Chapter Two
Lane
After a long mental war with myself I raced to the door, watching Jordan leave with an inferno's fire. Okay, okay, I admit it - I felt pretty bad. She was right, I guess. In her own stupid way. But she didn’t have to rub it in…couldn’t she just be happy for me? I was proud of everything I’d achieved; I’d gotten popularity, the halfback position on the football team, and (yes) the attention of plenty of girls. I was confident. Since when was that such a bad thing?
Jordan disappeared, running like the wind as usual. It was incredible that the rubber soles of her shoes hadn’t been completely worn away. My friends Nick and Darrin always joked about her appearance; she wasn’t the prettiest, and the fact that she dressed like a boy half the time didn‘t help. But they’d never seen her run like that.
Speak of the devil, Darrin grabbed my shoulder. “Hey, man! What happened to your nose?”
“Uh, ran into a door.”
“Right.” He didn’t believe it for a second. “Jordan hit you?”
“Maybe.”
“Well you’d better get it all cleaned up soon, if you’re going to be a Stacy’s party. Nick’s bringing a keg and it is gonna be--” mocking Stacy’s snobby hair-flip and high voice, “--off-da-chain!”
“Yeah,” I said, laughing. “I’ll be there.”
“Your parents still think you’ve got that job?”
If Dad needed that extra pocket change of mine, he‘d have something coming to him. I‘d lost my job weeks ago. Not a likely issue anyway, considering that his job at MERCY was so solid. “Yeah. They’ve got their heads too far up their asses to notice anything.”
“Nice.” His white-toothed smile split across his dark face like a flash of lightning. “See you there. Bring somebody hot.”
It was common knowledge that I was practically the only guy here who hadn’t been with a girl. In Mirage, people hook up early - they call it small-town fate. I call it hormones. For some unexplainable reason, I just couldn’t see anything in all the girls they constantly set me up with - mean, life-of-the-party, perfect. They all just seemed plastic and suffocating. Any relationships with them felt the same. Any relationships at all felt the same.
I went outside and pushed the kickstand of my bike. I owned a car, but riding was nice cardio work when the weather was good. I couldn’t believe I’d spent all that extra time in the school hallways. Freedom!
I just couldn’t get why it didn’t feel the same. I jerked my head, shaking the feeling off while I pedaled. There couldn’t be anything better than that feeling of having no responsibilities, nothing to do or care about.
Nobody to care about.
It was then that my phone rang. The song “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third-Eye Blind was blaring. Jordan. Time to be battle-ready. “Calling to apologize?”
Surprisingly, she didn’t sound in the fighting mood. For once in her life the human gazelle was full-out panting. “Where are you?” she asked hurriedly.
“Um…” I looked around. The café on the corner just breezed by my left. “Nowhere, really.”
“Well I’m at your house, and you have got to -”
“Jordan? Are you alright, sweetheart, you look like you’re about to pass out!” That was my mom’s voice in the background. Jordan’s tone suddenly dropped a couple dozen pegs on the niceness charts. “No,I--don't worry about it. I’m…feeling sick. Lane, meet me at the usual place, ASAP.”
“Yeah, but why--?”
“Just meet me!”
Before I could answer, she’d hung up and left me as dumbfounded as before she called.
I didn’t even know how in the dark I was. I made it past the baseball fields, to the tree and then to the Hideout. Jordan was there already, sitting criss-cross with her computer on her lap. She was too much of an ADHD adrenaline junkie to have much of a passion for technology, but now she looked hypnotized. Her red-streaked auburn hair was back in a ponytail - the official sign that she was zoned in and concentrating. Brushing back a few loose strands, Jordan stared up at me, motioning to sit. I did, staring quizzically at the website she was glued to. “North Star?”
“A missing persons website,” she explained. “And…I’ve found something. I-I’m not sure of it, I mean it’s crazy, but…”
Her brown eyes looked like the bark of some ancient tree, etched by on another time, reflecting things that no one else had bothered to remember. “I found us.”
“What?”
She took a deep breath, then said, “I’m starting to think there’s a reason this town’s called Mirage, Lane. And that’s because it is what it is - a mirage.”
Again: “What?”
“I’ve found us on this site, Lane - you, me, and Arie. Others too. There are pictures we’ve seen before, at weddings, anniversaries, graduations…ones that have been staring us in the face for years.”
She clicked a link, and I saw the picture of me that was also on the living room mantle. It would’ve been practically impossible to tell, if it wasn’t for the star on the blanket. But that was it.
I felt slow asking, but I had to. “So…what does this mean?”
“It means,” Jordan decided, “that something’s up. And I have a feeling that the people in MERCY might be the cause of it. But I'm pretty sure of one thing, Lane - no one is who we think they are…not even us.”
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