The Program [Book Two of The Test]

Chapter Seven

The Program

Chapter Seven

It's been two days since i've seen Annie, and John has been acting kinda weird. I mean, he's still acting like John but, I don't know, just different. But he's hanging out at his house more, allowing my house to finally be free of him each day. The only problem is, because he has been at his house, so have I. Apparently I wasn't aware that friends have to help hide other friends from their parents at times. But then again, I wasn't aware we were friends.

And Annie, well, i've talked to her on the phone a little but not enough for her to really understand everything. But i'll have you know that if you put John and Annie on the phone, those two start bickering horribly. I've learned my lesson, no more talking for them. It's times like when they fight that make me see just how lucky I was that neither of them really talked in the test.

Besides for the unlucky part about being sent to the test that is.

But hey, i'm trying to look on the bright side.

"So, Lexi, have you figured out that paper yet?" John asked me.

It turns out the entire reason John even took me to see Annie was because he found a paper in his parents' room and tucked it in his pocket while coming down the stairs. Which would explain why, even though he had been up there forever searching, he had nothing in his hands when he rudely stopped mine and Jack's hug. But that doesn't matter right now, what matters is what was on the paper, a list of names.

"No, not really." I said, giving the paper to him that I had been looking at for at least the past hour. John had handed me the paper while driving me home two days ago, hoping I could make sense of it. Parts of it were simple. The paper had one hundred and fifty names, causing us to believe that the names belonged to each of the people from the test. Among the names we found all my friends including Jack, John, Annie, and myself, basically confirming the list had something to do with the test. And what was next to each name, the person's address, which is why John knew exactly where to find Annie and that she was my dad and Mary's neighbor. "I just don't understand why your parents would leave something this important lying around, or at least, I think it's important."

"Well," John started. "maybe it's not that important. Maybe they wanted us to find it and hoped it would throw us off. After all, they lied to me pretty easily about all of this, they could do anything." I knew John was right, and if they wanted to throw us off, they were doing a pretty good job of it.

"That would explain the groups a bit." On the paper there seemed to be certain names on each side, separating the one hundred and fifty teens into two groups, one of the groups labeled A and the other B. As I searched through the names to try and figure out what the different groups were about, I saw that me, Annie, Luke, and John were on the front. And Jack, Danny, Caleb, and even Brittney were written on the back. 

"Maybe the people in group A are different than the people on the back." John suggested, flipping the paper over. "Maybe you and me are on the front because we're classified as different than Jack or something."

That actually made sense.

"Yeah, we are different. For one, we actually remember the test. And so does Annie, and she's in the same group as me and you too. Maybe group A shows who remembers and group B tells us who doesn't."