Boy in the Mirror by Robert J Duperre

Author:Robert J Duperre
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9781540309792
Publisher: TRO Publishing
Published: 2016-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 27

Jordan’s cell phone rang. He kept his hands on the steering wheel and groaned. “Can you get that?”

Sitting beside him, Andrea picked up the phone. “Hello?” she said. “Yeah, we’re going to check. Don’t worry. Listen, we’ll call you if anything’s wrong.”

Andrea hung up.

“Was it her again?” Jordan asked. “Annette?”

“Yup.”

He sighed. Should’ve never given her my number.

It was the eighth time she’d called that night, and she’d texted him at least twelve others. She’d been persistent he go check on Jacqueline as soon as he could, and he’d promised her he’d get on it when his shift at the Hartford food bank was over. The panic in her voice caused his concern to rise. His grip on the steering wheel tightened and he glanced at the clock. It was nine-thirty. He was beginning to get a very bad feeling about all this, no matter how much he tried to tell himself that it was a huge overreaction.

Andrea nudged him. “Your knuckles are white,” she said.

He relaxed his hands and breathed deeply.

“You think something bad might be going down?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Try Drew again.”

She did, the phone sitting in her lap on speaker, the sound of ringing rising above the grind of tires on pavement. A slurring voice answered, but Jordan could barely make out what it was saying over the raucous, static-like beats blaring in the background. “Drew!” he shouted, trying to make himself heard over the noise. “Drew, I need to talk to you.”

The voice uttered a few nonsensical phrases, and the conversation ended.

“Dude, he’s wasted,” said Andrea.

“That’s a Cottard house party for you. It’s why I don’t go anymore.”

“I thought Phoebe had something to do with that?”

“Something. Not everything.”

He stopped at a red light, adjusted his sitting position, and took off again when it turned green. The Saturday evening traffic was relatively light as they pulled through the center of Mercy Hills, though the mall parking lot was packed. At the light for Highland, he took a left. A line of cars blocked the road halfway up the hill.

“What the heck?” said Andrea.

“Welcome to Party Central,” Jordan said.

“There’s so many people down here. We’re a half-mile from his house. Is there another party going on?”

“Nope. This is all for Drew.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “These parties get huge. Drew invites people from all around. Somers, Stafford, Windsor Locks, Suffield, you name it. They all show up. It’s crazy. And it makes parking, well, hard.”

Andrea chuckled in apparent disgust while Jordan tried to get the cars up ahead to move. A Jeep pulled up onto the lawn of a McMansion and spun its tires, shredding grass. Andrea frowned. “This is so unfair,” she said. “I mean, look at it! Why don’t the neighbors complain? When my brother threw a party a couple years back, the cops were there in a heartbeat. And he only had like fifteen people show up. He got arrested.” She swept out her hand, palm bladed. “Y’know?”

“That’s the Mills,” said Jordan. “There’s different rules in Highland.

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