Chapter 4

Gibbs wasn't sure what to expect when he got home. Tim had been more frustrated and irritated than anything, and Gibbs had been sure that he'd seen someone who would embrace learning given the chance. So far, however, he'd been proven wrong. Tim was going through the motions but nothing had managed to galvanize him into learning.

He parked his car and waved at Thom.

"You've got a real interesting boy there, Jethro. I hope you can get him on the right path."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. How had that introduction happened?

"He's still on the fence about jazz, but at least he listened to it...unlike some people I know."

Gibbs chuckled.

"I've listened to it," he said.

"Not if you don't like it," Thom called back.

Gibbs just smiled and headed inside. What he saw when he got in there surprised him. Tim was sitting at the table, five open books around him, and he was taking notes! About what, Gibbs had no idea, but this was the first time that Tim had seemed at all interested in these books Gibbs had borrowed from Vivienne.

As he watched, he really saw Tim's potential for the first time. This wasn't the sullen, wary teenager he'd seen. This was a person fascinated by some topic, eagerly learning about it without any thought about anything else outside himself.

He didn't want to interrupt, because he was sure that Tim would get wary again, but he figured that it looked like Tim had been working for a while and he might be ready to eat dinner, even if it was a little late.

"Tim," he said.

Tim jumped and looked back at him.

"You met Thom?"

Gibbs saw the almost smile, but Tim quickly suppressed that. Clearly, he wasn't yet willing to admit to that kind of enjoyment.

"Yeah. How old is he?"

"About 90. Maybe older."

"Wouldn't surprise me if he was a hundred," Tim said.

Gibbs smiled a little and then gestured at the books.

"Going well?"

Tim looked back at them and seemed reluctant to answer honestly, but Gibbs was convinced that Tim was generally honest and that lying was not something he did casually, only in serious situations.

"Better."

"Good. You hungry?"

Tim looked at the clock and was surprised at how late it was. Gibbs suppressed a smile that time. It looked like Tim was finally getting into these books. He wondered if Thom had said something to get Tim to make a genuine effort. Regardless, he was glad to see it.

"Yeah," Tim said.

Gibbs grabbed a couple of steaks from the fridge. They were good, but not too expensive. Tim said nothing about the choice. He hadn't complained about any meal since the dinosaur cereal that first morning...and even at that, he'd eaten it nearly every morning since then. Gibbs had made a point of buying more just so that Tim could keep eating it if it made him happy.

They ate in near silence, cleaned up the kitchen and then Gibbs went down to the basement to work on his boat. After a few minutes, he heard the door creak open above him. It was the first time that Tim had ventured into the basement, at least so far as Gibbs himself knew. And nothing was out of place down here, so it looked like Tim wasn't exploring the house much.

"Is that a boat?"

"Yep," Gibbs said, not looking up.

"Why?"

"Why not?"

A long pause.

"How will you get it out?"

Gibbs just chuckled.

"You can come down."

Another pause. Then, he heard the hesitant thump as Tim walked down the stairs, but he didn't come all the way down. He stopped on the second-to-last stair and then sat down. The silence was heavy. Tim had a question he wanted to ask, but he wasn't asking it. Gibbs could tell, but he didn't want to push Tim to say something he wasn't ready to say yet. They'd known each other for not quite a week, and it would be wrong to push too hard.

Instead, he just kept working on his boat. Waiting for the right words to be said. If Tim was younger, Gibbs would invite him over to try out the wood, but Tim was still wearing that invisible armor and any outreach like that would be considered suspect.

"Will this really work?" Tim finally asked.

"What?" Gibbs asked in return.

"You keep saying I'll get into college, but I know that I don't have the grades for it. I graduated from high school, but only barely. An SAT isn't going to make that go away."

"Doesn't have to."

"But how?"

Gibbs was starting to see something of Tim's personality. The more he interacted with him, the more he saw a very intelligent person who was not willing to accept anything less than a real answer. He couldn't believe that Tim would ever have considered selling drugs. He apparently didn't like them himself. He probably knew it was wrong. It wouldn't have worked out for him.

But maybe that didn't matter. What mattered was, ultimately, what drove Tim. Gibbs didn't know what it was. Not yet, but he thought that he would be able to, given time. For now, though, he needed answer Tim's question, honestly.

"Don't know, yet."

"If you don't know, then, how can you be sure that anything will come of this?" Tim demanded. "Why should I try if you can't even tell me that there's really a chance?"

"There is a chance. A good one."

"But how do you know that?" Tim asked.

Gibbs stopped his work and turned to Tim. Tim was sitting there, staring at him, but instead of the belligerence Gibbs had expected, he saw desire. Tim wasn't asking because he didn't want it. He was asking because he didn't dare let himself want what he couldn't see was possible.

"I know it because I won't accept anything less," he said.

"And that matters?" Tim asked.

Gibbs smiled. "Yep."

Tim furrowed his brow. Gibbs guessed that he wasn't used to someone acting like this. However, he also made a mental note to get a real answer. Tomorrow, if possible.

"Keep trying," Gibbs said.

Tim stood and left the basement without answering. Gibbs watched him leave and somehow felt more determined than ever to get Tim into college.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Tom Morrow was often one of the first people at NCIS. He liked having a little while to prepare for his day, time that had no interruptions, no demands for attention. He could just sit. And sometimes, that's all he did. He went into his office and sat, enjoying the silence.

However, today, as he headed into his office, he found that someone had beat him there.

"Agent Gibbs, you're here very early," he said.

"What are the rules for getting into a good college?" Gibbs asked, with no preamble.

Morrow smiled. "Planning on going back, are you? That might do you some good. I might recommend a computer class or two."

"Not for me."

Now intrigued, Morrow gestured for Gibbs to follow him.

"What's this about, Gibbs?"

"Is a high school diploma necessary?" Gibbs asked.

Morrow sat down and looked at Gibbs, trying to figure out why this was coming up.

"It depends on the school, really. Some require it. Some don't. Some evidence of ability is required, no matter what it might be, though, and a diploma is usually a fairly good indicator."

"You know people at MIT, don't you?"

"MIT? With no high school diploma?" Morrow leaned forward. "Gibbs, I know you prefer to speak less and make people infer, but you're going to need to give me a little more detail. Why is this important? Who is it for? And why would you think that someone without a high school diploma would be ready for a school like MIT? That's an especially selective school. They only admit something like 10 out of every 100 applicants. They don't need to let anyone in they don't want to. So what is going on here?"

"I'm trying to help a kid get into college. He's smart, but his high school grades don't show it. I've got him studying for the SAT right now."

"And you think MIT is the best place for someone like that?"

"For him, yes."

"Why?"

"Because he can do it, if he gets the chance. He's never had one."

"How do you know him?"

Now, Gibbs actually smiled. "I don't. Not really."

Morrow just stared at him.

"Got into trouble and a friend asked me to help him out. He's staying with me."

"For how long?"

"A week so far."

"You've known this person for a week and you think you can tell what he's capable of?"

"Yep."

Morrow figured that he should have expected that kind of answer from Gibbs.

"Well, I do know some people there. Officially, a high school diploma isn't required, but there had better be a very good reason for them to consider him."

"Like a recommendation from someone they know?"

"Not without meeting him, first," Morrow said. "I'll consider doing that, but only after he takes the SAT, and the required Subject Tests. And does well. Let me know if he's worth taking a chance on and I'll talk to him. Not until then. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Then, I'll wish him good luck and I hope to hear from you about him, later."

Gibbs nodded and then left the office. After he was gone, Morrow sat back and thought about it. Of all the people who could have been asking him for help like this, Gibbs was not even on the list. Something about this kid had got to Gibbs and that was interesting, in and of itself. He did have friends at MIT who would be able to exert some influence, but Morrow would only ask for that if it was possible for the kid to handle it. While something like the SAT wasn't a guarantee, the plain fact of the matter was that, if he couldn't do well on a test, he likely wouldn't do well in college, especially not at a competitive institution like MIT.

Still, Morrow did hope that it would work out.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Gibbs continued to encourage Tim to catch up and even to get beyond what he should have learned in school. The thing was that Gibbs couldn't really help him with any of it. While Gibbs was far from stupid, he hadn't studied the same subjects in much depth and certainly hadn't studied any of them very recently. So when Tim got confused, he had to figure it out on his own. Gibbs simply said Tim could do it. To Tim's surprise, he was usually right.

Tim spent the next few months doing little besides studying for the SAT. Occasionally, Thom would convince him to come over and listen to jazz. He did go when invited, but Tim never felt comfortable with the idea of going over on his own. If Thom knew that, he never said so. He just continued to ask Tim to join him on the porch. Over time, Tim found that he genuinely enjoyed the time he spent listening to jazz with Thom, although he didn't know how much of that was because of Thom and how much was the jazz itself. Thom didn't make any demands of him which gradually convinced Tim that he could relax. While he appreciated what Gibbs was doing for him, he knew that Gibbs was watching to make sure he didn't slide back into the life he'd been leading before.

What surprised him, though, was that there was some temptation to do just that. Part of him wanted to go back, even though he knew it was a bad idea. He just didn't think that he could believe it was real until it actually happened.

At first, Tim tried not to enjoy his studies, but he couldn't help it. As he continued to learn and, in effect, to teach himself everything he'd never learned in high school, he was seeing how much there was that interested him. The hours flew by as he worked on the same stuff he'd always ignored before. A small part of him wondered if he had just missed how interesting it was or if it was his teachers' faults as he would have claimed, had he been asked.

However, by the time he was ready to take the SAT, he had learned physics, calculus, biology and chemistry. His English skills also improved, just by virtue of how much reading he was doing. Gibbs also made him read the required literature from D.C. high schools. All in all, Tim learned more in six months than he had in six years and he was feeling quite confident about what he knew.

...until the morning of the SAT came.

Tim woke up and thought about what was coming that day and suddenly, he was terrified. This one test was going to determine the rest of his entire life! Why had he even agreed to try it? It was absolutely ridiculous!

He surged out of the room and almost ran headlong into Gibbs.

"Ready?" he asked.

"No! Gibbs, this was a stupid idea! I'm not going to do well enough on this test to make a difference, and if I fail, it'll mean there's nothing else in my life and how can I ever–?" Tim bit back the end of that question.

Gibbs raised an eyebrow.

"How can you what?"

"Nothing," Tim muttered, looking at the floor.

Unexpectedly, there was a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and, for the first time, he saw something in Gibbs' eyes that wasn't evaluating or mild amusement. It was sympathy.

"What, Tim?" he asked.

Tim looked back at the floor.

"I...I promised Sarah that I'd take care of her, but I can't do that until I have enough money to do it. You already took away one of the few options I had, and if I bomb this, I don't have anything else. This matters too much."

"You won't bomb it."

"Yes, I will. I screw up the important things. If they matter, I mess up."

"No. You won't. You go in there and do your best. If you do, you'll be fine. You're too smart not to be."

Tim shook his head.

"Yes, because I've put too much time into this. So go shower. Eat breakfast and we're going."

Tim felt no better, but he didn't see that he had any real choice, so he did what Gibbs said.

As they headed to the testing location, at a local high school, Tim felt himself getting more and more tense. If he wasn't sure that Gibbs would literally chase him down, Tim would have been tempted to jump out of the car and start running when they hit a red light.

Instead, they reached the school without incident and Gibbs parked. Then, he walked with Tim into the building to a table. Tim felt like he'd forgotten how to speak, but Gibbs didn't help him this time. He just nudged Tim forward.

"Hello. You're here to take the SAT?" a friendly woman asked.

Tim nodded mutely and held out his registration. She seemed surprised at his nerves, but she just took the form.

"Timothy McGee?"

"Y-yes," Tim managed to stammer out.

"Do you have your own pencil?"

Tim froze. He hadn't even thought about that. Of course, he'd need something to write with! But he hadn't. He was about to say that she should forget it, but suddenly, three or four pencils appeared in front of him and Gibbs folded his hand around them.

"He's allowed a calcuator on one portion of the general test."

A small pocket calculator appeared in front of him as well. Tim took it.

"He won't need anything more than that," Gibbs said.

"Okay. Then, the room is just down the hall on your left. Room E43, all right?"

Tim nodded again. Then, he felt Gibbs turn him around, forcing Tim to look him in the eye.

"Remember. You can do this, Tim," he said, very seriously. "There is no reason not to do well. Just try."

Tim nodded once more, and Gibbs gave him a light swat on the back to get him moving down the hall. Tim started walking. Then, he paused and turned back. Gibbs was already walking away. He was alone, then. Okay. He was used to that. Squaring his shoulders, he went into the room, showed his form and sat down.

He listened to all the instructions and then opened the booklet and looked at the first test. For a moment, his mind was blank and he couldn't think of a single thing he'd learned. Ever. In his entire life. Then, he thought of Sarah and why he was doing this. It all came flooding back and he bent over his booklet.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Gibbs waited and tried not to show any worry. An all-day test like this certainly wasn't his thing, but he wasn't sure if it would be Tim's thing, either. Tim's confession about why he was doing this shouldn't have been surprising, but it was, simply because Tim talked about Sarah so seldom. He had called her and talked to her a few times, but she wasn't someone he mentioned much. It was great that Tim was thinking of her, but this should be something he was doing for himself, too.

Finally, he saw a door open down the hall and a few kids came out. They all were walking this way and it only took a few seconds to pick out Tim. He was walking alone, tall, still a little scrawny, and slightly hunched over as if he didn't want any attention. However, Gibbs caught an expression on Tim's face as he saw Gibbs waiting for him. Relief. He covered it quickly, but it was definitely there. Tim hadn't thought Gibbs would come back and get him. So who had left him like that before? Mother or father? Or both? Gibbs decided not to address it.

"Finished?" he asked.

Tim nodded.

"Go okay?"

Another nod. Nothing more. That was enough. Gibbs nodded in return and the two of them left the building.