As soon as the bell rang for lunch, Megan hurried to the library to meet up with Jen. She knew they couldn't afford to waste time figuring this out; the longer they waited, the better the odds were that they'd never see Jake again. And Megan really didn't want to lose him now. Her only consolation was Jen's near-insistence that it almost had to be someone at their school.
"So who do you think it was?" Megan asked. If Jen was so sure someone at school had Jake, she had to at least have an idea of who it could be.
"No clue." Jen told her.
Megan just sighed. Great.
"So, who could have found out about him?" Jen asked. "Has he done anything that someone might have noticed?"
Megan thought about it. She remembered how he drove that car to the mall with her a couple times – she knew it was too flashy. And how he made sure that she was wearing her gym clothes when she'd tried out for track. And how about the fact that he always seemed to disappear randomly and appear in her room? Anyone could have seen any of those things. But she'd always thought he was more careful than that. Besides, if it was because of any of those things, Megan felt that she could be at least a little responsible. She quickly brushed those thoughts aside.
"So why do you think it has to be someone who goes here?" Megan asked. As far as she could tell, it could have been anybody at any place they'd ever been.
"Well, I mean, these are basically the only people who ever see him, right?"
"Except for when we went out..."
"Yeah, but even when you took him somewhere, it wasn't like he stood out – he had to have made a mistake at school." Jen told her. Suddenly, Megan was remembering her track tryouts all over again.
"What if it's not someone at school?" Megan asked, refusing to acknowledge that it could have been because of her that he'd gotten caught. "How will we find him then?"
"Well, let's eliminate everyone here first. Then we can worry about who else it could be."
"And how do you plan on doing that? There's like two thousand students that go here." Megan reminded her.
"Well, they can't all know him, right? So let's start with everybody in his classes." Jen narrowed her eyes in thought. "Too bad we can't just make a list..."
"Why can't we?" Megan asked.
Actually, it seemed like a really good idea; she'd start as soon as she sat down next period. If she just wrote down everybody's names in each of her classes, she'd be half done by the end of the day. And she could finish the rest tomorrow – it wouldn't actually be that hard at all.
"Well, how can we know everybody in all of his classes?" Jen asked. "I mean, science – sure. But we have class with him then. And we can probably ask Greg for a list of who's in their Spanish class if we're subtle. But what about all his others?"
"Actually..." Megan started slowly. She really didn't want to mention this to Jen. Too bad it didn't look like she had a choice at this point.
"Yeah?" Jen asked when Megan didn't continue.
"...He's in all my classes." Megan mumbled, staring down at the table.
"Really?" Jen sounded like she could barely believe it.
Megan looked up and saw Jen was staring at her wide-eyed. It was that exact reaction Megan had been hoping to avoid by not mentioning it to her in the first place.
"Yeah." Megan admitted.
"Since when?"
"Since he started coming here."
"And you never mentioned this because...?"
"Because I didn't see the point." Megan shrugged. And because Jen had already thought Megan was losing perspective on her whole relationship with Jake. If she'd known that Jake was doing these kinds of things from the beginning, she never would have believed he'd be capable of liking her enough to actually be friends with her.
Jen just stared at Megan for what felt like several minutes. Megan could tell that Jen was seriously disappointed in her, but she didn't actually say it out loud. At least that was something. But the look on her face still let Megan know that Jen thought she was an idiot.
"Well, I guess it means you know everyone who sees him in class." Jen said finally. But she still didn't sound happy with Megan.
"Yeah. So, I'll start making a list." Megan told her.
Jen just nodded.
Now that they had a plan, Megan felt a little better. It still wasn't as much as she'd like to do, but at least it was something. She and Jen joined their friends in the cafeteria for the rest of lunch before Megan headed off to English.
As soon as the bell rang, Megan got out her book and a piece of paper, only half paying attention to her teacher. Instead, she looked around the room, writing down the name of every single person and where they sat.
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Friday, Megan sat down at her usual table in the cafeteria. She was the first one there.
Jake still hadn't shown up to school, but at least Megan had managed to make a tiny bit of progress on where he might be. She hated to admit it, but Jen had been right; it really was a good thing she hadn't just waited around for him to show up.
She'd written down the name of every single student in each of her classes on six different papers – one for each class – and had come up with around a hundred and eighty names. It was an incredibly long list, but after she'd eliminated the people in her science class, it was down to just under one-fifty. And since a couple of those kids were in other classes with her too, she could cross them off those lists as well. But even with all that, she still had about a hundred and twenty students to go through. She stared down at her lists, trying to figure out if there was another way to start crossing names off.
"What are you doing?" Tara asked, looking over Megan's shoulder. Megan jumped.
"Nothing." she said quickly. She had to resist the urge to snatch the papers up and hide them under the table; she didn't want to look any more suspicious than she already did.
"So why do you have a list of names?" Tara asked. "Is it some kind of science project or something?"
What? Megan glanced down at the stack and saw that she still had the one titled Science on the top. She tried to think of an excuse that wouldn't sound stupid. Science project was pretty good, right? But what kind of science project would that be? Fortunately, Jen cut in before Megan had time to get too worked up about it.
"Yeah, it's part of our science project." Jen told Tara, shrugging as she sat down.
"Yeah? How so?" Tara asked.
"We have to figure out the average height of the people in our class and if it correlates...to...anything." Jen told her, finishing lamely. Tara seemed surprised.
"Well, I'm glad I don't have to do it – I hate projects." she said.
"Yeah, me too." Megan mumbled.
She was just glad that Jen was a little quicker with the lies than Megan herself was. She tried to ignore the fact that both Jen and Jake seemed to be pretty good at coming up with lies on the spot. After all, this was a good one, right?
She put the papers away, deciding not to attract any more attention to what she and Jen were doing than she already had.
The rest of their friends sat down at the table, and the conversation thankfully drifted to other topics. But as soon as there was a lull in the conversation, Jen spoke up.
"So, this might be a weird question..." Jen started slowly, and Megan immediately turned to face her. Whenever Jen sounded like that, she knew whatever she was about to say would be good. "But, did any of you guys ditch last period on Wednesday?"
Megan just stared at her, eyes wide. What was she thinking? Of course none of their friends were responsible. How could Jen even ask that?
She was sure that none of them suspected anything weird about Jake; they would have told her. They were her best friends, after all. And if any of them thought there might be something wrong with the kid they all thought was her boyfriend, they'd be almost guaranteed to mention it. Right?
And even if Megan thought any of her friends could be responsible, she knew they'd never do that to her – or Jake. They all liked Jake way too much to keep him from going to school. It was the one thing he did that he really enjoyed; none of them were mean enough to keep him from coming.
But when Jen looked at Megan, she could see that Jen wasn't in the mood to be questioned on this in front of everybody. Still, Megan would definitely be asking her about it when lunch was over.
"Not me – I had an econ test." Tara told her, not noticing the looks Megan and Jen were still giving each other. "If I didn't, I probably would have though."
"...Well, Stacey and me went to the mall." Danielle admitted.
"Really? Before school was out?" Jen asked, suddenly incredibly interested.
She leaned forward in her chair, and even Megan caught herself considering the possibility that Danielle might know something. If she wasn't at school, pretending to be at the mall might be a decent cover.
"Well, yeah." Danielle shrugged, like she didn't see what the big deal was. "I mean, I needed to go home right after school, so of course we had to go early."
"You only skipped last period?" Megan asked. She didn't actually think it was possible for Danielle to spend only an hour at the mall. Maybe Jen really did have a point after all.
"Well...we kinda went after lunch." she admitted.
"We were going to invite you – we really were!" Stacey added quickly, as if that was the problem Megan and Jen were having. "It was just kind of a last-minute decision."
"You should have seen the skirt I bought." Danielle gushed, unaware of the excuses Stacey was making.
"Yeah? What's it look like?" Jen asked, sounding a lot more interested than Megan could really understand. Didn't they have more important things to worry about right now?
"Oh, it's so cute." Danielle told her.
She started describing it, and Megan's eyes glazed over. Something blue, some sort of trim; but Megan didn't care about things like that even on a good day. And now that someone had basically kidnapped one of her friends, she really didn't care what kind of clothes Danielle was buying. But Jen was listening to every word Danielle was saying.
"It sounds really cute – you should wear it tomorrow when we go out." Jen told her.
"Ok!" Danielle said, brightening. "You'll just love it – I know!"
Megan tried not to roll her eyes; Danielle was obviously excited, and these kinds of things were important to her. Besides, it wasn't like she knew what was going on with Jake – it was just a regular day as far as Danielle was concerned. But what was really bothering Megan was how Jen was acting. Jen knew what was going on, and she still cared enough to ask about Danielle's shopping trip? Why?
When lunch was over, Megan walked with Jen to her class, not even caring if she was late to her own.
"You really want to see what Danielle's skirt looks like?" Megan asked. It seemed like they had bigger things to worry about at the moment. And since when did Jen actually care about those things anyway?
"Of course not." Jen actually rolled her eyes. "How long have you known me?"
"Then why did you ask?"
"Because if she doesn't show up in a skirt we've never seen, she's lying."
"You think Stacey and Danielle might have taken it?" Megan was pretty sure they didn't have anything to do with this. Did Jen know something that Megan had somehow missed?
"Probably not – I mean, everyone seemed pretty honest." Jen shrugged. "But let's see if Danielle really did get new clothes. And if Stacey confirms that she really bought them yesterday."27Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv0MBFDfGPe
