Chapter 5

When I woke up I was in the old Muller house, and there was a bunch of broken wood around and on me. My head was throbbing from where it had been hit. I unsteadily got up and walked out of the house. I looked around to see if I could find the thing that fell out of my pocket, I finally gave up and walked back to my house, wondering what was going on. I remembered Lilly and the old house, but it seemed to me to be like a dream, too fantastic to be real. I couldn’t tell what was real and what was not.

I walked all the way to my house to find a car that I didn’t recognize was on my lawn, there weren’t driveways anymore they weren’t needed. Of course I was curious about who was here and why, so I quickly went inside to find out.

Inside were a couple official looking men that were talking to my parents, when I heard part their conversation, “…lieve that your son has been kidnapped. We can’t be sure about it, but those are our suspicions at the moment.” I decided that I should end this drama, but I had to make it look like I had been at the house before. There was a way to get to my room without being seen from where I was and then be able to get into the kitchen. From there I could easily get to the front room, where my parents were.

I quietly headed up the stairs to my room and past it, but not before going in for a little, and turning on the lights. I then went into the kitchen and got a bowl of cereal. I ate a little and then made my way into the front room. My mother was hysterical and my father was trying vainly to comfort her. As I walked it I put a spoonful of cereal in my mouth and then said after I had swallowed some of it, but my mouth was still partially full, “What’s goin’ on?”  

My mother basically pounced on me and smothered me with kisses, as she said, “Your all right, your all right.” Over and over, she sounded like a broken CD. Even though those things were ancient, I still knew what they sounded like.

My father was more sensible and walked over and asked in his most serious voice, “Where have you been son?”

“I was in my room.”

“We didn’t hear you come in.” My father said.

“Well I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“So what did you do with your friends?”

“Oh, we went over to the old Muller home for a bit.”

“And?”

“Dared someone to go in.”

“Did any of the guys go in?”

“Not that I know of.” This was the truth since I wasn’t considered one of the guys.

This is when one of the official people cut in, “A felon, escaped today and was hiding in that old home. Did you see anyone come out of there?”

Now I knew that if I tried to lie, they would know I was. I had been able to get past so far because I hadn’t really been lying. I had to be careful of what I said now. Those stupid new detectors made it so that you could tell when people were lying. Almost all official people, like cops and such, had them.

“Ummmmmm.” I said pretending to think. “I saw some girl come running out, I have no idea where she went.”

“Was she wearing a blue jumpsuit?” One of the other officials asked with urgency.

“Uh, yeah, I think.” I answered, that was partially true because the jumpsuit was more gray than blue.

“And you are sure you don’t know where she is?”

Now this one was hard to answer, I did somewhat know where she was, just not exactly. I really had to be delicate when I answered this one. “Well I think I saw her around some old building. I have no idea where.”

“Thank you for that information.” The other man said, although he didn’t look or sound thankful at all. That was apparently all they needed so they both of them left.

After that a conversation between my parents and myself ensued.  I was bombarded with questions. Where was I? Why did it take so long to get home? Why didn’t you call us? You know, normal hysterical parent questions. I gave the best answers I could, trying to keep as close to the truth as possible, in case they had a detector.

When I finally got to leave I headed up to my room, I needed rest, big time. I opened my door, not even looking and headed for my bed as I started taking off my shirt, when I heard a feminine voice speak up, “Hey! Hey! Hey! You should be decent right now. You have a lady in you presence.”

I recognized the voice instantly. It was my twin sister, Amy. She loved to tease me about being two minutes older than me, and we were closer than almost anyone else I knew. That accounted for the fact that we looked nothing alike. I was tall, blond, and handsome, with blue eyes, okay I added in the handsome part. Amy was short, brunet and had green eyes. We may have been twins, but if you put us side by side and had someone who didn’t know us come in, they would never had known that we were related in any way. She also happened to be amazing at doing hair, and not just styling but cutting and dying it as well.

She was sitting on my bed looking at me. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a green shirt that went surprisingly well with her eyes.

I finished taking off my shirt as I said, “A lady? Where?” Then I frantically looked around the room.

“Sitting in front of your big fat face you loser.” She replied.

“What are you kidding, all I see in front of me is a toad wanna be.” I replied with a smile. She threw a pillow at me, and said, “Hah! You’re the one with the zits!” It was true, among the differences we had, she had never gotten any zits, something I envied.  Plus she could always tell when someone was lying, me I couldn’t tell if someone was lying or not if they wrote it out for me.  

“Zits? I’m talking about warts. There is this huge one right in the middle of your face, oh wait that’s your nose.”  I said with a laugh. Let’s see if she can get a comeback for that.

She didn’t even give me the satisfaction of pausing before she said, “You mean like the huge one on your forehead? Oh wait, that’s a zit not a wart, man it’s huge!”

I immediately put my hand up to my forehead to feel, which is what she wanted. I then ran my hand trough my hair until I got to the back of my head.  “Ow!” I yelped.

“I know, the truth hurts.” Amy said with a smile.

“It’s not that, you ditz. I must have gotten a goose egg on my head. Dang that hurt”

“Let me see.” Amy commanded, I obliged, she was better at this kind of thing than I was. “Ooooo. That looks like it hurts, what the heck were you doing? And don’t tell me what you told Mom and Dad because I know that’s not all true.”

Yeah, like I could tell her, so I had to lie. Which would be extremely hard to do because she could always tell, so I had to tell a partial truth.

“Okay, okay, I didn’t tell them everything. I went into the Muller building, it was pretty cool. Wait a sec. how do you know what I told mom and dad anyway?”

“I listened in duh! Keep on going.”

“Well the place was so old that the floor caved in and smacked me on the head. That’s why I got home so late, I was knocked out for quite a while.” Not exactly true, but hey, it was close, and… Amy’s voice cut into my thoughts.

“You idiot! I can’t believe you went in there. Some one dared you didn’t they?”

When I didn’t respond she knew the answer when she looked at the expression on my face. “I knew it! You are such a dork. Can’t you think?” She rolled her eyes.

“Can we keep this between us please? I would be grounded for at least a month. You know how they overreact.” I said weakly, knowing I sounded like an idiot.

Amy just rolled her eyes again, “You owe me big time.” She said. “Wanna tell me what you were doing in there?” She asked me.

“Uh no. I’m way tired, can I please just get some sleep?” I asked hoping she wouldn’t prod me to tell her.

She paused for a moment, just looking at me then she said, “Fine. You look like you’ve been through a lot. Night.” She then walked out of my room and closed the door softly behind her. As Amy left she quietly said, "Off." Turning my lights off as she left.

As I got ready for bed, I thought about the events of the day. As I thought about it I got extremely ticked at Psysearch. I couldn’t believe they would do something like that, especially to a girl. You just don’t do that type of crap it made me sick, completely sick. Not to mention the fact that she was kinda cute, okay, okay she was hot. I decided that I wanted to help her, I didn’t know exactly how, but I knew I needed to do something. For one thing, she would be caught in a second if she went out in those clothes. Plus she still looked the same, which means if she didn’t do something to change her looks, she would be caught.

The one problem right now would be that it would be extremely difficult to find her. I reached into my pocket to take my phone out so I could get to sleep, but it wasn’t there. I looked around to see if it had fallen out of my pocket in my room, it wasn’t there. I then remembered that when Lilly had hit me something had fallen out of my pocket. It must have been my phone. There was my way of finding Lilly. Each phone had a tracker in it, I could use that to find my phone and in that way, find Lilly. Those were my thoughts as I went to sleep that night, and a plan slowly formed in my head.