By Wouter Jaegers wo.jaegers@planet.nl

Part two in the "Trouble Walking" series.

Part one "Break out".

After the events of "Dye, dye my darling" Jane decides to leave Lawndale for a while and decides to hop on a freight train. She meets a fellow traveler, an Australian named Sparky and his dog Zippo. Eventually the train winds up in Canada and Jane and Sparky have to get out. The people of a local village aren't too pleased with their arrival and soon they are being chased away. Some boys from the village decide that chasing them away wasn't enough they go after them with shotguns and kill Sparky. Jane, wounded at her shoulder escapes them by jumping in a river.

"Where am I?"

"Is there somebody out there?"

"I need help"

"Okay, Lane stay calm, let's get yourself together."

"I'm in pain, why am I in pain?"

"Let's open my eyes so I can see where I am."

"All this white light, what's going on?"

"Why am I naked, who has taken my clothes?"

"Hello?"

"She's still alive."

"She's in luck but she's in a bad shape." Two voices from outside suddenly spoke. Jane looked up but couldn't find the source of the voices. She called out to the voices.

"Hello, can you hear me, I need help!"

"Hello, base this is patrol Nr. 14, we need an ambulance here quick. We have a female around eighteen or nineteen years old with gunshot wounds in coma." The voice spoke up again.

"Gunshot wounds?"

Suddenly Jane's surroundings changed, the white void made place for a place in a pine forest near a big river.

"What am I doing here? Oh wait I remember, I was here with someone, a foreign man. An Australian, what was his name again?"

"Johnathan Sparks, 'Sparky' for friends."

Jane looked around and saw Sparky standing there.

"Yes, I was there with you. But then something happened but what did happen?"

"I am sorry to say thot I doid here, remember them boys who tried to rape you before? They shot me."

The surrounding changed once more, this time Jane found herself at the drugstore. Tabitha stood and laughed mockingly at her.

"May I ask why you are laughing?"

"You just don't remember do you? You broke my jaw because I was about to stab your Aussie buddy's dog. I just got even with you."

"A dog… Oh yeah Zippo."

"Some friends of mine decided to get back on you and take revenge on what you did to me. They chased you down and were about to rape you when your Aussie buddy and his miserable excuse for a dog chased them away."

"I remember that but how did I get here in the first place?"

The surroundings changed once more, Jane found herself back in her old room. Daria sat on the bed and looked up.

"You decided to flee from Lawndale after you broke up with Tom. You hopped on a freight train where you met Sparky and you both would up in Canada."

Sparky and Tabitha walked in.

"Them boys from the village we visited shot me dead and shot you too. That's why you're here in the foist place"

"Are you saying that I died?"

"No, y're in a serious coma."

"Jane, we are not real, this is your inner world."

"Enough, I don't want to anymore of this, I want to return!"

"She's coming around." Jane suddenly heard a voice say, she looked around and saw that Tabitha, Daria and Sparky had vanished. She suddenly felt something on her face, she looked down and saw that it was an oxygen mask. Suddenly she felt her right shoulder getting very heavy, when checking it revealed to be heavily bandaged. Jane slowly began to feel that she was laying in a bed and that's when the surrounding made its final change.

"Where am I?" Jane asked when opening her eyes, her voice sounding tired and raspy. She tried to focus but her eyes wouldn't cooperate.

A female hand took hers and a soft and gentle voice spoke up.

"You are at the IC in London hospital, You were in comatose for nearly a week." Jane looked up and saw Mindy and Jack, Sparky's friends.

"How did you find me?" Jane asked.

"A couple of mounties came by to check the forest for poachers, they found you lying in the river two miles from our hotel." Mindy explained "you were in a really bad shape."

Jane suddenly remembered something really serious. "Oh god no… Sparky…they shot him…" she blurted out before starting to cry hysterically.

Mindy and Jack nodded sadly, they already knew about Sparky's death. Zippo stayed with his master all the time. The boys had ignored Zippo and left him for stray. Jane cried on, for the loss of her friend and for the loss of the easy life, why didn't she stay home? Jane wanted to go back, back to her old life, back to her room and be at home again but little did she know that that would become impossible.

Trent looked in total shock at the flyer on the front door as he returned from shopping. The house, HIS house, had been taken by the tax due to unpaid mortgage bills. "All the inhabitants are supposed to leave the house in two days." It read. Trent began to tremble in desperation, what the hell was he supposed to do?

"Okay Lane." Trent said while calming himself "this is really it, what are your options?" Trent opened the basement door and walked into Amanda's workshop only to see her packing, it was obvious that she was preparing another journey.

"Ah Trent, perfect timing I was just about to leave. My plane to San Francisco is due in half an hour." She remarked, flashing her ticket.

"And the conviscation of our house is due in two days." Trent added sounding dead serious. Amanda looked up.

"Huh, how can that be? We paid the mortgage on time didn't we, I always keep money apart so we can pay it." And then she remembered something terrifying "Oh no, I used most of it to finance this trip to San Francisco and Vince used some to visit Canada."

Trent rolled his eyes. "What is it with this family and travel?" he groaned "Anyway, we'll be kicked out and our house re-sold if we don't cough up the money quick."

"Listen I wish I could help you but my friends in San Francisco are counting that I will be there at the Monterey Pop festival reunion. So I really have to go." Amanda said while walking out. "But don't worry, you will make it through." She added before leaving the house and driving away.

Trent reached out and grabbed one of the pots standing around him. "Oh…WHAT THE HELL DOES IT TAKE TO SHOW YOU HOW SERIOUS THIS IS MOM!?" he screamed while tossing it and letting it shatter. "What am I supposed to do?"

"WHERE IS JANE LANE?" Ms. Li's voice hollered through the teachers' lounge. "She had to attend some classes didn't she?" She asked the faculty who were all gathered.

"To be honest with you Ms. Li, no, I haven't seen her for more than a week now." Mr. O'Neill replied "But why didn't you try to call her parents? They of all people should know about her whereabouts."

Ms Li groaned "Each time I do I get that no good brother of her' on the phone. It makes me wonder if she even has parents."

Ms. DeFoe raised her head "You mean Trent Lane, he was one of my most gifted students, he never could find himself in visual arts but he found songs by just looking at the still-lives." She sighed "The Lanes have always been a very artistic family, Amanda with her pottery, Vincent with his photography, Trent with his poetry and Jane with her paintings."

"Maybe to you." Ms. Morris grumbled "But the two Lane girls who attended my class, or should I say were supposed to attend my class, never put in any effort."

"Hah, and that's their good right, with you only teaching cheerleading. I can understand why both Penny and Jane didn't want to get all sweaty for a bunch of male football players." Ms. Barch snorted.

"PEOPLE, stay calm please. We are getting away from our original point of discussion." Ms. Li called the faculty members back to order. "The most important thing is that we can punish Ms. Lane for vandalism."

After the meeting had ended, Ms. Defoe approached Ms. Barch and Mr. O'Neill. "Janet, Timothy, can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Sure, Claire go ahead." Mr. O'Neill answered.

"Why was Trent Lane expelled, I never really understood that. He was a good student and attended all classes as he was supposed to." She began.

"Come to think of it, I don't know too." Mr. O'Neill added. "As you said before, he was an excellent poet and he and some friends formed a band playing songs with fruitful lyrics. They named themselves "Emit Remmus" which is "Summer Time" spelled backwards. They had rehearsals in the auditorium and were to play at the 1991 school prom."

"I remember seeing them doing their final rehearsal." Ms. Barch chimed in "I must admit that they were decent, for a bunch of male teenagers, their songs were beautiful and melodic."

"But what happened at that prom? Trent was expelled just after the prom had been." Mr. O'Neill wondered out loud "I remember something about the football team starting a riot."

"Yes, the Quarterback at the time, Tommy Sherman, complained that the party didn't 'kick as much ass as it could have.' And then they raided the stage." Ms. Barch hissed.

"After he was expelled I saw Trent dropping Jane off at school frequently. He had changed, I guess because of backlash of the experience. His songs suddenly lacked all the freshness they had before and he went totally into the opposite direction with his next band, poetry and melody being replaced by dark rhymes that lack any depth and wild loud noise to accompany them." Mr. O'Neill sighed.

"I'm going to him to find out what really happened." Ms. DeFoe then stated, it will also give us some certainties about where Jane might be."

Meanwhile at the Lawndale library the same question was asked.

"I just wish that I knew where Jane was." Daria sighed "Life without her isn't the same."

"I understand, she is your best friend after all." Jodie said in understanding "I never had true friends, they were only interested in me because of my popularity. The only true person who I can see as a friend is also my lover."

This revelation made Daria look up surprised. "Do you mean that you and Mack…" she started but stopped her sentence midway, hanging her head in shame. "I'm sorry, I never should have asked."

"Don't worry, I don't feel offended by it. Because of the very few hours I have for myself I had developed a burning desire and Mack… You know, had it in for me and after I turned 18 a few weeks back I decided to give myself to him." Jodie giggled. "Yes, even though my parents are forcing me to stretch our relationship to the bursting point, Mack and I had the night of our lives." Jodie sighed "But if you miss Jane that much, why don't you go look for her, you could even hire a private eye."

Daria looked up after hearing that this was a possibility she never thought of before.

Meanwhile a couple of hundreds of miles away, was Jane still sobbing in her hospital bed. Why did she leave home, why did Sparky die, why was she shot at? All those questions spinning around in her head. Jane couldn't get herself to focus, her head being too blurry from both fever and the painkilling drugs. But suddenly a slap in her face cleared it all up again.

"Wakey, wakey, Yankee bitch." A soft spoken but vicious sounding voice said.

Jane opened her eyes and saw Tabitha standing next to her bed. Tabitha had her head taped in and looked at Jane with eyes of fire. "You are not the most lucky girl in the world are you?" Tabitha slowly spoke. "Where is your Aussie boyfriend now?"

"Dead." Jane replied, her voice laying as much hatred as she possibly could into that one word. "I don't get you and your friends, what is wrong for me to get supplies for my journey?" She hissed.

Tabitha laughed. "You ought to know, we can watch a lot of USA channels and they all have it in for us Canadians. MTV has an advertisement with a guy ranting what he would do if he had one million bucks, and his list includes buy cruise missiles to blow up Canada. And there are still militiant groups who are stating that Canada should be part of the USA."

"So because of those idiots I get shot and left to die in a river only because I wanted to buy tampons?" Jane hissed "Get a life. You will wind up in jail because of things like this, weather or not you're the mayor's daughter."

"Ha, that's where you are wrong being a mayors daughter has always kept me clean." Tabitha sneered "Know your place Yankee, I'm in control here." Tabitha grabbed the cord from Jane's respirator and pulled it out of the contact. Almost immediately Jane began to choke because of lack of oxygen.

Tabitha suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder and turned around, it was the mayor. " Tabitha no!" He then slapped her, causing Tabitha to reach for her jaw in agony again and dropping the cord. The mayor picked it up and plugged it in again. Jane's breathing became steady again. The mayor looked at his daughter in anger.

"Oh no, what did you do?" Tabitha asked her father while a stream of blood was making its way down from her mouth.

"I prevented you from doing something very stupid, young lady." He growled. "I haven't got the slightest idea where this hatred towards foreigners comes from but this is going too far. I'm bringing you in."

"No, you can't do this!" Tabitha mumbled, her voice getting weaker by the minute. "Byou zhust ghan't…"

"It seems to me like I just have done it." The mayor grumbled before turning his attention to Jane. "Are you okay Ms. Lane?"

"Let's see, your daughter's friends killed my travelling partner, they also shot me and left me for dead, I was in a coma and as soon as I wake up, your daughter is trying to kill me. So other then that I guess I'm okay." Jane's voice rasped.

"I came here to tell you that one of the boys who chased you had turned himself in, he confessed everything and told us the names of the others. They have all been arrested." The mayor said while two nurses took Tabitha away. "We have tried to call your family in Lawndale but nobody answered the phone."

"I have no family, I walk alone." Jane sighed.

Meanwhile back in Lawndale, things weren't any better for the one Lane family member still there.

Trent was riding in his car loaded full of Lane items and furniture to pawnshops at Degastreet hoping to sell enough to keep himself supplied with a roof. He even sacrificed his own guitars, Jesse would loan his' to him at gigs so it wasn't really a problem. Trent made his first stop at the "Wooden Mill" a pawnshop owned by a Dutch immigrant with a name nobody could pronounce. At least that Dutchman made it easy on everyone by letting them call him Paul.

Paul was just tuning up a guitar when Trent came in. "Ah Trent, Goedenmorgen, Good morning what can I do for you?"

"I hope you will be able to buy some of the stuff I have here with me." Trent began "That's a nice guitar you got there."

"Yeah, it's a 1965 Gibson J180, the same guitar The Beatles used to use, hang on to it while I take a look at your stuff." Paul handed Trent the guitar while walking out of the shop to check what Trent had with him.

Trent strummed a chord, the guitar sang. Trent strummed again and then something on the wall grabbed his attention. It was an old LP record from Simon and Garfunkel.

Suddenly Trent was back in 1981, he remembered his mother playing their records over and over again, she was four months pregnant, Jane would be born soon. Penny was still living at home, she was in her early teens and she made it no secret that she hated Lawndale, she hated the USA, ten short years later she left. Trent himself was four years old, he remembered everything but one thing stood out, those Simon and Garfunkel songs. Trent strummed a chord again and began to sing.

That song, "The Boxer", it told his story. Trent had to swallow. This was frightening, he went from listening to it to living it.

"That's a good rendition you played there." A voice spoke up, snapping Trent's trance. Paul stood in the doorway with a slight smile. "This is much better than what you normally play with your band."

"My mother used to play those records when I was a kid, I'm not ashamed to admit that I loved all of it." Trent sighed, normally he would tell nobody about his true musical roots but what the heck, after losing his house, he had nothing else to loose anymore.

"Anyway, what's going on at your place? You brought almost the entire house with you." Paul observed. Trent grinned sadly.

"Let me tell you about it…" he then began.

Meanwhile at the Morgendorffer residence were Daria and Jodie at the computer looking for missing person sites, knowing that they could search for Jane. Daria sighed.

"What kind of a friend am I, I should go out there myself to look for her." She grumbled.

"Look, you are doing the best you can right now. Those people have the methods and the material to search at a much better rate than you could ever do yourself. Getting them to do the search is the best you can do I'm sure that when they find her she'll be grateful for you doing this for her." Jodie replied. All she could do is comfort Daria as a true friend.

"I guess you're right. Wait a minute… Let's go to Trent, he might have a clue about where she might be." Daria then spoke up.

Meanwhile at the "Wooden Mill" had Trent finished his story.

"Ow, that's what we in Holland call 'Pech hebben', bad luck." Paul spoke up "Look I can't buy all of the stuff you have with you but I do have a temporary solution for you. I can take you in as an employee and you can sell that stuff yourself, I'll pay you your hours and you can keep the money of the stuff coming from your place when it gets sold." Paul reassured Trent.

"That's cool Paul, thanks but this still leaves me without a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in." Trent sighed.

"You can stay in the old caravan behind the store, nobody wanted to buy it." Paul said while standing up and showing Trent the way. "But you have to keep in mind that this is only temporary, as soon as you have earned yourself enough money to rent an apartment, you have to go."

"I understand Paul, Thanks a lot. I have to go and retrieve a few more things from my house. The IRS will take it tomorrow." Trent smiled sadly while shaking Paul's hand.

When Daria and Jodie arrived at the Lane residence a few hours later they were surprised to see Trent packing.

"Oh hey Jodie, Daria." Trent greeted them.

"Trent, what's going on?" Daria asked with utter denial in her voice to what she feared was going on.

"The IRS took the house, Mom and Dad went on yet another travel using the money meant to pay the mortgage with, so I'm moving out." Trent explained. "I know that you came to ask me if I know about the whereabouts of Janie but I can't help you now. I will be staying at the pawnshop "The Wooden Mill" for a while."

"Is there anything we can do for you?" Daria asked Trent before he got into his car.

"Yeah, see that box over there, keep it somewhere safe." Trent said while pointing at large cardboard box. "Don't open it, not until Janie returns." He continued while starting his car and driving off.

Daria and Jodie looked at each other and shrugged before lifting the box and loading it into the Morgendoffer SUV.

"What would that be?" Jodie wondered out loud.

"Whatever it is, it must belong to Jane. Trent really loves her and he would never sell any of her stuff without her permission." Daria proclaimed while getting behind the wheel and starting the car. "He doesn't care that much of his other family members though, they are never home, so who would notice."

Meanwhile back in Canada was Jane being visited by Jack and Mindy.

"Are you guys serious about this?" Jane asked in pleasant surprise.

"Absolutely serious, Jane." Jack replied "We will provide you with shelter for as long as you like, Your body must rest and the winter will be coming soon."

"I don't know how to thank you." Jane blubbered

"Don't mention it." Mindy reassured her. "The winters can get really harsh and you are in no condition to travel. Besides, Zippo wants you around too."

"Guys, you are the best. But can I ask you one more favor?" Jane began. "Send me an e-mail to this adress, I will write a message later."

"The Wooden Mill" Jodie, and Daria were helping Trent with getting the caravan livable. Most of Trent's stuff was all ready cramped in. Trent had set up his bed and a petrol heater made the winter cold bearable.

"It will take me awhile to get used to this." Trent said with a sad tone in his voice. "I sure hope Janie will do better than I do."

"At least Paul would let you keep your own bed, so you will have at least one thing that reminds you of home." Daria said trying to comfort him.

Jodie looked at Daria and Trent this was true friendship.

Trent looked at Jodie and Daria "Thanks for being there for me, if I had the courage then I would… Oh what the hell." Trent got up and gave both girls a big kiss.

After dropping Jodie at her place Daria went home. When she walked in, the fashion club came up to her.

"So like Daria, Quinn told us that you and Jodie were starting, like a business that helps unpopular people to, like get a job or something. And we wanted you to know that we support you with that idea, or something." Sandi began.

Daria looked at Quinn, "A consulting firm for 'unpopular people'? " she thought but then she realized that none of the fashion club members would understand the meaning of the word "minority" so Quinn had to use a word they would understand.

"Thanks Sandi, but would you mind telling me why you support me this?" Daria asked, curious about the motives they had.

"Well if you can get, like unpopular people a job, they will earn money and then they can buy clothes that are fashionable and stuff." Was Sandi's reply, Daria rolled her eyes, she should have known…

When she arrived at her room Daria turned on her PC hoping to get a reply from the missing persons bureau, what she got however was much better.

An e-mail from an unknown sender lay in her mail box, Daria could almost jump for joy when she opened it.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

Daria's eyes began to tear up, Jane was okay, she still didn't know where to find her but for the moment, it didn't matter. Jane was okay.

Daria looked outside and saw the first snowflakes fall, she thought of Trent, having to sleep in a caravan, he would be so cold. But this message from Jane would certainly warm him up again.

To be continued in "Fractured Mirror"