Bridgette decided on a plan of action long before the school day ended. But by the time class spilled out, the butterflies in her stomach were threatening to fly out of her mouth. Patience, she thought. I’ll wait until I get home.
But once home, the tension didn’t grow any easier. Her stomach was heavy with anxiety so thick she wanted to throw up. A good part of her was itching to forget all about her plan, go upstairs, and play Dream Chest once again. But she was frightened at the same time. She sat on the living room couch, glancing between the stairs and the phone, stuck in between.
She was still in the midst of indecision when her father came home from work.
“How are you honey?” he asked, as he hung up his coat. A moment later, he went to the refrigerator for one of his ciders.
“Fine,” she said, in her casual dismissal voice.
Her father recognized it at once. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
She looked up at him with eyes saying she both wanted to talk about it, and stay silent. Her father sat on the cushy chair nearby. “Tell me what’s on your mind,” he said.
“If - if someone you know is in trouble...” she began.
“What sort of trouble?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “But a girl I know is...”
Her father watched her with his cool eyes, gentle and trusting.
“A girl I know is - is thinking of running away,” she finally said.
“Has she yet?” asked her father.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “And I don’t know if she would appreciate me getting involved.”
Her father nodded thoughtfully. “So she wants to run away, and wants you not to tell anyone about it?” he asked.
“I think so,” she said. “At least, I know she wouldn’t - she wouldn’t appreciate it if I tried to stop her.”
Her father nodded. Reaching to the side table, he picked up a frame that held one of Bridgette’s baby pictures. He held it in his hands, thinking about a distant time. “You know Bridgette... your mother wanted you to be an ace student.” he said. “I guess it’s safe to say she still does. She has dreams of our Bridgette as valedictorian. Or star athlete. Maybe in softball.”
“I hate softball,” said Bridgette.
“Oh, I know,” said her father, his smile recalling all the fights they had years ago over the sport. “But I only had one dream for both you and Paul. I want my children to be good people. I’d rather you were an honest store clerk than a scheming lawyer. I have faith that you’re smart. But no school will make you a good person. These days we have millions of educated shysters.”
“I try to be good,” she said. “But-“
“But you’re young,” he said. “Listen.” He put down the photograph, and took a sip from his cider. Replacing it on the table, he looked at her intently. “What do you do if one of your friends tells you she wants to commit suicide?”
“I’d stop her,” she said.
“How?”
“I’d talk to her. I’d try to see what was wrong and get through to her.”
“All right. She says she’s miserable and she wants to die. Now what?”
“Keep trying?” said Bridgette, hoping it was the right answer.
“Okay. You keep trying. She gets upset with you. She tells you it’s her life. And she says that you do not have the right to control her life. Her life and her death is her choice alone, and you, as a third party, do not have the right to tell her to live when she doesn’t want to.”
A chill spread through Bridgette’s veins. “Keep trying?” she said.
“Your friend takes the gun. She opens the box with the bullets. She’s loading the gun. What do you do?”
Bridgette hesitated. She imagined the scenario, trying desperately to change the mind of someone that determined. “What do I do?” she asked.
“You tie her up!” her father said, pounding the side table for emphasis. “Sometimes you do know better than the other person. Sometimes they aren’t in their right mind. And if they confide to you about something terrible they plan to do, and you have the chance to stop them, then you do everything. And I mean everything. She may thank you later, or never talk to you again. But she’d be alive. Or - she’d be at home.”
“Did that happen to you?” Bridgette asked.
Her father shivered, as if a memory came back to haunt him. “Yes,” he admitted. He grabbed his cider and took a sip. “No one you know.”
“What happened?” she asked. The look on her father’s face told her at once that he wished she hadn’t asked.
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“A good friend of mine,” he started, “after his- well, that’s not important. What’s important is that he told me, and I spent the night trying to change his mind. I tried until the Sun came up. I was exhausted, and he was as obstinate as ever. He saw how wiped out I was, and told me he wouldn’t, not that day. ‘Go home and sleep,’ he said. ‘We’ll continue tonight. I’ll stay until tonight.’”
“I was stupid to believe him. But you can’t imagine the exhaustion. All afternoon and all night trying to change his mind. I wanted to believe I had succeeded. I wanted to go home and sleep. I wanted to-” he stopped to wipe something from his eyes. He emptied the rest of his cider in a single gulp. The cider didn’t seem to satisfy him, as his eyes trailed to a bottle of scotch high up on a kitchen shelf.
Bridgette found her voice. “I’m sorry.”
“I did my best,” her father said, sounding more like he was trying to convince himself than Bridgette. Turning to look at her straight on, he spoke very directly: “Bridgette, if you have the chance to save someone, you must run for it. It may be the most important thing you ever do.”
Bridgette nodded. “Thank you Daddy.” she said.
Her father nodded. “Go ahead,” he said. “Make me proud.”
She ran upstairs to the office. But for once, she ignored the computer and picked up the phone instead. She peeled the note out of her pocket, and dialed.
A voice answered on the third ring. “Hello?” it asked.
“Is this Stephanie Lawson?” said Bridgette.
There was a moment of quiet. “It’s Phintas now,” said the voice. “Stephanie Phintas.”
“I’m sorry,” said Bridgette. “I must have dialed the wrong number.”
“No,” said the voice. “Lawson was my ex-husband. Who is this?”
“I’m Bridgette Mittison. I’m- I’m a friend of Rose.”
“Rose.” the voice said. “I swear, when I see her again-”
Bridgette couldn’t identify the voice’s emotion. “Do you know where she is?”
“Of course I don’t know. She ran off with her father and he won’t give her up. He says he doesn’t know where she is, but I don’t believe him. The man is a liar, always has been. My lawyer will make him talk.”
“So she was with him?” Bridgette asked.
“Yes. He had her last, and then she was gone. He said she disappeared, but I know him. He doesn’t want to give her back.”
“Could I talk to him?” asked Bridgette.
“Why?” said the voice, sounding suspicious.
“I haven’t seen her in months,” said Bridgette. “And I thought…”
“You think you’d get farther than I did?” she said. “Farther than her own mother?”
“Maybe. I know where teenagers hang out. She’s my friend,” said Bridgette. “I just want to know.”
“All right,” said the voice. “Let me read you Adam’s number.”
She gave the numbers, and Bridgette scratched them onto a piece of notepaper. “Thank you,” she said.
The phone clicked, without a goodbye.
Without hesitation, Bridgette dialed the new number. It took a few more rings, but fortunately it was picked up. “Hello?” said a man’s voice.
“Is this Adam Lawson?” Bridgette asked.
“Yes,” said the voice. “Who’s this?”
“My name is Bridgette Mittison,” she said. “I’m a friend of Rose’s.”
“Rose?” the voice suddenly grew desperately passionate. “Do you know where she is?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Could you tell me what happened?”
“There’s not much to tell. She was with me over the weekend. I had a gig that night- I moonlight as a disk jockey. And when I got home, she was gone.”
“Your wife says-”
“Stephanie? Oh god, she thinks I kidnapped her. I don’t have money for another round in court. Look, if you have any idea where she is, please tell me. Please!”
Bridgette licked her lips. “Could I- do you have a computer?”
“Yes,” he said. “She was always playing with my old laptop. Do you think she left a clue on there?”
“Maybe. Could I look at it?”
“Come over if you want,” said Adam. “Or- no, that sounds bad. Look, there’s a coffee shop down the block, Serendipity’s Coffee on Maple and Locust. They have internet. I’ll bring the laptop. You could look at it there.”
“All right,” said Bridgette. “I can bike there now.”
“Fine,” said Adam. “I’ll see you there.”
Bridgette rushed down the stairs back to the living room. She grabbed her jacket and headed to the door.
“Are you off to save your friend?” her father asked.
“Yes,” said Bridgette.
“Come here first, honey.”
She turned. Her father gave her a big hug and kissed her on the cheek. “I love you,” he said. “And I’m very proud.”
Her cheeks burned lightly as she blushed. “Thank you,” she said. She hurried out the door. She walked around the side of the house, unchained her bike, and made her way down the block.
Though it was still Spring, she realized soon enough that her jacket wasn’t as warm as she’d have liked. She was shivering from the wind chill by the time she got to Locust. But the burning curiosity kept her warm, along with the exertion of pedaling as she made her way west.
Adam was waiting for her at Serendipity. At least, she assumed it was Adam. He was the only one in Serendipity banging onto a computer laptop. He looked surprisingly young for the father of a teenage girl, though deep lines in his face betrayed his actual age. Jewelry studs hung from his ear and his nose, giving him the sad presentation of a middle aged man adapting the dress of someone twenty years his junior. Prickly sensations crawled up Bridgette’s arms. She didn’t trust him. Not like her own father. She couldn’t imagine confiding in this man. At least his phone manner seemed okay. Maybe he wasn’t so bad.
“Adam Lawson?” she said.
He nodded, piercing the hope that she had stumbled on the wrong person. “And you are?”
“Bridgette,” she said. “Bridgette Mittison.”
He looked her up and down. She knew that look; the kind that men gave pretty girls. The tight look on his face told her all she needed to know about how he felt about her appearance. But for once, she didn’t care. Likely he saw the same expression mimicked in her own features when she looked him over. “How do you know Rose?” he said.
“The internet,” she said.
Adam Lawson nodded slowly. “Some website you two talk to each other on? You think you could get in? She never told me any of her passwords. But she told you?”
Bridgette had no idea what password Rose would have used. She could guess the obvious, like “Maxwell” or other details from Shard. But that was a shot in the dark, and she doubted Rose was so naive as to use an obvious password. “I can try,” she admitted.
“Okay,” said Adam. He turned the battered computer towards her. “What’s to lose?”
It was an old laptop. Adam probably had a new one he used in his night work. It was scraped, chipped, and stained with coffee. Still, it wasn’t so old as to be without use. Bridgette popped it open. The screen lit up quickly enough. She opened up the web browser, and typed in the address for the Dream Chest.
The screen lit up. “Welcome to the Dream Chest!” it announced. Looks normal, she thought. She clicked on the Log-in button.
A window popped up that she had never seen before. You are already logged into the Dream Chest. Log in time: 3 months, 2 weeks, 6 days, 7 hours, 12 minutes, 46 seconds. The clock was ticking up the seconds, even as she watched.
“Three and a half months?” Bridgette whispered.
“Yes!” said Adam. “She’s been gone three and a half months. Where is she?”
Bridgette turned to look at him, her face turning pale with fear. “She… she wasn’t at home? You didn’t just find her playing a computer game?”
“No,” said Adam. “She was gone, but she left the computer on. I switched it off, and couldn’t find her. It’s like she planned to come back, but never did. Where is she?”
“Shard,” whispered Bridgette. “She’s still in Shard.”