While Charles drove the pink convertible, Jane was smiling with her eyes closed while the wind moved her hair violently.
"I haven't felt so happy in days" Jane mumbled with a giggle ". We're out of Lawndale, we're leaving that hell, finally".
Charles didn't dare to remind her that they were coming back to Lawndale only a few hours later.
Jane was feeling strange. During those days in Lawndale, everything had been so surreal that she had been feeling extremely numb or extremely sad? For the first time she was away of the place where she had started to feel that way. She felt could almost imagine this was like that time she, Daria, Trent and Jesse were going to the Alternapalooza, if she imagined the smell of the back of the messy van. When they finally reached their destiny and entered Boston Jane was asleep. She had fallen asleep while thinking about the good times with Daria and Trent. Charles didn't wake her up, because he didn't want to disturb her since they weren't in the coffee shop yet. But the sound of the city did it for him. Jane woke up and yawned, and when she found herself surrounded by somewhere that wasn't Lawndale or the empty, endless highway her face lit up and she smiled.
"We're here, we're finally here!" Jane screamed and she combed her hair with her fingers.
"Oh, hey, I didn't know you were awake".
"Hell, I'm starving" she said taking her backpack from the floor of the car.
"Allow me, sweet Jane, to invite you to eat lunch" that was the first time in days that he had said anything flirty.
"Hmm... free food is free food. Where are we eating?".
"Give me the address of the coffee shop, we could have lunch somewhere near there and they will probably be a few minutes late, enough time for having lunch and then meeting them there".
Jane took the notepad out of her backpack and gave it to Charles. She also put her jacket on.
Jane had never been in Boston before, but Charles had been there enough times to recognize around which part of the city was the place. It didn't take them long to find the place, and there were a few restaurants around there. There was an Italian restaurant that served, for Jane's excitement, a pizza that smelled great. Jane and Charles sat on table and ordered pizza. It amazed Charles how Jane was the person who liked pizza the most from all the people he knew.
Jane started to laugh while neither she or Charles knew what to say.
"What happened?" Charles asked with a smile, used to see Jane laughing for no reason.
She suddenly stopped laughing and got serious.
"Is this a date, Chuck?".
The question hit Charles, he hadn't thought about it as a date until Jane brought it up but when he thought about it, it did look like one.
"I... I... why...?" He hesitated confused.
"You know, to be honest with you, at this point if this was a date I wouldn't mind.
Charles looked impressed and his jaw dropped.
"R...really?".
"Yeah" she reassured him with a smile ". I've told you this a bunch of times lately, you're not a bad guy, you just needed to know when to shut up. Now that you do, I like hanging out with you".
The pizza arrived the table at that moment. The waiter saw Jane looking at Charles with a smile and Charles with widely open eyes and a dropped jaw and just raised an eyebrow confused and almost intrigued.
They ate in silence, Charles amazed and Jane satisfied and calm, and they tried not to take too long. When they were done, Charles paid and they walked to the other side of the street to the coffee shop. Before entering, Charles grabbed Jane's arm and stopped her for a moment.
"Jane, did you... mean those things you said at the restaurant?".
She smiled at him and grabbed his hand.
"Yes, Chuck, I did".
Still holding Charles' hand, they entered the restaurant and found three people sitting in a table, wearing blue coats like they had said they would, but she was expecting five. It was two men, one fat and one thin, both with black hair and a woman with blonde hair and green eyes. They had seemed to recognize Jane and Charles too. Holding Charles' hand even more tightly, she shyly walked towards the table.
"Uh, hi. I'm Jane, he's Charles" Jane introduced both of them.
"Hello, I'm Mary and these are John and Luke. Have a seat" the woman offered ". Linda and James couldn't come, their cat got sick".
"That's okay" Jane said.
"So you told us something weird was happening at your town. Lawndale, right?" John asked while taking his cup of black coffee, ready to drink it.
"Everyone went mad" Charles said as a summary.
"What do you mean?" Luke inquired.
"This is gonna sound crazy, but a few days ago everyone in Lawndale was..." Jane couldn't find how to describe them.
"Plain? Miserable, maybe? " Charles suggested.
"Both, I guess. Anyway" she continued ", they were so... different. My best friend was a clinical, not enthusiastic girl, my brother was a lazy band member. Now I wake up one morning and she's a cheerleader and he's going to college to become a doctor".
"And this happened within one night?" Mary asked.
Jane and Charles looked around the table and noticed none of the people there seemed to think they were crazy. They actually looked like they were thinking about what they had been told very seriously.
Jane nodded.
"Why do you think you two weren't affected?" Luke asked.
"We don't know. We thought about drugs in the water or food but I ate the same food and drank the same water".
"That's something very strange. I mean, you did not start acting like them. Did you kids consider the possibility of your friends being part of some sort of mental control experiment?" John suggested.
"How could that work, Luke? I can't see the government doing something like this in one night, to a whole town, can you?" Mary refuted.
Luke shrugged and everyone in the table were silently trying to figure out something, like Jane and Charles had done before already.
The things Jane and Charles had said before started being said by the other three people and most of the ideas were quickly dismissed.
"A massive alien abduction?" Mary said repeating the last possibility that had been said by John ". Why would aliens want to do that and leave two kids out of it? If they are going to do something like that, wouldn't they plan it well enough to make sure they aren't going to forget abducting two people?".
The table had started to be more like a debate between the adults in which Jane and Charles didn't talk much, because the subject that was far more complex than anything they knew. All the theories that they had touched superficially and then dismissed before had been touched deeply by these people and dismissed once again but based of many things the teenagers had not even considered before. After a three hour discussion that touched almost every conspiracy theory that the aforementioned people knew, everyone shrugged when they ran out of things to say. With sad looks on their faces, Mary, John and Luke had to communicate their conclusion to Jane and Charles.
"Kids, we're sorry but we can't figure anything out. We really tried but we just can't" Mary apologized and took Jane's notepad and a pen. She began to write down a phone number and an address.
"Here" she said handing the notepad back to Jane ". That's Linda and James' address and phone number. They know some stuff we don't. I'm afraid you may have to wait until tomorrow, from what they told me their cat got intoxicated and they are going to be busy for a long time".
Jane looked down at the notepad, sad, and thanked the three people. After a few handshakes and goodbyes, only Charles and Jane remained in the table.
"Do you want to go now?" Charles asked, as sad as she was.
"I'm not going back" Jane stated firmly.
"What are you talking about?" He gasped.
"You heard them, Linda and James could help us but not until at least tomorrow. And I am not leaving this place if I know I have any hopes in here. You can go now if you want, but I am staying".
Charles looked directly into Jane's eyes and knew there was no possible way he could persuade her.
"I'll stay with you. I've got my dad's credit card, so we can pay with it and save any cash we have for emergencies. Let's go, we'll find somewhere to stay".
Jane smiled at Charles and took his hand, then they left the coffee shop to find somewhere to stay.