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part i - chapter iv. week iii

Perhaps the best part of having your own laptop was that it could be used whenever and however, unless, of course, your dad turned off the Wi-Fi at night. Then it wasn't all that wonderful. But luckily for Zackary, Tristan had forgotten to turn off the Wi-Fi, which was the reason why the pre-teen was wrapped in his heavy blanket in pitch black with only his laptop screen as a light source and click clacking away on the keyboard that he had to squint to see. It 4:27 in the morning and sleep was calling the child's name but he wouldn't give into it. Not until he found something that was valuable.

And what exactly was he looking for?

Angie, of course. That would be the only logical reason why he was up this late-or early in some people's minds-when he had school the next day. This was the only time he could utilize without the possibility of being caught and sure, he may have been sleep deprived but it would all pay off in the end. Or hopefully, anyway.

He was trying to be optimistic about his venture but so far, he hadn't had the best luck finding out information about his mom. She was somewhat of a ghost, he had figured out. When he thought he'd found something, it was either someone else or an address to his own house. He was starting to get frustrated with this whole ordeal.

He wasn't exactly sure why he was going through all this trouble anyway. He could always just ask his dad about it when he was ready to talk about her. Or he could just call Angie herself and ask some questions. But there was something about doing this behind everyone's back that was giving him the thrill and pushing him forward in his search for answers. His brown eyes darted across the illuminated screen, silently praying that he'd find something. But he still had no such luck. He sighed and shut his laptop. He stared into the darkness for a while, trying to come up with some type of solution to his problem. But to no avail.

Zakary decided to call it a night seeing as he would have less than four hours of sleep before he had to wake up for school, and he'd already been called out for dozing off in class twice that week. But of course, he didn't have any luck with that either. The boy let out a deep, frustrated breath before roughly unwrapping himself from the tight hold of the blanket and trudged downstairs into the kitchen for a nice cup of warm milk. That usually did the trick.

The further he got down the stairs, the brighter the light got in the kitchen, letting him know there was someone else already down there. Or maybe Xander had left the light on again after the cleaning the kitchen. It was bad habit of his and he'd convinced his younger brother that he did purposely because he was scared of the dark. When he stepped foot in the kitchen though, he saw that it was his dad in there with some milk of his own. He seemed to be deep in thought with his brows furrowed and hands tightly knitted together as they sat on the table.

"What are you doing up, Dad?" Zakary questions as he pulls the milk carton from the fridge. Tristan glances back at his son, breaking his stone face.

"I believe the better question is what are you doing up," The man chuckled to himself as he looked over to Zakary, who stayed silent, trying to make himself seem so interested in the nutrition facts of 1% milk.

"I'm not mad at you, if that's what you think. I just want to know what you were doing." Zakary's eyes widened. His father had blatantly told him not to go about finding information about Angie at all. And what did he do? The total opposite. He couldn't tell Tristan what he was doing. It would certainly get him yelled at.

And grounded.

"Video games," The child lied expertly, as if he'd been waiting for this day to come so he could say that to his father. Tristan accepted it. He didn't bother taking disciplinary action against his youngest son. It was a quarter to five in the morning anyway.