Thanks to everyone who read and to Priyanka for reviewing.
Barry yawned and sat up, a little surprised that his alarm hadn't gone off yet considering the amount of light streaming in the window, and then he remembered that it was a holiday. Well, technically yesterday had been the holiday, but Dad was off today too and there weren't any classes or volunteer stuff to do so it counted.
Dad being up before him was nothing new, and he mumbled a good morning in response to Dad's greeting when he reached the kitchen, opening up the fridge to dig out the last of one of the pies.
"For breakfast?" Dad asked, looking up from his computer.
"It's cherry, that's a fruit."
Dad shook his head but didn't object.
"Do you want a slice?"
"No, thank you, I had some of the sweet potato casserole already."
That had been one of the things that Monroe had made; he'd left behind some of his leftovers in exchange for what Dad had insisted on sending home with them. Personally Barry hadn't been a fan of the marshmallow topping, but Roddy had happily stolen what Barry hadn't been inclined to finish, and obviously Dad had liked it as well.
"Yesterday was fun," Dad said as Barry settled in at the table. "It might be nice to do that again sometime. Dinner, I mean, and not just with Nick. Except with the Colberts we never really...well, I suppose there were the occasional dinners with my partners, but those were always a bit more formal."
'A bit' was the understatement of the century. For the big dinners Dad's firm had always rented a private room at a restaurant if not bought out the entire place for a night, and that had been pretty standard for Mom's charity stuff too, but the couple times a year when they'd had people to the house it had been fancy china and multiple courses and up until he'd been twelve or thirteen Barry had been sent elsewhere—usually the Colberts—for the night to avoid the risk of any kind of embarrassment. Even dinners with the Colberts had been more formal than yesterday, especially when Mr. and Mrs. Colbert had joined them. Mom had never said anything when he and Jason and TB had squabbled over snacks in the basement, but she'd always insisted on proper manners when they were at the table, and she'd probably have had a fit about Roddy taking Barry's marshmallow topping off his plate. Even if he had offered Barry his turkey skin in return.
Then again, he was pretty sure that Roddy wouldn't have been allowed in the house if Mom had been here. He didn't really like the thought.
"Would you be okay with another dinner?" Dad asked, drawing him back to the present.
"Yeah."
"Are you sure? You seemed a little uncomfortable around Monroe."
Barry shrugged. Dad didn't always pick up on stuff the way that Mom had, but he supposed that that one had been pretty obvious. And still not something that he planned on talking about. "Mom sad Blutbaden were dangerous," he said instead. A perfectly true statement, if not exactly relevant.
Dad blinked. "They can be, certainly." His surprised expression faded into a frown. "Did Monroe do something that concerned you?"
"No, it's not…." It wasn't anything he'd done, it was just what he reminded Barry of. Men in the shadows, and things he didn't want to know about, and Barry shook his head quickly. "It's nothing. It's fine."
"Are you sure?" Dad repeated. "I won't invite him again if it would bother you."
"No, it's cool. Really." Everybody else liked him—heck, Roddy obviously thought the world of him and he had way more reason than Barry to be cautious—so Barry would just deal.
Dad didn't look very convinced, but after a moment he did nod towards his computer. "I was thinking when I got up that you and I might go down to the pond and see how the freeze is progressing sometime today, but judging by the emails I've gotten everyone is holding ridiculous sales for the next twenty-four hours so we probably ought to check out the camping equipment and make sure it's all in good shape as well. That way we can order anything that needs replacing at the same time you order your new coat."
"Oh, right, today's the whole extreme shopping day. Black Friday." Barry had mostly heard about it from the kids at school, and he'd never quite figured out how fighting to go shopping was supposed to be fun, but whatever. Humans were weird sometimes. And he for sure needed a new coat. "Sounds good to me. I know the sleeping bags are downstairs, and I thought I saw the fishing poles in the garage when I was trying to figure out where to put the weight bench, but is the rest of the camping equipment still out in the shed?"
"If the fishing poles are in the garage that's news to me, I assumed all of it was in the shed, but I can't say I've gone looking, either. Maybe we should just collect everything we think we'll need and put it all out in the shed together, and that way we'll have it." He tapped his fingers against the table. "And I suppose as long as we're out there we ought to plug in the freezer and make sure that that's still working, too. I don't think we'll need anything from the grocery store this weekend, but maybe I'll stop at the butcher's some day after work next week and see what kind of cuts they have available."
The reminder that he couldn't even be useful and bring down a deer or two for them some day while Dad was at work didn't exactly improve Barry's mood, but risking a parole violation didn't even bear thinking on, and he didn't exactly want to get stuck at the house for days with nothing to eat but spaghetti either. He took an especially large bite of pie to avoid having to actually say anything and nodded.
Barry sighed and rubbed his forehead. Poetry class for the January term for sure. And for the spring term...gah. This was so annoying. He'd already decided that he wasn't taking another math class unless someone forced him into it, and one or two of the science options didn't look totally awful, but other than that and English class it sort of felt like he should just put some course descriptions on the dart board and start throwing.
"Barry? Are you down here?" Dad called as he started to scroll back through some of the general education options again.
He twisted back towards the stairs. "Yeah, I'm here. What's up?"
There were footsteps on the stairs, and then, "Well, your coat just got here."
"Are you kidding? We only ordered it on Friday." He pushed himself to his feet. "Did the Portland post office start teleporting things while I was—" He cut that sentence off and corrected quickly with 'gone,' but between the application information from the colleges and now this, the mail services were being way more efficient than he remembered.
"Apparently the delivery companies have gotten very efficient," Dad said, echoing his thoughts as he came around the corner. "Although the new floor liner for the tent and the batteries for the lanterns won't be here until Tuesday. Catch."
The coat fit pretty well when Barry slipped it on, long enough that it actually reached a bit past his wrists and very much relieved the concerns he'd had about sleeve length when he'd ordered it, and it was loose enough that there was no danger of a roll of his shoulders ripping it in half either.
"Looks good," Dad said. "Don't forget to grab your gloves and things out of your old one, but after that I think you can put it with the rest of the stuff to be donated. I'll remember to take it all down into Portland sometime."
"Okay."
Dad took a step back towards the stairs and then paused. "What would you say to dinner in half an hour or so? I was thinking we'd make one more foray into our Thanksgiving leftovers, and then I'll pick up something completely different for tomorrow on my way home from work."
Barry frowned and glanced up and out the window, surprised to see a complete lack of light. "Oh. Wow. I guess I was more focused than I thought, I didn't even realize how late it was. Yeah, sure, dinner in half an hour sounds great. And something different tomorrow does too." They certainly hadn't been lacking for food over the last couple days, but he'd had about enough turkey and green bean casserole and all of that for a while.
"What have you been up to, anyway?" Dad asked. "I haven't seen you since lunch, and that's not your usual programming."
'That' was a random game show marathon that had come on when he'd flipped the television on for some background noise, and he couldn't say that he'd been paying it the least bit of attention. "I've been trying to figure out all my classes for spring semester. Sorry, I didn't mean to disappear."
"It's fine, I've mostly spent the afternoon catching up on my emails for work. May I take a look at what you're planning?"
"Yeah, of course." Barry sank back down and hurriedly cleaned off the cushions to one side as Dad came around the end of couch. "I've still got some question marks, though."
"What have you settled on?"
"Well, there's a script writing class that looks kind of cool, and according to their whole numbering system it'll transfer as English credits pretty much anywhere. It meets at the college on Mondays and Wednesdays right after lunch, and then I was thinking that if I take that I could go straight from there to the Wednesday environmental science lab as long as Mr. Marin will approve it." Environmental science being the most reasonable-looking of the sciences, especially since it didn't say anything horrible like 'requires calculus' the way the physics class did. "And I'll need his approval for the environmental science lecture too since it's on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the same slot, but I was thinking that if I could line that up with a third class that would just make things convenient for everyone. Plus maybe if the timing works I might be able to work a couple hours at the writing center too, either right before or right after classes, but I haven't even looked at their application yet." He still wanted to, obviously, but his actual schedule had to come first.
"Script writing?" Dad frowned slightly. "Aren't there any more...practical...options?"
Barry hesitated. "There is a class called Technical and Professional Writing that also gives transferrable English credits—it's one of the ones on Tuesdays and Thursdays—but it looks like a different kind of writing." A pretty boring kind based on the description, and he was sort of counting on his English class to keep him sane.
"Hm. Well, maybe something to think about."
Dad picked up one of the stacks of papers from the floor and flipped through it absently. Barry thought it was one of the required course lists that one of the colleges had sent him, but he wasn't totally sure anymore. He'd spent a lot of time sorting paperwork.
"And what are you thinking about for your last class?" Dad asked, looking back at him again. "Or are you considering taking more than one?"
"I was thinking I could do two more, or at least I've got enough free credits that I could do two if I wanted to." Based on this past semester, he'd certainly have the free time for it. "But if I do that, one of them will probably need to be online since otherwise I won't have much time left for community service." With what he was looking at now his mornings were still open, and he figured that he could make that work even if he just spent his time picking up trash on the roadsides and moving boxes at the food bank, but if he used his mornings up too he'd be stuck with only Fridays free. Well, Fridays plus the weekends, but he already knew that getting weekend hours was tricky since that was what most everyone with jobs had to aim for.
And regardless, online or in person, he needed to figure out what he wanted to take. It wasn't the hours that were his sticking point, it was that nothing seemed...there just wasn't anything that he'd seen that really interested him. Other than the writing stuff, anyway. The adults in his life weren't much help: Dad and Mom had always seemed to know what they were doing, same as the Colberts back when he'd been in and out of their house. Based on some of the times he'd been drafted along with the twins to help them with open houses or office parties or whatever he figured that real estate was out, but he didn't think that real estate had ever been in anyway. And Nick was a cop which was no help at all, and even Monroe...well, he did something with clocks so that was pretty useless too.
Barry liked Roddy and all, but when he looked at all of this stuff he couldn't help but be a little jealous because at least Roddy knew what he wanted to do.
Dad didn't seem to notice his uncertainty as he set the papers back on the floor again. "What are some of the options?"
"There's an intro to pretty much everything—philosophy, economics, psychology, sociology, I'm sure some other stuff that I'm forgetting—some beginner language options, some art classes that would probably be a bad idea, some music classes that would definitely be worse unless Roddy decides he wants to take one for me, several history classes about things I already know, and then a bunch of trades-type courses that look like they're maybe from a different part of the school." He shrugged. He wasn't really sure about those, except that he was very certain that he didn't want to spend any more time dealing with bricks than he already had for community service stuff.
"I suppose there might be the occasional incident where knowing basic plumbing or car repair comes in handy, but it's probably not something to focus your class time on," Dad agreed. "But doesn't the timing of the classes help you narrow your options down?"
"It does a little," Barry admitted. "Like most of the language classes are at the college but in the evenings for some reason so I probably won't do one of those." Although he probably wouldn't have picked one of those anyway since he hadn't particularly liked either the Latin or the German classes he'd taken in high school. "But there are Monday/Wednesday and Tuesday/Thursday options for most of the intro classes." He hesitated. "I guess...I guess if I do the technical writing class before the environmental science lecture on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I could do Intro to Philosophy Monday and before the lab on Wednesday instead. And I know Intro to Economics was one of the ones that had an online option." The other philosophy introductory class was in the morning instead of the afternoon, and he was pretty sure the psychology and sociology ones were too which would make volunteer stuff harder as he'd already noted.
"So technical writing, environmental science, philosophy, and economics?" Dad asked. "That sounds like a very reasonable set of courses. And if you enjoy either philosophy or economics, those are solid undergrad majors for law students. Economics tends to come into play more when you're looking at tax and monetary policies, but admissions offices always like to see a strong understanding of logic and reasoning with regards to complex topics."
The first part of that sounded an awful lot like math, which Barry had hoped to avoid, but if the Intro to Economics class had had any math prereqs he'd already have crossed it out so maybe it wouldn't be too bad. And now that Dad said it, he did remember philosophy getting a vague mention once before when they'd been talking about law school.
Of course, when he couldn't even choose four almost-random community college classes without help law school seemed like it was a million miles away, but...well, whatever. It was a schedule that made Dad happy, and it wasn't like he had anything else to do anyway, so it would be fine. "I guess I better get an email off to Mr. Marin to ask for permission then," he said. "We can't officially register until next week, but it'd be good to have that done beforehand."
"If he'll let you, definitely," Dad agreed. "Otherwise make sure that you put in the request as soon as you are registered so there's no trouble in January. Or, no, your spring semester starts in February, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. I—there's a poetry class that I was thinking I'd sign up for for the January term. It's just a couple credits, but it's all online, and with everything compressed into less than a month since nothing is happening over New Years', there's not really time to do anything else."
Dad paused for a moment and then shook himself and nodded. "I suppose that will let you get more of your community service hours completed before you start having to be more conscious of your time." He stood again, patting Barry's shoulder lightly. "You get that email sent off and then we'll see about dinner, all right?"
