I was desperate. Our computer has been broken for days and my dad kept saying he was going to take it in to be fixed but didn’t. I was afraid Joseph was going to be mad at me for not emailing him and Violet’s phone was right there. I can’t believe I did it. I’ve never stolen anything before in my life but I felt like if I didn’t talk to Wither everything would be ruined.

I feel terrible.

And Violet was really worried about it. She kept saying how her mom was going to kill her for losing it. I tried to make her feel better by telling her I’d help her look for it and saying that it would show up.

We went to the library again after school and we finally figured out exactly what we were going to do for our final presentation. A movie. At first we were just going to write a report and make a poster for our project—Violet’s a really good artist—but then we heard that Gabe’s group was going to present their project about the Bermuda Triangle through a fake newscast and Katie’s group was making a board game called Roswell with little plastic alien game pieces made from a 3D printer. It’s a lot harder than it sounds. We spent the last two days in class on the script and wanted to get it finished so we could start filming.

Jordyn complained that the script was too short. That we didn’t have enough information. Violet suggested that we go back and look through the old newspapers again and Jordyn said, “Don’t be stupid, we’re not going to find what you’re looking for in a newspaper. They can’t print stuff without clear-cut evidence. They couldn’t just go around saying that Joseph Wither was killing girls down by the railroad tracks.”

I could tell that the way Jordyn was talking to Violet hurt her feelings but Violet just asked what her bright idea was. I couldn’t stop thinking about Rachel Farmer and the yearbook so I got up from my chair and went to the reference section and pulled the yearbook down from the shelf.

I opened it to the picture of Rachel Farmer and laid it in front of them. “How about this?” I said and pointed to the photo with the heart around Rachel’s head.

Jordyn gave me a look like, So what? I told them all about how Rachel Farmer disappeared and that chances are she was one of the girls that went with Wither. “See the initials?” I asked. “JW+RF.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Jordyn said. “Anyone could have written that.”