Collide (3 page)

Once you got past the pretentious grandeur of
the main building, it became obvious to any visitors that they
weren’t being transported into the past but had, instead, entered
the one place that is almost unanimously viewed with either awed,
fond memories or sheer loathing and hatred, depending on one’s past
experience. The floor was covered with industrial tile designed for
easy cleaning by over worked janitors and the walls were made of
cement and lined with lockers, which were currently spewing their
contents into the waiting hands of the student body. This usually
put me in mind of some bizarre beehive where the workers gorged
themselves on their own honeycomb before they rushed off to a new
location. The acoustics were strange, too, sometimes making sounds
muffled and indistinct, other times so clear that you could hear a
whispered conversation from the other end of the hallway. I think
it had something to do with the curved ceiling, but I’m no
architect and can only guess.

Maria and I chatted about homework and class
on our way to our lockers and then parted ways. I watched her go
and dropped a hand to my suddenly churning stomach as her back
disappeared around the corner and guilt threatened to buckle my
knees right there in the middle of the packed hallway.

Three weeks ago, because of a stupid dare, I
had almost been arrested for shoplifting. An unsavory bargain with
the store’s clerk had spared me the humiliation of a police ride to
the station and a night cooling my heels in a jail cell while I
waited for my parents to pick me up. I was supposed to meet Maria
at our favorite dinner location after I had finished the dare, but
because of getting caught, and what followed afterwards, I hadn’t
been able to make it on time.

That night, Maria had vanished for seven days
without a single clue as to her whereabouts.

Chapter Two

Most of the other kids and even a few of the
adults had treated Maria’s disappearance with some kind of strange
casual disregard, or, in the more extreme cases, like something
that was totally understandable giving the fact that her parents
were going through a rather nasty divorce. Things just didn’t sit
right for me, though, because Maria had never been the type to
vanish without a word. If she had wanted to leave, it would have
been shortly after her dad’s first affair had been discovered and
things had gotten so bad at her house her mother had taken to
throwing lamps and other objects to vent her rather considerable
frustration. Maria had called me and talked for over an hour. She
had never left the house despite the fact that I could hear the
destruction and raised voices fairly clearly through the phone. She
had quietly apologized for the noise and turned down my offer to
call the police or at least go to her house to provide support. If
she had felt the need to up and leave during one of their many
fights, she would always make sure that there was a note on the
kitchen table or hanging from the fridge. She would then make her
way over to my house, where she’d cry and we’d have an ice cream
eating binge.

She had always left my house the next day
with renewed determination to see things through, though I knew it
was difficult for her as there were many times that I would wait
outside of the school counselor’s office if she hadn’t been able to
make it to my house for the night. She loved her parents and didn’t
want to add any more stress to an already highly volatile situation
and she tried to keep her visits to the counselor from them as much
as possible. She knew her mother would blame her father, her father
would throw back into her mother’s face that the only reason they
were able to live in the mansion she was so proud of was because of
his hard work, and the vicious fight would start all over
again.

When she was ten her dad had decided to
become an investor, and he had picked the oil industry. This had
been a smart move at the time and made him a very wealthy man. His
decision had greatly irritated Maria, though, because she was, and
still is, a big advocate for green energy, getting away from
relying so much on oil products and lowering her carbon footprint.
We’re talking a major recycling effort in her house, with bins all
over the place for plastic, glass and paper of all sorts. She is
also a queen at leaving pamphlets out regarding the virtues of
green energy and different ways to get off the electric “Grid” that
everyone was hooked up to. I can’t remember how many times I would
visit and walk into the middle of an argument that involved a lot
of statistics and other numbers that went over my head regarding
global warming, environmental issues, and the oil industry. Maria
said her Dad needed to do more to promote research into alternative
energy, and her Dad responded that what he did paid the bills, and
so the cycle continued.

Her mom, on the other hand, was something
like a trophy wife without all the plastic surgery. She had once
worked part time in the library for my Mom, but when Mr. Dupree
became wealthy off his investments she came into her own and
excelled when it came to throwing house parties for the local
bridge and quilting clubs. Hell, she’d throw a party for the local
ant collectors club if there was such a thing. She absolutely loved
to socialize and show off their house any chance she got. Maria
would spend almost all her time during those little shindigs
running around and making sure that all the plastic wrappers that
were used to protect food got put into the specially marked bins so
she could take them off to be recycled later. She once told me that
she thought her mother was more upset about the possibility of
having to move out of the house than the actual divorce itself. For
her part, Maria said that if they had to move, then she was just
looking forward to moving into a smaller house that required less
energy from “The Grid” so that she could decrease her “Green
Footprint” number.

I knew something was wrong when she didn’t
show up to school the Monday after my shoplifting disaster. Mom had
taken my phone away that night, so I hadn’t been able to call Maria
since I didn’t have a landline in my room, and her mother or father
never called our house looking for her. They later said that when
she didn’t come home they had assumed she had stayed with me, so we
had no idea that she was missing until much later Monday evening.
I’m ashamed to admit that I was also too wrapped up in my own
misery to really think past feeling bad that I had missed our
meeting time and had decided to call her from the principal’s
office once class was out to find out if she was ok and why she had
missed school.

She had mentioned feeling a little “off” on
Friday, so everyone else assumed that she was sick at home. Her
mother, concerned that she hadn’t heard from her since Sunday
evening, had called the school and found out that she wasn’t there.
I had been called into the office because I was supposed to have
been the last person to see Maria, but when I said I had missed our
meeting time it was discovered that no one had seen nor heard from
her for a full twenty-four hours. Her parents were beyond frantic,
having watched enough cop shows to know that the chances of a
missing person being found alive if they were the victim of a
kidnapping, which her mother insisted had to be the case in an
effort to extract money from them, after the first twenty four
hours were extremely slim.

What followed was a week of questions by the
police, by her parents, by teachers, and school counselors, all
asking the same thing. When was the last time I had seen Maria?
What were our plans Sunday night? Why was I unable to meet her that
night, and why hadn’t I called looking for her? That last one was
the hardest to answer, especially since Mom had been sitting right
next to me during the interviews. I had to own up to the fact that
I had tried to lift some candy bars from a local convenience store
on a dare, but that the clerk had caught me and, after giving me a
stern talking to (I almost choked on the words) had let me go after
I had coughed up the actual cash to pay for said candy bars.

The cops and counselors had all exchanged
glances, but knew that, on the grand scale of things, there was
nothing they could do since the clerk had decided not to press
charges, but still. That single look said what they thought louder
than if they had actually spoken the words, and I was ready to
climb the walls by the time they released me from their clutches.
After that Mom relented and gave me back my phone, mostly because
it drove her nuts that she couldn’t get in touch with me to check
up on me whenever I was out of her sight, and I spent the remainder
of that horrible week alternating between calling and leaving
frantic voice mails on Maria’s phone, or sending her increasingly
upset texts asking that she please get in touch with me ASAP.

The bell that signaled the end of first
period jerked me out of my thoughts and I quickly gathered up my
books. I started a text on my cell phone as I made my way to the
door.

I was in such a rush to get to my next period
with Maria that I ran into a very tall, rather gangly individual
with such force that we both careened backwards. Hands reached out,
grabbed my shoulders and kept me from what would have been a second
potentially painful introduction to the floor thanks to the heavy
weight of knowledge strapped to my back.

“Whoa, Alexander, that bag of yours should be
classified as a lethal weapon,” a highly amused, lightly accented
voice said above me.

I blinked and regained my bearings. I looked
up, and up, into the amused eyes of Akira Yamaguchi, our resident
Japanese foreign exchange student and basketball star
extraordinaire. My cheeks started to heat up, a fact which served
to irritate me to no end as Akira, while being an all around nice
guy, was also the general
objet d’drool
for many of the
girls here, and I tended to take pride in the fact that I refused
to follow the sheep in their constant near worship of the six foot,
three inch athlete that still had his hands on my shoulders.

Whispers began to circulate through the small
group of girls that always seemed to follow Akira wherever he went,
and as casually as I could I gently shrugged my shoulders and
stepped back away from the unsettling warmth his touch brought to
my skin as I worked to try and stop staring up at him. He didn’t
make it easy, though, because when he smiled a deep dimple appeared
on his right cheek and his chocolate brown eyes seemed to glow with
an inner warmth.

“Thank you,” I said as I took another step
back. Akira cocked his head slightly and gave me a quizzical
look.

“You’re welcome. See you after lunch?”

I muttered something in the affirmative as I
pivoted on my toe and headed down the hallway towards second
period, determined to put some space between us; a fact that had
nothing to do with the envious glances I knew some of the girls
threw my way. There was something about him that just unsettled me,
something that just didn’t quite feel right, but I’ll be damned if
I knew what it was other than a niggling sense that he just wasn’t
everything that he claimed to be. I’ve been unable to figure out
just what doesn’t add up about him other than he makes my spine
tingle in a way that had nothing to do with hormones and everything
to do with whatever he was hiding.

I sucked in a breath when I arrived to second
period and saw that Maria was not at our usual table. I tried to
hide my worry as I made my way to my normal seat, but Dr. Burgandy
must have noticed because he walked over and quietly informed me
that Maria was running late as she had an appointment with the
school counselor and would be in a little later. I nodded and
placed my cell phone on the desk and resisted the urge to send her
a text and break the school rule prohibiting their use in
classrooms on pain of suspension. The last thing I needed was
another strike against me.

Still, I didn’t fully relax until Maria
walked through the door, all smiles and apologies as she handed Dr.
Burgandy her late slip and slid into the chair beside mine. I
glanced over and tried to catch her eye, but she kept her attention
focused straight ahead and didn’t even acknowledge me once through
our Chemistry lab. My jaw clenched and I took a deep breath and
worked to loosen my neck muscles as I turned my attention back to
the teacher.

I snagged Maria’s arm as soon as second
period let out. This prevented her from standing up and forced her
to meet my eyes for the first time since class started.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” she asked in return and
gently pulled her arm from my grasp as she picked up her book
bag.

“You haven’t looked at me once since class
started, and I can’t help but think that I’ve done something to
upset you between this morning and now.”

She paused and pursed her lips. Her eyes ran
from the top of my head to my feet and then back again. My breath
caught in my throat, as she had never looked at me in such a way,
almost insulting and, if I were brutally honest, sexual, which
wasn’t like her at all. I was so unnerved that I actually scooted
my chair back as my hand instinctively pressed against my chest
where my bruises were in a defensive, protective movement. She
blinked, and suddenly I was facing a very angry friend.

“You know what?” she practically snarled and
the venom in her voice caused me to scotch my chair back even
further as several students looked up from their own packing to
glance in our direction. “I’m really starting to get tired of how
you and everyone else keeps hovering over me, constantly asking if
I’m ok or if you’ve done something wrong, or if I’ve remembered
something yet. Just . . . just leave me alone for right now!”

She stormed out the door and I stared after
her, red faced with embarrassment and my own rising anger as the
rest of the class started to whisper amongst themselves. I took in
a deep breath, and worked to let go of my anger as I blew it out in
a huff. I told myself that Maria had a right to be feeling
frustrated with everyone around here constantly picking her brain
to see if she either remembered anything or to make sure she was
feeling all right. I also knew that her sessions with the counselor
were geared towards working through any anger and frustration that
she felt about her parents divorce, but still. A part of me wanted
to lash out with my own anger at her even though I knew I
shouldn’t. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t know what had
happened to me on the evening of her disappearance. Her return, the
fuss being made, not to mention all the doctor’s visits, her
counseling, etc going on, I just hadn’t had the time to tell her. I
never really knew which days she’d be at school because of all the
appointments, so scheduling my own time with her between Mom
breathing down my neck, my part time job, and the wonderful
schoolwork that gets dumped on Juniors, and I just hadn’t been able
to find any real alone time with her.