Come on, Avet.
Of course, I can’t just put them in a stack. They have to be categorized because otherwise we will drive away tonight, and I will know they are still out of order. It will itch at me all night, and we’ll just have to come back here tomorrow.
The books go into three categories: school, personal and miscellaneous. I find three library books in the mix, sighing at the fines that have probably tapped out by now. There are the standard textbooks that are far too advanced for my narrow range of intellect. I can tell you half a dozen different ways to kill a vishap, but this school stuff was never my forte.
Cher was different. She came alive when she would brag to us about her perfect score on a test.
I leaf through each book, unsure what I am looking for. Any clue, really. Any shot in the dark that might direct me to the week before she was taken.
I find nothing of note in the textbooks, other than a papercut, which proves yet again to me that school is not my thing.
Cher’s personal books are a plethora of fantasy fiction and a few romance novels. I smirk at the covers with sexy vampire men clutching their busty women. It is never that euphoric or consensual in real life, but hey, to each their own. I truly don’t understand how she could get into this stuff, knowing the truth about Bel’s creatures and the damage they do.
The romance books are dog-eared and thoroughly loved. I can tell Cher has gone through these many, many times.
I don’t like to think of Cher having a mature side to her, but I suppose that’s how siblings go, and I’ve always been like a second brother to her.
I chuckle when my gaze snags on some of the phrasings on the marked pages. “Her heaving breasts” and “his lengthening member” draw an audible chuckle out of me. Though, as there doesn’t look to be clues of anything except libido, I set each of those books aside, alphabetizing them because that’s just good sense.
The miscellaneous books are spiral-bound notebooks that take a bit more time because everything is handwritten in Cher’s bubbly print. I don’t want to overlook anything, so I take my time skimming each page, even though the notebook I have in my hands was clearly used for taking notes in her Chemistry class. Everything in here is way over my head. Chemistry on its own is too complex for me, but add to that the fact that Avet and Cher’s father’s bloodline is descended from witches? They can see things in chemical combinations that most people would never dream.
When I finish looking through the Chemistry notebook for clues, I go on to the next, and the next, making sure nothing that could be a red flag is filed away and forgotten.
It’s when my hand falls on a smaller, leatherbound purple notebook that my skimming turns into actual reading.
A journal. Cher kept a diary. Why didn’t Avet mention this? If there is one thing to keep on you at all times when tracking down a missing person, it’s a collection of her personal thoughts.
I harbor zero hesitation as I read through the pages in much the same way one sifts through a fascinating novel. I know I am violating Cher’s privacy, but if it will help us find her killer, then it’s a line I am willing to cross.
The journal starts on January 1st, with the promise to herself that she is going to start journaling this year. As with any new habit, there are several hits and misses, but eventually, she gets a rhythm of journaling three times each week.
I need to take notes. I grab a half-used History spiral notebook and tear out one of the blank pages, grateful to find a pen shoved in the spiral part. I start with page one and list all the people she mentions, along with a brief description of where she met said person and who they are to her, if I can ascertain that information from her scribblings.
As each page turns, the list grows. I get a feel for Cher’s schedule, her mental state, and her mood as it fluctuates. As the semester progresses, it is clear to me that Cher’s stress increased.
“The tests are unreasonable. Either that, or I am losing brain cells by the day. It’s not supposed to be this hard. I set the curve in high school! I stayed up until four in the morning studying and still only managed a B+ on the exam. That’s not me. Nothing feels like me these days.”
Poor thing. Cher always had such high expectations for herself.
I expect things to even out, but the more pages I turn, the more her grades start slipping. Her tone shifts from exasperation to self-loathing. Over and over, she berates herself. There are a few pages where the ink is smudged in spots, making me wonder if she was crying while she wrote the words.
The Astghik grandparents raised Avet and Cher after the two were sent to live with them. The hardworking couple set high standards for their grandchildren, which went two different ways. Avet simply laughed at the standards and flicked them away. He dropped out of high school senior year, preferring to study potions and the craft traditions his father practiced before he died. Avet didn’t care about his grandparents’ expectations and sneaked out of the house whenever he was grounded. He moved in with me when he was only seventeen. The day after we got our GEDs, we took off to try our hand at trapping and never looked back.
Cher chose the more respectable route. The sun rose and fell on her grandparents’ opinion of her. No matter how hard she worked, they were unimpressed. An A+ received a satisfied nod with no eye contact. Anything else got a grounding, a lecture, and a heaping dose of shame.
How she managed to not go insane, I will never know.
Though, as I turn each page, I am starting to see that pressure like that can, in fact, drive a person closer to the brink.
There is a whole page dedicated to her frustration that the undergrad lab on campus doesn’t have the tools she needs for the experiment she really wants to do. Only the graduate lab has them, but she can’t get in, because she is an undergrad student. I smirk when she gripes about the fact that the graduate lab has security cameras, so she can’t easily sneak in whenever she pleases.
Cher’s angst grows as the weeks tick by. Then all of a sudden, her self-loathing drops. She skips an entire week of journaling and then jumps back in with an entirely different tone.
“Andranik is amazing. The way he puts things makes so much sense. I love how easy it is when we’re together. I never knew it could be like this. The guys I dated in high school were nothing. I felt nothing. It was a checklist of life experiences that never made me feel more alive. Andranik is good to me.”
I blanch at the idea of Cher in a romantic relationship. I know it’s healthy and all that, but I don’t want a front-row seat to her swooning.
Still, I make myself read page after page until my breath stills in my lungs and my eyes widen in shock.