While walking home that day, Chance’s phone buzzed in his pocket, he took it out and checked. It was Brooklyn, or rather, Luna, who had sent him a DM on Instagram.

My school started today, so I didn’t really get a chance to talk to you during the day :(

So…Luna isn’t Brooklyn? If she was, she could’ve talked to him at school, perhaps she didn’t recognize him?

Me too, I bet you guys had a lot of preparation for the first day of school going on

Yep, we had a school-opening ceremony where we had to listen to the principal blabber about the rules and introducing the new staff members… It was really boring

Wait… So Luna’s not in the same school as Chance?

Besides, I think I’ve never asked you this before, but which city are you in?

Oh, I live in Manchester, and you?

You know what, me too, perhaps someday we can meet each other in real life

Sure! That would be so exciting :D

Chance could not understand what was happening. Brooklyn looked exactly the same as Luna’s pictures, they live in the same city, but Brooklyn doesn’t seem to recognize Chance.

The next day at school, Chance tried his best to walk in front of Brooklyn and attract her attention without seeming too intentional. She must have seen him, and knows that he exist, but she doesn’t seem to care much about him. Chance wanted to ask Brooklyn if she was called Luna on Instagram, but doesn’t know how to bring up the topic in a conversation, or even how to start a conversation with her.

After the morning classes, students spilled into the hallways to grab their things in their lockers. In the hustle and bustle, Chance tried to move past the crowd in front of his locker. There was Jack, whose locker was right beside his; Allison, whose was on top of his; and Chloe, whose locker was on the other side of Chance’s. It was chaos. 

“Excuse me.”

Chance turned around, it was Brooklyn, he stared into her deep brown eyes but Brooklyn wasn’t looking back at him.

“Oh, sorry…” Chance moved away quickly.

Brooklyn brushed past him, “Chlo-Chlo!”

Chloe looked up from her kneeling position, “Yes?”

Brooklyn walked towards her and said something.

She seems so close and opened to Chance while chatting online, why does she act like she doesn’t even know him? Chance couldn’t think of any away to get the answer from Brooklyn without having an awkward conversation.

Just a few minutes later, when Chance and Tristan were walking down the stairs to the cafeteria, Chance heard a girl’s voice calling his name. When he turned around, it was Brooklyn. Chloe was standing beside her, smiling.

Brooklyn said, “Chance, Tristan, are you two free this Saturday afternoon? We’re planning on going to an Escape Quest to play but it requires 5 or more people. Hunter’s coming, you know. And us, and Melody.”

“I’m always free during the week-end, and it sounds fun, sure, I’ll come, can you text me the exact location?” Tristan answered right away.

“Sure, wait a sec…” Brooklyn browsed her phone for the location and sent it to Tristan, “there!”

Chance stuttered, “I’m…I’m also fine, I guess I’ll…I’ll come along too.”

“Great!” Chloe beamed and the two girls walked away, slightly skipping.

Brooklyn isn’t at all nervous around Chance, and she spoke to him just like she speaks to Tristan. Chance had came to the conclusion that he was just imagining things and Brooklyn was never Luna after all.

After they had left, Tristan asked, “You have Brooklyn’s number, right?”

“Eh…Nope.”

Tristan said, “Oh, I’ll give it to you, here.”

He showed Chance Brooklyn’s number on his phone and Chance typed it into his contacts, “Thanks.”

Hi, this is Chance 

He texted Brooklyn.

Hiii :)

Brooklyn sent over the location of the Escape Quest.

2 p.m.

When he arrived home, the first thing Chance did was to go to his mother. “Mom, I’m gonna go to an Escape Quest this Saturday, after lunch. Hunter and Tristan’s gonna be there, and some girls, it’s not far, I can bike there.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s fine for me,” and she continued humming without looking up from her phone.

There was finally a reason Chance could look forward to the week-end except for not having to go to school. On Friday, Chance anticipated so impatiently for the classes to be over quickly and when he got home, he could not wait to go to bed.

The awaited Saturday finally came and as Chance stretched his arms and yawned loudly, it was 10:30. He already had butterflies in his stomach while picturing how day would go. Brunch was a monotonous omelet and toast, with a cup of apple juice.

At a quarter past 13:00, Chance started preparing. He muddled around in his closet and spent ten minutes choosing the best outfit. Then, he scrambled downstairs, grabbed his bike, and headed outside.

When he arrived at Redsky mall, it was almost 2 p.m. He went to the third floor, where the Escape Quest was, and found Tristan and Melody already there.

“Hi guys!” Chance waved at them.

Melody said, “Hey, we just arrived a few minutes ago, let’s just wait for the others for a while.”

After a couple of minutes, Hunter, Chloe, and Brooklyn arrived. Chloe was skipping along the way and was thrilled when he saw the other three.

“It’s so nice to see you guys,” she sang and danced her way towards the lady at the reception desk, “Hello, I think I pre-ordered the tickets on Thursday, it’s the 2 p.m. one, under the name of Miss Anniston.”

The lady searched through her thick notebook which pages were already yellow and crumbled, “Is your phone number the one that ends in 6709?” She asked.

“Yep, that’s me,” Chloe nodded enthusiastically.

“All right, follow me, everyone, I’ll lead you inside,” The lady stood up and walked towards a doorway.

She opened the door but there was only darkness inside, then, she gestured the teens to enter the doorway while she stood beside it.

Chloe grabbed Hunter’s hand and hurried inside, “Come on, guys, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

One by one, the others followed into the doorway. As Melody entered, the door shut behind them, and they were trapped in this small, condensed darkness.

“So… What are we supposed to do right now?” Brooklyn broke the silence.

“Oh, we try to proceed into the next room of course,” Chloe explained leisurely as if it was common sense.

Brooklyn said, “Oh, but how do we do it?”

“Just look around for some clues, see if there are anything that could help us go somewhere else, like a trapdoor or something.”

Chance couldn’t see anything and all that he could feel is Tristan’s shoulders behind him and Hunter’s back in front of him.

Without warning, Hunter cried out, “Woaaah!”

Instantaneously, bright light poured in from where he was standing. There was a hidden door and they have solved the first riddle, probably the easiest of them all.

Hunter stepped out of the new door and arrived into a small but brightly lit chamber. There was a table and several chairs, and a lot of knickknacks spilled on the floor. The room was so messy that it was hard to walk from one end to another.

“Hey, there’s a door over there!” Tristan pointed at the other end of the room, where a silver door knob was hanging.

“I’ll go try it,” Hunter leaped across the room, onto the chairs, and towards the other end of it. He tried to turn the door knob and pushed the door, however, the knob wouldn’t budge to turn, it was locked.

Melody rolled her eyes, “I guess we’ll have to search for the key to that door in all this trash.”

“So Hunter and I can take this area, near the door; Chance and Brooklyn, you can search around the table and chairs; and Tristan and Melody, you can look through the part near the entrance.” Chloe directed everyone around.

After that, she started digging through the cardboard, fake gold, and children’s toys. Melody refused to bend down, so Tristan was doing all the work. Chance has looked through everything on the table and tried to avoid speaking to Brooklyn, who was busy muddling around the chairs.

After a while, Tristan stood up and announced, “I think I’ve got a key chain, but there are three keys on here, I bet one of them is the right one.”

He was holding a key chain with a bronze, silver, and gold key. Tristan walked over the mess toward the door and inserted the bronze key, it fit perfectly and he turned the knob, then he pushed open the door, which led to another room.

Just as he was about to toss the key chain into the muddle and head into the next room, Chloe stopped him, “I think we should keep the other keys, in case they come into any use later.”

The three boys and three girls continued their journey through the rooms one by one. They had to call the staff with the walkie-talkie twice because they got stuck in the rooms. After almost 2 hours, they had emerged into the entrance hall again.

“Congratulations! You’ve made it through all the rooms!” The lady at the recipient greeted the teens when they had completed the quest, “Have a nice evening and come back again soon!”

“Thank you, bye!” Chloe waved and they left.

On the way towards the elevator, Brooklyn checked the time on her phone and said, “I think I’ll have to go pick up my sister right now, she’s having drawing class on the second floor, but her class doesn’t end until 5:30.”

Chloe asked, “Oh, she’s called Luna, right?”

“Yep, do you guys want to come look at her for a couple minutes?”

Tristan said, “Sure, I’m not busy going anywhere after this.”

“Not a big problem,” Hunter agreed.

Wait, Luna?

Chance didn’t want to be left out or to seem weird, so he also decided to join the others to see Brooklyn’s sister.

They took the elevator to the second floor and Brooklyn led the way to Luna’s drawing center. They stayed outside and watched through a window, but she didn’t notice.

Brooklyn pointed at a 12-year-old brown-haired girl with freckles. She resembled Brooklyn, but her nose was slightly rounder. Luna was painting a serene landscape of an island with water color.

After a few minutes, Hunter and Chloe said goodbye and left while the others waited for Luna.

A few minutes past 17:30, Luna came out of the center and waved at Brooklyn. At a closer glance, Luna’s cheeks were red and cute, but she was timid and didn’t talk much.

“Are these your friends?” Luna asked Brooklyn.

“Yep, this is Chance, this is Tristan, and this is Melody,” she pointed at each one of them.

Chance smiled at her, “Hi, Luna.”

She said hi back awkwardly without even looking at Chance.

After that, Luna remained silent and held her head down as they traveled to the ground floor together. Tristan and Melody took a taxi home while Brooklyn and Luna walked. Chance waved at them, then grabbed his bike and headed home.

Brooklyn is really bad at thinking of names, using her sister’s name as her fake name on Instagram, she had probably used it to keep some privacy. But still, it was sure that it’s her. However, she didn’t seem nervous when she introduced Luna to him. 

When he arrived home, Chance pulled up the photos he had taken with Brooklyn in front of the Escape Quest and scrolled through his DMs with “Luna” to find the picture she had sent him. He put the pictures together and obviously, they were the same person. Chance was sure that his eyes weren’t conceiving him and that he wasn’t imagining the similarities.

The girls’ thoughts were always so difficult to read. Brooklyn seems so nice, it was unlikely that she finds confusing Chance to be funny, but there was no other explanation for this perplexing situation.