According to Kübler-Ross, grief works in five stages. First, there is denial, the initial shock and avoidance of the truth. Then follows anger and frustration. Not being able to grasp what happened, or why, people lash out. This is followed by bargaining. It seems that I found myself right there in the middle, after the trip to the forest. I still thought about death, like a mosquito in the night, sometimes it just buzzed in my ears. Impossible to let it go, it kept me up all night. But I tried to go outside, meet with Sam and Mack. But I felt hollowed out. Like a shedding skin, an empty husk. I was alone, who could truly understand me? Needless to say, I didn’t feel ready for school yet. But I helped my mother where I could.

The thought of the girl that hung itself continued to linger in my mind. I decided to go to the library in search of old newspapers, or someone old enough to remember the story.

I tried to enjoy the short walk to the main street, passing the thrift shops and bars. Passing the ice-cream shops and the hip boutiques that screamed for attention in colours too bright.

At least the library was not frivolous. It was old and bureaucratic. The interior seemed to be made in one, dark, boring wood. The lights were dusty and dull. At the desk there was an older lady, I asked her for the newspapers since there were no signs.

“For what purpose?” she asked.

“Research,” I said. She bowed her head ever so slightly and blinked. Her eyeshadow was purple. “For school I imagine. Well, try not to damage anything.”

I gave her a short nod as she took a key and led me to a separate room. “What year?” she asked.

“1980.”

I filled in my name on some document and she led me to the room behind the counter. It lead to a small room with lots of drawers against the wall. The free space in the middle was around the size of my kitchen. She turned on the lights and showed me the 1980 drawers. She then left without a sound. I remember gulping and thinking. The answer is in here somewhere.

There were but three different newspapers. I quickly read the front page and then searched for the right stories. I quickly noticed the layout was the same on all of them, still, I advanced slowly. I was around halfway when the old lady returned. Her steps were precise but slow.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked. I shook my head. For a moment I doubted sharing my trust in her. But in the end, she was just a woman who I’d never meet again. When she almost passed the doorway I said. “Do you know something about a death?” I asked. “A girl, around sixteen that hung herself?”

She turned around and her face became pale. “I see. Well, you could have asked me from the start, Barney.” I frowned. “So, can you help me?” I asked.

“Why do you want to know about that? You must have barely been around the time of the events.” She walked towards the drawer and pulled some newspapers out. Then focused on year 81, just to go back to 79. She started in October, however. “Yes, there it is.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

On the front page was the girl from the photo. She grinned, showing her false teeth. Standing next to a large tree and a white car was the girl from the photograph.

“Gloria, her name was.” She said as she tapped the photo with her withered finger. She had dull nails, like plastic left outside for too long. “She wasn’t from here, but her uncle owned a big house nearby. It’s the villa north of here, near the woods.

I remembered the villa. Sometimes we snuck through the large garden and peeked in the windows. It always seemed eerily desolate. We would invent stories about zombies haunting the place at night. That the basement was a crypt for vampires. When we grew up, we forgot about the place and smoked cigarettes behind the school. Like the dullness of adult life came seeping in through the cracks of our childhood. Around the time we chose the concrete over the forests.

She opened the newspaper, almost two pages were dedicated to her. On one side was the photo, on the other a text.

Gloria Ferluci, born in 1966, was found dead the morning of 28 October. It is believed she hung herself in the local playground. The reason is still unknown since she was supposed to be 100 miles further south, at Bellavista, where she attended school.

I didn’t continue to read. There was no need, I had found the girl. My mother did speak the truth.

“I thought about her death recently.” She said whilst I focused on the face of the girl. “There has been another strange case recently.” She said thoughtfully. “A man was found dead in his car at the bottom of a canal. Somehow he hit a sluice gate. Isn’t that strange? How did he get so far, when they found tire marks of the car leaving the road almost two miles earlier?”

I realised I was crumbling the paper. “And now this young boy comes to me and asks about an equally strange suicide that happened twenty years earlier.”

I threw the paper on the floor and ran away. “Hey!” I heard the woman say. “Barney!”

Like a spear, I darted past the desk and bashed the heavy door open with my shoulder. I ran through the main street. People stared at me like a stray coyote, but I ran. I ran until I found myself a few blocks further, panting against a stained wall.”She shouldn’t- shouldn’t. She shouldn’t have! She…”

My throat felt thick like glue. The slimes rattled in my lungs. My shoulder felt sore. She knew who I was, where I lived. I should have taken the document with me. I should have locked her up.

Sometimes the things that seem the most prominent, happen to be the things that don’t matter at all. She never went over to our house and we never received a letter. The mystery wasn’t close to being unravelled, I had barely found the entrance of the maze. But I was ready to get lost.