Elusion(41)

That’s another thing about family—I don’t know what it is that compels us to give them more second chances than we give our friends, but maybe it’s not something we’re supposed to understand.

Just as I finish that thought in my head, I sit down next to Josh, leaving only a small space between us. Then I feel my father’s passcard digging into my rear end from my back pocket.

His passcard. I lean forward and pull it out, setting it on the table in front of us. Once again, my mind is flooded with all the questions that overwhelmed me back at my house—and the crazy theory that my father might have been addicted to Elusion and faked his death so he could disappear without a trace. While a part of me really wants to dismiss everything, the other part wants the crazy theory to be true, just to create the possibility that my dad isn’t dead. Either way, Josh might be the only one who can help me make any sense of it.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” he asks, placing a warm hand on my shoulder.

Instead of answering his question, I pick up the passcard and stare it. Then all of a sudden, I glance at him and blurt out:

“What if my father is still alive?”

Josh’s eyebrows creep up into two steep arches. “Are you serious?”

“I know it’s a leap,” I say. “But finding this passcard has made me really suspicious.”

“Yeah, it’s weird that we found it, but I don’t see how it means your father is still alive.”

“What if my dad wasn’t in that plane when it disintegrated? What if it was controlled remotely? Right before he bought a HyperSoar, my dad told me that’s how the CIT tested them, so I know it’s possible.”

Josh takes the passcard out of my hands and examines it. “So what are you trying to say? That your dad staged the crash?”

“Maybe,” I say, my voice faint.

“Well, what about the FAA? If they notified your family of your dad’s death, I’m guessing they had substantial proof, passcard or not,” Josh says. “And even if he was addicted, do you really think your dad would do something that awful? Lie to the people he loves? And if he knew Elusion was addictive, would he allow it to be mass-produced?”


“No,” I admit. The father I knew wasn’t capable of that kind of recklessness. But if he really did die on that plane, how could he have left his passcard behind? Why would my dad go anywhere without it? Why would he keep a bottle of granulated Zolpidem at his office? And why was he protecting these copies of Walden?

I stand up and cross my arms in front of my chest, facing the smudged window. ”I just have this strange feeling that he’s still alive,” I say. “That he somehow found me in my Escape to warn me.”

I know how insane this sounds. Besides the passcard, the only proof I have that my dad might still be alive are these strange fragments of my father’s life, and a vision of him in a make-believe world. Even so, when you put them all together, they seem like pieces of evidence—of what exactly, I’m still not sure.

“Can we use my father’s passcard to find out the last place he used it?” I ask hopefully. “That could give us a strong lead.”

“The only people with that kind of technology are the police,” he says. “But think about how much crime there is in Detroit. How long would it take for the cops to start investigating a case they’ve already closed?”

“I guess,” I say. “Honestly, I don’t think I could bring myself to hand it over to someone else anyway. It would feel like, I don’t know . . . giving up.”

Josh rises and joins me near the window, handing me the passcard. “I know what it’s like. When you lose someone, it’s hard to let them go. You come up with a thousand excuses that will explain why they were taken from you—reasons that will make all the pain go away.”

My hands begin to tremble, a crack in my seemingly calm exterior, as I admit to myself that there’s some kind of rational explanation behind my dad’s passcard and the drugs. But I’m not ready to accept that reality is entirely black-and-white like Josh is suggesting.

Especially since it seems Patrick wants to keep us from thinking anything is really wrong with Elusion.

“What about the number fifty-twenty?” I ask. “Don’t you think it has something to do with both my vision of my dad, and your sister and her friends?”

“It could,” Josh says, a wary smile forming on his lips. “I think it’s pretty clear Patrick is somehow tied into all of this, too.”

“Have you heard from him yet?” I ask.

I hope to God the answer is yes. Maybe Patrick messaged Josh and gave him a good reason why he didn’t show up at the factory. I need to believe that I’m totally misjudging him, even if it’s only for a moment. But Josh shakes his head no.

“When he was at my house, he said the problems I experienced with Elusion, and the number fifty-twenty, could be related to a downloading issue with the upgraded app, but—”

“Okay, that’s a lie,” Josh says, cutting me off. “If there was any kind of downloading error with the new app, you wouldn’t have been able to open the program and get to Elusion in the first place.”

“Are you sure?”

Josh cocks his head to the side and grimaces.

“Sorry. I forgot about the computer mastery thing.”