Chapter One
Jordan
“I hate you!”
Okay, so that was harsh. I could see the morally-winded look on Lane’s face, but was he anywhere near breaking point?
Of course not. And neither was I. When this started, there was no stopping us. We were two tornadoes on the same path spinning two opposite directions, and there wouldn’t be any easy way to spin out of this.
There was a moment of silence as we both measured up…metaphorically of course. He was scraping six feet and it was a stretch to say that I was five-foot-six. Years of football had formed him from the happy-go-lucky loser I’d known to the overly-muscled jerk that stared me down today. He’d always been good at sports, sure - we both were. Competitiveness coursed through our veins, and we’d butted heads plenty of times, but we’d always shouldered it off and gone back to our chaotic friendship, our arguments causing nothing more than a little collateral damage. Besides, they’d always been teasing, and fun. This was different. I knew it wasn’t the sport that changed him. It was the people. Jerks like Nick Forman and Darrin Stronghold had turned Lane into one of them. And I hated it with a passion.
“You’re just a --” Ohhh, this one would sting “--complete image of your dad, aren’t you?”
His jaw dropped, and my stomach squirmed sickeningly from the white fire that sparked in his dark blue eyes. “Shut your mouth before I shut it for you!”
“You wouldn’t hit a girl,” I taunted.
“A girl?” he laughed. “Please.”
That was it. Before mind met muscle, my right arm slammed perfectly into his nose. A bone-crunching, blood-blooming hit. Ah, the endless advantages of being a tomboy. Not that he had any right to rub it in my face…
“Damn!” he growled.
My smile was wicked, I’m sure. “I can be a girl without hitting like one.” Possessing the most feminine grin I could muster, I patted his shoulder teasingly. “See ya, sister.”
“Stop. Right. There.”
For whatever dumb reason, my legs obeyed, though my mind longed to run out the school’s doors into the irresistible June weather, Mirage Valley High School left to swallow up the dust of my Nikes as I zoomed like Road-Runner. This wasn’t how I’d hoped the ending days of school would be. Fighting with someone who’d been my best friend, once upon a time.
One hand still held his nose carefully, like he was worried it would fall off, and I could already see it swelling while the blood dripped down. Still, he wouldn’t be leaving without the final word. “You are so full of it Jordan, you know that? Ever since high school -”
“What?! You’re the one who’s changed, Lane! What happened to the funny, stupid guy I used to pick on, huh?”
“I’ll tell you what happened - he got a backbone and started winning! He grew up, and so should you!” Our volume had gone from yells to screams. My blood was pumping so fast it was amazing that I didn‘t explode. This was all the things bottled up, from the first rocky weeks of blowing me off freshman year, to now, the end of junior, with us wanting to rip each other’s throats out.
Finally, my voice lowered to a simmering snarl, running from my throat like boiling water. The hot words bubbled away. “Well I miss the other Lane. Before you were too cool to hang out with me, when you didn’t get anything off of being stared at by the school sluts all the time. Whatever happened to not getting into that? We told each other all the time, that we were never going to get lost in any stupid relationships, or hang out with those messed-up people!”
“Jordan, I’m the only sixteen-year-old guy in this entire school who could easily get a girlfriend and chooses not to, doesn’t want to! You know that! And those ‘messed-up’ people happen to be my friends.” He stared at me with scrutinizing stormy eyes as his baby-blues transformed to gray. “Besides, what do you care?”
“I don’t,” I glowered. “Not anymore.”
With the theatrics of a cheesy teen movie, I pushed through the double-doors and raced down the concrete steps. Tears were dammed up determinedly but on the brink of flooding. If my phone hadn’t rang I would’ve pretty likely burst. Caller ID revealed the speaker before I answered. A single second to breathe and pull myself together, then I perked up. “Arie! What’s going on?”
Even though Arie Sinclair was my cousin, we were more like friends. She was fourteen, two years younger than me, and my polar opposite. She had the sweetness of a fresh spring day, the prettiness of one too. Her voice chimed sweeter than birdsong, and her words worked to overpower the El Niño of emotions always swirling through my stomach. Luckily, she usually had plenty to say.
“I was thinking about going to the Hideout. Do you and Lane want to--?”
“No,” I cut off harshly. I could feel the hurt from the other end of the line, and sighed. “Sorry, Ar. Sure. Of course I’ll come.”
“But Lane won’t,” she concluded. Like me, Arie had seen his transformation from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.
“Yeah. Mission aborted.”
Well, we'd tried for two years to make him see the light. There was no hope. Maybe Arie couldn’t comfort me as much as I’d thought. Of course, I was yet again proven wrong. “Don’t worry, Jordan. We don’t need him around anyway. He’s not even worth tracking down anymore. I thought we could finish our project together. Meet me?”
“I’ll be there,” I promised. Arie gave a happy goodbye, and I was left to hear the click and empty end of the buzzing line. For a minute at least, I could put He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named out of sight and out of mind. It was time to enjoy the day, sweltering beneath the renewed and summering sun. I zigged on Ross Drive and zagged towards Twin Ferry, passing Mirage’s population sign: 1,004. I’d memorized it, and the true number rarely fluxed up or down. Things here harmonized almost perfectly; when someone died or moved away, another person or family seemed to pretty soon take their place.
I jogged beyond the Birchstone Library and past the nameless corner-side café, on until I reached a place where no roads led. It was near the baseball fields and tiny park, half-circled by forest made up of maples of elms. The entrance was a tiny deer path that was given virtually no wear nowadays, apart from Arie and I. The sunlight dripped through onto the low-lying brambles and bushes. Creeping through and finding the hidden entrance made me feel like some sort of super-spy. Pass two turns, take the third. Climb the oak. Clamor across the lowest bough. Drop. Do this, and you’d find the Hideout. It was impossible to get to any other way because of all of the surrounding rocks and thorn trees. Climb the oak and crawl to the middle of the first bough, let go, and you’d land square in the middle of the little crater in the earth. You couldn’t really see until you got down there, because of how much the foliage covered. This was why it was so perfect: a single place in the world that was all ours. Lane and I had been nine when we’d found it.
Great. Him again.
I dropped, the hard dirt landing less-than-pleasant on the ankles but not totally unbearable. The little fort we’d built that surrounded the walls of rock was vacant, which was surprising. Arie was homeschooled and spent most of her time studying or playing here, when the weather was good. The wooden benches that we’d gotten from the furniture store Lane’s uncle owned were empty of all but air, the blue plastic cooler closed, fishing poles in their normal place. On one of the side-tables, there was a little white note.
Jordan,
Ever question a name? An image? A Mirage? Search this site …
And good luck.
It wasn’t Arie’s handwriting; way too messy. Not Lane‘s either, though; too neat. A website name was scrawled on the bottom of the slip of paper by the same hand, and I pulled the laptop from my backpack. It was weird that there was the convenience of WiFi in the middle of the woods, but it wasn’t hard to get service anywhere near town. Probably just because of how small it was, and so easy to send out that reception, considering that it was nothing more than a blip on any GPS. The only reason there was likely any such technology was the Mirage Research Center. MRC, usually called MERCY, was the only reason this town existed, even though only the 200 or so pepole who worked there really knew what was going on. My own parents worked there, and even I was left in the dark about MERCY‘s purpose. Clearly it wasn’t something that was mentioned in idle dinner chit-chat.
Typing the site’s address, I was surprised by the webpage that filled my screen. It was matter-of-fact, gray-backed and black-worded. In a red bar at the top was North Star Abandoned Missing Persons Search.
Missing persons? Who would give me this site? Who would’ve even found our hideout in the first place? The thought sent a chill down my spine.
Someone else was here…
My first instinct led to Lane. What a jerk! That son of a bitch didn’t really give this place away, did he? Was this some joke he and a new friend of his were coming up with? I didn’t think it was funny, but the idea seemed twisted in a way that wasn’t at all Lane-like. Sure, he wasn’t exactly Lane anymore, but this was weird. A missing persons website, seriously? What could he be playing at?
It had opened instantly to the section labeled Infants and Toddlers. My fingers started moving, clicking, opening files and pictures. Pudgy faces and big round eyes, goofy expressions and crying pink things that were too young and generic to have any real chance of being found. A little pang of sympathy ebbed within me; some of these were 20 years old. It seemed like any chance of anyone being traced was hopeless. A needle in a haystack.
Except…
I stared for endless seconds, finally shutting it off and watching the screen fade to black.
Climbing over the rock and grabbing the rope we used to make our way out, I hit the ground running. Down Maple Drive to the big white house in the middle of the street, with the perfect picket-fence and lush garden where Lane’s mom Mrs. Sumlin was working away. I gave a breathy “Hi,” in response to her wave and opened the door with lightning speed. No one was inside. Good. It took only five seconds for me to find what I was looking for.
It was a picture I’d seen for years, with its eternal place on the mantle.
A picture of newborn baby Lane, wrapped in a pale blue blanket, his small stubby fingers gripping the blue-green star sewn onto it.
But according to North Star, this wasn’t Lane. It was nameless missing baby boy, child of Rosa and Jerry Parks.
Definitely not his parents.
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