Immaculate

Not going to plan

A/N: Sorry about the delay in posting this and I am thankful that you've stuck with me. :)

This is important: Tom Drew's story line.  I just wanted to say that I know the South gets a bad rep for being anti-gay and while some of it is justified, (the South is not alone in this attitude) I do know that there are a lot of Southern folk who do not feel this way.  I don't want to offend anyone and I know that this attitude is not indicative of everyone in the South.  I know a few wonderful ladies who are from the South and they are not homophobic in any way, shape or form.  

Tom's back story was going to be this way, despite where the story is set, be it the South, Alaska, the UK, or Outer Mongolia.  It just so happens that the Academy series is set in a Southern City, Charleston; but I can assure you the geographical nature of the story has no bearing on the plot line of Tom Drew.  

Tom's partially based on a person who I used to go to school with (back in the 80's when this country was still very anti-gay, in fact there are still a lot of people who are).  Back then it wasn't accepted as freely as it is now and he spent his entire teens trying to hide it, (unsuccessfully to us, his friends, but we didn't care, because he was our friend) he was a very unhappy, confused person whose parents disowned him when they finally found out.  He was and is, one of my best friends, so Drew is a salute to him and others like him, who struggle for an acceptance that the rest of us take for granted, the right to be who they are.

Having said all that, I hope you enjoy this chapter.  I sweated little plot bunnies all over it. :)

Sang's POV

The plan was set into motion and the next day I had found myself leaving school with Victor, North and a plain manila folder that they had collected from Mr Blackbourne during lunchtime.

Normally I sat and day dreamed or chatted to the others when we were in the car, but this time I had to pay careful attention to where we were going. I needed to be able to retrace these steps with Mr Hendricks when the time came. Victor had spent the entire journey telling me the street names and pointing out landmarks that would help me to remember. It was further away than I anticipated and we never made it back to school that day due to an accident on one of the roads.

I half expected Mr Hendricks to call me in on the Friday, but he didn't and I started to worry that maybe this plan was not going to work.

The weekend was relatively quiet. I moved back into Nathan's Friday night, Saturday was spent at the Diner with North and Luke. I did double shifts that day, Uncle was nowhere to be seen and someone else was off sick.

Nothing had come back from the boys who had vandalised the Diner. If someone had put them up to it, they were keeping very quiet.

Victor had been able to put a device on Sasha' Bennett's phone and I knew he had a programme running that was tracking her movements outside of school. It was illegal and highly invasive, and it did prick my conscience, but like everything else, if I shoved it to the back of mind I could forget it. I knew that if it was her that had caused us so many problems then it was justified.... whoever it was had tried to kill Victor, and quite possibly all of us with the removal of the earthing wire on the house.

Protection was in overdrive and I wasn't able to step outside the front door unaccompanied, but I knew why and I made no complaints. Besides, it wasn't just me, it was all of them, none of them went anywhere alone. We were being held to ransom and it was making them as angry as it was frustrating them. I sometimes found myself wishing something would happen just to stop the atmosphere that was getting steadily worse. I also found myself wondering if this was the calm before the storm.

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Sunday night the house was finished and it was hard to think that there had ever been a fire here. It was only the smell of fresh paint and new carpets that gave it away. Mr Blackbourne knew that Marie would have to move back in, but he decided not to inform her the house was ready until Monday.