Project Wildfire

Chapter 6: Jason

It's been four days since he had run into Alex, but it was still all he could think about. The halls were empty which left him to himself. Jason knew he was supposed to be thinking about math and what he wanted help with so that he could tell his new tutor but he couldn't help it. His mother was missing. Alex's father was involved in something weird. Something that connected both of their parents to a drug cartel.

Jason was so deep in thought that he almost ran into Will Wright.

See, Jason never really liked Will. It was probably because Will never really liked Jason but he didn't know why. Now that would've been fine if Will didn't happen to be everywhere Jason was. They were in almost all of their classes together. In fact, most of the times that Jason was sent down to the principal's office, Will was with him. And more often than not, one of them always had a black eye. This would make them want to get back at the other and they were stuck in a never ending cycle of getting each other in trouble. Plus, it was safe to say that both of them were in charge of the two main groups in the grades. Jason was leading the classic definition of who you would consider popular while Will was leading pretty much the rest of the grade. In other words, Jason was the King of the land and Will was the leader of the rebels. Those two do not mix together very well. So, when Jason bumped into Will, he knew he was in trouble.

The two of them stumbled backwards and Jason hit his shoulder into a door frame and cursed as Will crashed into the lockers.

"You can't even watch where you're going?" Jason muttered to himself.

"I'm not the one running around a corner at seventy-five miles per hour," Will snapped back.

"At least I can go that fast."

Will raised a snarky eyebrow, "Trust me, Kane," venom dripped from his voice when he said Jason's last name, "I can do a lot more than you think. Definitely more than you."

Jason immediately went into defense mode. "Is that why I'm the basketball captain?"

"Just because I'm not the basketball captain doesn't mean I'm not better. We both know that if I decided to try I would beat you in a landslide."

"Do we though?" Jason stepped forward. "Besides, it doesn't matter what you think you could do or what you could've possibly done, it matters what you are doing. You could be better but in the end people only care about one person and that's me. I'm the one who actually went out there and accomplished something. What are you doing?"

"More than you are."

"Really?"

Will took a step forward, "The world is bigger than high school basketball games, which is something you've never understood. But one day you will. And when you do, I wouldn't be surprised if they found Jason Kane hiding out in one of his dad's mansions, too scared to walk out into the daylight."

Normally Jason would've reacted to this, but now Jason knew what Will meant. It's only been a few days since his mother disappeared and he could already feel the bubble that protected him for so long starting to weaken. How long until it popped completely? And what would happen when it does pop? Would he hide away from his problems? But Will was wrong. He hadn't been running away, he's been trying to find his mom. When he figures out what happened, he wouldn't run away. He wasn't a coward, right?

Will, who took Jason's silence as defeat, smirked and walked down the hallway. Jason watched his shadow recede in the distance and continued walking through the hallways. All things considered, the exchange went pretty well.

Finally, Jason made it to the corner of the library where he was supposed to meet his math tutor who was already waiting for him. She was sitting in one of the chairs with her head bent over some papers and a textbook.