I should’ve stayed curious.

I would never have to deal with the problem that I’m in at this moment, scared and stuck in a position where I have no idea what to do. It all started, when I decided to help my friends investigate the case of our friend Layla…

“Guys we should totally investigate Layla’s case. I think that we could figure out at least something,” said my friend Mia. My friend and I nodded and added words in agreement with Mia. We weren’t supposed to get directly involved in the case, but we thought that if we stayed out of the way then we would be fine. We weren’t sure where to start exactly, so we gathered everything that we knew about the case.

“Okay so here’s what we know: she went missing from her front yard; it happened yesterday before school; her purse was found that had her car keys, gum, sunglasses, and her wallet in it. Other than that we don’t know much,” I said to my friends.

“Well I think we should visit her yard, I think that it’s still taped off and hasn’t really been touched for the most part,” said my other friend, Isabella. We decided we should go right then, so we took off and headed over to her house.

Once we got to her house we saw where it was marked off and went and took a look to see if we could find any information. Any evidence had already been taken into the police office, so that wouldn’t help us. Her parents saw us looking outside and invited us in. We greeted them as well as Layla’s sister who was there, and made small talk for a little bit. While they went into the kitchen to take a call, we continued to talk with her sister. When Mia then asked, “Have you guys heard anything or do you know anything new at all?”

“Not too much, only that there were no other footprints or fingerprints on the crime scene, which was weird. I’m not really supposed to mention this, but they said they have reasons to believe she wasn’t actually on her way to school. They found that she didn’t have her book bag with her,” said Layla’s sister.

In my head I was thinking that that is really weird. Normally, she would tell at least one of us when she isn’t coming to school, so we know but we didn’t hear anything from her that day, which was unusual. It was getting late, so we left and went back to my house.

Once we got back to my house we decided that we would start fresh in the morning and look for more clues or connections. So far we know what was in her bag, when it happened, where it happened, and how she might not have been going to school after all. Since we were all tired from running around all day, we relaxed and went to bed.

After we all woke up we decided to set up a plan for the day, since we didn’t want to waste any time.

1. Interview anyone who might’ve seen anything

2. Ask our friend’s dad who’s a police officer if they can share anything, and

3. Go over everything and go from there.

We went to her neighbor’s house, who said the same thing as the two other people we interviewed, that they hadn’t seen anything off that day. We thought that it was weird that no one saw anything, and we didn’t get any new information. So that was no help. Then we went to our friend’s dad and asked if they could share anything at all. But since it was an ongoing case they couldn’t. Our whole day had been wasted. We went to bed and gave up for the day. We were going to discuss other ideas tomorrow morning at breakfast.

“Okay so yesterday was a total waste, anyone have any other ideas on what we could do?” I said. Isabella and Mia both shook their heads. We decided to eat and talk about other things, to give ourselves a break from talking about the case. After we finished eating I got a text message suddenly. My mom texted me saying Layla is back home! We were all surprised but super happy. She let us know that her mom asked if we wanted to come over for dinner since Layla was asking for us, because she missed everyone so much. Of course we said yes we wanted to see how she was.

I got in my car and picked up Isabella and Mia to go to Layla’s house. Once we got there we all ran to hug Layla. It was pretty hectic with us talking and feeling so relieved to see her finally. At dinner Layla was telling us how happy she was to finally be home and how scary that all was. But something wasn’t fully adding up…

I texted Mia and Isabella and asked if something seemed off to them, and they both quickly replied saying that they thought there definitely was. It was as if something was being hidden from us. I wondered if she was keeping something from us, so I decided to ask to go to the bathroom but instead go to her room. At first I didn’t see anything, but then I found her journal. I didn’t want to touch it or go through it, but I had a gut feeling that something was going to be there. I looked at her last entry and that was when I saw it…

01/03
Dear Diary,
I cannot do it anymore! I’m getting so annoyed by everything right now. Like my parents are being totally crazy about nothing. I just wanted to go and hangout with my friend, but they won’t let me. And don’t even get me started on my friends– it seems like none of them even like me anymore. I don’t get enough attention from anyone, they’re all tired of me. I need to do something that’ll really get them worried about me… You know what? Call me crazy, but I should totally run away or something crazy, I don’t know. I can plan this out over the next few days.

Okay, so it’s a few hours later and I don’t have all the details planned, but I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to fake my disappearance. I’m going to do it before school and leave a few things that I don’t need in order to make it believable.

I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I had just been hit in the head. What do you mean? So this was all fake? We had spent days worried about her and losing sleep and she just did this for attention. I went downstairs and let them know that I was going to go home because I didn’t feel too good all of the sudden. Isabella and Mia came with me because they wanted to let Layla have time with her family and plus it was getting pretty late anyways.

“So did you find anything?” Asked Mia.

I nodded and took the journal out from my bag to show them. I handed it to Mia and Isabella to look at. “Look at the last entry,” I told them.

Isabella flipped through the pages until she found the last entry where her and Mia began to read. As they read it, I watched their faces drop as they began to take in what she was saying. There was silence as neither knew exactly what to say.

“What do we do? Do we go to the police? Do we confront her? Tell her parents? Our parents even? What do we do?!” exclaimed Mia as she rambled on. “I don’t know,” I said, “What can we even do in this situation?”

We sat for a second as silence consumed us until Isabella said, “I think we should go to the police, I mean think about it they’re looking for a criminal who was responsible for this, but there’s none this is just wasting their time.”

Mia and I nodded in agreement. We decided to go that night, so I drove us to the police station. As soon as we went in there we explained what was happening and they took us back to talk to us. I gave them the journal to look through, and now we have been sitting in separate interrogation rooms for a couple hours.

I should’ve stayed curious…