After Before and After

Conclusion: Chapter 15

"I feel dirty."

Ralph Langley turned in the passenger seat of the little red SUV to catch a glimpse of the boy who'd just spoken sitting in the back.

"Stop being such a little bitch" the boy's brother commented before Ralph could respond. "This is real big shit happening here. Serious business. If you don't stop wussing out, I'm gonna start telling people you were adopted."

"I'm too old to fall for that threat anymore" now fifteen-year-old Samuel Brooks called his twin brother's bluff. "Where would that leave you? An adopted kid's clone?"

"You're a little shit" Eric contended. "They should've put you up for adoption."

Some things never changed.

"You guys! Please, I can't think over all your arguing" Ralph finally interjected. "This is stressful enough as it is. Eric! He's getting off on the exit up there."

"On it" the Brooks twin in the driver's seat replied as he switched his left turn signal on.

"I still feel dirty following him" Sam circled back to the initial catalyst of his and Eric's spat. "What if he sees us?"

"He won't" Eric was quick to insist. "I'm staying two cars behind. Besides, that's why we took Mom's sedan instead of one of Ralph's parents' cars. He won't recognize ours."

"But it's Jack" Sam continued to nervously argue. "If he catches us, he might cut our heads off."

"He wouldn't do that" Ralph weakly insisted as he kept most of his attention focused on the little back sedan belonging to Jack Merridew.

"Right, cause nothing like that's ever happened before" Sam quietly added, mostly to himself.

Nonetheless, Ralph spun his head around again and shot the twin a disapproving glare.

"Too soon, asshat" Eric responded for Ralph.

"It's been four years" Sam countered.

"Not since the trial. And either way, four years or eight months; both still too soon" Eric concluded.

Ralph only had to endure ten more minutes of the twins' ageless bickering before Eric was forced to focus all his attention on driving. Ralph had asked Sam and Eric to come along with him to follow Jack to wherever it was he ran off to most nights. Paige wasn't able to get anything definitive out of him when she pressed him about where he was all the time last week, so this was Ralph's last resort. He felt a little dirty following Jack too, but he needed answers more than he needed a clean conscience.

The three of them had been following Jack's car for over an hour now, and Ralph had no idea what city they were even in as they tailed him from several yards back through a residential neighborhood.

"This place is kind of a shitbox" Eric observed as he carefully drove through the foreign neighborhood.

Ralph had to agree, it wasn't the nicest city he'd ever been in. It might've been the most run down though.

"He's stopping!" Sam gasped from between the two front headrests. And he was right, Ralph saw. Jack's brake lights came on for a moment as he pulled over in front of a two story apartment building. It looked like a cheap motel, the kind a teenager could afford to sneak off to when meeting up with someone they weren't supposed to see.

Eric pulled his mom's red sedan over on the other side of the street. All three of them ducked their heads down a little as they watched Jack get out of the car and walk up to the apartment building. He climbed up the staircase to a unit on the second floor. They all watched him knock, then disappear on the other side of the door. Whoever let him in, the boys didn't get a chance to see them.