A Haunted Trick

"Tell me why you think we'll find the riddle here again."

Seated next to me in the yellow cab, Murphy pulled out his booklet, paperclip with sticky notes and other scribbles and in front of it, the paper containing the cipher.

"Look, when we found this text in her room, it was just these symbols. Now I remember that certain ciphers were encoded using symbols, numbers even, but I couldn't remember which one was used until now. So I thought that we'd find it here."

Looking at the symbols again, which I thought had looked like Chinese of some sort, suddenly began enlighten me. I had seen it many times before, just not in this order.

"The New York Public Library, as you so hurriedly requested, Sir."

Looking out the window past my friends silhouettes, I saw only strings of water descending from the inky sky. It felt as though it was imprisoning us, telling us that our destination was only going to lead to further disaster, but after the uneventful day so far, we would take our chances.

"Thanks." Murphy handed the driver $15, the whiskery gruff man bared his grinning teeth. As he climbed out the door hugging the curb, I followed, mindful to watch my step. I closed the door and the yellow car went on its way through the showers. Not waiting for Murphy to catch up, I leapt up the stairs, 3 at a time, and had to restrain myself from bursting through the doors. Murphy hustled alongside as we entered the lamp lit hall of the library.

Sauntering to the front desk, shaking off the skin of raindrops still sticking to our jackets, Murphy requested the section on cipher texts and Mrs. Pierce, the librarian, who looked as you might imagine her to appear, directed us.

As Murphy began to walk off, I stayed and asked, "Can you also tell me where the Korean dictionary and alphabet section is."

"Interesting." She hummed in pensiveness, though not appearing entirely taken aback my usual requests of novels and history books. "It's the fourth row from the front." As I turned to catch up with Murphy, she spoke, "Undertaking investigations are we, Noah."

I always felt confident telling her about my secrets. Mrs. Pierce was not one to report on the privily of others, especially longtime friends of hers. "Its about a secret note left by Laura, I think it could help us understand why it happened." She raised here eyebrow in concern, "Did you tell her father about this, anyone?" I said nothing but maintained eye contact as she sighed, "I know that you, Murphy, and everyone she knew is devastated by her suicide, but you need to think about what the right decision is." I nodded, considering it. Almost everyone in the suburban area knew her, mostly because she but, herself up through nothing. With the reasons behind her recent suicide found to be inconclusive, those closest to her searched for any reason.

"If we find nothing, we'll tell the police and everyone. Okay. Please let us try. If anyone deserves to know about why she did it, it's us."

She folded her hands, and then her expression warmed, "She liked her little puzzles didn't she. Well, clever of you and Murphy. Let me know if you need assistance."

I gave a nod of comprehension and fleeted my way on down. And as I did, I could suddenly hear her voice again. Simply walking in there was enough self induce hallucinations of the past, the agents of wistfulness. They appeared for a moment to regret and pine about it all, the tragedy of my friend, Laura.

*

I recalled the day before it happened, when we would skip into the library not uncommon to the many times before. Only that time, we walked because she said I should not get my hopes so high. She told me that we had come here because she needed my help. Of course, I thought, where better than the place where we exchanged advice on work, solved puzzles, and occasionally dealt with our social affrays.

It was on that primaveral day, sitting at one of the rectangular tables in the open area of the library, she told me that her dad didn't have enough money to continue her 2rd year at college. I deuced a while ago that this was an inevitability, given the fact that the man was a widower, and practically teetering off the edge of affording the life he and Laura had. In fact, she sometimes worked at the library to maintain stability with her father's algebra teaching job at the nearby Middle School.

I assured her that her boyfriend and I would continue to check in on her even if she couldn't continue, but that seemed to discourage her.

"That's part of my problem. Murphy's been ignoring me. We had it goin' great last year, but this....this work of his, it's drawing him away."

Something I admired about Laura so much was how she took an interest in us. Initially, Murphy and I thought it was a desperate attempt to step into a higher league than she was born into, but I could tell it was deeper than that.

He on the other hand, sometimes overlooked that, "That's Murphy for you. One minute he's invested in ya, next minute he wants to go purchase the latest paper to find an interesting story or plot in the Middle East. I think it's just his stress. It's been a hard year, but we're close to the finish, and we'll both be here for you."

She frowned and looked down. at her hands, "Why do you always treat me like I'm some foreign child, Noah? He's been my boyfriend for years and it isn't good enough. Why can't I be more than a fucking girl straddling your backs?"

Her sudden escalation in tone disquieted me. She made no secret of her desire prove herself to others, become a beautiful mind, and of those who never let her cross the line of recognition. But she never had she doubted my appreciation for her, or Murphy's for that matter.

"He just never knows what I want." She continued, "You both hang out with me, yet, do either of you actually know what I wanted from it?"

I was unsure how to answer. Considering how feverish the past few months had been for us, I figured this must be zesty outburst that would soon pass, "Look, talk to Murphy, I know we've been distant and focused but he loves you, we both do. Talk to him and it'll work out."

I held out my hand, as if to expect a handshake, and as she looked up, she extended her hand parallel to mine and a complex handshake began. It encapsulated mostly backhands, fist bumps, and finger points, ending with a silent 'pew' from both of our hands. She smiled moderately as she finished. "I'll see you soon, Noah."

She plodded out of the library, odd considering a visit to to library, a visit to me, forbade her to leave without skipping exuberantly. Thinking about her less-than loose composure that day made me feel worse now knowing what she needed but could not get. And to think, 1 week later, she was found dead at the town lake.

And in all the distraught and chaos that sprang from this so called 'tragedy', I forgot the question she asked me.

*

After grabbing a Korean dictionary and textbook I found, I hustled over to the cipher text section where Murphy had just plunged a tack of code books on a table, then pulling his own notebook out with his pen. 3 banker lamps were already lit and I sat down next to him pulling out my pencil and composition book next to him. Arranging his notebook, holding her message on it, I flipped through the Korean dictionary and alphabet.

"What's this?" he asked friendly. When I found the symbols I was looking for, the ones that matched, I pushed it towards him, "Remember you suspected that these letters were in a cipher form. You were right about the ciphers. But that isn't what these symbols are in the message. I've been taking Korean classes for almost a year now, but I haven't had much experience with full written sentences and I didn't recognize those symbols squeezed together, until now."

He looked up after looking at the page I presented. He glanced back and forth at the text and Korean alphabet and became reasonably perplexed, "Then why doesn't her message translate into any real words?"

"Because you were right, This is a cipher-text, thats why its in an order that doesn't spell anything. Not unless you have the key."

He examined the page for a moment, then glanced back at the message, repeating the process thrice more before I interjected again, "Don't you see. This is a cipher text in Korean. That's why I couldn't read it. Once we substitute letter for letter, we can then find out what code she used."

As realization swept over him, I began to translate the message into english letters. Sure enough, a bunch of jumbled vowels and consonants arose in no logical order. As I completed the translation, Murphy suddenly decided to snapped back to reality to assist. I reached for the stack of code books and began to examine which one it could be. It was a long droning process that lasted about 15 minutes. 15 minutes which encapsulated us learning the rudimentary methods of each code and seeing if they matched up with the text. Some involved math, but me and Murphy were wizzes at the subject. Come to think of it, we completed high school calculus when we were just freshman. Now we were 2 years unto college, separate from each other, and we still hung out. We had so much fun doing that as the dynamic trio.

"I think I'm on to something. It was my turn to suck out of the mental recess to see that he had deciphered 3 letters. "I ...am... Pulp? What code did you use?"

"RSA. I can't believe I forgot this." He held up a 2x2 card that had p=6 and q=7 and e=5. "This book here reminded me that all RSA ciphers have these letters, which generate the key needed to decrypt the message, and this letter 'e' is an exponent of the product of p and q. Look I translated these 3 words out of order in the sentence to make sure it was right. It works."

I smirked at him, not simply because he solved it, but because it reminded me of her. She used to show texts like these to me whenever she was excited. "Just like her puzzles."

Murphy paused a moment and then smiled back, "Oh yep. She liked those didn't she."

After examining his work for a moment, I closed the book I was on, a binary digit method that seemed pretty weird, and began to speed up decryption. As I was absorbed into decryption, I imagined the precise work I was doing is how a computer runs algorithms, meticulous is what I can describe it as.

Soon, we reached the end of the fairly simple, yet time consuming process and uncovered yet another puzzle.

I've been a idle pulp, denied, betrayed, and broken,

my life's worth was arcane, but to most, just a token

I'm an idle force of balance, between drowning and survival

but every road I take, I'm met with forsaken denial

Yet there is solace in my message, a trick to this clue

while my memory lasts, here is a riddle for a select few

'the more I appear, the less you'll see

when encapsulated in fluid of life, what could I be'

For a while we sat there in silence. A few others passed by us, likely on their way home at the hour of 10. It looked as though we would be frozen in this state on perplexity forever, until Murphy gave a low growl, "Another fucking puzzle." He stood up slamming the codebooks shut, "The ultimate answer better be worth it."

My eyes widened weakly, for his carless remark shattered this colossal illusion. Murphy had just made me realize the answer to her grand enigma without the aid of a book, foreign language, or math. The realization made me want to vomit. Nauseating as it was, I finally knew what she really wanted. Her beautiful trick.

"Wait." I said looking gloomily at the paper. "Maybe the answer is right here. Why she died."

Murphy sarcastically threw back his head and picked up the paper. "I've been an idle pulp....drowning and survival....solace. This looks and reads like the words of a depressed teenager who tried to mask her feelings in a clue, and poorly at that. Laura's way too smart for this."

i continued to sit down and put my hands on my chin. "We, knew her better than anyone. She's always been smart, that's why she liked you so much. You liked her, but I think maybe she's telling us that we couldn't offer enough to satisfy her."

Murphy scoffed, not wanting to believe it. "So...so we're just supposed to assume I was not good enough and because of that, life's not worth living. What kind of debilitated idiot does that. No." He shook his head and sat on the rim of the table. "There has to be another answer."

Who was he kidding. Who were we kidding. We both knew what the answer was, what she wanted, but we didn't want to believe it. I knew it was going to be harder for Murphy to accept it than it was for me. I guess that proves in spite of his mild thickness, he still cared for her.

"Acceptance. The answer's acceptance."