Page 25 of Violet Spark
“Oh, no! I didn’t mean—”
“I’m kidding with you. Brayden deserves all the downtime he can get. All of us need to unplug occasionally.”
“Except he plugs in,” I said.
Mr. Alling barked a laugh. “Except he plugs in.That’s so true. You’re funny.”
Not that funny.
“Have you tried to contact him through his gaming friends?” He leaned forward, his long fingers wrapped around his coffee mug. “One of them might know something.”
“Yeah, I did that already.”
“And social media?”
“Yeah.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Two nights ago, online.” I’d said that already. My gaze dropped to his mug. His knuckles were white.
“And when in person?”
“Um.” It was starting to feel like I was getting interrogated again even if this guy was nicer than that asshole Dane. “Almost a week, I guess. He said he was really busy.”
So, yeah, I was back to lying. I didn’t really know why, but it was going to get hard keeping track of all the noise falling out of my mouth.
“Were you at his place, or did he go to yours?”
“We met for…pizza.”
“Ah, that sounds lovely. Where?”
My brain was churning fast but I was so cold, like when the ice chunked up in the bin and couldn’t tumble out. I put my water glass down on the side table so Alling couldn’t notice my trembling fingers. “Does it matter?”
“I only ask to get an idea of his movements. Quite frankly, I’m concerned for him,” Mr. Alling continued, in his dad voice. “Had he been acting strangely, do you think?”
I wasdefinitelybeing interrogated again, but this guy was being all smiles and cookies about it, while Black Suit Dane had been menacing.
“No, he was himself,” I said.
“Because he seemed a little stressed at work.”
“He was okay. We were planning a new quest.” I threw that last bit in.
“That sounds exciting.” He glanced at my hand. “May I ask how you hurt yourself?”
“Knife slipped in the kitchen.” Which was sorta true. The back of the Desert Freeze was like a kitchen, and the blades of a mixer were basically knives.
“And why’s it purple?”
“That’s paint,” I told him. “I’m an art major at ASU.”
“An artist! BantaMatrix actually values artists over those who settle for more conventional majors at school. Ms. Ruskin says it means you can think out of the box. Find creative solutions where other people think in one-way black and white.”
“That’s…refreshing to hear,” I said. “Look, I really should be going. I think I’m going to try calling some hospitals, maybe file a missing persons report.”
“We’ve done that,” he said. “And I really think someone needs to look at that cut.”
