School was weird when I showed up.
Everyone was chattering to themselves, stuck in their phones more than usual, and it wasn't just the students. The teachers were buzzing from the same sort of strange energy.
I went towards Harry, who was also stuck in her phone, nose nearly touching at the screen.
Her boyfriend, Clint, who is usually glued to her by the hip, is nowhere around, which is even more strange. I tried to nudge her from her trance, bumping her on the shoulders, saying hello. She barely glanced at me. I whispered in her ear, "What is going on?"
She finally lifted her eyes from her phone to look at me, she looks scared. "Jacks is missing."
My eyes went into saucers, every part of my body locking into place. The part of me that wanted to scream, I managed to mutter, "What?"
She nodded, her posture telling me everything that I needed to know about the situation. She is serious. "Apparently no one has seen him ever since the party in your house."
I gulped, trying not to squirm. I wanted to say, 'No, he is okay. I have seen him. He's stalking me almost everywhere I go lately.' But part of me knew and said, no, I can't.
I didn't know why, but I listened to it with every fiber of my being. I kept my lips tight. I kept quiet, hoping it was answering enough. Harry took that as a suggestion for her to keep talking. "The teachers are doing an assembly to organize a search party."
"For what?"
She raised her eyebrows. "For a dead body." I suddenly paled, realizing that no one had seen him but me. Could it be—no, I refuse to say the words.
"Couldn't it be that I don't know… he's out on a bender?"
I panicked trying to find another explanation, but the one that kept circling in my head for some crazy reason.
She shook her head. "Jacks is a lot of things, but is not reckless enough for this sort of drama. All these friends don't know where he is, and his ex-girlfriend told everybody that would listen that he always used to check up with at least one of his teammates when he was drunk."
Suddenly my breath is going into shorter spans. I keep circling into this insane, very unreasonable theory in my head. Please don't let me be another crazy person in my family. Please.
I turn away from Harry, to run. I think she's shouting, calling me back, but I'm not listening because I'm going in the direction of the only person right now that would give me a straight answer. I'm going to my grandma's place.