Amber slept fitfully in her own bed that night, waking every so often in a state of conviction that Chris Courtland would appear beside her, hold a gun to her head, and demand to know the whereabouts of Danny Sham.
This didn’t happen, but it didn’t make Amber’s sleep any easier. When she woke up for good, the sun had yet to rise. In early May, this meant it was the early hours of the morning.
Okay. Today’s the first day of the rest of my life. It’s also my second full day bearing this task on my shoulders.
Amber stretched her arms, yawned, and gingerly got out of bed. Although she lived alone in a spacious North End apartment, she still tiptoed over to the place where she kept her phone on its cord at night. It was fitting, right? She recharged her physical body as her phone’s battery was also charging, as sad a statement as that may have been about the state of society’s smartphone addiction.
When she first tapped her iPhone’s screen to wake it up, Amber saw that she had a missed text.
Maybe it’s one of those candidates soliciting donations. I’m not sure I want any part of that right now, or for the foreseeable future.
But Amber paused. If the text was from a family member or friend (like Rachel), Amber would kick herself for a long time if she didn’t answer it. Especially if the message turned out to have been something extremely important.
So she opened her messages app to find that the text was from Chris Courtland. “Oh boy, here we go again” Amber muttered.
The text was surprisingly wordy for the small amount of substance it ultimately contained. It read as follows:
Good morning, Amber. It’s me, Chris Courtland. I hope you slept well. I’m writing to inform you that you should call me as soon as you wake up. My number is (555) 227-4453. Once you’re on the phone with me, I’ll tell you everything you need to know to track down Danny Sham, who is in fact a sham.
“Huh” Amber muttered. This man wasn’t just blackmailing her, he was insisting upon an early-morning phone call. Just like a clingy boyfriend.
But then Amber pictured herself standing in front of Rachel as the latter told her she’d been expelled from Harvard. Then Amber would have to admit that she could have saved Rachel’s spot at the university by helping track down a criminal. And she’d be forced to acknowledge that she’d failed Rachel as a friend.
I’ll do this for you, Rachel.
So Amber dialed the number, then hit the call button. Surprisingly, an answer came right away!
“Good morning, Amber” Chris remarked, sounding almost exactly like how Amber would have perceived him from his text. “How did you sleep?”
“Pretty well” she lied. “I mean, I woke up at 5 AM.”
“Was that sarcasm?”
“Yes. No. Maybe, I don’t know. The point is, I’m calling you because you told me to call you.”
“Right” Chris replied. “You’re still on board with the mission at hand, correct?”
Amber narrowed her eyes, not caring that Chris couldn’t see this gesture. “Yes. I have to be, don’t I?”
“Well, the choice is yours” Chris admitted. “But choices have consequences. Your friend Rachel should know that better than anyone else, but she doesn’t.”
“I actually had dinner with her the other night” Amber blurted out.
“Oh?” Chris said. “Continue.”
“Yes. We went out to the Pokémon Café near the Public Garden, and we tried some delicious Pikachu Stew. And…”.
“I don’t care what you ate” Chris told Amber. “How did you feel upon seeing Rachel?”
Pressure. I felt pressure to get this job done so that she doesn’t get expelled or worse.
But Amber knew she couldn’t tell Chris the truth in such terms, so instead she shrugged and replied as follows: “I knew that I needed to protect her.”
“Just like you’ve been doing for the last few months?”
“Just like I’ve been doing” Amber echoed, trying not to sound angry. After all, Chris was the only reason the world might end up knowing about Rachel’s academic dishonesty in the first place.
“And she doesn’t know about me?” Chris asked. “She doesn’t know that her dirty little secret isn’t going to be a secret much longer?”
“She doesn’t” Amber replied. “I haven’t told her about you. She just talked about travel to Japan. And I said I’d have loved to join her if flights weren’t so expensive. And…”.
“Rachel Petty’s a trust-fund baby of the highest order” Chris snapped. “No matter how costly those flights get, the biggest obstacle to entering Japan is going to be her criminal record.”
Criminal record. Those two words would be branded on Rachel’s reputation like a scarlet letter in colonial times, and Amber had to prevent that, which was why she was talking to Chris in the first place.
“Look,” Amber continued, “that meal reinforced how much I want to help her. I’ll find Danny Sham for you. I just don’t know where to begin.”
“You’re a smart girl. You can figure it out. Maybe start at the library?”
Amber was a little taken aback by that. If Chris truly wanted her to find this guy, he could be making it a little easier.
“There’s one other thing” Amber continued, realizing that something had just occurred to her.
“What’s that?” Chris all but jeered.
“Could we FaceTime for a moment?”
Yes, it was an odd demand, at least on the surface. But Amber felt as though she might trust Chris more if she knew what he looked like. After all, eye contact was everything sometimes.
“I am not permitted to FaceTime with my clients” Chris barked.
“Why not?” Amber wondered aloud. “You’re already on the phone with me. This is my personal phone - it’s not a burner.”
“Showing my face is against protocol. But you don’t need to know what I look like in order to trust me, do you?”
“No. Not really” Amber mumbled, though she wasn’t sure she believed her own words.
“Good. Because you have no option but to trust me if you want to save Rachel’s secret.”
If you want to save your friends, solve my maze!
Seriously, Chris was like an arsonist who called the fire department and wanted credit for saving his neighbors. He was the reason Rachel needed saving in the first place!
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
But Amber kept things cordial as she wrapped up the conversation. “I’ll head to the library as soon as it opens. I’d better get an early start to this, you know?”
“Fair enough. I look forward to bringing Danny Sham to justice and exposing his sham.”
Soon enough, the phone call was over, and Amber allowed herself a moment to relax. Then she got dressed in her jogging clothes, fully intending to head to the library on foot.
And then she realized: It’s five in the morning. They’re not going to be open for a couple hours.
A cursory Google search revealed that the Boston Public Library opened at 9 AM. In other words, Amber had nearly four hours to kill, which she whiled away by searching the Internet for the name that her last eighteen hours had revolved around.
Danny Sham.
She typed that name into the search bar, but then realized that this wouldn’t be wise. After all, people liked to pretend that their Internet activity was private, but it wasn’t. If someone were to hack into Amber’s phone data and find that she’d searched a random name obsessively, it wouldn’t be that hard to put two and two together.
But if Amber didn’t take some risk, all of the risk would be put on Rachel. It wasn’t fair, but it was reality. So she hit the ENTER button on her phone’s keyboard to initiate the search.
The search turned up hundreds of thousands of results, a number that was no doubt going to grow if she had anything to say about it. But none of them struck her as immediately useful.
There were LinkedIn profiles under that name, as well as its legal form of Daniel Sham. There was a professor at some state school that was far less prestigious than Harvard. And, of course, there were those highly invasive people-searching websites that cost a fortune to unlock a full profile on. Amber dismissed those out of hand - she wasn’t about to spend half her scholarship on this project.
A voice in Amber’s head, the proverbial devil on her shoulder, chastised her: Aren’t you willing to spend that money, though? What is Rachel’s degree worth to you? Apparently less than $100/month!
Still, speaking of months, Amber had been told she had a full month to complete the task. Therefore, she didn’t have to launch into the most invasive searching method as a first resort.
At about 8 AM, Amber left her apartment and traveled on foot to a nearby Starbucks. There, she ordered a cappuccino and egg sandwich. While she waited for it, she glanced at the other patrons, which included a police officer eating a glazed donut.
If I were so inclined, I could tell that cop that I’m being blackmailed by a private investigator, or whatever Chris’ title is. I could put an end to this ordeal, at least for myself.
No. I can’t do that to Rachel.
Still, it was pretty sad that Amber was now trusting a “private investigator” over those who’d sworn an oath to protect and serve the people of Boston. Forget the shock of her parents; Lady Logic would have been wrinkling her nose with utmost displeasure!
When her cappuccino was ready, Amber sat at a harborside table, feeling the spring breeze in her blonde hair. Strictly speaking, she did not need the caffeine contained within her drink; the Starbucks visit was purely a vehicle to kill time until the library opened.
Finally, she began her jog to Copley Square. The streets were not terribly busy with vehicular traffic on a Sunday morning, so Amber didn’t have to stop very often. In not more than fifteen minutes, Amber stood in front of the grandiose flag-flying building that was the Boston Public Library, panting and perspiring greatly.
The air conditioning is going to feel amazing. Like, it’s 9 AM and humidity’s at least 80 percent!
Once inside the library, Amber headed to the front desk, which an olive-skinned woman of maybe sixty sat behind. The librarian’s eyes did not waver from her computer; at least, not until Amber waved at her.
The librarian stood up from her chair, towering over Amber’s five-foot-three frame. “Wow, you look like you ran here! Who might you be?”
“I’m Amber Hawkeye. I’m a Chemistry major at Harvard.”
“Wonderful, wonderful. I’m always telling people your age that they should never stop learning. It’s a process, not an end goal. Are you studying here?”
Amber forced a smile. “Nope. My final exam was yesterday.”
“I see, I see” the librarian replied. “So what brings you here if not studying?”
Well, I need to locate a person who may not want to be found. Who probably doesn’t want to be found. And I have to do it so that this private investigator doesn’t reveal that my best friend’s guilty of cheating on an exam. You know, the most common reason I’d be here on a Sunday morning.
Obviously, Amber couldn’t actually say it that way. So instead she tried telling part of the truth.
“I’m looking for someone” she said. That wasn’t a lie, nor was it even an alternative fact. It was simply a small part of the picture.
“Huh” the librarian replied, giving Amber a severe glance. “To that end, you’re here at the Boston Public Library because…”.
“I was hoping you’d have some leads for me to follow in locating this person.”
The librarian’s look was now a highly suspicious one. She glared at Amber as though she were about to accuse the younger woman of stalking a stranger.
“Who are you, a Lobster Mobster?” she asked.
Amber gasped. Say what you wanted about some of what she’d done, let alone things she was currently doing, but if you accused her of something she hadn’t done, there would be hell to pay.
“Who are the Lobster Mobsters? Those characters I saw on the duck tour buses during my jog here?”
“I was being sarcastic,” the librarian continued. “But you have to realize that with the supposed Pokémon activity in Greater Boston, even if it’s just a superstition, people are bound to be suspicious.”
Amber’s blood simmered in her veins. “I’m not involved in that. I don’t even know why Pokémon would be real, unless Danny’s behind it - could Danny be behind it? ”
Right away, Amber realized she’d made a Freudian slip. She hadn’t meant to tell the librarian whom she was searching for.
“I don’t know who Danny is,” the librarian replied sternly, “but the New England Bureau of Records might. Do you know where their office is?”
“No” Amber acknowledged.
“I would offer to give you directions, but you youngsters use Google Maps for everything. Gone are the days when you needed a physical map to get where you needed to go! Google’s just taking over the world - so much is different from when I was your age.”
“I’m twenty-one.”
The librarian frowned. “Does that matter?”
“Maybe not.”
“In any case,” the librarian continued, “the New England Bureau of Records is near the JFK Presidential Library in South Boston. You can’t miss it if you’re heading down the road to the presidential library and its younger brother, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.”
“Noted” Amber responded blankly.
“And there’s one more thing,” the librarian continued, giving Amber the sternest look yet. “I recommend that you don’t tell too many people about your quest for this Danny person. They take stalking very seriously in Massachusetts law.”
“I’m not a stalker” Amber insisted. Even when divorced from its context, though, those words were hardly wise to say out loud, because they only made you sound like more of a stalker.
The librarian glared at Amber as if to say, You could’ve fooled me. Then she spoke again.
“You should be aware that there could be a good reason Danny wants to stay hidden. If you search the voter registration rolls, for instance, some people who are victims of certain crimes - stalking, domestic violence, or anyone else who might have something to fear from their information being public - they’re not on the public rolls even if they are registered. They ask to be taken off, and we comply, because we want to protect them.”
“Fair enough” Amber sighed, rolling up her sweaty sleeves. “I’ll do it the old-fashioned way.”
“Good luck” the librarian replied, though she didn’t appear to mean it at all.
“Right. Sorry to jet, but I’m in a hurry.”
As soon as Amber was back in the middle of Copley Square, her phone rang for the millionth time in just under twenty-four hours. She sighed. This had better be really important, or maybe it’s Chris again. I guess Chris is now “really important” in my mind.
The caller ID stated RACHEL PETTY, so Amber did not need to hesitate this time. She unlocked her phone and answered the call.
“Hey, Amber!” Rachel exclaimed.
“Uh, hi” Amber responded.
“Is there something wrong? You seem a little…preoccupied.”
When Amber next responded, she did so slowly, carefully measuring every word she said. She was certain that it’d be better not to tell Rachel how much danger she might be in.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just a little out of breath. I ran all the way to the library in fifteen minutes, after all.”
“Wow, you must be tired. But what were you doing at the library? We’re done with the semester, Amber!”
Amber only had a few seconds to concoct a white lie. “I was looking for a new novel to read. I don’t have a summer job yet, after all.) Not one that doesn’t involve protecting you.
“Then do you want to go to the aquarium this afternoon? I know it’s pretty touristy, but it’s nice if you’re a local too.”
A week or two ago, Amber would not have hesitated to say yes. She’d have jumped at any opportunity to spend more time with Rachel outside of an academic context. But, in the words of a certain pop singer, that was then…this was now.
“I don’t know if I can” she admitted. “I just…can’t afford to.”
She meant that she couldn’t emotionally afford to. Harvard had taken care of the financial challenges of Amber’s life in Boston - she could splurge as much as she wanted, a drastic change from her previous existence. On the other hand, as a very wise fable-teller had once said, better safe with a little than scared with a lot.
“I’ll cover the cost” Rachel replied, clearly not understanding what her friend truly meant.
“Look, I just have other things to do” Amber admitted. Finally, that was something closer to the complete truth. She still harbored no desire to tell Rachel all the facts, only those that were necessary at this very moment.
“Oh” Rachel mouthed. “Well, if we go our separate ways a bit this summer, we’ll still be friends again in the fall semester, right?”
“Yes” Amber promised. “Yes, we will.”
Now, all she had to do was move heaven and Earth to keep that promise.