After that, something changed inside of her. The fragile hope she’d nurtured that this was all leading somewhere began to sour, and curdle. She began to ask herself difficult questions as she lay awake in bed at night, staring at her hands in the gloom, numbers trickling past her wide open eyes like drops of rain down a window pane. Questions she didn't know how to ask herself when she was thirteen.

Was the man who wrote the letters really the same man that had driven away with Bobby?

Did she actually believe that the end result of this sordid letter-writing campaign would lead her to the remains of her dead best friend? Or had she pushed herself to believe it so that she could make peace with her own complicity? And, whether or not they were the same person, who was the man in the blue van, really? Why had Bobby been talking to him? Did Bobby know him from somewhere, already? Was Bobby’s awkwardness with her that day related, somehow? He had only kissed her once, and not shown any signs of wanting to repeat the kiss. Was this because of his age, his inexperience?

Or was it because...had he discovered that kissing girls was not for him, after all? Did he prefer kissing men? Older men?

She remembered him leaning into the car, laughing. She remembered how he hid his face behind his hair when he climbed into the van. Had he been ashamed? Embarrassed?

Had Bobby been taken?

Or had he, in fact, run away?

And if so, why had Bobby chosen the stranger, over her?

Other questions began to plague the restless hours she spent trying, and failing, to sleep at night. Could she take the letters to the Police, now, all these years later? What would they think of her when she told them about the underwear, the sanitary pad? What would they be able to do about them, realistically? She knew little of DNA, but she knew something of evidence. What evidence was there, really, in the letters? Evidence to prove that Bobby was actually dead, evidence to prove definitively that her mysterious pen pal really knew where Bobby’s body was? Simple: there was none. All she ever got were demands. All she ever got were map coordinates. The man was a crackpot, and she was indulging him, a willing participant in an elaborate prank. The Police would never take her seriously. The letters would be lost, filed away in a box folder in a storage room somewhere, and she would lose her only slim chance of finding a resolution.

But, a little voice warned, periodically. But.

It might not be a hoax. Her writer friend might be crazy, might be a pervert, but he might also be telling the truth. She might not have debased herself for nothing. Maybe she was building trust, like an undercover agent, or mole, and at the end of the process, there would be answers for everyone who once loved Bobby, herself included.