We had all assumed she had died. There had never been much question about it. It was a pity, she was the best teacher that high school had seen in a long time. She used to give us wonderful puzzles to work out during class in groups or separately. They were always different. There had even been a rumor that she was part of some spy organization, because of them. They were always different. Some were like mazes with problems at the corners. Some were mysteries with a number of clues. Yes, for many of us 16-year-old, she was the best thing that had ever happened to us.
It was common knowledge that her boyfriend was an abusive drug-addict, so the class was told that Mrs. Pritsker has gone missing, we all assumed the worst. Now years later I had never heard anything to shake that belief.
Until now.
A week before my first high school reunion, I had received an anonymous letter-if you could call it a letter-without any stamps. At first I thought it was a poem, but it lacked any romantic or poetical feeling. After the ‘poem’ there was a complicated sketch that looked sort of like the floor plan of a house, but made entirely out of triangles. Originally I had taken it to be some sort of trick by a neighborhood kid, but after re-reading it, I couldn’t help thinking of Mrs. Pritsker’s old puzzles. Even the hand-writing looked familiar.
A week later at the reunion I had the letter in my purse, and had my ears open. Well it turns out I was right to do so. Martha, Janette, Mark and Matthew had also received letters. They were similar, they both had the same design on the bottom, but the poetry was different. The four of us were old friends from school, and it wasn’t hard to get us all a table together.
All of us had the letters on our persons, and we started to compare them. We tried to remember things that our old teacher would have put in puzzles, and tried a number of ideas on the poems, but to no avail. None of us really thought much would come of it. But we tried anyways.
Finally Martha started to write down the first letter of every line. After coming up with a number of patterns, we started to get somewhere.
I-A-M-A-L-I-V-E-I-N-E-E-D-Y-O-U-R-H-E-L-P
I am alive and I need your help.

The End