Chapter SIX #2
"Someone taped them to utility poles near school and left one at a grocery store. A parent brought this copy in."
"Everybody knows I'm here. How can I be missing?"
"You're not missing. We have contacted police."
Tiana, summoned because Monroe had learned resistance was useless, read the flyer and said a word that made the principal close her eyes.
"Accurate feeling," Monroe said, "wrong vocabulary for my office."
Mei sat down.
"He wants people to think Grandma took me."
"That appears to be the message," Monroe said. "It does not make it true."
By lunch, the flyer had reached student group chats. Mei deleted three apps from her phone. She did not want to know who believed what. At home, Alex was angrier than she had ever seen him.
"He's making her a target."
Grandma said, "Which is why yelling in my kitchen helps absolutely nothing."
"I could go talk to him."
"No."
"Just talk."
"You inherited your definition of talk from the wrong side of the family. Sit down."
Alex sat.
Mei almost smiled. Then the doorbell camera chimed.
* * *
Lena taught Mei a word she had never needed before: doxxing.
"Publishing someone's private information online," the victim advocate explained. "Address, school, phone number, workplace. Sometimes people do it to intimidate. Sometimes they tell themselves they're helping."
"Like the woman who came to Grandma's house."
"Exactly."
The community post had been taken down, but screenshots
kept circulating. Someone had guessed Grandma's neighborhood.
Someone else had posted the name of Mei's school.
Principal Monroe called an emergency meeting with Grandma, Lena, the school resource officer, and the district safety coordinator.
Mei sat at the end of the conference table feeling like a problem adults had to route around.
"Can I still go to class?" she asked.
"Yes," Monroe said immediately.
"Then why does this feel like I'm getting suspended?" Nobody answered quickly enough.
Mei folded her arms. The safety coordinator changed the pickup
plan, removed Mei's name from publicly visible activity lists, and asked teachers not to post classroom photos that included her. The district also flagged Daniel and several known associates in the visitor system.
"Known associates sounds like he's in the mob," Tiana said later. "Please don't make this worse."
"I'm making vocabulary better."
For two days, the precautions worked. On the third, a bouquet
of white lilies arrived at the school office.
No sender.
A card read: For Grace. Mei stared at the flowers through the
office window. White lilies had covered half her mother's funeral. "Do not give those to her," Grandma said over speakerphone.
Police collected the card and delivery information. The florist had received the order by phone. Cash was left in an envelope for pickup. The caller used a voice-masking app.
"Who does that?" Mei asked.
Ruiz answered, "Somebody who wants the flowers to feel more threatening than kind."
The lilies were not illegal.
That fact made Mei furious.
"So somebody can send funeral flowers to a kid and it's not a crime?"
"Context matters. We're documenting it."
"Everything is documenting."
"Documentation is how patterns become evidence."
Mei knew Ruiz was right. She did not have to like the pace of being right. The following evening, Tiana came over with a cheap disposable camera she had bought from a drugstore.
"What is this, 2004?" Mei asked.
"Our phones can be hacked. This is analog security."
"You watched one conspiracy video and became somebody's uncle."
Tiana took a picture of Mei anyway. The flash made both of them laugh. They spent an hour photographing deliberately boring things: Grandma's spice cabinet, Alex asleep on the couch, a crooked lamp, a plate of cookies.
"Why are we doing this?" Mei asked.
"Because every picture around you lately is evidence or surveillance. I want some pictures that are just ours."
Mei lowered the camera.
"That's actually smart."
"I know. Don't spread it around."
When the film was developed a week later, one photo caught something neither girl intended. They had taken it on Grandma's porch at sunset. In the background, across the street, a dark blue sedan was parked beneath a tree.
The license plate was visible.
Tiana brought the print to school in a plastic folder like it was a treasure map.
"Tell me I'm a genius."
Mei looked at the plate.
It matched the partial plate from the private investigator's car.
Ruiz confirmed the vehicle had been near Grandma's house on the date the threatening photograph was delivered.
The investigator insisted one of his employees had the car.
That employee eventually admitted Daniel had paid him separately to take photographs beyond the scope of the attorney's contract.
"Did he write the messages?" Mei asked.
"He says no," Ruiz replied. "But he admits Daniel asked for pictures of you entering and leaving school and your grandmother's home."
The uncertainty narrowed.
Not enough to answer everything. Enough to prove Mei had not imagined being watched. That night she put the disposablecamera photos into a shoebox. Most of them were blurry. She kept every one.
* * *
Everyone looked at Grandma's phone.
A woman stood on the porch holding one of the flyers. Grandma spoke through the camera without opening the door. "Can I help you?"
"I'm looking for Mei Chen."
Mei went cold.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Paula. I saw the flyer. I just wanted to make sure
she's okay."
Grandma's expression hardened. "A child's safety is not improved by strangers locating her home. Please leave."
"I was only trying to help."
"Then help by leaving."
The woman did.
That night, Grandma added a NO TRESPASSING sign beside the porch.
"Feels dramatic," Mei said.
"Good," Lillian replied. "Maybe drama can read."
The flyers became part of the investigation. The email address on them had been created through a privacy service. The print shop named in tiny letters at the bottom had accepted a cash order from a man wearing a baseball cap.
No clean identification.
Not enough. Yet. The next blocked-number voicemail came at 1:03 a.m. Daniel's voice was almost gentle.
"Mei, strangers are making this worse. Your grandmother cannot protect you from what happens when people start digging into a family. Come home and we can end it."
Mei listened once.
Then she forwarded it to Detective Ruiz. For the first time, she did not delete it because hearing his voice hurt. She kept it because his words belonged in evidence now, not inside her.
* * *
Annoyingly, Mei needed to hear it. Inside, the front-office secretary gave her a visitor badge by mistake and then apologized three times. Principal Monroe came out personally.
"Mei, if you see your father anywhere on campus, you go directly to an adult. You don't need permission to leave class. Understood?"
"Yeah."
"Your teachers will simply know that you have permission to step out if needed. They don't need details."
"Okay."
Tiana was waiting outside homeroom.
She took one look at Mei and said, "You told them." Mei nodded. Tiana hugged her so hard Mei's backpack shifted sideways.
"You actually told them."
"Grandma knows. Alex too. Police. Everybody."
Tiana pulled back. "Are you okay?"
"No idea."
"Fair."
They walked into class together.
For most of the morning, school felt almost normal. Mei took notes. She laughed when Tiana's mechanical pencil exploded lead across her desk. She answered a question in English and got it right. Then, during lunch, a boy named Caleb from their grade walked over holding his phone.
"Yo, Mei, is this your dad?"
Her entire body went cold.
On the screen was a neighborhood Facebook post. A photo of Daniel. The caption said: MISSING / RUNAWAY MINOR PLEASE CONTACT FAMILY.
* * *
By the fifth day at Grandma's, Mei had learned the new rules of having a dangerous person outside your house.
The porch light stayed on after dark. Curtains closed before sunset.
No walking home alone. No answering the door, even for deliveries.
If a car appeared twice on the same street, write down the plate if it could be done safely.
If someone asked online where Mei was staying, do not answer.
If Daniel called from a new number, save the evidence and block it.
The rules made sense. They also made every ordinary thing suspicious.
A delivery driver became a man standing too long on the porch.
A gray sedan became a car that had passed twice.
A wrong-number text became a possible message from Daniel.
Mei hated what fear did to probability. On Tuesday, Tiana came over after school.
They sat at the kitchen table pretending to work on math while Grandma cooked chili.
Tiana was halfway through complaining about fractions when a vehicle slowed outside.
Mei stopped writing. Dark blue sedan. The same one she had noticed near the courthouse two days earlier.
"Don't look," Mei whispered.
Naturally, Tiana looked immediately.
"That car?"
"I said don't."
"I looked casual."
"You turned your entire body."
"Casually."
The sedan rolled past the house and disappeared at the corner. Grandma had already noticed. She wiped her hands and checked the doorbell camera. "Do either of you know that car?"
They said no.
Lillian called Detective Ruiz, who asked for the time and promised to have a patrol unit pass through. Twenty minutes later an officer came by. The sedan was gone.
"Could be nothing," Grandma told Mei after he left.
"You don't believe that."
"I believe we don't know."
Mei hated that answer, even though it was the responsible one.
The next morning, the sedan was outside school.
Not directly in front. Across the street near a laundromat, engine running.