BooksBarbecue
Back The Game
Chapters (68)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. NOW
  4. One
  5. BEFORE
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. NOW
  26. Twenty-One
  27. BEFORE
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. NOW
  46. Thirty-Nine
  47. BEFORE
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-One
  50. Forty-Two
  51. Forty-three
  52. Forty-Four
  53. Forty-Five
  54. Forty-Six
  55. Forty-Seven
  56. Forty-Eight
  57. Forty-Nine
  58. Fifty
  59. Fifty-One
  60. NOW
  61. Fifty-Two
  62. Fifty-Three
  63. Fifty-Four
  64. Fifty-Five
  65. AFTER
  66. Fifty-Six
  67. Acknowledgements
  68. About the Author

From the report, he knew notebooks had been taken. They had been checked for a possible note left behind, but he imagined it would have been mentioned if one had been found. Another thing he would have to go over – the task of poring over its contents, trying to ascertain whether the words of a teenage girl meant anything in relation to her disappearance.

Mark sat down on the bed, pausing for a second and sighing loudly. He stood up, pulling back the covers, then the sheet underneath. Against the mottled white of the mattress lay a navy blue-coloured diary, a small sticker on its cover. One word scrawled across the white of it.

THOUGHTS

He picked it up, turning it over in his hand, noting its thickness. He tucked the sheet back in with one hand, then lay the duvet over it, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

The first page was blank, but the next one was filled with tiny, slanted handwriting, taking up all the available space. He continued to flick through the pages, seeing most of the same writing, interspersed with thick, black blocks of words. Words which took up entire pages by themselves.

The notebook was almost to its end, with only a few blank pages left to fill. Mark turned back to the beginning, reading a few lines and immediately feeling a sense of guilt for doing so.

I’m seventeen years old and no one has even looked at me. They barely know I exist. If I wasn’t a twin, I reckon everyone in school would have had trouble picking me out of a lineup. S has never had that problem, of course. Everyone knows who she is. They’ve never bothered with me though. I could be invisible for all I know. It would explain a few things, I suppose. Even the geekier boys leave me alone. I’m not even good enough for them. I thought it would get better once out of high school, but if anything it’s got worse. I have no friends, I have no boys interested in me. I’m alone. I don’t have anything to look forward to. I don’t have anything to remember. I wake up every single day and wonder what the point of all this is? I wonder if it’s worth it. Whether I should even try anymore.

Mark read on, scanning the pages, also filled with similar feelings of woe and loneliness. The handwriting began as precise and neat, before slipping into angry block capitals, the ink almost bleeding from the page.

Further in, there was a list.

Initials. He wasn’t sure what they meant.

JS

MK

AP

He wanted to reach out to the person writing these words and tell them it would be okay. Then, a thought came to him thick and hard. A realisation.

It was probably already too late for that.

‘Enjoying the read?’