"And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long."
― Sylvia Plath,

Cassie sat in silence, her focus on Joseph. She watched him very carefully like she did Avril many times in their childhood, only difference was that whenever she looked at  Avril it was only in awe of her mysterious presence and out of curiosity of what she was thinking, but now looking at Joseph she felt an unsettling feeling rise in her guts. It felt very ominous in a way she had no control over.

Joseph sunk into his couch with his eyes closed but he did not look like he was at peace, she could see his eyelids trembling, like he was trying to force himself awake from a nightmare, like his demons were constantly taunting him. He swallowed hard a couple times, he looked the most human he ever had; like someone who had problems that kept them up at night. What Joseph had said about never feeling loved made Cassie pity him, but she tried not to show it because Joseph did not come across to her like a man that would appreciate pity, it seemed like something he'd loathe, like he would rather die than accept pity from anyone. Cassie wondered more and more what his life was like when he was sent to live with his sick grandmother, it must have been terribly lonely and must have allowed him more time to be consumed by deep and dark thoughts, he must have worried about his baby sister Avril and feared she would be lonely without him. He did not even get to spend much time with Avril before she was murdered.

Cassie decided that she had stared at Joseph and made speculations about his life enough, therefore she got up and picked up the textbooks in an attempt to leave.

"Stay," Joseph said once he heard movements, he opened one eye and looked at Cassie pleadingly. Once again he looked too normal, too human, it made Cassie feel even more unsettled.

Cassie did as she was told; she sat back down and waited patiently for Joseph to speak or move or give her a reason not to get back up and attempt to walk out his door. He sat up and looked at her for a while, he opened his mouth to speak several times but shut it every time. He pulled out his phone and scrolled a bit and when he stopped scrolling he stared at his screen for a while before finally turning it to Cassie. On his phone were numbers that Cassie had seen before, her eyes shot open in recognition; they were the numbers she found the first day she went back to the camp where Avril was killed: 60.90.140.40...130.50/000000

"You have that too?" Cassie said with her eyes still widened. Joseph nodded softly and turned the screen back to himself to take another look at it. 

He chuckled and said "Avril was a very simple girl, the clues she left behind, you've been thinking too deeply about them." He was starting to act more like the Joseph Cassie sometimes hated but mostly appreciated.

"Go on," Cassie encouraged in an impatient tone. But she tried to feign being calm, she did not want to make any move that would deter Joseph from revealing the secret she was so eager to hear. She was too eager that she could cut his head open just so she could see everything he hid in that small space, the pain, the secrets. . . his deepest darkest thoughts.

Joseph got up and went up the stairs, he returned only momentarily, holding a notebook and pen in his hand. He set them on the table and began to write the letters of the alphabet on an empty page using only capital letters. "Avril was simple," he said again "she was simple because she was desperate, she was simple because she wanted people to understand. It is only when you understand that you can help," he continued writing the alphabet.

"Josep-" He put his hand up to stop her and she bit her tongue to stop herself from cursing at him. She have him a harried look as she waited for him to continue. By now he had completely written out all the letters of the alphabet, now he began to write numbers under each letter, Cassie was not sure if he was doing that to annoy her or because he was hesitant to reveal what he knew.

"You know, before I moved back to Freetown I did some research on you, you're pretty famous," he said while writing, this time he began to circle some of the letters with the numbers they were paired with. Cassie watched him tentatively, most of her attention had gone from what he was writing to his face, and for some unexplainable reasons she felt nervous. He was much too focused on what he was writing. "I saw on the news that you had this friend you presumed dead. Matt. Much to your surprise it turned out he wasn't, he was simply hiding to save his life," he said and then he stopped writing. He turned the page to face Cassie and she looked at the letters he circled but still did not understand what they meant, and so he dragged an arrow from the letters to the empty space on the page and handed the pen and notebook to Cassie. She hesitates a bit and then took the notebook and paper from him and began to write, following the arrows. She wrote: F I N D M a tear started to trickle down her face as she wrote the last letter E

Her lips quivered as she stared at what she had written, in disbelief. She took in a deep breath and looked at Joseph who was watching her intently. Her chest heaved and she bit her bottom lip. "Is Avril like Matty?" more tears fell out "is Avril alive?"

*

Thank you so much to everyone that has been patient with me. I hope you enjoyed this chapter.