Under Pressure

Part 20

"You can't come with us."

Linda had her hands splayed out on the table, mouth set in a firm line, crows feet wrinkling as she squinted. The image immediately transported him to childhood, his mom reprimanding him for some kind of misbehavior, clear frustration and subdued anger radiating off of her. Jeremy spent a moment or two trying to fully grasp the situation. He felt momentarily dissociated as his brain tried to reconcile the image of his mother in the kitchen she hadn't stepped foot in since she'd left, some kind of nauseating, foggy déjà vu settling inside the fine lines of his brain, some sense of wrongness accompanying it. They were all just sitting here, at the kitchen table, like they were sitting down to have family dinner. Just like old times. Just like childhood.

But Jeremy wasn't a child anymore, and this wasn't some memory haphazardly resurfaced from the dregs of his mind. It was real. Really real. He'd finally stepped foot out of the lab, into a familiar, mildewy basement, and then into the kitchen of his childhood home. Which was when someone finally filled him in on where they were; not the lab beneath the elongated house in rural Alabama, but some kind of secret place tucked away beneath the home he'd lived in for a good eighteen years, completely unaware of its existence.

There'd been a secret laboratory under the Heere house his whole life and he never even knew about it.

His brain was having trouble keeping up.

It occurred to him, while he stared dumbly at his mom as he slowly digested this new information, that he should say something. Respond. Open his mouth and actually speak words. Jeremy had been thinking about how, as a kid, he'd watch Dexter's Laboratory and consider how cool it'd be to actually have a secret lab, or just a secret anything he could hide away in, and how ironic it was that there'd been one all along. Childhood opportunities completely wasted. A twist of fate kept hidden from him until circumstances arose to necessitate the reveal.

"There's absolutely no reason why-" His dad was sputtering beside him, a bowl of Capn' Crunch cereal slowly getting soggy in front of him.

Oh. She'd been talking to his dad, not to him.

"Ray, your arm is broken."

It was. It'd been broken in the crash, cast and sling taking up an absurdly large portion of his father's chest. His mom, miraculously, had come out mostly unscathed, except for a few cuts and bruises. Jeremy wondered how much worse off he'd be if he hadn't put his seatbelt back on.

"I can still drive!"

"No. You'll only get in the way."

His dad opened and shut his mouth a few times, looking vaguely insulted. Then he snapped his mouth shut, looking in Jeremy's direction. Jeremy sank down in his seat a little, smiling weakly, giving his father a defeated shrug. He had no intention to argue, and he sort of agreed. The less his dad was involved, the safer it would be, and Jeremy was already on thin ice. He was still technically recovering, still generally malaised, and there was a risk he'd be left behind, too. He needed to be there, see with his own two eyes that Michael was okay, where ever he was. Getting on his mom's bad side wouldn't help his cause. Jeremy wasn't going to do anything to jeopardize his ability to help.

"Fine." With no backup from his son, his dad pushed himself away from the table and stood. "I'll stay here." He picked up the bowl of soggy cereal with his good hand. "But if you aren't back in a few hours I swear I'll-"

Linda interrupted him again with a wave of her hand. "Yes. I know. You'll call the police."

Tense silence filled the kitchen while they stared at each other. Jeremy dropped his eyes to the grainy wood of the table and focused on the way Squip rubbed gentle circles against the back of his hand with his thumb until his dad backed down and retreated from the kitchen and made a beeline for the loveseat in front of the TV.