Creative Writing Now - Mysterious Puzzle

Ten years.  I never thought I’d be old enough to be getting an invitation to my ten year school reunion.  It seems like high school was an eternity ago.  Was it really only ten years ago?  I looked at the invitation and knew right away that I would not be attending.  I hated high school.  Why would I want to go back and be reminded of those awful years of trying to fit in and failing miserably at it?

I threw the invitation on my pile of unread junk mail and magazines and continued on with my day. I thought about my life and how glad I was that I had moved away to college, settled in with a solid group of friends and found a decent guy to marry.  The awful years of high school were behind me and I was happy with the life I now lived.

A few weeks passed and the invitation had been forgotten.  My husband brought in the mail and threw it on the counter as I was busy putting away the groceries.  Once the food was all put away I started thumbing through the mail when a strange letter caught my attention.  My name was on the envelope, but it was my maiden name.  The handwriting was a bit shaky and looked as though a young child had written it.  There was no return address.

I tore open the letter to find a single sheet of paper.  The handwriting was a bit more legible and all that was written was some sort of math problem or puzzle.  Who would send me something like this? What did it mean?  For some reason, the puzzle seemed strangely familiar.  I stared at it for what seemed like hours, when realization of what I was looking at hit me with full force.  It lost my breath as I thought, “There’s no way this can be possible.”

My sophomore year of high school I had Miss Jenkins for math. Her class was the best.  I was a decent math student, but the way Miss Jenkins taught brought math alive right in front of my eyes.  Numbers and equations became a symphony to me and Miss Jenkins was the conductor.  She taught us how the pieces all fit together to create a beautiful masterpiece. 

 Each day she started class with a special puzzle that we were all asked to answer.   At first the puzzles made no sense, but slowly I began to understand the sequence and the order of these puzzles.  It was like Miss Jenkins was speaking to us in code and the things we learned in class each day taught us how to break that code and solve the puzzles.

The problem was, Miss Jenkins disappeared.  One day, about a month before school let out for the summer, Miss Jenkins didn’t show up for class.  I had her first period and we all sat there, waiting for her to come.  There was no puzzle for us to solve and an eery feeling came over me. I knew something was wrong.   She was not the kind of teacher to miss class.

Halfway through class I volunteered to go to the principal’s office and let him know what was going on.  He looked at me with a worried face.  Miss Jenkins was one of his best teachers and he seemed to know that something must have happened to her.  He called her home: no answer.  He called her cell phone: no answer.  He call her mother, who was her emergency contact.  She hadn’t heard from her daughter for several days.  She was worried.

The police were called and for weeks they searched for Miss Jenkins.  She was never found.  There was evidence that her apartment had been broken into, but any other evidence they found led to a dead end.  After a year, they determined she was dead.  It was horrifying and for months I had nightmares about Miss Jenkins being kidnapped and murdered.  

Now, here I was looking at one of Miss Jenkins’ puzzles.  I could recognize that handwriting, even 12 years later.  My mind started racing and I knew I needed to solve the puzzle before me.  But I had no idea what it meant.  It had been so long since I sat in math class figuring out those puzzles.  

There was only one solution I could come up with.  I went to the pile of junk mail, sifted through it until I find that class reunion invitation.  I hoped that I hadn’t missed it. I looked at the date. It was still five days away.  I sent an email to the R.S.V.P. address given and started making plans for my trip home.  

If I was going to solve this puzzle I’d need the help of the other students in Miss Jenkins first period math class.  Little did I know that at the same time I received this mysterious letter, several of my other classmates had received their own puzzles in the mail.