. The phone lags as he scrolls down to Katherine and clicks her name. The phone rings three times before she answers in a groggy voice, “Carter? It’s one fifteen a.m!”
“I’m really freaking out!” He says in a panic, “Alyssa is gone and she left a note saying I have twenty four hours to find her.”
“I’m on my way, It’ll be okay, Carter.” The line goes dead.
In the meantime, Carter goes back into Alyssa’s room to find anymore clues of her whereabouts. The books on her bookshelf are all evenly against the back of the shelf, all except for one. A book about haunted places in Ontario was poking out from the array of books. He pulls it out and a ripped page falls from the bindings of the non-fiction book. Carter bends down and picks up the paper entitled ‘Albion Falls’ it summarized how Jane Riley committed suicide there and how she haunts the falls. Another thing is written on the page:
“Tick-tock.”
“Carter.” Katherine whispers as she knocks quietly on Alyssa’s door from the balcony. As soon as she enters with Marcus and Nick, he breaks down crying. “What if we can’t get to her in twenty four hours? What if we’re too late? What are we supposed to do?” Carter cries out, Katherine walks over to him and wraps him in a hug, “It’s okay we’ll find your sister.”
“It’s all my fault, I could have gotten up earlier, I could have grabbed her before she left.”
“Shh, shh. It’s not your fault, it’s never your fault.” She whispers, “Now, where do you think she could have gone?” Katherine continues in a soothing voice.
Carter dries his tears and pulls the page out of his pocket, “This fell out of the most recent book she was reading, should we go? It’s in Hamilton, about an hour to drive there.”
Marcus takes the page and examines it through his glasses. “I would assume that she left at midnight, to get an hour head start, she knew you would come in at one, and it’s one thirty now, it could take us about half an hour to get everything ready. This might not be the only place we need to go, she gave us twenty four hours, this could take a while. How about we’re on the road at two?” The group agrees and they prepare for their road trip, they grab food, drinks, maps, phone chargers, passports, anything they may need. Lastly, Carter leaves a note for his parents:
“Alyssa’s gone, went to find her with K, N, & M.”
After an hour and six minutes of driving from Toronto, they’re finally on Mud Street, Hamilton where they get out of Carter’s silver minivan and Carter bolts into the forest where the trail leads to the Lover’s Leap site. He immediately sees the rocks, a perfect place for her, but no Alyssa. They’re about to leave, thinking they were wrong and nothing was there, but then they saw a red bag. No one recognized it, but they thought they should take a look anyway.
Inside the bag was a simple black notebook and a pen filled with bright purple ink. Carter opened the notebook to find the first page blank, but the second page was scrawled on with Alyssa’s handwriting.
“I can’t take it much longer, I’m so sorry Carter. You don’t have twenty four hours anymore, you only have six. That should be a little more than enough time to get to Ottawa. I’ll be at the Château Laurier. You don’t need to make it in time, just make it soon. I love you.”
“Guys we have to hurry!” Carter says when he’s done scanning through the message from Alyssa.
The group runs along the dirt path and hop into the car. They all rush clearly confused but Carter knows exactly what’s happening.
“Do you mind telling us where we’re going?” Nick speaks out after being quiet the whole time. He’s still in shock over the fact that the girl he’s in love with and one of his best friends is running away possibly to commit suicide.
“Ottawa.” Carter explains with one of his signature one word answers. Everyone nods and a collection of sighs escapes from them, wanting to get there as soon as possible.
About an hour and a half into the drive the traffic starts becoming terrible, cars slowly merged off the highway but Carter wanted to stay on track and refused to move from his spot on the interstate. After turning the news on, on the radio they’re informed of a car crash about a mile ahead of them. Carter soon turns it off, someone died in the crash and he wasn’t too keen on thinking about death at the moment.
They soon got to the site of the crash and it was spread over the whole width of the road. Everyone gets out of the car to watch as the police and paramedics walk around the scene. The body of a teenage girl lays there on the ground only a few feet away.
A tear rolls down Carter’s chee as he is the only one who notices. “Carter? What’s wrong?” Katherine asks with concern.
“It’s too late,” Carter whispers as they realise it’s Alyssa’s numb body lying on the road.
