As Long As I Remember

The Color Pink

"I might be down here a while. I'm not leaving till I find Maria's last clue. It's the last gift she'll ever give me."

I sit down at the swivel chair and start to get to work. Matt leans over my shoulder, sees the huge mess of papers, and says he's going to get me a snack for while I work. After he leaves, I sort the papers by date, type, and whether it has a stickynote or not.

It turns out that all the pages that have stickynotes are expository articles that were printed recently.

Sounds like a good enough clue for me.

I tear the stickynotes off the pages quickly. I'm pretty sure they're the only important thing since Maria talked about them in her letter. I'm disappointed when I just see random doodles on the little pink squares. Then, on one of them, the pink all of a sudden brightens in one spot, and it looks like an E. I hold it up to the light and sure enough there is an E written in pink highlighter.

Pink highlighter on pink stickynotes. Maria used to do that all the time to annoy me.

I continue to do this for each stickynote. Each one has a single letter. I scramble the letters and try to make sense of it all. I hear Matt walk in. He quietly places a plate of pretzels and an apple on the top of the desk.

"Need any help, babe?"

"Babe? You never called me that before."

"I thought I'd try it out."

"Yeah, I don't like it."

"Okay, Miss Grumpy Pants. Sheesh. But seriously, do you need any help?"

I get Matt up to speed about the letters and how I think they must make up a name or location. He sits in silence for a couple minutes, staring at the letters.

"I agree. It think it's going to be the name of business, or maybe just an address."

"Well, there's only one way to find out."

Matt and I sat on the cold cement floor of the crawl space for hours, scrambling the letters and only getting nonsense words or phrases like:

"Be Therein Otter Storks",  "Be Therein Torte Storks", and "Be Neither Strokes Trot". (A/N: http://wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=thirteen+brooks+street&t=1000&a=n)

After another hour of dead ends, I was ready to rip up the stupid pink squares and throw them in the trash.

"THIS IS INSANE! WE ARE NEVER GOING TO FIGURE THIS OUT!"

"Relax, Chrissy."

"No! I can't!"

"Yes! You can! I promise, one more hour and then you can give up."

I huffed, not excited about the prospect of doing this for a whole other hour.

I won't just give up on Maria that fast. I owe that much to her.

"Fine. Let's keep on going."

So we sat down on the floor and kept sorting. There was only a couple minutes left when something caught my eye:

An 'S', 'R', 'T', and two 'E's.

STREET.

"MATT! I FOUND THE WORD STREET!!!!!!!!"

Not long after that, we found the number thirteen, and then the word brooks. We decided the address was Thirteen Brooks Street.

Victory! Yes! Thank God! ........ Now how do we know where in the world that is?

Matt also saw the dilemma, but quickly thought of a solution.

"Come on, Christina. Obviously Maria wasn't an idiot. One of the articles on her desk must have the address somewhere. Then we can find out the city and state, and get directions."

So then the tedious comb-through of the information began. It was 3:47 in the morning when we finally found it:

13 Brooks Street, Ithaca, NY. Abortion Center, now offering teen help services.

So this is what Maria wanted me to see.

Part of me wants to throw up at the thought that Maria might have killed her unborn child, and the other wants to hop on bus as fast as I can and find out why Maria wanted me to go there.

I choose to do option two.

"Let's go, Matt."

"Wait, right now?"

"Yes! Don't you get it? This is the answer! Maria found something here! We need to leave, NOW!"

"Fine, whatever you say, Chrissy."

He walks away angrily. A couple minutes later he comes back, large duffle bag in hand.

"Now we can leave." he says angrily.

Without giving me a chance to say anything, he walks out the door and slams it in my face.

What the heck is his problem?

I leave the room to follow Matt, taking only Maria's diary and key with me. I find him sitting on his front porch.

"What did I do wrong, Matt?"

"Nothing."

"Um, well, why are you angry?"

He takes a deep breath. "I'm not angry. I'm just scared, and cause I'm a guy I just cover it up with anger. I'm scared for this trip. We have practically no resources. Where are we getting money from?"

"I don't even know. Maybe we could get jobs at a Wendy's or something?"

He doesn't answer immediately.

He's thinking of a plan. It's good Matt's so smart!

"No, we can't get jobs. We'll be to exhausted to even search for whatever Maria was hiding. I guess there's just one option."

......silence.....

All of a sudden Matt stands up and picks up a crow bar from behind him.

"We are gonna break into my parent's safe."

A/N: HEEEYYYYYYYYYY EVERYONE! IM BAAAACKKK. so haha anyways, what did you think? anyone upset with what the clue turned out to be? I think it was pretty clever of Maria to hide the address like she did ;) will Christina and Matt be able to break into the safe so they can get enough money to get to the abortion center? answers soon to come ;P

VOTE/ COMMENT!!!! PRETTY PLEASE?!? :D

every read makes me so so so incredibly happy! I love ya!! -marierosa13 **Hebrews 11**