Chapter 2

A quarter of an hour later I found myself sitting quietly on the front steps of Casper High, a block away from the Nasty Burger and a long leap backwards into my youth. Exactly ten years earlier my friends and classmates had been inside the school, sweating over that three-hour test, while I sat here on the steps in the warm April sun, stunned, humbled, hopeful; breathing the sweet, clean air of my own second chance. I had to come to terms with the fact that I had already failed the most important test, failed miserably and at immeasurable cost, and that the make-up test was only just beginning.

Ten long years have come and gone. How could I have lost track? Of course the date was auspicious! Of course the three people who knew me best, the only other humans on earth who had any idea what catastrophe had been averted, would want to commemorate the occasion. They all very nearly died that day.

As for me. . . well, from my fourteen-year-old perspective, "ten years" was nothing but a vague synonym for "practically forever"—more than two-thirds of my whole life. Was the test finally over? Has my failure finally been erased from the record?

Does he still exist?

"Ah. So there you are, Danny." Lancer's nasal voice jerked me back to the present. He was striding up the walk toward me, briefcase in hand. "Are you all right? You left rather suddenly back there, everyone was wondering where you'd gone to."

I lowered my eyes, embarrassed that he had noticed my spontaneous escape. "Please don't tell me they're sending out search parties."

He smiled. "No, Samantha assured me that you had your reasons for leaving and that you can take care of yourself. I'm just on my way home; my apartment's around the corner. But I'm glad to see you're okay."

I nodded, hoping he would go away and leave me alone with my brooding thoughts, but I had no such luck. He walked right up and lowered himself stiffly to sit beside me, setting the briefcase on the step between us. For a brief moment, I have no idea why, I imagined myself slipping my hand through the side of the briefcase and snatching the answer packet from inside. I squeezed my wayward hands into fists until the image subsided.

In the litany of deaths that came about because of my disastrous choice, his was the one I sometimes forgot to remember. Even his monument had been separate from the one for my family and my friends. Alone. Forgotten.

And there we sat. It was weird; I had never thought of him having an apartment, sitting down to a lonely meal, turning on the TV. Uh, probably no TV. Sitting down with a book. An old book. A musty old novel with tiny print and no pictures.

"Why did you run off so suddenly, Danny?" He seemed genuinely concerned. "Is there something you'd like to talk about?"

Could this have been more awkward? He was the last person I'd want to be confiding in tonight. But his friendly demeanor, his casual invitation to unburden myself was throwing me off-guard. I tried to change the subject. "You know, Mr. Lancer, I don't remember you ever calling me 'Danny' before."

"You're not a student any more. And my name is William."

He held out his hand as though he were introducing himself to a stranger—not an easy thing to do, with the briefcase still handcuffed to his wrist. I paused awkwardly, not exactly sure how to react, then shook it. "Uh. . . thanks. But I'm not sure I'm quite ready for that, Mr. Lancer."

"No, I don't suppose anyone ever is."

"I never understood why you did that—why you called us by our last names."

There was a hint of a smile on his face, as though he appreciated being asked. For a moment he closed his eyes, as though composing his answer. "A hundred years ago, most children ended their formal education at the eighth grade. Fourteen-year-olds went to work full time in factories or on farms. During the Civil War, fourteen-year-olds enlisted."

"So. . . you were treating us like adults?"

"In a way. High school is different, Danny. When you're fourteen, you have to start taking responsibility for your future. You have to make decisions for yourself: what courses to take, how to budget your time, how to set priorities." He gave me a stern, knowing look, and suddenly I realized that he knew exactly why I had run away from the restaurant tonight. Or, at least, he thought he knew. "You have to decide what kind of person you're going to be."

What could I say? At fourteen years old, I saved the world.

"You know, Danny, in my thirty-seven years of teaching I've suspected a lot of students of cheating. I've caught quite a few red-handed. Only a handful have ever come clean on their own. But nobody, nobody has ever looked as happy, as relieved to confess as you did that day."

Relieved? He had no idea. I'd lost everything, failed everyone, destroyed my whole world and then miraculously got it all back. "I don't. . . I don't think I've ever thanked you properly for letting me take the makeup test."

"Or for giving you a week of detention to prepare for it?" He raised an eyebrow and nearly smiled. "I have no idea why I went so easy on you. I shouldn't have been so lenient. But you needed the extra time to prepare, and at least I could make sure you made good use of the time."

"You wanted me to do well on the test?"

That earned me an amused, indulgent stare, as though I had announced that Shakespeare was a halfway decent writer. "You're just now figuring this out?"

He had me there. Whatever else I could say about Mr. Lancer, about his cynicism, his sarcasm, his blatant favoritism, I have to admit that he had gone the extra mile for me more times than I could count. He couldn't have known why I struggled so much, why I never seemed able to live up to my potential, but he wouldn't give up on me. Clockwork wasn't the only one who believed in second chances.

"So what are you and Samantha doing these days? I lost track of you two after you graduated."

"Huh?" For some reason, I didn't really expect him to care. And it was still weird hearing him call us by our first names. "Sam works for the city environmental office, and I'm a private investigator."

"A private eye? That's. . . unexpected. Somehow I find it hard to picture you doing something quite so dangerous."

"It's not really what you think. Not exciting or glamorous, like in the movies. I spend most of my time staring at old microfilm records in the library or the courthouse. Or lurking in the shadows watching people do things they'd rather not be seen doing." A job perfectly suited to my unique skills. As for "dangerous"—well, that's the stuff I do for free. "PI work is very flexible; I can set my own hours, work at my own pace." Belatedly, I reached into my shirt pocket and handed him a business card.

"Working at your own pace on your own schedule—that certainly suits you. You were always a law unto yourself. 'Fenton Investigations,'" he read from the card. "'A division of FentonWorks, Inc.'?"

I smiled. "Say what you will about the family business, there's nobody in Amity Park who doesn't know the name FentonWorks. Mind you, I don't exactly go looking for supernatural cases, but when they do come my way. . . well, I have access to the resources and the tools for the job. Mostly I handle domestic disputes, petty fraud, insurance scams, the occasional missing persons case. Keep the card—if you ever need a PI, I'll give you a discount."

"Your office is in your parents' house?"

"Uh, yeah. Except. . . well, it's my house, now. A few months ago my parents bought a condo a few blocks away, over on Ninth. They still come to work in the lab most days, but they deeded the house over to Sam and me. It'll be a good place to raise our daughter." Mom and Dad were understandably reluctant to move out, and Sam was justifiably concerned about raising a baby in a house with a ghost portal in the basement, but everyone agreed that I needed to live there in order to guard the portal.

"Daughter? Sam said it was a boy."

"Oh." I blushed. "That's just a little game we play. Sam asked the doctor not to tell us the baby's gender; she likes living with the mystery. I woke up this morning and she told me that my son had been kicking since three AM; so today I talk about my daughter. In a few days she'll say 'our little girl' and I'll switch to 'our little boy.'"

"And paint the nursery yellow?"

"Purple."

"Ah. But just between us—do you have a preference?"

"Whether she's a boy or a girl? No, I'll be thrilled as long as she's a healthy human being." Like most people, Lancer didn't comment on my odd choice of words. Only a handful of people knew what an agonizing decision it had been for us to start a family, not knowing whether my powers would be passed along to our children.

We fell silent. My thoughts were on my daughter, my son, my child who might someday have to make the kinds of life and death choices that had faced me ten years ago. How many second chances would she need? Or might she be fully human, unburdened by the responsibility of power, free to live up to that academic potential that had eluded me?

As I was lost in my thoughts, he clapped me on the shoulder. "I'm sure she'll be fine. And I look forward to introducing him to literature when he's fourteen." He got to his feet, stretching a bit to work the kinks out of his back. I sat there on the steps and watched him walk away, shoulders stooped, down the sidewalk towards his home.

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Many thanks to Obi-Quiet for agreeing to beta-read. You're the greatest!