"Hey C!" Eric beckoned his friend over as soon as he spotted him walking into the cafeteria. He'd been keeping a watchful eye on the doorway, anxious to find out how it had all gone and more importantly, to get his hands on and have a play of the new toy. He hadn't seen Carl since they parted ways before the weekend and owing to them both having separate classes at opposite ends of the campus on Monday mornings, it was usually lunch time before they caught up. They'd already decided that they shouldn't run the risk of texting each other about the purchase, on the off chance that someone, namely Agent Burke, began an investigation into what had transpired if he ever caught wind of the fact that some money had gone missing from the cafeteria.

"Hey E," Carl grinned from ear to ear as he slid into the seat opposite his friend. "You have a good weekend?"

"Forget my mind-numbing weekend," he held out his hand, "let me see it!"

Carl rummaged through his bag and pulled out a small black neoprene case, which he passed over.

Eric took it carefully, like it was some rare, fragile artefact. "What's it like?"

"Better than we even thought."

Eric looked up dubious, "Better than seeing Kalee Bassingwaite without her top on?"

"Better than seeing Kalee Bassingwaite completely naked!"

"Uwwww!" Eric screwed up his nose. "I'm not sure I want to see what it's like down there!"

"Well, either way, this is far better my friend. Go ahead and take it out."

"How did you manage it?" Eric asked as he proceeded to remove the electronic device from its case.

"Easy. I told Dad that I had some money saved up and Mom had promised to take me to the store through the week to buy it but she had been too busy with her friends and she said she would try and take me sometime after the weekend."

"And he bought it?"

"Yeah. The minute he thought he had a chance to make Mom look bad, he had his jacket on and keys in his hand."

"Too easy!" Eric laughed. "So which button do I-"

'Attention teachers and students…Mister Eric Hunter report to the Headmaster's Office…Mister Eric Hunter… thank you.'

Both boys froze as they listened intently to the message come over the loud speaker.

"You don't suppose…"

"Nah," Eric shrugged. "You know me and Mack Q? Him and I are great pals and he's probably thinking, oh, Eric hasn't stopped by for a chat for a little while…Phyllis, give my best bud a call over the speaker for me!"

Carl smiled but didn't laugh. He leaned across the table and whispered, "This could be serious, E. Maybe somehow they worked out it was us."

"There's no way, C. We covered everything. Maybe they are just making their way through interviewing all the usual suspects. I imagine its just routine."

"Yeah, okay."

"Now remember what we talked about?" Eric's voice took on its own tone of seriousness, "No matter what they say to you, no matter what they say that I said, deny everything. If they sense something's not right, they'll try and trick you in to giving up what happened. Don't let them."

Carl nodded but still wore a most concerned expression. "Good luck, man."

"Thanks…and," he indicated the NaNOT3, "best put that out of sight."

# # #

"Eric Hunter," Eric announced as he stepped up to the office front counter. Not that Phyllis, the woman behind the counter didn't know who it was already – he'd been called to the Headmaster's office enough times to warrant a loyalty card.

"Mister Hunter," the craggy old bag crowed. "Headmaster McCuen will see you now. Knock and then wait."

Well, of course he will see me now! You called me, you muttonhead! Eric glared at the witch hoping she could sense his thoughts as he walked across to the door and knocked.

He didn't have to wait long. 'Come in!'

Eric sighed painfully and stepped into the office, remembering to shut the door behind him as per the instructions issued during prior visits. "You wanted to see me, Mister Cu-" Eric stopped short as his eyes focused on not the headmaster, but the unforeseen presence sitting in the visitor's chair… "Peter?"

"Eric," the headmaster called for the boy's attention before explaining, "I asked Mister Burke to come in to discuss some evidence that has come to light."

Evidence! Eric gulped. They'd been so careful. There couldn't possibly be anything to implicate either of them. This had to be a bluff. "I'm not sure I understand, Sir?" He turned back to Peter and raised his eyebrows by way of saying, 'Do you know what he's talking about?'

But Peter wasn't playing into it. He'd had enough experience over the years, particularly with this one's father, to know all the games. Instead, he sat back silently and waited for the headmaster to take the lead…

"I'm talking about the money that was taken from the register in the cafeteria during recess on Friday."

Eric shrugged, "I hadn't heard. No one said anything to me about it." It was true. The students weren't kept in the loop about affairs of the school that were none of their business. As far as Eric would have guessed, the administration would want to keep the theft of nearly $500 on the quiet so firstly they didn't look like a bunch of incompetent fools, and secondly, so other students didn't get any bright ideas.

"No, I imagine you wouldn't have." The headmaster began typing something on his keyboard and then spun the monitor so it was facing towards Eric. "You also probably didn't hear that last year, we had a student who claimed to hand over a twenty dollar bill when he paid for his lunch, when in actual fact he had only handed over a five. When he received his change, he accused the register operator of short changing him and there was a whole lot of legal matters that came about and well…long story short, the school admin decided in order to prevent such an event happening again, we would install a camera in the vents above the register."

Eric felt the colour draining from his face and there wasn't anything he could do about it. He forced himself to look at the monitor as it came to life with the register from a bird's eye view. "I'm sorry, Sir," Eric challenged, "but I believe it's illegal to have a concealed camera in operation without signage to publicize its presence."

"Unless," Peter spoke up for the first time and clarified, "it's stated in writing somewhere that the patrons have signed, saying they accept and understand. In this case, both you and your father signed your enrolment forms, which on page eight covered information pertaining to the cafeteria camera."

"Oh," was all Eric could manage. What he really wanted to say was, 'Fuck!' but he doubted either man would let that pass without some type of serious consequence. With the legal loophole blasted out of the water by the agent's friggen flawless legal knowledge, Eric's only hope was that a lifeline may present itself in the video footage. His eyes became fixed to the screen as he watched some money being passed back to a student, and then there was a long pause, followed by the lady locking the drawer and moving off camera…and then a boy darted in and took her place. He was wearing black gloves and used what appeared to be a thin metal prong to open the drawer. The boy scooped out the cash, shut the drawer and darted off camera once more. Eric's eyes raced to meet the headmaster's. "Who was that kid? I think I may have seen him in my history class but there's so many boys here with that dark, wavy hair, it's difficult to tell."

"Mister McCuen, may I have a word with Eric in private, please?"

"Certainly. I'll wait outside. Let me know when you are ready."

Peter waited till the headmaster shut the door behind him then reached out and pulled Eric over so the kid was standing between his knees. It was all Eric could do, not to roll his eyes. "This is so typical, Peter," he pre-empted. "You have a reputation so every time something happens like this, you're the first to get blamed and held responsible."

"You're being held responsible because you are."

"You saw," Eric indicated the monitor over his shoulder. "It's impossible to ID the kid." To support his case, Eric tilted his head forward so Peter could see the top of it. Half the boys here fit that descript-"

"Eric," Peter took the boy's chin and tilted it back up. "Stop lying to me. You're just making it worse. I can see quite clearly that's you on the screen. The headmaster picked it was you right away. There's no question of doubt."

"It could be any-"

"Don't. I asked the headmaster to wait outside so you could tell me why you did it and help you sort it out but if you're going to continue lying to me, I'm going to tell him to come back in and deal with you however he sees fit."

"Either way, I'm going to get my ass chewed out."

"For stealing, yes. No need to add lying to your poor choice of behaviours. Why did you take the money, Eric?"

Eric considered. He could continue playing the innocent card but no doubt Peter and the headmaster would continue to scour the video until they discovered some incriminating stain on his uniform shirt or a matching hairline to nose ratio, and then they'd be really pissed off that they had to spend so much time on it. Plus, at some point they'd connect the dots and bring Carl in for questioning and if his parents got a phone call about the theft it may come out that Carl was in the possession of a large sum of money over the weekend. It wouldn't bode well for either of them.

"Eric?" Peter repeated. "Why?"

"I…I don't know. It seemed like an easy target at the time and when I got to the register and the lady ran off, I just got caught up in the moment."

"Enough!" Peter reached behind the boy and whacked him hard across his butt. "You had a burner phone, a lock pick and gloves. This was premeditated. You tell me one more lie and I will borrow the headmaster's paddle myself!"

Eric swallowed hard. This wasn't turning out in any way he expected it to go. He always had back up plans but this time they were failing him at every turn.

"The truth, Eric."

"I…wanted to buy myself an electric scooter like the one Danny Marshall has across the road. I'd asked Elizabeth but she just told me that maybe I could ask for one for Christmas. I was pretty annoyed about that so I figured I'd…"

"Steal the money?"

Eric nodded.

Peter sighed deeply. "Okay…So where did you put the money?"

"When I came home on Friday, I had time to think more clearly and I realised that I'd never be able to get away with keeping a scooter without one of you noticing-"

"Ya think?" Peter couldn't resist the sarcasm.

"Yeah, and I did consider leaving it with Danny and just borrowing it but it all became too complicated so I panicked, ran down the block, across to the shops and dumped the money inside a bag in one of the trash cans out in the back alley."

Peter shut his eyes and shook his head, "Four hundred and eighty-six dollars."

Four hundred and twenty-six. He'd kept sixty for his troubles when he handed the cash over to Carl. "Yes."

"Well, you know that you are going to be paying that back in chores from now until the end of time?"

"Yeah, whatever." Eric wasn't too concerned about that. He would rather be doing something, no matter how menial, than stuck up in his room dying from boredom. He was more bothered about the other, more hands on consequence he was going to have to face.

"Okay, then let's see how the headmaster wants to handle this."

"With a bit of luck he'll want to expel me?" Eric asked hopefully as Peter stood up to open the door.

"You really want to hope he doesn't do that. The next stop for you my friend is, Shelby Academy."

Eric paled some more. There really was a worse case scenario than Barclay House!

"Mister McCuen," Peter started as the headmaster walked back around to his side of the table, "Eric has something he wants to say to you."

The headmaster sat down and waited expectantly.

"Eric…" Peter prompted.

"Uh…" Eric cleared his throat. "I…I'm sorry to report that yes, I was the one who stole the money from the cafeteria last Friday."

"And who else?"

"Excuse me, Sir?"

"Who helped you, Eric? I doubted you did this on your own."

"No. No, Sir. No one helped me. I acted alone."

Peter actually doubted that was the truth but seeing as how he believed the kid would have instigated the crime and certainly wouldn't have been forced into it, it only mattered to him that Eric be held accountable. "Mister McCuen. Eric is taking full responsibility for this. I will reimburse the school and of course take measures to punish him accordingly when we go home."

Eric's face flushed with embarrassment. It was bad enough everyone knowing what was going to happen, it didn't need to be spoken out loud.

"Thank you, Mister Burke. Of course, the school has it's own procedures to follow in cases like this, and because of his prior warnings, Eric will be suspended for one week…"

Peter nodded.

"…and receive four strokes of the paddle."

Eric dropped his head, knowing full well that the paddle was going to factor into the punishment doled out by the headmaster at some point.

"Now, the paddle can be administered either now, before he leaves, or when he gets back from his suspension."

"Later." Eric was quick to choose.

"Now." Peter overruled.

"But-"

"Nope. You lost all rights to making choices for yourself when you chose to steal from the school. Mister McCuen. He'll take the paddling now."

"Okay then." The headmaster pushed up from his seat and went across to the side cabinet. He opened the locked door and retrieved, what was becoming an all too familiar, heavy wooden school paddle. He tapped the top of his table with the edge of the wood. "Over you go, Mister Hunter."

"But…" Eric shot a sideways glance at Peter and stopped short from saying, 'Not in front of him.'

But Peter wasn't going anywhere. He simply crossed his arms to indicate he was going to sit this one through.

Eric pressed his lips together accepting it was a lost cause and stepped forward to the cleared space on the desk. He bent forward and rested his head between his crossed arms. He felt the paddle come to rest on the seat of his trousers then, Whack! Eric squeezed his hands as tight as he could and braced himself for the next, Whack! This time, a rush of air escaped his lungs and a little squeal that was embarrassingly undignified came out before he could prevent it. Whack! His ass was throbbing something shocking and there was still one more to go. If Peter hadn't been sitting there, ready to hold him down, he may have considered trying to make a break for the door but it was too late anyway. Whack! He bit down on his lip and tried to ride out the pain as water filled the corners of his eyes. He couldn't let them see him like this. He wiped his sleeve discreetly across his face, hoping it would collect any evidence of his distress and then pushed himself up off the desk. His gaze stayed fixed to the floor and he folded his arms so he wasn't tempted to rub at the burning emanating from his rear.

"Okay Mister Hunter. In one week you will resume school as usual and in the meantime, I will instruct your teachers to send homework for you to complete in your absence. And I trust that when you return next Monday, you will be a model student displaying outstanding behaviour at all times."

"Yes, Sir," Eric mumbled without looking up.

"Thank you for your time, Mister Burke."

"Thank you, Mister McCuen." Peter led the way out of the office knowing that Eric would follow suit. In his peripheral, he could see from the way the kid was shuffling along, it was hurting. He wanted to put an arm around the boy and offer a shoulder to cry on but he knew Eric would just brush it off so instead he took the bag off the kid and carried it for him. They didn't say anything on the way back to the car and they both remained silent during the short trip back to the house. When they arrived home, Eric shot out of the car and had disappeared up the stairs, long before Peter made it into the house. At some point Peter would have to deal with Eric's stealing and disposing of five hundred dollars but he wasn't in any state to do that right now and neither was Eric.