1st 5 Pages August Workshop - Miles

Name: Melissa Miles
Genre: Young Adult
Title: Hashtag Witness

 

The first time I heard the term Reign of Terror, it oozed from the lips of the bleached blonde anchor woman on the local TV news program. Even though I was in the middle of my Calculus homework, it actually caused me to turn and look at her, expecting to see a weather map with some kind of freakish acid rain that would kill us all—only if all the chemicals that get sprayed on our food don’t eradicate us first. It didn’t take me long to figure out that she wasn’t talking about the kind of rain that falls from dark clouds above our heads, but the kind of reign that envelops an entire community in fear.

 

What I actually saw when I caught of glimpse of the screen, was a picture in the top right corner of a crime scene— yellow tape and all. The phrase Reign of Terror was prominently displayed in a color that I felt certain a witty producer had considered the perfect match for blood. I’d like to think that I was above this type of blatant sensationalism, but I have to admit that I actually started listening to the blonde at this point. Chalk it up to that “train wreck” phenomenon—I just had to watch.

 

They had found the body of the second girl; and it was the lead story on the evening’s coverage. The girl had been snatched out of her yard the week before while playing with her little brother. Now, I’ll admit that was scary—in part because it was the second girl who had been abducted in broad daylight in the past two weeks. But even more so because this girl had been in an actual neighborhood this time—and people had literally seen the guy get out of his truck and grab her. Some of the neighbors had even called the cops, but no one had been able to get a license plate number. This is type of thing that creates the, it could happen to me, sort of feeling that always makes me feel kind of nauseated.

 

And now this girl was dead too. Her name was emblazoned above her school picture; and as the news team droned on about the case, my mind began randomly filling with completely irrelevant—and probably inappropriate thoughts at such a time. God, if this ever happened to me, my parents had better find a better picture to give the news people than my school picture. That poor kid hasn’t had the time to develop into her beauty like the first girl—she was so young. Why do they always give the double names of these victims when nobody ever actually calls people by both of their names?

 

But there it was, hanging over that Lifetouch school photo—Dana May Hendricks. I started wondering about the girl right away. Like, did her mom regret the last time she had nagged her about her posture? And was everyone at her school crying and acting like they had been her best friend? Even the ones who had never said a word to her? I felt pretty certain they had. After all, I had been in enough schools to know how things go down in those places.

The first girl that was taken, had been at her mailbox after a pool party. But her house had been kind of deserted, so it wasn’t entirely surprising that no one had witnessed the actual abduction. She had been a year older than me, and about to graduate from high school. It was literally like a week before graduation. Can you imagine? Suffering through 12 years of school and then some bastard decides that this is a good time to do you in? Of course I felt terribly sorry for her, even though I had never actually met her in person. As hard as I tried not to, it’s hard not to become sort of obsessed by a girl like this and wonder what her life must have been like.

 

When the news was covering her disappearance, and then later the discovery of her body (behind a Masonic lodge or something), it had been her school picture emblazoning the screen. You couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was—blonde wavy hair, blue eyes, amazing smile. She looked gorgeous even in her school yearbook photo. Just like poor Dana May, it had been her full double name that everyone would refer to her by—Shelby Lynn Brown. I was pretty sure than none of her high school friends had ever once called her Shelby Lynn. You could tell by looking at the girl that she had tons of friends. And yet that was the name that every single official involved in the case constantly referred to her by—and it seemed so odd and strangely formal.

 

The national news had picked up coverage of Shelby Lynn’s disappearance because she had been a Type One Diabetic. She was supposed to have medicine with her at all times, but it had been found in her purse on the passenger seat of her car. Her parent’s appeared on television urging for her abductor to get her the medication she needed to survive. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division issued an Amber Alert immediately, and the largest manhunt in the history of the state was conducted in an attempt to find the abductor before it was too late for Shelby Lynn. When her body was discovered, it struck a blow to the gut of everyone who had been holding prayer vigils for her safe return, piling flowers and stuffed animals at the site of her disappearance and flooding social media with best wishes under the hashtag #findshelbylynn.

 

Looking back, it seems kind of harsh to admit it, but I didn’t spend too much time thinking about these girls once their bodies had been found. After all, I had my own problems to worry about. My dad is a Presbyterian minister in a small South Carolina town, and that probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to most people. Anyone who isn’t a preacher’s kid has no idea what a huge pain it can be. Like moving to this small town in the first place, for instance. Everyone here went to Kindergarten together for Christ’s sake, and my parents expect me to just be able to waltz right in here and make friends with these people. No one around here is particularly looking for new friends, if you know what I mean—they’ve got plenty of old ones.

 

The only good thing I can say about moving here and trying to make new friends was that my parents had at least had the sense not to introduce me to everyone by my full name Melinda Jane Jackson. My middle name Jane isn’t so bad considering it came from my grandma—who was awesome. But I could live without the “Plain Jane” comments that would certainly come with it. Especially since I felt pretty plain most days with my overly poufy red hair and regular old brown eyes. Nothing at all like the formerly gorgeous Shelby Lynn Brown.