Jessa cleared the spit from her throat. “Welcome to the first meeting of The History Club,” she declared. “Mr Fletcher is here because he’s going to oversee our activities, right, Mr Fletcher?”

“Yes, but don’t worry, I won’t be buzzing around too much. I’m not trying to babysit you; I just have to keep an eye out. You’re in charge.”

Jessa turned back to the others. “So I’ve planned out agendas for all our meetings for the rest of the school year.” She handed out copies to everyone in the group.

The entire History Club comprised Jessa, Maggie, and Flynn as co-founding members, and Tonia Pitts and Annora Huff as regular members. They had to advertise the History Club around the school to attract any other potential interested parties, and had actually received replies from Kevin Xu, Lucy Adelman and Suzanne Daniels, all first-years from Mrs Reid’s class. However, much to Jessa’s relief, the Wednesday meet time for the History Club clashed with practice times for the athletics team of which all three of the other students were members. So the History Club ended up being just the five of them.

“I thought it would be fun for this month’s meeting to be focused on family. In case you don’t know, the study of family history is called “genealogy,” and I thought we could go to the library and use the ancestry software to look into our family trees.

“Cool,” Tonia nodded.

Maggie and Flynn had helped Jessa formulate the plans for each meeting, but it was new to Tonia and Annora, so Jessa was reassured to know they liked the idea she had for their first topic.

“You guys can head off to the library, then,” said Mr Fletcher. “I’ll be here marking some homework, so I’ll log onto the chat network and you can give me a buzz if you need any help with anything. If not, I’ll check in on you at the end.”

Jessa noticed how quiet the halls were after school hours. Usually, when she wandered the corridors, it was in between lessons, which was when most of the other students were also milling around. But after school, there was an almost eerie stillness. The hallways seemed sad not to be filled with the banter of students and the clatter of feet traversing the floors. It was only a small school, but it seemed so bustling when filled with people. In the stillness of the late afternoon, it felt sterile and empty.

They settled into seats at the library computer corner and each signed into their school intranet accounts on the wide screens before them. Jessa described how to access the online genealogy software, giving them the log-in details Mr Fletcher had given to her.

Tonia and Annora each started exploring the options on the home page, pinching and swiping the digital buttons on the flat screen.

“Jessa,” Maggie whispered, and Jessa rolled her desk chair closer. “Are you going to start looking for information about Silas Lynch?”

“Shhh!” Jessa hissed back, gesturing toward Tonia and Annora.

“Why are you shushing me?” Maggie said. “I thought that was the whole point.”

“Are you all right?” Tonia folded her leg under her bottom and pushed herself up on the arms of her chair so she could see them.

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Jessa responded. “Don’t worry about it.”

“What’s going on?” Annora’s face poked out from behind her screen. “What’s the big secret?”

“It’s nothing!” Jessa exaggerated.

“I’m sure we can tell them, Jess,” Flynn said. “They’re in the club too. They probably deserve to know what they’re getting themselves into.”

Jessa sighed. She should have known that the History Club would not have been the covert operation that she’d hoped.

“Scoot your chairs over here.”

“Woooooow!” Annora said, a little too loudly.

Jessa had told them everything. About the intuition she’d felt at the museum, about Silas Lynch, and then about how she’d wanted to set up a history club as a way to secretly research these things she’d found so intriguing.

“So it’s really less of a history club, and more like a mystery club!” Annora giggled.

“Ha, yeah, I suppose it is,” said Jessa. “Are you okay with that?”

“Definitely,” Annora said before Jessa had barely finished the question. “I’ve never been in a secret club before.”

“What about you, Tonia? I’m sorry if it was a real History Club you wanted.”

“No offence, Jessa,” she replied, “but I only wanted to be in your History Club because I hadn’t joined any other club and I needed to fill the requirement. Mystery Club sounds way better.”

They all swore themselves to secrecy that neither Mr Fletcher nor anyone else could find out what they were really doing. They also agreed that, so as to not arouse any kind of suspicion, they’d stick to Jessa’s plan and actually partake in the regular activities. Fortunately, they all enjoyed history just enough that it wasn’t too much of a misfortune to actually have to attend a History Club.

The five students decided they’d get the history part out of the way first, so they spent the best part of an hour exploring their own family trees. Jessa had secretly hoped that she would uncover some kind of great family conspiracy, perhaps an estranged cousin or a secret marriage or a famous relative. Her quiet fantasy was quickly brought to an end, however, when she saw her family tree digitally recreated on the screen before her, displaying every one of her known relatives, plain and clear and so very ordinary.

Jessa peered over at Flynn, whose face was rumpled in concentration. “Did you find anything good, Flynn?” She rolled her chair toward him to peer at his screen but he closed the page before she could see anything.

“No. Nothing really.”

Jessa saw a sliver of embarrassment creep into his face and she knew not to ask any further questions. She’d always known that he lived with his mother, but she couldn’t recall him ever mentioning his father, let alone any other family member. She left him to it.

On Jessa’s other side, Maggie’s head was wagging side to side, her eyes reading rapidly across the page.

“Interesting…” she said quietly.

“What is?” Jessa enquired.

“Well, I started searching for Silas Lynch.”

“Oh! Already?”

“Yes, of course. I’ve researched my family tree in the past, so I didn’t have to venture too far down the rabbit hole this time.”

“Great, so what have you found then, boss?”

“Not much.”

“So why is that interesting?” Flynn walked over to Maggie to lean on the back of her chair.

“Well, the birth records show he was born on the twelfth of June, 1961, and he was officially declared deceased in November 1985.”

“Okay…” Jessa waited for Maggie to continue.

“But that’s all there is. There’s no place of birth, no address, no family members, none of that is listed here. It’s like his whole record has been deleted.”

“That is a bit weird,” Flynn said curiously.

Tonia and Annora both moved to look at Maggie’s screen, too.

“It gets weirder,” Maggie added. “He’s not in the parapsych database.”

“What does that mean?” Jessa asked her.

“It means he was unregistered.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” Annora’s soft voice questioned.

“Yep,” said Maggie.

“But we know he was a parapsych.” Jessa tried to understand what part of the puzzle was missing.

“What happens if you just do a regular search for his name? Does it bring up anything else?” Flynn asked.

Jessa shook her head. “Nope, I’ve been trying that since the trip. All that comes up are those newspaper articles, the same stuff we already know from the museum.”

“Hmm,” Maggie opened a new page and inputted the name Silas Lynch to see for herself. When the search returned exactly what Jessa described, Maggie seemed perplexed. “Well, that is curious.”

“Why?” said Tonia, craning her neck to see what Maggie had found.

“Because there should be more on the net about a person than just archives of newspapers that mention them.”

“What else should there be?” Jessa asked.

“I’ll show you.” She typed the name Reginald Turner into the search box. “This is my grandfather on my mother’s side. He passed away when I was little. But here you can see pretty much everything about him: where he was born, his parents’ names, where he went to school. He was a parapsych too, so you can see here is a record of his registration, and here we can see where he went to school, the jobs he had, how he died, the date of his funeral, et cetera.”

“Woah,” Jessa said quietly, “I had no idea there was this much information available about people.”

“Oh, yes,” Maggie nodded. “Since the Community Information Act, basically every record that’s ever been made is available digitally.”

“That’s a little creepy!” Tonia exclaimed.

“It’s actually incredibly efficient,” Maggie told her. “The records have always been accessible if you went to a library or county office, but this way they’re available easily and for free to anyone who needs to access them.”

“How do you know all this, Mags?” Jessa gushed.

“Computer Club! And my parents actually have this software on their home office computer, so I’m familiar with these search strings.”

“All right, so we know there should be more information about Silas Lynch,” Flynn said, getting back to the matter in hand. “But why isn’t there?”

“That I don’t know,” Maggie shook her head.

“The articles said he was kind of a loner,” Jessa postulated. “He was in a children’s home until he was fourteen, so could it be possible that nobody cared about him enough to ever register him as a parapsych, or properly enrol him in school?”

“I’m sure a council-run children’s home would require him to Register and go to school. I think it’s more likely someone removed the data. What’s really perplexing me is the absence of a death record, though.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s very highly controlled. When someone dies, their death has to be reported, and then verified, and then it’s made available in this official database of Births and Deaths.” She pointed to various parts of the screen as she explained. “So what we know from this is that someone reported Silas Lynch dead. But there’s no official verification. The death wasn’t formally logged in the system. Wait. Maybe if I look more into this…” she trailed off as she clicked and swiped and typed, delving deeper into the hoards of digital information.

“Yes… just what I’d have thought,” she said, stretching out her fingers. “I just went a bit further into the Death Record Database. Look…” She pointed at the screen, and they all leaned closer to read the simple line of text she indicated.

“This record is incomplete,” Jessa read aloud.

“What does that mean?” Flynn questioned. “Nobody verified his death?”

“Guys…” Maggie whispered, “I don’t think he’s dead.”

A moment of quiet fell over the five teenagers as they pondered the implication of what Maggie had said.

“Is that even possible?” Tonia said incredulously. “Are you saying he faked his own death? This thing says he died in the 1980s. So you think he’s been alive this whole time? Where could he have been hiding? It seems really unlikely that someone could just disappear like that.”

“It does sound very implausible,” Flynn agreed.

“But not impossible,” Jessa said thoughtfully.

“I guess not. But okay then, here’s a better question: Why? Why would someone pretend to die, and then hide for twenty years? It doesn’t make sense.”

Through the silence of the library came the nearing sound of footsteps.

“Shhh!” Maggie shooed her friends away from the huddle around her and Mr Fletcher entered the room with an exaggerated look of suspicion on his face.

“What’s going on in here, then?” he said

“Nothing!” Jessa spoke with a forced nonchalance.

“Glad to hear it,” Mr Fletcher responded plainly, still looking at Jessa intently. She squinted her eyes at the computer screen, trying to make it look like she was reading. She hoped that neither his general teacher-senses nor his parapsych abilities could see through her lie.

“Mr Fletcher, we’ve been researching our family phylogenies, in accordance with the plan Jessa made for our meetings,” Maggie spoke in her classic talking-to-a-teacher voice. “So far I’ve found some very interesting details about my great-grandmother.”

“That’s great, Maggie. I researched my great-grandparents once too, and found out some pretty cool things about them.”

“Is anyone else in your family a teacher, Mr Fletcher?” Annora asked him.

“Nope, just me,” he walked to Jessa’s chair. She felt the seat back move slightly under the weight of his lean.

“Have you found anything interesting, Jessa?”

“Umm, not really. My family’s quite boring, I think,” she could feel him reading her words for indirect information.

He noticed the pile of papers Maggie had printed, and picked them up to leaf through. Jessa’s heart leapt in her chest, immediately assuming they were going to be found out so quickly, but breathed a sigh of relief when it turned out to be prints of Maggie’s actual family tree.

“Well, I think it’s probably time that you guys packed up and went home, don’t you? It’s almost half past five.”

They hadn’t noticed time going by so quickly, but did as he suggested, logging out of the computers and collecting up their belongings.

The students filed out of the library, but just before she walked through the doorway, Jessa heard Hugo Fletcher call her name. She spun round, trying to look chilled and aloof.

“Don’t forget this!” he said, holding up her red pencil case.

She reached out her hand and clasped the pencil case tightly, expecting him to release his grip. But he held tight, and pulled it incrementally closer to himself.

She glanced up to his face where his deep eyes stared into her. And then she heard his voice. He didn’t make a sound, and his lips didn’t move, but she heard it as clear as anything.

“You’d better not be up to anything.”

#

Jessa lay upon her bed, unable to fall asleep. Every time she came close to relaxing, her mind recharged with thoughts of school and friends and homework and mysteries. She swung her legs out of bed.

She was just about to stand up when she heard the sound of the front door opening downstairs. Her heart floundered for a second, in fear that someone was breaking into the house, but she quickly heard Audrey’s voice talking to someone on the phone.

A glance at her alarm clock and Jessa wondered why Audrey was returning home at such an hour, and who she could possibly be on the phone with so late. Audrey walked up the staircase, trying and failing to avoid the creaks that whimpered out from beneath her feet. Jessa instinctively switched off her lamp so Audrey wouldn’t see the light trickling out from under the door. She heard her sister’s voice whisper into the phone as she entered her own room down the hall.

“Okay Sarah, I’m back. I’m in my room now,” and the door clicked closed behind her.

Jessa couldn’t resist. She pulled fuzzy slipper-socks over her feet and ever-so-gently opened her own bedroom door, straining her neck in the direction of Audrey’s room. She took tiny steps, placing her heel slowly into the carpet and letting her weight reach the ball of her foot only after she was sure the step made no sound.

After what felt like far too long, she reached the outside of Audrey’s room and placed her hands on either side of the frame, careful not to touch the actual door in case Audrey heard it. It was not Jessa’s first time eavesdropping on her sister.

Audrey’s voice became audible through the solid wood of the door.

“I thought we were going to get married!”

She was crying.

“We were supposed to move in together on Valentine’s Day, and now he tells me all of this?!”

There was a long silence. Jessa waited to hear what her sister said next.

“I know… maybe I was starting to suspect something, but not this! I mean, he can be secretive sometimes but I thought he was just a bit shy about personal things, you know? I really can’t believe it.”

Another silence.

“Well yeah, obviously I’d rather know the truth than be kept in the dark about it. But I don’t know if I can be with him now, Sarah. I really don’t. It scares me. What if it puts my family and me in danger too? What if he goes out on a job and something happens to him? I couldn’t bear it!”

Jessa’s heart raced.

“Of course I love him. I just don’t know anymore.” She broke down again, sobbing heavily.

“I know. I’m so tired… You’re right. I’ll see how I feel tomorrow.”

Audrey whispered goodnight and then the only sound Jessa heard was the thumping of her own pulse echoing in her head.

Afraid that Audrey would suddenly emerge from her room, Jessa tiptoed quickly back to her own bedroom and pushed the door closed.