Read SNAP! and the Alter Ego Dimension for Free Online

Delport?” Wayne asked, wanting to do something. “I can go anywhere and look.”
    “I’m out of ideas, Wayne. I don’t know where else to search. I’ve checked with everybody I know, everyone I can think of.” Wayne heard Mrs. Delport start to cry again. “I . . . have even phoned her dad. I thought that maybe she was with him. But he’s so rude nowadays. It is as if he’s always drunk. It is as if his drunken personality has taken over completely. That’s why I can’t think that she would’ve gone to him for any reason. But why would she run away? We didn’t have words or a fall out, Wayne. Did she say anything to you about running away?”
    Mrs. Delport’s words sounded like an indictment against him. Perhaps Tammy was hiding because of the spot on her face. Perhaps she had decided not to go back to school until the pimple had cleared. It was his entire fault. He was the reason why Tammy’s poor mother was in such a state. Tammy had run away—without money or her phone . . . But it didn’t make sense. Tammy’s mother was right. Nowadays nobody in their right mind would run away from home without taking at least one of those two items. It’s stupid.
    “Mrs. Delport, my father is a former defense force officer. I’ll ask him what he thinks about all of this. Maybe he’ll have a plan. I’ll phone again later. Good bye.”
    Wayne put the phone down and walked towards the sitting room where his father was watching cricket on the television. He glanced at the score before sitting beside his dad, who gave him one look and then frowned.
    “What’s the matter, Wayne?”
    Wayne started to tell his dad about Tammy’s disappearance. Hans Basson, listened attentively to every word Wayne said. Here and there he interrupted to ask a question or clarify what Wayne was trying to explain. The cricket totally forgotten.
    “You don’t think Tammy’s run away, do you?” his father asked when Wayne finished.
    “No, Dad. At first I thought she was hiding from me, but now it’s getting too late. I’m worried.”
    “And it seemed as if Tammy was busy on her computer, her phone left lying there?” his dad asked.
    “Yes. And the towel was hanging over the back of the chair,” Wayne answered.
    His dad stood up. He was over six feet tall with brown hair and a luxuriant moustache only lightly flecked with gray. Despite a bit of a paunch, his dad was a man that kept himself quite fit. Wayne saw a worried frown between his father’s pensive green eyes.
    “There was an article in the Sunday newspaper about a boy who had been next to his younger brother when the former disappeared for a few minutes. Suddenly the boy reappeared again in exactly the same spot. The boy that disappeared was sitting in front of his computer at the time it happened. No one would have believed anything other than that the disappearance hadn’t really happened except for a really lucky break. The younger boy was making a video on his cell phone for a school project and accidentally filmed the disappearance. Of course, most people still thought it was a fake. They thought the boys used Photoshop to alter the video for a joke or something, for sensation.”
    Wayne nodded. Nowadays you could alter any photo or video with Photoshop. Even he could change the background of an image or put two or more photos together on one picture. Wayne thought Photoshop was quite a cool package.
    As if sensing Wayne’s thoughts, his dad continued: “Trouble was, even the experts couldn’t see how they’d pulled it off.”
    Hans walked to the basket in one corner of the sitting room in which Wayne’s mother kept all the old newspapers and magazines before she sent them off for recycling. He knelt down on one knee and started to look through the contents of the basket. Then he stood up with a newspaper in his hand. He sat down next to Wayne and started to turn the pages.
    At long last Hans found what he was looking for and read the article aloud. For Wayne it