Date: August 14, 2008

Dear diary journal, Hi.

I'm not super sure how I want to start this, but Dani said I should keep a diary or something while I'm traveling. She thinks it'll be good for me, and she's never really been wrong before, so here goes I guess. 

Should I introduce myself? I should probably introduce myself, but like, why? No one else is gonna see this. Posterity? Maybe some archaeologist will find it in like 100 years. I guess if I were an archaeologist I'd want to know more about me. 

So, I'm Jamie. I'm 18 (my birthday's in about a month) and I just graduated high school in May. I guess you could call what I'm doing here a gap year, but I might try to go to college in the spring. My SATs were pretty good, so I don't think I'll have trouble getting in, and who knows? Maybe I'll figure out what's going on super fast, and I can move on with my life. 

I live in this tiny-ass town in Oregon called Yachats. There were probably 30 people in my graduating class, and it's not like everybody knows everybody, but it's pretty close. My mom has been kind of MIA since freshman year, so I'm living with my cousin Dani while we get shit figured out.

That's kind of why I'm doing this. My mom wasn't the most normal person, but nobody expected her to just cut and run in the middle of the night like she did without a word to anybody. She didn't have a great relationship with Grandma Maisey, and my dad's parents won't talk to her either, so I went to Dani about it and we called the cops. They were exactly as helpful as you'd expect. They didn't find anything. 

Fortunately, and apparently unlike the cops, I actually know how to use a computer. Mom didn't leave much of a trail, but I tracked down a credit card charge in Oil City, Washington for about $150. I have some money saved up from working over the summer and on the weekends, so I told Dani I wanted to go find her. She wasn't thrilled, but like, the only person who can actually tell me what to do has up and left the state. So I'm going. Dani told me I had to promise to call her at least once a day, which I will, and I'm gonna follow Mom's trail as far as it leads. I've got pictures, several hundred dollars, and I'm ready to go. I'm not just gonna let her disappear like that. She's my mom, for God's sake. She wouldn't just leave.