Way 75
Don't just give your kids the answers to questions. Show them how to find the answers.

John was stressing out.

He kept it from his older brothers.

And he kept it from his younger ones.

But as Valentine's Day drew near, he was shit at keeping it from his father.

Finally he broke under interrogation, the kind where Jeff Tracy sits you down behind closed doors, looks you in the eye and says, "Spill."

John felt uncomfortably like a suspect in an interrogation room with the dogged gumshoe threatening to beat it out of him while a lone naked bulb hung overhead, blinding him with its old-fashioned white light.

Jesus, he really needed to stop reading through his grandmother's collection of old dime store detective novels.

"I don't know what to get," was John's first attempt.

Jeff wasn't satisfied.

"I don't know what to get…her," was his second attempt.

Jeff raised an eyebrow. In Dad-Speak, this meant, "Not enough, keep going."

Well, crap. Thirteen years old and going to meet his end in some dank back room at an old precinct the city'd forgotten about because he just couldn't spill his guts.

Yeah. Seriously needed to stop reading 'Dick Dobbs Detective Weekly.' How Grandma had ever talked him into that—

"Son."

Oh. Right. Still had Dad to deal with.

"I don't know what to get Chloe for Valentine's Day!" John blurted out.

Then turned beet red.

He was singin' like a bird. Some criminal he'd make.

"Ah," was his father's wise and succinct response. Great. A lot of help he was going to be.

John wanted to crawl under the bed. Or maybe out the window. Or maybe into the Black Hole of Calcutta where he could die a miserable death from suffocation, heat exhaustion or being crushed, as had supposedly happened to British prisoners of war after Fort William was taken by—

"John."

He looked up and met his dad's eyes.

"Why don't you just go with what you know best?"

And with that, Detective Dad, Gumshoe of the Tracy Family and a guy who must have cameras stashed in every room in the house because otherwise, how the hell did he know all the stuff he knew about what happened there, anyway…was gone.

"Go with what I know best?" John repeated to the now-empty space surrounding him. "That's what you're going with?"

Apparently, it was.

So John scooted up to his headboard, pulled his knees up to his chest, rested his chin on them, blew the errant lock of hair that insisted upon curling down over his forehead up and out of his eyes, and thought.

And thought.

And thought some more.

"Go with what I know best," he said aloud again, one hour and eleven minutes later.

He looked to the right, where a five-shelf bookcase was crammed with more books than any thirteen-year old boy had ever owned in the history of thirteen-year old boys.

And it hit him.

What did John know best?

Books.

Books, books, books and more books.

He was up half the night, but at last he managed to find precisely what he'd been looking for, and put together enough pink and red construction paper to fashion decent gift wrap. He made a little card to go with the gift, taped it all up, and finally fell into bed around two in the morning.

So the next day at breakfast, his father said to him, "Find what you were after, son?"

Of course, none of the others had a clue, and John kind of liked that. Almost like he was the Confidential Informant, and his dad was his handler, and…oh, God, those detective stories.

"Yeah, I did."

The thanks went unsaid, but Jeff winked and grinned. He knew.

When, at lunch time that day, John left the cafeteria to find Chloe on the playground, he was stunned to see that not only had another boy – Zack Mansfield, to be precise – beaten him to giving Chloe a gift, but she was rewarding the eager redheaded kid with a kiss John didn't think he'd ever seen anywhere outside a movie screen.

Frustrated and exhausted from too little sleep, John whirled, tossed his construction paper-wrapped book into a nearby trash bin, and stomped off to feel sorry for himself behind a large oak tree at the far edge of the playground.

Some minutes later, a voice said, "Excuse me."

Fists jammed in his pockets, John looked around the edge of the tree to find…the most beautiful girl he'd ever laid eyes on.

Blonde hair hanging halfway down her back.

Dark eyes – hard to tell what color in the shade of the leaves above them.

"I…hi," the girl said. "You're…you're John Tracy, right?"

He stepped out from behind the tree, completely entranced, smitten, and every other word his normally thesaurus-like mind refused to conjure up at the moment. "Yeah," was the best he could do.

"Um," she said, shyly taking a step forward. "I think you maybe threw this out by accident," she continued, pulling something out from behind her back.

John looked down at what she held, and saw the paper-covered book he'd thrown away. It immediately made him scowl. The paper was ripped half away, revealing what it was, and just the idea that he'd been stupid enough to—

"You know," the girl said, then stopped and bit her lip, looking down at the title of the book, exposed through the tear. "I think any girl would be happy to get a first edition of 'Jane Eyre."

He blinked, and looked up from the book to meet her eyes. "Really?" he blurted out, and felt his face grow hot.

"Yeah," she nodded. "Especially on Valentine's Day. She must be really special," the girl said, looking all around like she was trying to figure out who the intended recipient had been.

"To a lot of guys, as it turns out," John spat, and honest-to-God scuffed the toe of his shoe in the grass. Oh, God, I am such a cliché, he thought ruefully.

The girl looked away. "You, uh…you're not really going to throw this out, are you?"

There was something about the look on her face…something that made him clamp his mouth shut so he wouldn't say the wrong thing. He was quiet for a moment, until she looked up and smiled at him.

"A first edition," she said. "I love this story, you know."

She loved the story.

And knew the value of a first edition.

"Then it's yours," he told her, "unless you've got someone else giving you something for Valentine's Day."

She smiled and it dazzled him. "Not 'til you. Thank you, John."

Holding his eyes for just a few seconds more, she then turned and walked away, hair flowing out behind her and sliding back down into place in slow-motion, like all those romantic scenes you read.

"Wait," he called out, and jogged forward until he was walking next to her. "I gave you a Valentine's Day gift and you're just going to walk away?"

"What'd you want for it," she asked, "a kiss? I only just met you!"

He blushed. "No," he replied, stopping her with a hand placed gently on her arm. "Just a name."

"Oh," she breathed, then smiled and held out her hand. He shook it as she said, "Ann Darning."

"John Tracy," he said automatically.

She extricated her hand and giggled. "I know." She walked a few steps away, then turned around so she was walking backwards. "See you around, John Tracy." Then she whipped back around and kept going.

He stood there like a goof and watched her until she'd made it all the way across the playground and into the school. "I hope so," he finally whispered, wondering if this was what gob smacked felt like.

Because right now, it was the only thing that fit.

Ann. Her name was Ann…

Way 76
Remember, they're never too old for piggyback rides.

The moving gantry had never malfunctioned before. So Jeff, Scott, Virgil and Brains were all on the case, with Tin-Tin keeping an eye on the experiment Brains had left in the lab to come help.

After all, if they got a rescue call, it'd take way too long for Scott to get into Thunderbird One's cockpit with the gantry unable to move.

So there they were at different points on the long, long ladder that led from the base of One's hangar clear up to the ceiling, all checking, double-checking and triple-checking each trip box along the entirety of the 150 feet of ladder in question.

Until Brains, nearest the top, thought he'd found the fault.

And, in turn, called Jeff via wristwatch to tell him.

Who, in turn, let Virgil know, who at last called Scott to tell him.

"Brains can fix it," Jeff told his sons as they got into a three-way call. "He's assured me your gantry will be working in thirty minutes flat, Scott."

"Great!" Scott replied enthusiastically. "Now how about that game of pool?"

"You're on, son. I still owe you for kicking my ass two weeks ago."

Virgil laughed and started his descent. Scott, nearest the hangar floor, was already unhooking the harness he wore – the same one each of them wore when working at heights like this.

Jeff was the next one up, and had only about thirty more feet to go before he reached bottom.

At seventy feet up, Virgil was going to take a bit longer.

Scott moved to the harness locker about twenty feet to the ladder's right, unlocked it with his thumbprint, and started carefully putting his equipment away.

Jeff kept moving down foot after foot, hand after hand. He looked up. Virgil was moving faster than Jeff, and Jeff had a moment to think, Ah, youth, and then chuckle to himself over how much he sounded like his dad once had.

Then there was a strong tug on the safety rope.

A strange clanking sound from above.

A jerk of the ladder.

A yelp.

It echoed off the hangar walls.

Jeff's head whipped up.

Scott stumbled back out of the harness holder and ran to the bottom of the ladder, eyes up the whole way.

Brains looked down. "Virgil!" he yelled.

Because Virgil was falling.

And his harness wasn't attached to the rope.

"Virgil!" Scott hollered, calculating all the angles, all the possibilities, doing what he usually reserved for doing only in the field, on a rescue. "Oh, my God," he breathed when he realized there was nothing he could do.

Just like that, Virgil was even with his father. He reached out his left hand, eyes wide, face pale, jaw dropped.

Scared shitless.

Jeff already had his left arm hooked over the rung he was chest-level with. He reached out with his right arm and grabbed.

Virgil grabbed at the same time, but his hand slipped from what he'd tried for, which was Jeff's shoulder.

No, was the only thing Jeff had time to think, and he blindly clawed for something…anything…

…and caught one of the back straps of Virgil's harness.

Virgil whirled and tried to wrap his legs and arm around both his dad and the ladder, but the weight of him wrenched his father's shoulder painfully. Jeff cried out as he heard his shoulder pop out of its socket, seeing nothing but blinding white dotted with explosions of color behind his eyelids.

His son's arms came around his neck, Virgil's entire body shaking, chest heaving, him panting as he tried to shove the panic away.

Scott was yelling from below.

Brains was yelling from above.

Jeff was about to pass out. "Hold…my arm," he ground out through clenched teeth.

Virgil clamped it tightly to his father's side, still trembling.

One by one, Jeff's feet found the next rung down. His hand and Virgil's hand were moving as if they belonged to the same owner, one at a time so they were always held fast to the ladder.

Down and down, Virgil clinging to his father's back.

Down.

Down.

Slowly.

Scott came up beneath them, but Virgil refused to let go of their dad. More like, he couldn't have made himself let go even if he'd wanted to.

When at last they reached the bottom, where Tin-Tin, Alan, Gordon, Kyrano and John had all gathered with hover stretchers and emergency medical kits, Virgil stood on his own two feet, but his left arm was still over his dad's shoulder, and his right was still holding his father's arm tightly to his side.

Jeff reached up and grabbed Virgil's hand. "You're okay, son," he whispered. "You're okay." He was shaking as badly as Virgil.

Virgil, who never could quite figure out how to thank his father for catching him. For keeping him from becoming a mess of blood and shattered bones on the concrete floor of the hangar. But every time one pair of eyes met the other, volumes were spoken.

And Jeff's shoulder, well, it was fixed, but it never was quite the same after the Ladder Incident. Small price to pay, he once told Penelope years later when it was acting up during a rainstorm, for your son's life.