Chapter 2.10 - Time Skip

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like? I’m playing soccer.”

“By yourself?”

Beckett glanced at the girl talking to him. He recognized her, of course. This town wasn’t big enough for him to not know who any kid was. Her name was Madeline. “I tried to talk my siblings into playing with me, but Alaric was doing homework and Jade was watching TV, and neither of them really like sports anyway.”

“That’s a shame. Can I play with you?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

They played for a while. Finally she paused and wiped the sweat off her forehead. Then she looked up at him, warm brown eyes sparkling in excitement. “You’re really good.”

“Thanks. You’re good too.”

“No, I mean you’re really good. Why aren’t you on the middle school team?”

He blushed, embarrassed by the way she was looking at him - like he had some real, impressive talent. “I guess I just never thought I was that good.”

“Oh, you’re definitely that good. You should talk to the coach about it.”

“Do you really think so?” He met her eyes, feeling strangely hopeful.

“I really do.” She paused, blushing a little bit. “I could come with you, you know… if you want?”

“I’d love that, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all.”

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Jade was watching what her brothers liked to call her “cheesy tween soap operas” when her phone rang. She fished it out of her pocket and answered it without looking at the caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Hey Jade. We just got back.”

“Oh my Plumbob, Eve! It felt like you were gone forever!”

“Let me guess, since I was gone, you spent the whole summer lying on your couch watching Prince of Hearts.”

“You know me well. Have you managed to keep yourself caught up while you were gone?”

“I haven’t seen a single episode in three months.”

“Oh my Plumbob, you have got to get caught up! You’ll never guess what Liana told Lance last episode.”

Eve laughed. She was a couple of years younger than Jade, but they were in the same grade because Eve was a super-genius and had skipped two grades in elementary school. Sometimes Jade thought that if they weren’t cousins, they would never be friends. Eve was, as previously stated, a super-genius, and Jade’s ability to keep up with several complex interrelated plotlines on her favorite TV shows did not translate to doing well in school. Eve was really the only reason she was passing math this year. She just couldn’t focus in class. Her mind started wandering, and the next thing she knew, the teacher was calling on her and she had no idea what he’d said. She shook off her thoughts, because Eve was speaking again. “How about you come over and tell me everything I missed.”

Jade grinned. “I’m on my way.”

On her way out the door, she called back to her dad. “I’m going to Eve’s house!”

“Say hi to your Aunt Ayla for me, and text me if you’re eating dinner there.”

As she got on her bike, Jade grinned. Her life had been incredibly boring for the last three months, but now Eve was back. Things were really starting to look up.

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Alaric stared at his paper. He couldn’t quite figure out what the teacher wanted from him. The assignment said that he was supposed to summarize the assigned summer reading book, The White Flag of Victory, and then write a recommendation for it that would make other people want to read it. The vagueness of the instructions frustrated him. How much detail did the teacher want in this summary? How long should it be? Should he focus on the plot? The character development? The intricacies of the social structure the narrator was part of? Who was his target audience for the recommendation? What sort of books did they like to read? Why were they going to a twelve-year-old boy for a book recommendation?

He was currently in the process of drafting an email to the teacher to ask all of these questions. He’d found her email on the school website, and if she didn’t answer it, he had ways of getting her phone number. He absolutely refused to start his essay until he knew exactly what it was the teacher wanted from him, and there was only a week left until school started. It would take him at least a couple of days to draft, revise, edit, and run his essay by several experts. He needed answers soon.

After the email was sent, Alaric wandered into the living room, idly wondering where Jade was. It was a rare occurrence for her to be somewhere other than lying on the couch, watching bad television. Beckett was probably still out playing soccer, but he really couldn’t figure out where Jade was. Alaric walked out to the back porch, where his dad was painting, as he usually did on his days off.

“Dad? Do you know where Jade is?”

His dad didn’t even glance backwards, completely focused on his painting as he replied to Alaric’s question. “Eve’s family just got back from Monte Vista, so Jade went over there to visit.”

“So when should I expect a scathing expose of the Monte Vista mob?”

Alaric could hear his dad’s smile in his voice as he spoke. “It should be out in a couple of weeks. Not that I would know anything about that, of course.”

“No, of course not. The upper-level forensic profiler who just happens to have a sister who’s one of the best investigative journalists of all time knows nothing about her exploits. Especially not when she sometimes gets access to information that only high-ranking police officers should be able to get their hands on.”

“Exactly.”

“Did she take them down?”

“From the inside. It was beautiful.”

“I imagine it was.”

They stood in companionable silence. Alaric stared at the sky and wondered what it would be like to have the power to take down the most powerful mob in existence. The corners of his lips curled up at the thought. He had to imagine that sort of power would be… intoxicating.

Author's Note: It really feels like it's been forever since my last chapter. It's been over a week, so I suppose it kind of has, by my standards anyway. At least this was a long chapter, right?

The rest of this generation will be almost entirely focused on the kids. We'll have a couple more chapters of them as kids, but the fun will really start once they're teenagers. Madeline from this chapter is the first of several interesting characters that the kids will interact with in various ways. She is a (slightly edited) child of Mei Milne (who TwistedSmiley lent me) and Geoffrey Landgraab. 

Hopefully it won't take another week to get the next chapter out, but I haven't written it yet, so who knows? Nevertheless, I can tell you that it will contain some evil plotting, awkward preteen flirting, and more than a little angst.