“Hey,” I said. “I’m here to take pictures for The Gazette.”
“Hey. Ella told me to expect you.” He smiled, holding a hand out. “I’m Max.”
“Amelia.”
“Nice name.”
“Thanks. You can call me Mae.”
“Cool.” He waved his recorder. “So, you want to do this together? I interview, you snap photos? Or are you going to take some candid photos?”
“I can do both. I’ll take some after you interview first so I don’t look so lost.”
“I heard about your brother,” he said, starting to walk over to another group of girls in uniforms. I kept up his pace. “I’m sorry. If there’s anything you need. I mean, we don’t know each other, but I figured I’d . . . I don’t know. If you need anything, I’m here.” He chuckled nervously.
“Thanks.” I offered a small smile.
“Is he going to be okay?”
“The doctors say so. I think so. He’s the strongest person I know.”
Even as I said the words, I felt like a liar, and then like a traitor because of it.
“That’s good. He was always one of my favorite people to interview.” Max smiled. “He was always nice.”
“Is.”
“Uh, yeah, but I meant when he was here,” he said, voice lowered as if to not offend.
“Oh. Yeah. Of course.” I shook my head. “Have you interviewed a lot of people so far?”
“The basketball team, volleyball team, soccer team, and lacrosse. I still need hockey and swim.”
“And you’re going to cover every single sport in one edition?”
“No.” He chuckled. “I’m going to do a page of quotes, so whatever stands out, I’ll put on that page.”
“Oh. Like a high school yearbook?”
“Like that but not corny.”
“If you say so.”
He laughed. “How ‘bout I show it to you and if it’s corny you let me know?”
“Okay.” I wanted to ask him about Lana, but hesitated. Was that a weird thing to bring up when you first met someone? Deciding I didn’t care, I brought it up anyway. “Did you know Lana Ly?”
“Yeah.” He eyed me strangely. “She worked at the paper.”
“Don’t you think it’s weird that nobody is looking for her?” I asked. “The media is saying she ran away. Isn’t that weird?”
“The media is doing more for her than they’ve done for the girls who have disappeared in the past.”
“What girls?”
“Are you sure you want to hear about this? I mean, with your brother being . . . you know,” he said, “The last thing you need is something else to worry about.”
“I want to hear about it.” If nothing else, it would help take my mind off my brother.
“One girl has disappeared each year since the beginning of the founding of this university. They stopped reporting on it because, well, a lot of them have been found. Some of them have managed to get out of the woods, and others have been found in states across the country.” He lowered his voice as we passed a group of people. “Those are the ones who have been found alive. The ones presumed dead haven’t been found.”
“One girl a year?” I whisper-shouted. “That’s impossible.”
“It’s not. Look it up. Go to the archive newspapers in the library. The local paper usually hides them in page two or three. Never page one.”
“But these girls, wouldn’t their families be looking? Wouldn’t there be press conferences or something?”
“Most of them are foreign students. Those are the ones targeted. People from out of the country.”
“Lana wasn’t a foreign student.”
He shrugged. “Well, the media is reporting about her. They have a knack for pretty blonde girls.”
“Lana is Vietnamese.”
“A pretty Vietnamese girl, then,” he said. “They switched it up for once.”
“One a year doesn’t make any sense. Even a serial killer acts with more frequency than that.”
“In the last thirty years, we’ve had a total of sixty missing girls. That’s two a year.”
“So, more than one.”
“Right. And not all of them have been foreign.”
“Yet nobody has an idea who’s behind it?”
“A lot of us have an idea. I mean, you go on Reddit and it’s full of ideas.”
“Well, who do they think is responsible?” I pressed. “You can’t give me all of this information and then withhold the important parts.”
“Thing is, it’s just an idea. We could be way off base.”
“Tell me anyway.” I got closer. We stopped walking.
“I think the secret societies are using them as sacrifices.”
My jaw dropped. I let out a laugh. “Yeah right.”
“There’s a secret society that formed after the first girl went missing, back in 1910. It is said that every year they conduct their own investigation and try to look for the missing.”
“How do you know this, if it’s a secret?”
“The girls who are found talk. They say it was a group of people in cloaks who helped them to safety, but they won’t say anything beyond that. Gratitude buys their silence.”
“So they’re not sacrificing them.”
“Not all of them return.” He shot me a look.
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“Like I said, it’s a theory.” He shrugs.
“So what’s your theory on Lana?”
“I don’t have a theory on her. I just hope she doesn’t end up being one of the disappeared girls.” He shot me a grave look. “The ones that are gone longer than a year, never come back.”
Jesus. I let out a breath. In an effort to calm down, I unclipped the camera cover and brought it up to my face, taking photos of the trees and flowers around us to test it out and make sure I’d be ready to shoot whoever Max was interviewing next. When I lowered it and looked around again, I caught sight of Logan and his friends. They seriously looked like greasers from Grease, not because of the way they were dressed, but because it was the vibe they gave out. I nudged Max.
“Do you think those guys are part of a secret society?”
“There’s no telling.”
“A friend of mine told me they were in a secret society.”
“I don’t think they’d have the time for everything that goes into it.” He glanced over at the group again. “They’re definitely popular though. Big men on campus. Fitz especially. He has this cult following that started in high school. All of his fans show up at the games, do a big racket. It’s kind of fun to witness.”
“Fitz meaning Logan?”
“Well, yeah.” He chuckled. “Not sure he’d answer to anything other than Fitz though.”
“Interesting.” I looked at Max.
“You must have experienced the Fitz craze firsthand when your brother played here.”
“I can’t say that I have.” I smiled. “I only went to a game when he was a freshman and I was still living at home. Logan wouldn’t have been here then.”