Autumn in Philadelphia Trilogy

The Return: Counter Strike

"Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions."

-Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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Dylan tossed his book bag into the corner of the hallway and stood staring at it for a long moment trying to decided what to do. An absent-minded melody drifted down the hall from the living room. He frowned. His mother was singing to herself; something she never did. This had started in the car on the drive home after she finished gushing about Jonathan Turner. Dylan suddenly felt like he was going to puke. Turning on his heel, he forced himself to head into the living room.

In the living room, his mother was doing what she'd been doing every day after school for the past month: going through all the boxes in storage looking for something. Because their apartment was so small, they had to go to the unit after school, take a few boxes out, then go back the next day to take those boxes back and get more. Dylan asked her what she was looking for every day and every day she told him the same thing: pictures. This made no sense to him because all of the family pictures were together in albums in the bookcase in her bedroom.

Just as he took a step into the room, his mother cried from her place on the floor, "Oh, here's one!"

"What?" Dylan looked suspiciously at the photograph she was holding.

"Dyl, look."

Dylan looked at the photograph she held out to him. He blinked. All he saw was an empty, ancient-looking school cafeteria. There weren't even any people in the picture.

"So?" he asked unimpressed.

She gave a wistful sigh. "This is where we met."

Dylan looked at the picture again, squinting as he tried to see what exactly was so nostalgic about it. "I don't get it," he said feeling as though he'd missed an obvious punchline to a joke.

"This is where Jonny and I met, honey."

The teen curled his lip up in disgust. "Oh."

His mother sighed as though there was more to the picture than an empty room. He thought it was a weird picture to take, let alone keep.

Katherine's eye suddenly lit up. "The others must be in this box, too!"

Dylan groaned and got up. He wandered into the kitchen and grabbed a soda. At his mother's shriek of delight, he rolled his eyes and slowly wandered back to living room. He was in no hurry to see more pictures of empty spaces.

"Oh, Dylan, look. Here they are." She had a handful of old Kodak pictures hugged to her chest. For the next hour Dylan was subjected to Katherine's cooing over these pictures from the 90s. There were a multitude of pictures of the superintendent in various settings. He had long hair and an earring. Dylan found this incredibly distasteful for a man of his age, even back then. Other pictures where just photos of places often with no people in them or just people in the background. The backs of these pictures had explicit details of the event that happened there. Out of the stack of photos there were only three that were of both the superintendent and his mother. Dylan couldn't help but notice that Mr. Turner didn't look nearly as happy as his mother did. The boy frowned.

"Why do you want these old things?" he asked petulantly. "The picture quality is terrible."

Katherine was too happy to be exasperated with her son. "Oh, Dyl, I know you don't understand, but these are pictures of the happiest days of my life."