Undercover Badge; Next Generation

Chapter Twenty Nine

CHAPTER 29

So, it went down this; Tommy had snuck out shortly after I'd left the house to go to the very shindig Matthew and I had discovered in the woods of the junior high kids.

"Dude, I can't go." Tommy had said on the phone when I ran into him in the kitchen. Apparently my mother and father had expressly forbade frolicking in the woods with a horde of pre-teen misdemeanours waiting to happen.

I'd been the one to wake up my parents, both groggy from the sedative Gabbe gave them. The last vestiges of moggy-eyed stares vanished the second they caught sight of a sheepish looking Tommy. My mother cried and my father slipped into the deep, resounding silence he only emitted when overwhelmed with emotion. It lasted twenty minutes before they turned on him, skinning his hide backwards, forwards, and then again for good measure. It was during this period of hide tanning that I quietly informed the Cavaliers that we would be telling my family the whole truth. I couldn't keep it from them any longer.

Once they'd calmed down and tea had been brewed by my mother, my father scowled at Matthew and had calmly though pointedly announced that the Cavalier family were deep in our good graces for their assistance but that he could handle it from here. It was then that the situation got sticky.

Alex and Gabbe kept their rear ends firmly planted on the couch with sombre faces, their expressions showing no indication of movement. Joey had come and gone, reporting that the tracks lead to nowhere, and then just after Tommy got home, had gone on his way to let the town know he'd been found. Matthew, who had been pacing behind we while I stood dead still with my arms folded, stepped up to my left, his hands in his jacket pocket. At this my father looked at me with an exasperated expression that accused me for their non-compliance. My mother's expression grew steadily more suspicious as she fiddled with her long braid. I breathed in and out loudly, and found no comfort in the action. Matthew moved himself half an inch closer to me so his elbow grazed my upper arm. That soothed me and gave me the courage to open my mouth.

An hour later, they three sat on the couch facing me. They formed a string of my father, tommy, and my mother. She had her face in her hands, mouth covered my pale, quivering fingers. My brother had his elbows on his knees and his fingers in his hair over his ears, covering them. My father had the hells of his hands pressed into his eyes. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

I was shaking. Matthew had taken up standing over my shoulder like a gargoyle on the prowl. Alex and Gabbe stood on opposite ends of the room; her eyes empathetic, his tired to the point of exhaustion. I felt the same. Raw and emotionally spent. I desperately wanted to sleep, and Matthew's kiss had fallen away in the worse memories of the evening.

"I knew something like this would happen." My mother whispered. I recoiled like she'd slapped me, then lowered my head. She lifted hers and tried to flatten the flyaway strands off her hair, spine held up, forward and straight. My brother and my father fell back into a deep slouch on the couch. The Cavaliers hadn't interfered and had let me recount the story as I'd understood it. My memories, my feelings, my terror. The fear I had of Matthew, of my family. I'd told them about the men trying to find me, and I'd just begun to explain why when Matthew's hand caught my shoulder and squeezed too tightly to be the encouraging move it looked like. I'd turned and caught his eyes to see the slightest warning in them. So I left out the lynchpin- my apparent immortality.

Instead I painted the picture for what it really was. I didn't really know why they were chasing me, I didn't know who my parents were, but it was clear that hiding only kept me safe for so long. In my retelling of the story, Alex shared knowing looks with his severely beautiful wife that had made me feel like a child. They were the expressions parents shared when they lied to their children for their own good.