The next day the incident was never reported on any news outlets nor were there discussion threads about it online. It was as if it had never happened. On my way to the campus, I waited for Will at the usual spot where he would come running towards me in the same Nationalistic fanboy attire he always wore. Soon thirty minutes had gone by.

“He’s late.”

Then an hour.

“…”

Unable to wait any longer, I decided to go to class without him. The entire school day had gone by, but he never showed up.

(What happened?)

Growing suspicious of where he might be, I asked a friend of his who I had always seen him with when he was not with me, Grace if she had seen him today.

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“Who’s Will?” She asked.

“He’s…your friend, I thought. You know, the one with the messy hair and red and white uniform?”

Looking more and more confused, the more I tried to describe him, she just shrugged her shoulders.

“Sorry. I don’t know anyone that looks like that. She replied.

Getting nowhere with this, I decided to ask around campus if anyone had seen him, including some of the professors, but no one knew who he was.

(I’m not crazy, right? There was a person named William Hartfield.)

I began to doubt myself. Wondering if I had just made up this fictitious character that I called Will.

The day slowly turned into night, and I was getting tired, so I decided to go home for the day where at least I knew that my father should be back from the disaster of a press conference that took place yesterday.

I reached the street that my house was on and turned to walk up the three stairs that led into our home, and there I saw it.

“We are regretfully informing you that as of X/X/XXXX Dr. Freedman has been pronounced dead. We understand that you will need time to process this information, so we will wait until you are ready to give us at XXX-XXX-XXXX to retrieve the body. Thank you for your understanding. Signed, The Office of State Affairs”