M.E.
Miren Eze's initials alone described how fundamentally selfish she was being. And although Jeno could only try to understand where she was coming from, it was hard to do that when she was still nowhere to be found.
As he left the orchestra hall, he felt haunted. This was where the hell between them had unleashed, and despite it only being three days since he last saw her, she might as well have been a ghost to him. It was fitting, wasn't it?
After all, he was dead to her.
He gritted his teeth as the harsh February air assaulted his nerves. But he didn't bother pulling up his collar. Didn't he deserve to feel pain? Honestly, he preferred the sensation, as it distracted from the battlefield of conflict that was his brain, which was more determined to consider all of the worse possible scenarios with Miren. To think, if he had been more determined to just believe her...
His eyes closed and he allowed his near photographic memory of the Rinzen campus grounds to guide him. It was sad, really. He was such a calm, calculated individual. He should have seen it all coming: Penelope's video announcement. Wallace's apparently not-so-temporary departure. Chara and Theodora's life-shattering secrets and betrayals. Miren's seemingly valid reasons for not wanting to discuss The Incident.
But the M in Miren stood for many other things. Mystery. Missing. Madness. He was so mad at her—himself. He never allowed anyone in. Never. And he was beginning to see why. There was only safety in obscurity. And now everything was out in the open.
Even Axel.
"Have you been walking with you eyes closed the entire time?" Jeno could smell the joint in Axel's hand before he saw him. He hissed just as the other boy took a drag.
"I'm not in the mood for the idiotic banter you call humor," was Jeno's reply. Then his feet found movement. But not before Axel latched onto his arm. His grip wasn't particularly strong, but the look on the jokester's hazel eyes suddenly was.
"I know the word 'smile' isn't in your vocabulary, but I'm not an idiot. Something's bugging you." Axel leaned slightly against the gazebo near the forestry. "Something big."
If would be easy to dismiss the boy with an insult and go on his unfortunate way, but it didn't take long to realize that he now lived in a world were Axel was probably the only person he could talk to. Discreetly, that is.
"Girl stuff," Jeno said through his teeth. See? He could be personable. "Had a fight. It's not a big deal." Axel raised an eyebrow.
"Then why do you look like Theodora went missing?" Jeno almost growled.
Theodora.
"We broke up," Jeno clarified, allowing his worked up gaze to calm against the snow-capped evergreen trees. "Like I said, I'll get over it."
"I don't know..." Axel teased, a slightly giddy smile spreading across his lips. "She might have been the best thing that happened to you, Grinchy. Don't forget that you started to become a person when she came along." He laughed bitterly.
But Jeno did feel bitter. Miren made him feel like a person. Miren was responsible for his growth. Yet, she was his right, and he was her wrong. Maybe they were just doomed from the start, regardless of the illusion of progress they had made.
He sighed, realizing that humoring Axel was a mistake; everything was a mistake. His eyes, saddened and unmoved by this encounter, shifted to the other boy. "How do you know if you're wasting your time on something?"
Axel took another drag, before blowing out the air from his nostrils, like some sort of humanoid dragon. "If by 'something', you mean a girl, then I guess you've answered your own question. It's okay to have doubts, but you're not supposed to internalize them. If you have, then it's probably your brain warning you subconsciously," he replied rather intelligently, as if being high gave him a few more IQ points. "But honestly, Dora comes off as a girl who's too eager to please. And that's totally my thing because I'm a sexual being, but something tells me that doesn't get you off. Not like having a meaningful, heartfelt connection or something else girly does." He laughed and Jeno rolled his eyes.
"Good to see that this conversation was just as insightful as I thought it would be." Jeno narrowed his eyes.
"I'm serious!" Axel said very unseriously. "You need like a girl version of Wallace or even Miles. You know, someone who won't take your shit." It took everything for Jeno's eyes not to widen. So he shook his head instead.
"I'm leaving now."
"Here." Axel offered him his joint. Jeno just stared at him before Axel rolled his eyes. "It won't kill you. It wouldn't kill you to calm down."
"If you think I'd accept something that touched your dirty lips, then you don't know me as well as you think you do."
"No one knows you," Axel admitted with a laugh. "Besides, I'm not not forcing you."
Jeno was too smart to indulge in on-campus recreational drug use, but his mind was relentless. He would have no peace as long as Miren was missing. And even if she returned, a little birdy told him that they wouldn't be BFF's again. Not that they ever were.
So he took a drag. Coughed as the toxic air entered his lungs like the novice he was. As Axel laughed harder, he swore he'd never do it again. Especially when his mind clouded over in a sensation that was both unsettling and pleasant. However, before his brain could get addicted to it, he had a small bout of clarity.
A suspect in Miren's missing act.
***
"I don't see how you can be so confident that Miren's death is just an act," Artemis said, shaking her head. It was lunchtime, but since they had bigger fish to fry than having social lives, Artemis had just parked into the guest lot of The Gloveria City Hospital. She lusted for fish and fries as she turned off the ignition. Olive merely shrugged at her remark.
"Hope is a half optimism and half ignorance." She stepped out of the car, brushing the wrinkles out of her skirt. "Like I said, it's still better to believe that she's dead."
"That's the spirit."
"Don't twist my words," Olive cautioned with a small smile as they stepped inside the space. "I like to aim high. Worse case, we'll probably find some information to incriminate Penelope."
"I thought we already agreed that Penelope is socially indestructible."
"You agreed that. She's just a girl. Don't forget that."
Artemis breathed out a nervous breath. She wanted to forget a lot of things. And this hospital was one of them. Guess her parent's weren't getting another doctor. She turned to Olive. "Remind me exactly what we're doing again?"
"I talked to the head of the hospital about the camera footage and the conspiracy that surrounds Miren." She pursed her lips. "He 'promised' to offer access of the inside of the hospital, but I could tell he thought I was a joke. So I wanted to come here to get a physical sense of Miren's actual entry. As well as the witnesses she might have encountered. Maybe if we can make a case with them, we can get access to the footage."
Artemis wrinkled her nose as they walked through the powder white corridor. "Won't people get suspicious if we poke our heads around too much? And how are a bunch of stressed out hospital employees supposed to remember some random black girl that came in on one random night to see me? She isn't a unicorn."
"Calm you knickers, it was just a suggestion." Olive rolled her eyes. "I just wanted to familiarize myself with the place," she said, inspecting the linoleum floors, the even blander walls. "We still have the nurse."
They approached the reception area where a couple of nurses typed hastily on their computers, were others were talking with other hospital personal. One, a younger male, looked up long enough to take in the two girls.
"Can I help you two?
"Yes," Olive said, smiling brightly. "Do you know if and when Nurse Nancy Caldwell is in? We're students at St. Rosemunde and we wanted to interview her for volunteer work in multiple sclerosis for the pre-med society."
The man frowned, and Artemis felt her heart plunge into her stomach. "I'm sorry ladies, but Nancy is actually on a two week vacation. I can pass over her contact information if that's alright."
Olive's expression deflated only slightly as she nodded. "That sounds perfectly fine." Then they left almost as empty handed as they came.
"We should hurry before lunch ends," Artemis said, feeling somewhat defeated. She knew that progress took time, but it was everything she did got her nowhere. Chara had told her that Penelope's box was a bust, with only a dumb friendship necklace to show for their weeks of effort. So how was this not destined to be a total disappointment?
"Rome wasn't built in a day," Olive offered, picking up on the girl's somber spirits.
"But it was destroyed in a day," Artemis replied as they drove back to campus. Sure, she was being morbid, but what wasn't?
"It's not like I can hack into their computer network and get the footage for myself," she said, sinking against her seat. "Then again, I'm not trying to get anyone in jail."
Artemis' eyes widened. Wallace could get access to the footage, couldn't he? She shook her head. Despite everything, that idea seemed to be the most outrageous out of everything they'd done. Perhaps this was because this wouldn't be a dumb prank or a ply for revenge. Rather, it would confirm her worse than worse suspicions.
So as they drove, she sealed the thought away somewhere deep inside her troubled mind.