Disclaimer: I own no rights to the characters or the show of Numb3rs.

"Eppes"

Don was sitting at his desk, going through a hundred different file papers, trying to make sense of handwritten notes in the margin, half of them his own.

He looked behind his shoulder at Marrick, who was impatiently standing at the entrance to Don's work space.

"Need you a moment, Eppes"

Marrick then went back into his office, sitting down with an air of expectancy.

Don gave a loud sigh, dumped the papers on his desk, and walked slowly to Marrick's office. One moment usually meant the time it would take Marrick to tell Don the many-houred job he expected Don to perform. With paperwork organized into piles on his desk, the last thing Don needed was to give up this moment of his time.

"Yeah" he said as he entered Marrick's office, looking around for a spare space to sit. He realized that Marrick had his share of paperwork, as even the small chair he usually offered was loaded with books.

"Don", Marrick started, "we are trying to establish better community relations with the young kids in LA, you know community outreach, the baseball games we have- in other words, keeping up with the required number of recruits. Someone's made the brilliant suggestion of getting the recruits interested young-before college- and with most high schools having career days, suggested we send agents out to discuss the advantages of the Bureau. I suggested you would be a good choice for a trial run."

Don looked at Marrick with a look of utter disbelief. Me, he thought, the detention-hall kid, talking to a bunch of high school students like I could ever be any kind of example their teachers would want within two city blocks of their school. No, he though, make that two city miles.

"Well," Don said, "I really don't think I'm the best choice-

"Well.," Marrick interrupted, "Lucky for you I'm doing the thinking. And I thought the best place for you to begin would be your old high school. "

Don closed his eyes a second, then looked at Marrick. This, he thought, has to be a nightmare, and next thing I know I'll be naked in front of the high school baseball team holding nothing but my bat.

Fortunately for Don, he was able to show up at the entrance to his old high school fully clothed with bat nowhere in sight. He stood on the sidewalk leading to the school's entrance, looking at the front of the building, memories flooding his vision. The brick building itself looked the same, two large doors emblazoned with the faces of the founding fathers surrounded by hazy glass that still didn't look possible to clean. On either side of the doors, two separate wings jutted out, one leading to the right and the other to the left. The building was three stories tall, with opaque windows looking down at the nervous and anxious agent. Don swallowed, then he looked at the flag waving at the top of a pole centered in the sidewalk before him.

"I can do this" he said to himself.

He had thought the words were spoken in his head, but the giggles of two high school girls passing him with sideways glances informed him that he had spoken out loud.

Don sighed.

His adult love life was bad enough without him having to experience the awkward embarrassment of teenage girls laughing at him, which didn't happen too much when he was a teenager but was sure to occur now that he was an old man in a suit.

I've become the essential geek, he thought, careful to keep the words as thoughts in his head as another group of girls passed by him, glancing at his suit and giving him the stares he remembered other guys got in high school, but not Don, not cool Don.

Don had to admit that his former image was the reason he did not want to be back here, talking to a bunch of high school kids whose idea of cool- did they even still use that word?- was probably so different from what he remembered. And what he remembered had been good memories for him, a time in his life when everything seemed to be going his way- the parties, the girls, his friends, baseball. Even Charlie's brilliant mind had not been able to taint the image he had in high school, what Springsteen referred so eloquently as Glory Days- and Don wanted to keep those memories that way, with full glory.

But coming here now- Don's memories might fade and be replaced by this new experience, of not belonging here and having groups of kids look at him- like, well, the essential geek. And Don didn't want his last memories of this place to be about him being a geek- he wanted his old memories, the ones that made him feel that maybe he was alright during the times when Charlie started talking and Don got lost in trying to understand, so that he thought about the one area in which he had excelled where Charlie hadn't- the social life at a time in life it was so, so important to excel in.

And now he was here, about to ruin the one thing he had been better at, so that a bunch of high school kids who would never join the FBI could here about his boring paperwork and sneer at his uncool suit and give him the look that other kids got but not Don.

Don sighed again.

He looked around and noticed that there were no longer any students entering the building.

He was standing by himself, still looking up at the flag on top of the pole. He shrugged his shoulders, readjusted his tie, and started towards the building's entrance.

If I were a freshman on Freshman Friday, Don thought, I couldn't feel any worse.