You Have 86,400 Seconds To Find Me

11:50pm (Dunkin' Run)

   "Thank God Sam let me borrow his Jeep, though. I was getting so sick of catching buses. I guess that damn motorcycle of his isn't so bad after all, if it gets me a spare Jeep. Sam is such a great guy, always taking care of me. I'm gonna miss him so much," Macy said, her voice catching.

   "You don't have to miss him," I said out loud, "You could decide to stay."

   "Anyway," Macy said, reclaiming control of her emotions. "Max, you would be so proud of me. I bought a book. An actual book, with actual words in it. I know you're the reader in this relationship but I just had to get it. It's a signed copy of The Notebook. I found it in this little used bookstore and I just had to get it. My last indulgence of this lifetime, you know?," Macy said, as she looked down at her watch. "Sorry, Max, I gotta go. I'm falling a little behind my schedule here. This is what I get for having to drive myself around now! I uh... I hope I'll see you soon."

   And then the video ended. 

   Macy has a Jeep now. That's just great. Now I guess she really could have gone anywhere. Hell, you can drive from Rhode Island all the way to New York in three hours, if you really wanted to. 

   I can't handle this stress. I'm going to have a heart-attack. 

   "A bookstore," I said, picking up my phone and beginning to Google Search all the used bookstores in the area.

   "There's no need to Google it, Maxwell," Kelly said, I recognized the sign behind Macy's head in the video. I've been there before."

    "Been where?" I asked.

   "The Book Bear," Kelly said, pointing down the street to a little building with a tan sign in front of it that read: THE BOOK BEAR, OPEN 7 DAYS, 10AM-6PM; USED, RARE AND OUT OF PRINT BOOKS. 

   "Wow, so that's how close we were," I said, putting my seatbelt on.

   "I don't really see the point in driving over there," Kelly said. "It's definitely closed and I don't see any way Macy could have left a clue there. I mean, what is she gonna do? Tape it to the outside of the building?"

   "We have to at least look," I said, as I pulled out of the parking lot. 

   We spent the next half hour walking around the outside of The Book Bear, looking for a clue. 

   Any clue.

   But, after a whole thirty minutes of searching, we decided to cut our losses and just go back to the car, where we sat, annoyed and not quite knowing what to do next. 

   "What was the point in leading us here?" I asked, throwing my hands up in the air. "Why lead us to some random bookstore, where there's nothing to find?"

   "Maybe we're missing something," Kelly said, looking around the car.

   "What are you looking for?"

   "A piece of paper," Kelly said, picking up the bag she threw in the backseat of my car and pulling a notebook out of it. "And a pen."

   "Do you always carry a notebook around with you?" I asked.

   "Yeah. I like to doodle during my breaks," she said, and I handed her the pen I kept in the glove compartment, in case I ever had the sudden need for a pen.

   I watched as Kelly leaned forward over the piece of paper and drew a small dot on the lower right-hand side and then labeled it iHop. 

   "Okay," Kelly said, turning the notebook over to me so I could see what she'd drawn. "So, this is where we started. Where did we go next? Hanover Theatre, right?" 

   "Yeah," I said, as I pulled out my phone. "Hold on." I opened up my Google Maps tab and typed in iHop, Providence as the home location. And then on the second location I typed in Hanover Theatre, Worcester.  A few seconds later, my phone showed me a map connecting the two places together. "Okay," I said, comparing the map on my phone to the blank piece of paper on Kelly's lap. "So, Hanover Theatre would be right about there." I pointed my finger to a spot on the page which Kelly then proceeded to label Hanover Theatre.

   "And then it was Spencer State Forest," I said, trying to remember the sequence in which this awful night had occured in.

   "Right. And then it was Howard's Drive-In," Kelly said, taking turns calling off the names, as I typed them into my phone and pointed out where they would be on the paper. 

   "And then The Book Bear," I said, pointing to the sign outside my window. "And here we are."

   "Okay," Kelly said, turning the notebook to me once more so I could see the four places she had marked down on our patch-work map. "So, this is the direction she's headed," Kelly said, as she drew a large circle around the empty upper left-hand corner of the page. "Now we have direction."

   "Yeah," I said, looking down at the map. "I don't think she would be going anywhere too far. If she was, the locations would be more spread apart. But, they're not. All the places Macy is leading us to are all a half hour radius from one another." 

   "Maybe that's why she didn't leave a clue this time," Kelly said, looking up at me, her eyes wide. "Maybe Macy ran out of places to fill her twenty four hours. She said there would be twenty four videos, but she never said there would be twenty four stops. Maybe we're closer than we think. This whole time we've been thinking that Macy is so far away, but what if she isn't? What if she reached her destination sooner than she expected and she's just been hanging out there since?"

   "Maybe she's less than an hour away," I said, looking at the map, then looking at my phone, thinking. Maybe Macy was going to stop leaving us clues because she had already led us halfway to her. Maybe she wanted us to think, like she always does. She brought us close enough, but now it was up to us to put the pieces together, like a puzzle. 

   "I think she's close," Kelly said, looking out the window. 

   This has been by far, the weirdest day of my entire life. My best friend goes missing, I end up getting stuck on this ridiculous road-trip with a complete stranger, and now it's 12:30 in the morning and I'm sitting in the deserted parking lot of a used bookstore with no idea what to do with myself. 

   "I think she is, too," I say, looking out the window as well. The only question is, if Macy wanted somewhere to hide, where would she go?