"In triangle ABC, angle A equals three times angle C. Point D on side BC has the property that angle ADC equals two times angles C. You need to prove that AB plus AD equals BC." Charlotte read sadly.
She and her father were sitting in the living room and doing the dullest thing in the world - mathematics.
"What's so complicated?" Gold looked at his daughter. "We need to continue the part BA beyond point A and set aside segment AE to equal AD on it." He drew a triangle on a piece of paper. "The angle EAC, which is 180 degrees, minus the angle BAC is 180 minus three times angle C, it turns out the triangles ADC and AEC are equal on the sides AC, AD is equal to AE and the angle between them. Accordingly, the angles of the triangle are found: the angle AEC is equal to the angle ADC, equal to two times angle C, the angle ACE is equal to angle C, that is, the angle BCE is equal to two times angle C, so the triangle BEC is isosceles. Thus, AB plus AD is equal to AB plus AE is equal to BE is equal to BC."
"Yes, nothing complicated at all." The girl nodded. "Can you write all this down now?" She moved a notebook to him.
"Charlotte, I just explained everything to you." Her father sighed. "At least try to understand."
"It's all too boring." She shook her head. "Maybe it's better to do chemistry?"
"You can do chemistry without me." Gold grinned. "Truly darling, if you had only tried to get into this even once, you would have seen that everything isn't so boring."
"Do you want me to read you my presentation for the science club on the specification of white blood cells?" Charlotte did not give up. "It is very interesting and I need to rehearse before the speech."
"I want you to know how to do a few simple mathematical tasks." He sighed again. "You still have to pass the final math test. Even if you are not interested and don't need it, there is no escaping this."
"Well, it isn't soon." his daughter dismissed him. "And I'm sure it will be possible to get the test's answers in advance. You'll just show me the correct answers, I will remember them." she assured her father.
"Charlotte, I don't understand that." Gold shook his head. "Why don't you even want to try?"
"I have a humanitarian mindset." she said, suppressing a grin.
"Come on, there is no such thing as a humanitarian mindset." Her father grimaced. "The mind is either there or not. And you have it. I don't understand why you use it so selectively."
"Because I only put in my mind what I'm interested in." Charlotte explained seriously. "And I don't fill it with any rubbish I don't need, like these triangles of yours."
"Well, here we go..." Gold rolled his eyes.
"I don't put rubbish in my mind space." she repeated with a smile. "I only store what I need there."
"In time, you will realize that you need mathematics too." her father assured her. "To put it in a language that is understandable and interesting to you: solving logical problems forms new neural connections in the brain that will come in handy more than once. For studying any other subject and for life in general."
"But they can be formed not only by mathematics," Charlotte objected, "but by any activity in which we have to analyze and systematize new information."
"Okay, that's it." Gold stopped her. "I have no strength to argue with you. Let's just finish your homework. What else is left there?"
A door slammed in the hallway and Regina and Rachel's voices were heard. The girl appeared in the living room first.
"Daddy!' She ran to Gold and hugged his neck. "You are home already."
"Hello, baby girl." He smiled at his daughter, hugging her back. "How are you?"
"Great!" the girl began with enthusiasm. "Miss Tencer said I will be performing at the final recital of the year in the front row!"
"Wow!" Gold admired. "And how many numbers do you have?"
"Two." Rachel answered. "We dance the first one at the beginning and then the other somewhere else in the middle of the recital."
"And what are you going to dance?" Charlotte inquired.
"Flower Garden and Pearl Variation." Her sister listed.
"I see, Miss Tencer's repertoire doesn't change." the elder grinned.
"This is not surprising." Gold said. "I think it is not so easy getting a new curriculum approved. So it's easier to simply use the existing one."
"Will you rehearse with me?" Rachel asked her sister.
"Do you think I still remember all these variations?" She was surprised. "I can only rehearse with you if you are interested in street jazz as a workout." She winked at her sister.
"Well, I don't know." she thought. "Probably not yet. It would be good not getting lost in these two dances."
"Judging by the fact that they put you in the first row, this doesn't intimidate you." Her father smiled at her.
"She knows everything." The Queen, who just entered the living room, confirmed. "She's just playing around."
Going to the sofa, she leaned on the back, hugged her husband by the shoulders and slowly kissed him on the temple.
"I thought you would still be at the negotiations." she remarked.
"I thought so too." Gold nodded. "But they ended much faster than one might have expected."
"Successfully?" the Queen asked.
"Well, give or take." her husband answered evasively.
"Okay, you'll tell me later." She instinctively massaged his shoulders.
Her phone, which she had left in the hallway, rang and Regina rushed to it.
"Yes, Becky, hi." her voice was heard. "Everything is fine, thank you. How are you? .. What do you mean: "is Adam going to go home?" They are all with you. ... What? .. No, this is some kind of nonsense." She went back to the living room. "Gideon told me that today they are going to Adam's place, their entire rock band would rehearse in your garage ... Well, we definitely don't. Maybe you've misunderstood something? And the phone is off? Okay, listen, this is clearly some kind of misunderstanding. I'll call Gideon now and we'll find out. I'll call you back".
"What happened?" Gold looked at his wife.
"I don't know yet." she dismissed her husband. "Wait, we'll understand everything now." she added, dialing the number. "Off ..." she muttered, dialing the next one. "Linda, hello! Aren't our children with you?" She asked as nonchalantly as possible. "Yes, I know that they gathered at Adam, but now Becky calls me and says that they should be with us. But we don't have them either. So I thought, maybe she didn't understand something ... Yeah, I see. No, Gideon's phone is off too. Okay, I'll call Victoria." She dialed the other number again. "Tori? Listen, we are a little confused with the plans of our rock band here." She smiled. "Do you have them today at your place? ..Yeah ... At ours ... No, we don't have them here... That's what I'm trying to understand ... Okay, I'll call you back ... Girls, go and really have practice." She smiled at her daughters. "Charlotte, I'm sure you will remember everything as soon as Rachel starts showing you the variations and then you can see if she does everything right."
"As you say." Charlotte looked worriedly at her mother. "Come on." She nodded to her sister, heading for the stairs.
"Regina, what's going on?" Gold asked tensely.
"Some kind of nonsense." She sat on the sofa next to him. "Gideon said that they would be gathering at Adam's today after school. And now his mother calls me full of confidence that they are here with us. Just like the parents of Michael and Christie."
"Well, there must be some reasonable explanation." her husband said without any certainty. "Maybe they stayed over too long at school?"
"Hardly." Regina shook her head. "The classes were over long ago".
"Let's find out." He took his phone from his pocket and dialed a number. "Miss Collins? Good day! Tell me, did Gideon have some extra classes today? Yeah ... Thank you... " He put the phone on the table and fell silent.
"So?" His wife looked at him hopefully.
"No, he went home long ago." Gold answered, looking thoughtfully in front of him. "Is there anyone else in their rock band, except for those you have already called?"
"No." Regina said after thinking. "There are four of them: Gideon, Adam, Christy and Michael. And I've already called everyone." She looked at her husband, bewildered. "Where could they have gone?"
"Don't get nervous ahead of time." He took his wife by the shoulders. "There must be an explanation for all this." he repeated again.
"What kind?" the Queen asked, raising her eyebrows.
"I don't know yet." He pressed her tighter on him. "But we'll find out. Stay at home and I'll go to the police station on the nineteenth street, to captain Reynolds. Remember how he found Henry in a couple of hours? That time he ran away from Regina? I'm sure he will find Gideon just as quickly. So we'll be home for dinner."
"I'll go with you." She jumped to her feet.
"Regina, don't go crazy." Her husband took her hand and set her back down. "You need to stay with the girls. I'll call you as soon as we find everything out. Everything's going to be alright, don't worry. Think yourself what could happen to them? This is Manhattan, nothing ever happens here. This is all just some kind of misunderstanding."
For the rest of the evening Regina dialed her husband's number every now and then, receiving only a short note: "So far we know nothing, I'll call you back." The three of them, she and the girls, had dinner.
"Mom, what's going on?" Charlotte asked cautiously at dinner.
"What?" The Queen glanced up from her glass, which she was looking at and twirling in her hands, and looked at her daughter. "Everything's all right, honey." she said quickly.
"Where is Gideon? And dad?" The girl continued uncertainly.
"They will come back soon." her mother assured her.
"Soon - when?" Rachel clarified. "I wanted dad to read to me before going to bed."
"Soon - means soon." the Queen answered, suppressing her irritation. "Eat dinner and go do your homework."
"I already did." Charlotte shrugged.
"That's fine." Regina nodded. "Help Rachel."
"Okay." The girl looked again at her mother and fell silent.
"I'm sorry." She took her daughter's hand. "I'll explain everything to you later, okay?"
Charlotte nodded silently.
The Queen didn't sleep all night. Sitting in the living room, she turned the phone around in her hands for a long time, realizing that calling was useless. In the end she couldn't stand it and dialed her husband's number again, around the middle of the night. Only to receive the same: "I'll call you back." Throwing the phone to the corner of the sofa, she burst into tears of horror with her own powerlessness. After reaching the kitchen somehow, she uncorked a bottle of wine, drank almost a quarter in one gulp and then returned to the living room, for her phone. Sitting on the carpet in front of the fireplace, she repeatedly dialed her son's number, begging the universe so that the "subscriber is unavailable" was finally replaced by beeps and his voice. The universe did not answer her pleas.
"Please ... Come on, please ..." Regina repeated pressing the call button again and again.
She couldn't say how many hundreds of times she did it.
There was no patience in her to sit still. So she grabbed the phone, went outside and went to school on foot, looking around all the way, as if Gideon could suddenly be somewhere here, on someone else's porch or in a diner glowing in the night. When she reached the school, she dialed his number again several times. The subscriber was still unavailable. After standing for a while on the steps at the main entrance, she went back.
"Ma'am?" The police officer called out as she passed by a police car.
"Ma'am?" He repeated, stepping out onto the sidewalk. "Do you know that in New York it is forbidden to drink alcohol on the street?" He added, catching up with the Queen. "I'm afraid we have to detain you."
"I'm sorry." The tearful Queen looked at the bottle of wine she was holding in her hand. "I didn't notice I was carrying it with me."
"Didn't notice?" the police officer asked. "Ma'am, how much did you drink today?"
"I don't know, see for yourself." She handed him an empty bottle. "My son is gone." She added. "My husband is with Captain Reynolds now, he's been there since last night but they still haven't found him."
"Mrs. Gold?" The man asked uncertainly.
The Queen nodded silently.
"Don't worry." He motioned for his partner to drive up to them. "We all have a picture of your boy. All police officers in the city are looking for him. And we will definitely find him, ma'am. You don't need to be alone on the streets now, it's dangerous. We will take you home, okay?" He opened the door of the car that pulled up in front of her.
"I can't stay at home." Regina shook her head.
"If you want, we can take you to the station." the man suggested. "To your husband."
"No." the Queen replied, thinking. "There's no point in making him even more nervous. And my girls are at home."
"Sit down." He motioned for her to get into the car. "We will take you home."
After ending up home, she dialed Gideon's number several more times, all with the same result. She went upstairs, looked into the rooms of her daughters who were sleeping peacefully, and then went to her son's room, where, until almost before dawn, she sorted out notebooks, books, all kinds of trinkets on the shelves and the desk drawers, looking for at least some answer. There still was no answer. Right before morning, she fell asleep at the same place, his desk.
In the morning, when the alarm clock of the phone in her pocket vibrated, she barely opened her eyes, squinting at the bright sun, which shone bright right in her face from the curtain less window. Cherishing the fragile hope, the Queen went to the bedroom, which naturally turned out to be empty. After having hastily taken a shower, she woke up the girls and went downstairs to the kitchen, preparing breakfast for them and coffee for herself.
"Has dad left already?" Rachel asked at breakfast.
"Yes." Regina nodded. "He has a lot to do today."
"And Gideon?" the girl continued.
"He stayed with friends yesterday." Her mother smiled at her. "And he'll go to school from there today."
Charlotte silently looked at her mother.
"Let's go." Regina got up from the table, leaving her coffee unfinished.
"But I haven't finished yet." Rachel protested.
"I'll give you money for the cafeteria." The Queen smiled. "Come on, we're already late."
After she returned home, she went to the kitchen, finishing off the cooled coffee. Putting the phone in front of her on the table, she kept turning the screen on, making sure there were no new messages. When she had almost finished drinking it, the key clicked in the lock and she, leaving the cup again, rushed into the hallway.
"Hi." She looked at her husband's face who had just entered the house.
He was pale and looked exhausted.
"Any news?" The Queen asked hesitantly.
"None." Gold answered quietly. "They've already searched through the whole city, I guess. We watched videos from all the train and bus stations, police officers have been on duty there since yesterday. He is nowhere and never was anywhere. He just disappeared."
"But it just can't be like that." Regina said perplexed.
"It can't." her husband agreed. "I called that federal agent. Do you remember? We met when Snow White wanted to initiate an investigation on us. He is checking now at the neighboring states through his connections."
"And what should we do?" the Queen asked in the same perplexed manner.
"Sit and wait for the call." He unbuttoned a few of the top buttons on his shirt.
"From the police?" Regina specified.
"From those who may have abducted the children. If anything, they are going to call and demand something. Quite a long time has passed, they should have called us already." Gold said slowly, voicing these words with difficulty. "The police will continue searching for them but Reynolds says that if the children are not found within a day, then there is practically no hope."
"No." the Queen breathed. "We can't just wait."
"We can't." He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. "I'll lie down for five minutes and then we'll think about what else we can do, okay?"
"Rumple?" She picked up her husband who was leaning on the side, pressing him steady against the wall.
"Everything is repeating, Regina." he muttered, losing consciousness.
As soon as the patrol car arrived, Regina, who had been nervously pacing along the window, bounced out of the house and ran to it.
"Mrs. Gold." Captain Reynolds smiled at her as he stepped out of the car.
He opened the back door and a slightly rumpled and embarrassed teenager stepped out of it.
"Gideon!" The Queen automatically hugged her son, holding him tightly to her.
But a few seconds later she released him from her embrace. Tears appeared in her eyes again.
"How could you do this to us?!" She gave her son a sonorous slap.
"Regina!" Stern. who had followed her from inside the house, grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to him.
"Mom ..." Gideon looked down. "Come on, everything is okay."
"Inside." Regina pointed to the door. "We'll talk there. Thank you, captain." She smiled at the policeman as much as she could.
"Are you all going to be all right?" he asked. "Of course, I will pretend that I didn't see what just happened, but besides that, is everything going to be alright with all of you here?"
"Everything will be fine." Stern assured him. "Don't worry."
"Have a nice day." The captain smiled, returning to the car.
"What are you doing?" David whispered to the Queen.
"Well, I haven't done anything yet. What is necessary to do." she answered irritably. "Inside!" She reminded Gideon, who was stamped at the doorway and she herself went after him. "Go sit down!" Entering the hallway, she slightly pushed her son forward. "I've already heard this whole story by the federal agents, now I want to hear it from you. First-hand, so to speak."
Gideon obediently trudged into the living room and sat on the sofa. The Queen sat down beside him.
"I'm listening." She nodded.
"Well, Mom." The guy lowered his eyes again. "Nothing happened."
"I'm listening!" She repeated, stressing the words. "And Uncle David still doesn't know where you were found. He was busy with other things all day. Tell us how it all came to your mind."
"Mom, really, well, nothing happened." Gideon smiled helplessly. "When Adam said that he has friends who go to "Black Rock" and can take us with them, it was necessary to decide quickly. And that was our only chance to get there this year. But we ourselves would return tomorrow."
"Great!" the Queen admired with irony. "Tell me what prevented you from calling me or your dad before going to a rock festival in Connecticut."
"Well, you wouldn't have allowed it anyway." the kid sighed out depressingly.
"Probably." Regina agreed. "What prevented you from calling us from there already? Or even to just not turn off the phone?"
"Well, you would come after me right away." Gideon answered without looking up.
"And what was the plan?" His mother asked. "You thought we just wouldn't notice your absence?"
"Well, you would notice." the teen sighed. "But I would be back in a day. Tomorrow I would have come home myself."
"Incredible!" Regina breathed. "Do you have any idea what we went through this day? No, I'm just trying to understand your logic. Mom and Dad probably won't allow you to go to a rock festival with your friends, so you have to run away from home, in the hopes that no one will notice it? Or how?"
"Well, I didn't think you would go to the police right away." Gideon shrugged. "Just a couple of days, not a big deal. I would have come back and explained everything to you."
"David, I can't talk to him." The Queen turned to Stern. "I'll kill him now."
"Regina, less emotions." He slowly lowered his hand in the air from the top to the bottom. "He is a child, he has his own logic."
"You're not a baby anymore." She turned back to her son. "You're fifteen. You can already start thinking about the consequences of your actions."
"Mom, really!" Gideon repeated once more, this time in raised tones. "Nothing bad happened!"
"Don't shout!" The Queen hissed. "Dad is sleeping".
"Well, see?" The son smiled at her. "No one is that worried besides you."
"Yeah." Regina reached out to him and sniffed. "Did you drink?"
"Not much." Gideon was embarrassed again. "Well, it's a rock festival. Mom, really. We didn't want anything bad. We just wanted to get to "Black Rock" and we had such an opportunity. Yes, we turned off the phones for a short while so that our parents wouldn't pick us up from there immediately. But this was only a couple of days…"
"Just a couple of days..." the Queen repeated. "Come with me." She got up and held out her hand to her son.
"Regina, don't." Stern interjected. "Don't wake him up now."
"I won't." Regina assured him. "Let's go." she said again to Gideon.
Clutching his shoulder, she dragged him along, to the second floor.
"Remember how I told you about the consequences of your actions?" She stopped near the bedroom. "Just a couple of minutes ago?"
She quietly opened the door and Gideon froze on the threshold, looking at his sleeping father, pale as a sheet, with a dropper in his arm.
"Do you see now how nobody else here was worried?" She asked in a whisper. "Let's go." she just as carefully closed the door and dragged the boy back to the living room.
"Mom, well, I didn't think ..." Gideon sat down onto the sofa again.
"I can already see that you didn't think." the Queen nodded. "But it would be valuable to. You are not five years old. You might stop and think about what your trick can cost us."
"I'm sorry." the teenage boy muttered, dropping his head.
All the remaining alcohol that had previously provided him with a cheerful mood despite the circumstances flew right off him.
"Is everything going to be okay with dad?" He looked intensely at David.
"It will be." he nodded. "Come on, I'll make you some coffee."
"What for?" Gideon was confused.
"It would be desirable for me that when your dad wakes up, you no longer smell of alcohol." Stern explained. "So now you go brush your teeth and then you'll drink some coffee. You can even chew a couple of coffee beans, to make sure. Then you'll brush your teeth again. On the contrary, you need a drink." He smiled at the Queen. "And try to reduce the degree of emotions slightly. They are not good for anyone, believe me."
"Is this a medical recommendation?" Regina asked.
"It is." David confirmed. "Go on. Drink some whiskey, hug your son, calm down. Everything is fine already. He is home, he understood everything. Relax."
"You think so?" The Queen looked at her son.
"I'm sorry." Gideon repeated. "I really didn't want ... I didn't think…"
"It's good that you're home." Regina sighed, hugging her son.
He buried his forehead on her shoulder and closed his eyes.
"I love you, Mom. Both of you."
"And we you." The Queen smiled, kissing the top of his head.