Dissapearance

chapter 4

Margo's POV

      Maybe I should leave it be. Maybe I should close Amy's sticker-infested laptop and never speak of it again, and maybe I should even turn it into the local police station.

But I won't.

I won't ever do any of those things, because I want to know what happened. I want to know what her last moments were even if they ruin me. I want to know why she didn't mention this guy. There are so many unanswered questions I have, and frankly, I want them to be answered.

I want them to be answered for not only myself but also for Amy's mother, her father, their falling marriage. I want these questions to finally be answered for her cousins, her true friends, her poor uncles and aunts, for the boys who fell so hard for her and never got to act on it. These questions have to be answered for more reason than one.

So, really, it's not selfish for me to open her laptop and investigate.

It's not selfish to want answers for her entire family and other loved ones.

I nodded with a light sigh as I opened her laptop, tapping on the familiar tab, "For Jeremy." I looked through that tab for hours until I decided to check her messages, hoping more of the puzzle would be pieced together. Jeremy obviously had to be her lover of some sorts. Maybe even a boyfriend? But she slept around so much... Could she have been cheating on him?

It just seems like she would have mentioned him at some point.

I'm her best friend! She tells me literally everything, so why would she keep this one thing from me? It doesn't make sense for her to be so secretive about it if there is nothing suspicious about him. Something weird must be going on.

Scrolling through her messages, I can't seem to find anything besides flirtatious texts with boys- none of which are named Jeremy- and party arrangements. There were also a group chat for the cheerleaders she was friends with, mostly gossiping about people they didn't like on the cheer squad. Predictably, she also had many texts with me, but I didn't see anyone named Jeremy. My eyebrows knitted in confusion at the realization that she hadn't texted anyone with that name recently.

What? That doesn't make sense.

Deciding to take another approach, I searched "Jeremy" into the search bar at the top of her iMessages. At first, I thought nothing would pop up, but one result surfaced. It wasn't a contact number for a guy named Jeremy like I had hoped, but it was a conversation between Anna May, a popular cheerleader who had been friends with Amy before she moved schools, and Amy. I immediately clicked on it, praying this would reveal who Jeremy was.

"Hey Amy, just wanted to check in! I listened to your voicemail. Jeremy really said he liked you? He's cute! Update me on what happens!" Anna May had texted her last year in April, a very long time ago. Had Amy really known this guy for that long and never mentioned it? Amy has replied a day later.

"For sure will! Sorry, I just have been so busy with cheer practice lately. Katie is really up our a** about Tuesday's pep-rally. It was such a disaster." Seems normal. Except for the fact that she never told me any of this. Well, why did she tell Anna May this?

"I get that, haha! West Prep Cheer is so much easier. You should move schools!" Anna May had texted back.

"Maybe If Margo wasn't here," Amy replied, "but I can't just leave her. She would be alone."

"Understandable. Have you told her about Jeremy yet?" I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion, not understanding. Why would she tell Anna May and not me? They weren't nearly as close as we were.

"No, not yet," Amy responded. Their conversation went on for a little while longer, but they no longer spoke about Amy's mystery man at all. I groaned in disappointment and annoyance, wishing more information had been given. Maybe I could ask Anna May herself, but then, it would be obvious that I had her laptop with me. She could even tell the authorities. A ding suddenly sounded from my phone, which had been placed neatly beside me on my desk. 

"It's rude to look in peoples computers, you know," the text read, which was from Amy, "plus, we wouldn't want you to get in trouble, now, would we?" What? How would this person that has her phone know? 

"How did you know that?" I quickly responded, freaked out completely as I looked around my room, getting up to lock my windows and close my shades. Another ding erupted from my phone as I sat back down in my chair. Anxiety was coursing through my veins rapidly at this point, my heart racing faster than a sports car. 

"Look out your window." My breath hitched as I read the text, my heart pounding so loud I wondered if my mom could hear it from downstairs. I felt my bones tremble and shake as I looked out my bedroom window, praying nothing was there. I simply just wished for this to all be a terrible nightmare and for me to wake up with Amy standing over me with the same stupid smile as always. All I wanted was for me to wake up in a world where none of this happened at all, but of course, that isn't what happened. I glanced out of my window only to see a figure standing on my lawn in the dark. I immediately closed my blinds once again and hurried away from the window. My heart raced as I slammed the laptop shut, putting it in the top of my closet before hurriedly running back to my window, checking out my window only to see that whoever had been there already left. I let out a huge sigh of relief, but my heart still raced at the thought that someone was literally watching me and still could be.