On Mondays she was like a minister: prompt, punctual and dutiful. You could expect her to arrive here at the station not too long after the final bell had sang its sweet song. You may have heard of it. It's a timeless classic more popular than Beyonce to those kids. The rest of the days of the week she was more like a churchgoer. Her attendance was appreciated but not expected. It was a Monday. I was the first to notice she had not arrived.
Her daddy and I were partners. I never figured it unusual for her to be around the precinct. I grew up in a place where it wasn't uncommon to see kids hangin' around their daddy's auto shop or corner store. Hell, I used to go with my daddy to the courthouse pretty regularly. I saw the real bad ones there; not like Newbury Hill.
I had a hard time adjustin' to Newbury Hill. I didn't know how to act around so many White folks--rich, White folks at that. My hair is different and they would stare with wonderment about how it could seemingly grow ten inches in the matter of a night's sleep. I was tickled pink pretendin' I didn't know how either. I would recite my hair care routine from the night before to them; deceptively vocalizin' whatever ingredients were in my lunch that day-- pickle juice, mayonnaise-- you get the gist. They thought I was plumb crazy to put those things in my hair. I thought they were as sane as a box of socks after laundry, missin' a few too, to have believed me.
I grew up in the South and longed for Hollywood. When I was twenty-two, I moved to Los Angeles and longed to go back but wouldn't dare have returned. I just couldn't handle them all smellin' me along with a stench of failure the rest of my life.
California was a culture shock. So many colors. I was used to White and Black. I had learned growin' up that fo'-out-of-every-five White men were racist. I got so good as a youngin', I could spot the good one 'fore he even fixed his mouth to speak. I knew how to act and behave in every situation there. I was...acquiescent, much to my father's dismay.
"Need is the color that softens any divide." That's what he would always say. "Your color will never matter if what you're offering is of value and if you have value, little girl, you will never need to learn in which situations how to act and behave."
But it wasn't like that in Los Angeles, or Newbury Hill for that matter. And so Daddy's priceless gems turned out to be rhinestones when it came time to cash 'em in. I had to learn that fo' out of every five White men wasn't and that the one that was posed no danger. I learned that a White man would even date you with pure intentions, and not just to learn your address so they can burn a cross on your lawn, or dismember your cat. Black men date White girls here too, hell even prefer 'em. In all my days, I would have never have thought I would see such a preference.
I was always one for tryin' to fit in; that was my second problem. My accent and my attire was too country bumpkin for the Angelese. I swear my hometown was two decades behind in pop culture. So I started wearin' weaves and listenin' to dialect tapes to learn how to speak proper. What resulted wasn't an exchange like I'd hoped, but a fusion. I called it, Southern California. I would speak English just fine but would still string my words like a Southerner.
I went back home five years later for a visit. Somehow, I had managed to demote myself even further than where I was 'fore I left. Growing up, we were the bourgeoisie of Daddy's family. Although not by much, we spoke a bit more formally than our cousins. We used proper syntax and our written communication had all the appropriate punctuation. We had nice clothes and attended nice schools. Didn't eat leftovers, that sorta thing. So we were labeled "uppity."
After five years in California, I had graduated myself from uppity to White. Everyone, even my brothers, they all thought I was too ethnically-challenged to still eat mama's greens. With each flick of my fancy hair, each smoothing I made of my fancy clothes, every time I took their words and used them properly they took it as a slight against their status. Newbury Hill had the same small town vibe. I looked expensive but talked country. They didn't know what to make of me.
Anyway, it was a Monday like I said. The worry set in around 3:00, grew darker around 4:00 and became unbearable by 4:01. I had had a feeling and I sat on that darkness for quite some time; ponderin' over the correct words to speak to him. Maybe I was wrong-- I wasn't. Maybe she had plans after school with friends--I doubt it. Maybe she isn't missin' at all--she was.
I was no good at decisions back then. It took me too long to arrive at 'em. I felt quite out of my element there which was really no way to be when your job requires you to feel ways in order to find things. Ways meaning hunches and by things, I mean people.
I have never believed that when people open their mouths to speak that they are being honest. Everyone's a liar when the law is after them. So most of the time I did okay in my job. It was just the social interactions where I struggled. I couldn't quite figure out the patterns. I couldn't predict the behavior of the people who called me their friend. I didn't know how close is too close like I once had.
For instance, when they would say I should come over sometime for dinner but never gave me a date or time, did they mean what they said? Or was that somethin' said to be nice? Maybe they were waitin' on me to make the plans? I still don't know the answer to that. And I understood that we were partners but when I didn't know the inner-makin's of his refrigerator or how his wife died did I really have a right to question the whereabouts of his child?
All of it coulda been resolved with a little confidence and with no apologies, "Evan, it's after fo', where's Campbell?" But that was hard for me to do then. Hell, I still struggle although I'm better now. And there was somethin' about him. Everyone found him so charmin', and my name was added to that list as well I won't dare pretend. That man can charm a girl out of a garden. But there was somethin' inaccessible about him too. He would talk, and boy would he talk and smile and laugh. But I never once felt close to him and it always sat a little strange to me back then how that could be so. But it was and so I guess I felt that there was a small chance, probably less than 3% that he would actually be upset I had the audacity to inquire about his daughter. But 3% is just so dauntin'. And I faced multiple 3% chances in the span of a single conversation that, sometimes, it felt more like three thousand.
So, I kept quiet until 5:00 p.m. and until Evan, who had lost track of time, crept out of the Captain's office, the residue of the laughter they had exchanged for the past 84 minutes still prominent in his features. I watched him turn his gaze towards the clock on the wall immediately to his right and I breathed for what felt like the first time in two hours. Finally, his expression after he scanned the usual places she would be told me then that I was right. She was missin'. He came over to me in a panic and I coulda sworn I had answered him before he even asked, "No. She hasn't been in yet, honey."
The rest of that night was a blur of sirens and procedure. I kicked myself every hour for what would be the next five days that I had waited until 5 p.m. to ask about that girl; bargainin' with the universe that if she would just let me find her...alive...that I, somehow, would learn to be a better detective and friend to her.
See, Campbell was movie pretty. You know what White women, and Black girls who don't know better, aspire to be. But she was kind and for that she sat higher on the list of people I tolerated on a day-to-day basis. She was mysterious too. In an age where kids can share the cut, color and consistency of their bowels with no shame, she was a ghost. I learned more about her those five days she went missin' than all the Mondays she sat two feet across from me.
By 5:15 p.m., the school showed no signs of youth. So we talked to the Administrator about coming back the followin' day to conduct interviews of the students. A Mr. Timothy Daly told us he would call an assembly first thing the followin' morning and have all the students gather in the auditorium for us to make it easier. He then had his secretary conduct two emails; one to faculty to inform them to clear their schedules for the better part of the day and to allow the students who were late reentry back into class. The second was to inform the parents that we would be informally questioning their minor children and if they had any objections to this to be at the school promptly by eight.
We spent the remainder of the night waitin'. Rylan came back around midnight and told us her last location on her phone was on school grounds that pinged sometime around lunch. The same went for her apple watch. No activity since. We canvassed the school and surroundin' neighborhoods, called the only one of her friends her daddy had known about, had Benji check the bus and train stations and the airport. All the usual things detectives do to find missing girls.
Usually time is our enemy in these types of situations but I really felt that after talkin' with the students we would get a better idea of what we were dealin' with. All we needed was fo' one of them to say somethin' that would lead us to her. Nobody believed she would run away and that only posed us more questions. Who would take her? Will there be others? But 8:00 a.m. took forever to come. Time is funny in that way.
The interviews went smoothly, much to our detriment. Evan, who was not permitted to conduct them personally, had weaved a path that went from station to station hoping to, somehow, overhear the case-crackin' detail mere seconds after a student had uttered it, yet breaths before an interviewer had heard it himself. He was antsy and restless and without composure. Which was as fascinating as it was sad to witness. The man looked and acted like he had never had a bad encounter all his life. Just flawless. But this completely floored him. Which, if I am to be believed, is what, in actuality, floored us about this situation.
I conducted hundreds of interviews. The students were very forthcomin', if I am being polite, but downright delusional if I'm bein' honest. It was organized and went smoothly from an administrative standpoint but, pardon my expression, a clusterfuck, of useless details for solvin' a crime.
The stories we got were exhaustive. Hundreds of them recited that one time they had happened upon her and words were exchanged. In the library where he happened to be passin' by and she looked up at him and mouthed, "hello." In Ms. Prairie's study hall where another boy had said a joke and she actually laughed. That one time she had asked if the quiz was due today or tomorrow and of course the long-winded response that should've encapsulated tomorrow. All of these kids knew her, but none of them knew her.
I was able to narrow down a few key things that were of interest. Firstly, as much of a ghost as she was to me she was equally as entrancing to her peers. I got the impression she was admired by both boys and girls alike.
Second, she did hangout with a small group of kids, which based on the stories described, were a band of misfits. A healthy majority of the students all seemed to excessively worry and wonder about why she would choose to hang out with them instead of the cheerleaders or football players. They each even had a theory.
She was a saint or angel, sent here from the Heaven above to help the deplorables have a good high school experience because they would forever be able to say that they were friends with a future movie star or model or somethin' like that. Or that she had banded these, "rejects" together to boost her popularity and status. Somethin' about being prettier than all your friends makes you even more attractive.
My favorite theory came via a freckled-faced, red-haired boy. He went on to insist that she was a spy sent to infiltrate the school so her "friend group" wasn't "important" to her mission and that theory also conveniently explained why she wouldn't date let alone talk to any of the boys at school despite their persistence and insistence on talkin' to her. If she was really a spy working for the government, having sexual relations with students would be against the law. Do you see now what I mean by clusterfuck?
The third thing I learned was this band of misfits may have been her group but they couldn't have been her friends if her daddy didn't know about them. A high school girl with no friends is suspicious, I agree. Especially a girl as pretty as she. But you just never can know what's normal and what's not anymore. It was 2019 then, genders were blurrin', kids were withdrawin' from societal norms, things were so far gone than what they had used to be and behavior never really is strange until it's examined further, anyhow.
The very last thing I learned, which was the most strikin' as it was the only detail in agreement amongst them all. I had asked the students to describe each member of the group using one word. I wanted a better idea of the kids I would call in for further questionin', this time with their parents present. The adjectives I received were near universal for all the group members 'cept one; she had two. They listed the following: an over-achiever, a funny one, a gymnast, the twins, a fat one, a liar/whore and then Campbell, their leader.
This work is created by, written by and belongs to Aecko and shared here for entertainment.