Like Elliot: Part 6

As two weeks pass, I understand I can finally trust Parker, and I need answers. I’m beginning to long for his company, but am not quite willing to admit that yet.

My goal used to be to leave town with a better understanding of my past, but now I’m not so sure what I want.

Pushing these thoughts aside, I come to Parker one day with Elliot’s leather green journal.

I’m starting to learn how to read his face too: he is surprised to see the book, with a “Why are you showing me this?” thought schmeared across his forehead.

Before he can say anything, I jump in and ask, “Can you help me?” and thus initiates Parker’s ongoing questioning. He is as talkative as he was when he rushed out of the cake shop on the first day...but his jumbled words disintegrate into my head. Instead of trying to respond to him here, I grab his hand and pull him out the door as he throws off his apron rattled by my urgency.

We land back in the barn where I can finally give him some answers, and hope for some in return.

As I explain Elliot’s journal, Parker mentions that he took a class on historical coding for his degree, and I’m a tad bit more confident.

But then I wait. Just wait. A piece of Elliot’s mind lays in Parker’s hands, being read by someone other than me after...what 16 years? 18?

Without either of us taking a full breath, Parker asks for a pen and pad. I fumble through my bag and grab an orange flyer for the local dance studio for him to write on the back of. This was another one of those moments where Parker’s face told me more than his words. It was, “Really? This? You dragged me all the way in here and didn’t even prepare with any real paper?”

Fair.

I let him scribble while I hover over him and finally exhaust myself enough to stop pacing and sit.

After what feels like forever, (but was probably at most twenty minutes) Parker says, “I think I can figure it out…” which is when I finally exhale.

He says that it doesn’t seem to be any traditional or well-known code, but one that correlates capital letters to page numbers.

I didn’t notice because all the capitals were at the beginning of sentences, so nothing looked out of place. There were no symbols other than on the last page, the one dated as his last day.

My mind was clearly very jumbled, so Parker showed me an example:

“Look here on page fifteen. It’s one of the shortest journal entries right? Well, it says ‘The air in my room was cool today, there was a nice breeze coming from outside. Whoever opened the window must have forgotten about the bugs. Oh well, guess I’ll have to brave those sucking little insects.’ The capital letters make up the word TWO. Then flipping to page two, the first letter of each sentence makes a word.”

“So that means, if we start at page 2, we will find a message if we go through it that way?”

“That’s the idea.”

“What about the symbols on the last page?”

“That’s what got me started at page 15...it was a good guess, the picture of the cake suggested his birthday, then there were some more symbols and I just counted each as one.” Parker proudly, but warily announces.

I guess this all means this wasn’t exactly Elliot’s journal. Sure, maybe he expressed his thoughts in it, but it was more so crafted with the purpose of the code.

As much as I would like to show a pristine picture of Parker and me in the barn decoding the journal in ten minutes, bouncing ideas off each other one by one and everything unfolding in the palm of our hands, that was just not the case.

It was a lot of trial and error, reorganizing the letters and numbers, scrapping ideas, and starting all over again. Considering this was done by a child, it was not perfect...but it was enough.

Tressler Drive...and when the words stopped and new numbers started, 13207.

13207 Tressler Drive

I don’t know what I was expecting, but the years of lost hope led me to believe that nothing would come from this.

Parker, quickly logging onto Google Maps finds only one house in the country with this name and number. In Seward, Alaska.

From there, it was a whirlwind of needing to know more. And now, it wasn’t just me. It was Parker too that shared the same goals. I thought I was going to have to bear all of this alone, but now I have someone to help, someone to keep me company, and to keep me sane.

Before I could suggest anything, Parker jumped to the thought plastered all over my face: “Let’s go.”

We jog back to Marie’s, where Parker’s car stands, and he tosses me his keys to get in while he quickly rounds up road-trip essentials. I hit the button to unlock the car, with the green light on the remote flashing, allowing me to get in. I lean into the passenger seat and my mind is blank and numb and racing at the same time.

Parker comes back out with water, baked goods of course, and clothes for the both of us. He was a bit unsure how he should mention the clothes, and if it was a good idea at all...and I did the opposite of soothing his nerves by saying, “well, your clothes aren’t really my style... it’ll have to do.” But he’s caught onto my sarcasm by now and it doesn’t faze him. Instead, he teases, “oh perfect, I’ll make sure to keep that in mind when your birthday comes around.”

As much as it was a nice gesture, we agreed it would be worth our time to make the quick trip to my childhood home to get some of my own clothes. And to be honest, it was more of the underwear situation that I didn’t want to have to deal with.

I quickly grab my things, leave a note on the counter for my parents, and run back to Parker’s car.

Everything was suddenly so hopeful, that I didn’t even stop to think that this would be our first long car ride, our first trip together, and our first time staying with each other overnight.

It wasn’t until this trip that I really got to know and love Parker.