A Different Shade Of Spy

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

The Family Business

Two years later after the incident with Caleb Kohle, Iris's family moved back to the United States. José was settled in a new school and had been for almost the whole year. Since her parents had thought that because of her poor grades in her previous school, she should stay back a year and so they placed her back a year only to be told by the teacher and principal in January that year that she was out pacing the honor class students and that she should really be in the eighth grade, not the sixth, her parents decided that the following week she would be placed in the 7th grade and next year she would start fresh in eighth (which was were she should have been going to in the first place but her parents felt she would do better this way.) So finally she was where she should have been in the first place in junior high doing the 7th grade.

She didn't like the new school. Iris was pleased that she wouldn't have to go back to that junior high school after the summer, since her parents had finally found a house they liked, and bought which was in a different area, so she would go to a different school anyway, but she would have to wait till the new school year started, after summer vacation. She hoped she would make friends there. Still she would have to go till the end of the year to that school and was lucky that she could get a ride with a teacher who lived near by the new house. She smiled at the fact that she could always blame him if she was late for school or late coming home.

One day, she came home early (the teacher having a dental appointment had come to her class to get her twenty minutes before the bell was do to ring on her last class so he could drop her off.) Her dad was in the kitchen and José and her mom were not yet home. Iris decided that she might as well wander around the place in order to get better acquainted with what was her new home. Iris came to the study (as her mom called the room at the end of the long hallway, her dad called it his office) she decided to see if it was still a mess, to her surprise it wasn't. It was there that she saw in a typewriter (her mother was not yet used to using a computer, Iris saw that her dad had not yet finished setting it up yet either. The new computer was a sort of housewarming present from her older brother a way of saying to her parents or so Iris thought welcome to the modern age, he had mailed it to them.)

In the old typewriter (the kind her grandfather had used) was a letter addressed to some guy who was an investigative reporter on national T.V. The letter spoke about the secret papers the ones she had seen so long ago, back when they had lived over seas and her dad had helped the Colonel, the same papers she had read (and kept her mouth shut) even as she had handed them over to her dad way back when.

Iris heard her mom come in as she slammed the front door even as the phone rang. She yanked the paper from the typewriter and walked angrily to the kitchen. Her dad was calling out to her as he walked down the hallway saying that they could have dinner early since her little brother was going to be over at the at the local shul for boys' choir practice and some extra study.

So she said, "Great!!! Well, we can only hope that he hasn't read this,"

she said waving the paper as her mother yelled,

"Hey what were you doing in my study..."

Iris under most circumstances had would never have been rude enough to interrupt someone and would certainly not have cut her mother off as she was about to, but in her mind these were far from ordinary circumstances. In an exasperated voice she said,

"Why did you tell mom about the papers you know she can't keep a secret! I mean you told the Colonel how dangerous it was and yet you go and tell mom! I mean if you want to get you and mom killed then just don't complain about my being home so late or staying over at a friends, chances are if they come, because mom has babbled this to anyone, I wont be here and well José is usually out most afternoons...Are you trying to leave us orphans or something!!!"