Who is Melissa Harbenton?

“The moving truck is gonna be here in 20 minutes!” I heard my fiancé, Roger, shout from downstairs.

“Okay, almost done!” I shouted back.

I had been up in the attic packing boxes with the last of our stuff for the last couple of hours, in preparation for our big move. Roger’s job was relocating us from Trenton, New Jersey, to just outside of New York City. No matter, really, as I had moved several times in my life and lived all over the place. It was as I was going through the last of my books that something caught my attention: an old yearbook. I hadn’t seen it in years. It was the yearbook from my senior year at Welldren High School, in Welldren, Iowa. Welldren was a small semi-rural community in central Iowa, where pretty much everybody knew everybody. That certainly was one of the charms of living in a small town. My high school graduating class was a whopping 32 people, most of whom I was still in contact with, one of them being Roger.

I opened up the yearbook and immediately began reminiscing as I gazed upon the many faces that I had interacted with back in high school. I even came across an old picture of me running cross country in the section that showcased our sports teams. I really enjoyed running cross country, and if I recall correctly, I think I came in 12th that race. It was fun thinking back to the old times and looking at our old hairdos and outdated fashion sense. However, it was as I was scanning through the pictures of all the people in my class that I came across something odd. I came across a face that I didn’t recognize. The name under her picture read, “Melissa Harbenton.” That’s strange, I thought. I was pretty sure I knew everybody in my class.

“Who is Melissa Harbenton?” I muttered quietly under my breath.
She was a pretty girl, with long, wavy, sandy brown hair, and blue eyes. I stared at her visage, completely transfixed, searching my memory bank for any recollection of who this was, but I just couldn’t remember her. I even counted everybody in the class to make sure there was 32 of us, and sure enough, there were, we were all there, I just couldn’t remember who this one person was.

“Honey!” Roger shouted. “When you get a minute could you come help me move the coffee table?”

“I’ll be right down!” I shouted in reply.
On that, I closed the yearbook and quickly packaged up the rest of my books and headed downstairs to assist Roger with the coffee table.
It was several hours later, as we were tailing the moving truck on our way to our new home in New York, that I asked Roger if he knew who Melissa Harbenton was. He said that he didn’t and then asked me where he thought he might know her from. He seemed confused when I said that she apparently went to high school with us, and that moreover, she graduated with us. He said that her name didn’t ring a bell and that he was fairly certain he knew everybody who had graduated with us. I concurred but then went on to tell him about how I saw her picture in our senior yearbook, even explaining what she looked like.

He just shrugged, said he didn’t know who she was, and posited that maybe somehow the people who put the yearbook together inadvertently put a picture of somebody from a different class or from a nearby school in our yearbook without realizing it. I figured that was a possibility and from there we didn’t talk anymore about it the rest of the night.

The next so many days after the move were rather busy. But between unboxing things and setting up furniture, I would occasionally think about Melissa Harbenton. When we got to a point where things were relatively settled, I called my sister, Nikkole, to let her know that the move had gone well and that we were liking our new place. During the course of our conversation, however, while we were talking about all the places we had lived, I asked if she knew of a Melissa Harbenton from high school, figuring that maybe she knew who she was, being that she was only two years behind me in school. She also said that she had no idea who I was talking about. Given Roger’s earlier suggestion that maybe she was from a different class, I wondered if she had been in my sister’s class, although that appeared not to be the case.

Later on, that same day, I called my brother, Tyler, mostly to talk about the same things that I talked to Nikkole about, and invariably I ended up asking him if he knew who Melissa Harbenton was. He too had no idea who she was. This was getting stranger and stranger.

The next day, I called a couple of my friends from back in high school to see if they knew who she was. First, I called my best friend from back home, Shelby, and after catching up for a bit, I asked her if she remembered a “Melissa Harbenton” from high school. She took a moment to think about it before telling me that she couldn’t place who that was. She then asked why I had asked, and I told her about how I saw her picture in my old yearbook and found it odd that I didn’t know who she was, especially in a school as small as ours. Shelby then had the brilliant idea for me to take a picture of the yearbook picture with my phone and send it to her. On that, I went over to the box I had packed it in, opened it up, pulled out the yearbook, turned to the page the photo was on, and took a picture. I then sent it to Shelby. After a couple of seconds, she again said that she didn’t know who it was. After that, we went back to talking more about life and such and the conversation eventually wound down. Later on, I called one last friend of mine from school, Brandon.

Brandon, however, didn’t pick up the phone, so instead I texted him about it. I didn’t receive a reply until the next day a little after noon, when he just said that he didn’t know her. He then asked if I could describe her. I, instead, sent him the picture I had taken of her picture the night previous. He replied just a few short minutes later saying that he, again, did not know who she was. This was just so strange. How did no one I know from back in school, a school of no more than 120 people mind you, know who this was?

The next I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind. It was my Roger’s first day at work at the new office, and I stayed home just doing housework.

When I got a break from mopping the floors I pulled out my phone and began scrolling through social media. That’s when I got the idea to search for her on there. I put her name in the search bar and hit “enter.” To my surprise, nothing came up. A few people with similar names came up, but no “Melissa Harbenton.” After that, I just put the phone back down and went back to cleaning the floors.

That night, before bed, I got myself a bowl of ice cream. As I was enjoying said ice cream, around 11:30 at night, there came a knock at the front door.

That was strange, I thought. Who would be stopping by at this hour?

Could it have been one of our new neighbors? Either way, I stopped what I was doing, set the bowl of ice cream down on the counter and made my way to the front door. I unlocked the door and opened it slowly only to see that no one was there. Confused, I stepped out onto the front porch.

“Hello,” I said hesitantly and to no one in particular.

I was just about to head back inside when I noticed something on the porch. I bent down and picked it up to see that it was an envelope. It being fairly cold out that night, after picking up the envelope, I just went right back inside. Upon making it back to the kitchen I opened the envelope. Inside was a folded-up piece of paper. I unfolded the piece of paper, and it read, “Melissa Harbenton,” followed by a phone number. Now things were getting really strange and a whole host of questions rushed through my mind. Who had left this at my door?

How did they know about all this? Had Melissa herself been here?

The next day went about as normal as could be. Roger went to work, I unpacked some more stuff, made dinner, just a normal day. Roger and I even watched a movie together before he headed off to bed. It was a pretty decent action movie, nothing to write home about. But as the night wore on and I was stood in the kitchen doing the last of the days’ dishes, I couldn’t help but think about the note that I found on the porch the night before.

After I finished up with the dishes, I dried my hands off and went over to the kitchen table where I had set the piece of paper the night before. I picked it up and looked at the number. Then I pulled my phone out of my pocket and began dialing the number. It rang several times before someone on the other end answered.

“Hello,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

“Uh, hi, is this Melissa Harbenton?” I asked.

“Um, yes, who’s this?” She replied.

“The Melissa Harbenton that went to Welldren High School?” I inquired further.

“Yes,” she said warily. “Who’s this?”

“Uh, hi Melissa.” I started, not being totally sure how to begin a phone call with someone that I called but didn’t know. I continued.

“This is Lauren Indrio, and I-“

“Lauren Indrio?” She said, cutting me off.

“Uh, yes, that’s me.” I replied, starting to get confused.

On the other end of the line I heard what sounded like someone moving around mixed with the sound of rustling papers. This went on for nearly a minute before I called out to her.

“Melissa?” I said, now very confused. A couple seconds later she spoke again.

“Lauren, are you still there?” She asked, sounding a bit frazzled.

“Yes, I’m still here.” I confirmed.

“Okay, Lauren, this is the craziest thing.” She started. “I was looking through an old yearbook last week and I came across your picture in my graduating class but didn’t recognize you. So, for the last so many days I’ve been talking to several people that I went to high school with, asking about you, but none of them seem to remember you. Then I looked for you on social media but couldn’t find a profile for you. And then, last night, when I was in my kitchen, there was a knock at my front door. So, I went to go see who it was, but there was no one there, there was just an envelope, and inside was a piece of paper with your name and number on it. I was just about to call you.”

Credit: Steven Allen

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