Pandemic Spy School

Chapter Three

Chapter Three - Identification

Freeway 10

Tallahassee Florida

April 19th

1800 hours

I got home in just under 30 minutes. The path Erica had taken was difficult for me to navigate, mostly so that no one could follow us. And it also made it tricky to get back out of. By 9am I was back at my home, where my parents had gone frantic trying to find me. I had suspected this would happen. So on my way back, I thought up a story that would convince them where I had gone. I stepped out of the woods, with a few thorns stuck in my arms and legs, and my hair a mess, to find my dad pacing the porch, being no help whatsoever. Mom on the other hand, was searching in the woods behind the house. This gave Dad the opportunity to pretend he had found me.

"AHA!" He had yelled triumphantly when I emerged. He had quickly walked over to me, and took me by my shoulders and gave me a slight shake. "I knew I would find you!"

Mom came around the house scowling, like she had wanted to be the one to find me. Clearly neither of them had actually wanted me to be here, they had just wanted to be the first to find me.

"Sorry 'bout that." I said quickly. "I decided to go on a quick walk while you two were cleaning up, and I saw some cool animal off the path, so I decided I would quickly check it out, but then I couldn't find the path again, and it took me a while to get back." I flashed a grin at the end.

Mom had just been interested in the animal side of it.

"So... what animal was it?" she asked eagerly.

"I think it was a pink chameleon. But I didn't get a good look at it."

Mom seemed disappointed at this.

"I'm going to go check my phone if that's alright."

"Sure go ahead. We'll wait for you." Dad said, letting go of my shoulders. I quickly walked into the house, and into my room. I didn't bother to take off my boots as I went. I slipped into my bedroom, and found my phone exactly where I had left it. Underneath my pile of dirty clothes. Sure enough, I had about 15 missed calls from Erica, and lots of texts from my other friends. I didn't take the time to reply to any of them, and instead shoved it into my backpack, which was already overflowing with knick-knacks such as papers and pens. From there I took my suitcase out of the small closet against one of the walls, and started grabbing everything that was mine from around the room, and packed it. One thing I hate about vacation. You have to pack everything. Eight hours may seem like a lot of time, but when you have been living in a house for 3 and a half weeks already, you will have stuff everywhere, and eight hours doesn't give you much time. Plus, I wasn't getting out of the nature walk with my parents. Which would take an hour at least. I still had half my room to unpack when I heard the door to the house open and my dad call out -

"Ben! What's taking so long?"

"I had a lot of stuff to catch up on!" I replied hurriedly. I hoped he wouldn't decide to come to my room and see that I was packing. And for a second, I thought I had convinced him to go back outside. But then I heard footsteps coming towards me, and I knew I was about to be found out. Sure enough, my dad's head popped around the corner a few seconds later.

"Hey," He said slowly. "I know you might feel like we don't want you here, but I assure you, there's no need to pack."

I quickly thought up a story, and then acted as though a thought had suddenly occurred to me.