All You Never Wanted

3. The Suspects

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."