Through the Storm

Chapter Thirteen

A/N
Wait, what? Mitch is back?....
;)
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I slept a few hours and then pulled my journal to write some of the developments down. If I was able to get into younger Kevin's circle, he'd need all these pages of notes. I knew him well enough to know that.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Today is my first official day of assuming the role of my seventeen-year-old self. Damn, this sucks! I have a few goals formed already, even in this early hour. (1) Avoid a repeat of any form of high school. (2) Find out what Kevin and Mitch are doing in this year. I really need to see them. Both of them. Even if they don't know me.

Someone banged on my bedroom door, hard. It must have been my dad and he was probably still pissed off about last night.

"You have no consideration for the fact that I've been living in a different time zone since last May," I said as I stuffed the journal under my pillow.

"It's almost noon, you've slept enough. I made you something to eat ," he shouted through the door.

I took my time showering and got dressed slowly, developing a story as to why a nearly straight-A student would suddenly want to drop out his senior year.

Dad was waiting for me as the kitchen table with coffee and eggs, wearing his usual suit and tie, his dark hair neatly combed.

Part of me wanted to tell him everything, but I mostly just wanted to tell him that I'd seem Courtney, talked to her. He missed her as much as I did. Maybe more. Not that we've ever talked about it. But I have myself official orders.
Don't trust anything he says.

"Scott," he said with a stiff nod.
"Dad."
"I want to talk to you about dropping out. I understand you have your reasons for coming back from Spain, but at least consider going back."

"No, thanks." Not biting that bullet again. "So, are you heading to work?"

He opened the newspaper all the way, covering his face. "Yes."
I poured a glass of orange juice and took a long drink. "What was going on in Houston?"
Killing people with your bare hands?

"Nothing interesting, just some meetings with politicians. Cutting off the FDA before they start dumping new regulations on us. All things a high school dropout could never do."

I groaned and stuffed a forkful of eggs in my mouth. "I'm not interested in going back to a school with a bunch of stuck-up kids."

He folded the paper and looked at me. "Huh...Europe has diversified you. Can't say I object to that...but your education shouldn't suffer. It's just one more year and then you can go to college wherever you want."

One more year. What the hell did that really mean for someone like me?

"I'll get back to you," I grumbled.

He left me alone in the kitchen and took off for work. Several questions ran through my head, like...did he yank off his suit and turn into a spy the second he walked out the door? But if he really did work for the CIA, there was no way I could follow him without being caught.

My dad never seemed like the government-worker type, but he had been closed off the past few years. I thought that was because of Courtney. Mostly I thought he wished it was me who had died instead.

Can't say I blame him, especially now that I was acting the part of pain-in-the-ass-delinquent-seventeen-year-old, too spoiled to finish high school.

The doorbell rang and I forced myself off the chair and walked over to open it. Henry was standing on the other side holding out a large brown envelope. "Delivery for you."