The Five

3

Two days later, and Josh couldn't get Brooke to put down the yearbooks. He'd complained and ranted to her when she'd stolen them from the library as she claimed she would need them for a long time and wasn't in the mood to keep checking them out when they were overdue.

"Nobody is going to notice them missing!" Brooke had explained to him. "Nobody cares about yearbooks from the classes of 1981 and 1982."

"Except Madison, James, and Amelia!" He'd almost had an anxiety attack when they'd left the library. Out of everybody in the school, those three were at the top of his list of people to avoid, and they just strutted up to their table with no hesitation at all.

"Madison and James have probably already forgotten about it, and Amelia seems less than interested about her dead uncle. We'll be fine."

Now, Brooke had been dragging him around the school during lunch to look for 'clues'. Josh had stopped complaining when he realized that it actually was cool. The five of them had planted themselves in nearly every part of the school, and in about 45 years the school hadn't escaped the roots they stuck.

According to an older teacher, her coffee mug was still stuck to her desk due to a prank from Brian Phillips. She also told them about the row of bubblegum pink lockers that Brian had painted because a rivalry he had with one of the locker holders. Josh guessed they must have kept it in memory. Brian had also failed to hide the pink footsteps he'd left in the auditorium where the night janitors almost caught him.

Jason Hill still held about half the track and baseball records that were displayed in the gym. The other ones were taken by James Finley. In the trophy case filled to the brim with golden awards, the biggest trophy had a matching photo of the team, Jason standing front and proud in the middle of it.

The same could be said for Jennifer Harris, whose pom pom's were stuck to the 'spirit wall', along with her portrait in the row of historical head cheerleaders. On a plaque next to the spirit wall, Jennifer Harris gave the school a golden reputation after starting the highest raising fundraisers the school had to this day. Despite her already being missing for two months, keeping her from going to homecoming, she was still elected Homecoming Queen, her king being no other than her boyfriend, Jason Hill.

Lastly, Eric Martin and Kelly White were the founders of eleven successful clubs in their three and a half-years of being at the school. Eric held a generous number of spelling bee championships in the state, being surpassed by only Kelly herself. They were academically perfect, each with a 5.0 GPA and took enough AP classes to make even the highest students faint under pressure. They were top of their class for three years running, and would have made it their fourth if not for the incident.

The lady in charge of the hallway decorating claimed that both Jennifer and Jason's uniforms would have been framed if they weren't the clothes they went missing in. Josh found that more than horrifying.

"Someone with a higher GPA than you," Brooke said while flipping through the yearbook for the upteenth time that night. "Surprising."

Josh scoffed while he wrote on the poster board they both were supposed to work on. As usual, Brooke got sidetracked after the first five minutes of working on the project and was now huddled in the large bean bag placed in the corner of the room. "You definitely don't help it."

She didn't even look up from the pages. "Boohoo."

"Boohoo," he mimicked her in a high voice.

"I wonder what Kelly was like. Seems like a total brat."

He sighed. "I don't know, Brooke, it's nine. You have dragged me around the whole day and right now my last functioning brain cells are not willing to answer your question."

"You liked it. Spooky."

Josh cleaned up the supplies he'd spread across the carpet. "If trained professionals couldn't find them, what makes you think you can?"

"Because those professionals don't have my drive."

"It's not a drive, it's you being stubborn and wanting to find an answer that's not there."

"It was a murder. I'm sure of it."

Josh groaned while he got up from the floor and dropped his weight onto his bed. "Who would want to murder them? Robinson has got to be one of the safest and most boring towns in the U.S.. Nothing interesting happens. You're going to be devastated when you come to the conclusion that they just ran away."

"Eric came from a family of millionaires!" Brooke protested loudly. "I'm sure they hired some of the best detectives out there. I bet there's still a hired eye from the Martins. They surely would have found him if he ran away."

"I want to go to bed."

"Too bad."

"Go home, Brooke. Please."

"But I'm too comfy."

"I will throw you out the window if you don't get out in the next minute."

Brooke groaned as she pushed herself off the cushion. "Somehow I feel like you're not kidding." With that, she put on her backpack and skipped out his doorway. He could hear her trample down the stairs.