Chapter 19: The Girl from Africa
The Samson House. After school.
"Owen, you're home!"
"Mm."
Lisa watched him come through the door, backpack on, already moving toward the stairs with the focused energy of someone who had somewhere to be.
"I was hoping we could—"
"One sec, Aunt Lisa, I just need to do something first."
He was already halfway up.
She shook her head. Got it half right — he wasn't avoiding the conversation, exactly. He just had something to handle first.
Upstairs. Owen's room.
He sat at his desk, pulled out a sheet of plain paper, and wrote.
Not in his own handwriting — he'd been practicing a rounder, looser script for exactly this purpose. Three pages, unhurried, the pen moving steadily.
When he finished, he folded the pages into an envelope, wrote an address he'd looked up at the school library, sealed it, and set it aside.
He changed into a nondescript hoodie, put the envelope in his pocket, and went back downstairs.
"Going out for a bit," he told Lisa.
"Dinner's at six-thirty."
"I'll be back."
He rode to a mailbox in Lincoln Park — far enough from the neighborhood that it wouldn't connect to him easily, close enough that it wasn't suspicious to be there. He checked twice that no one was paying attention, dropped the envelope in, and rode home.
The letter was addressed to the Illinois Department of Human Services, Fraud Reporting Division.
Its contents described, in specific and verifiable detail, a social security arrangement involving a deceased elderly woman named Ginger, a South Side Chicago address, and a man named Francis Gallagher.
Anonymous. Unsigned. Written in handwriting that wasn't his.
Frank had made a threat. Owen didn't do well with threats. But he also understood that the response to Frank couldn't be direct — Frank was enmeshed in too many things that needed to stay intact. Fiona's arc. Lip's trajectory. The Gallagher household's broader function as a secondary universe node.
So the response was indirect. A nudge. Enough to keep Frank occupied with his own problems for a while, redirect his attention away from Owen, and do it through channels that couldn't be traced back to anyone in particular.
Owen had not reported anything that wasn't true.
He rode home in the early evening feeling, for the first time all week, like his head was clear.
A man of his word, he thought. I told Frank I wouldn't appear in front of him again. And I won't. Problem solved from a comfortable distance.
Dinner.
Jack sat at the head of the table. Lisa served. Elizabeth, home for the week from her first semester of community college, ate with the cheerful detachment of someone visiting from a slightly different dimension.
Jack looked at Owen with the expression of a man who had been assigned a portion of the evening's agenda and was deciding how to begin.
"So," Jack said. "Owen. I hear your year is going well."
"It's going well," Owen said.
"In multiple departments," Jack said.
"Jack," Lisa said.
"I'm getting to it." Jack cleared his throat. "Lisa and I aren't here to come down on you. But we did want to have a conversation."
Lisa set down her fork and looked at Owen directly. "I'm going to be straightforward, because that's how I prefer to do things. In three months, you've gone from being a quiet kid who studied a lot to being — I don't even know the exact phrase that's circulating, but it involves the words true man and campus and a few other things that I'll spare us both by not repeating at the dinner table."
Elizabeth made a sound that was half cough, half laugh.
"Elizabeth," Lisa said.
"I'm eating," Elizabeth said innocently.
"Owen." Lisa folded her hands. "You are fourteen years old. You are brilliant and you are driven and you have more potential than most people I've ever known. And I will not watch you spend that potential on — on running a personal social life that requires a scheduling system."
"Aunt Lisa—"
"Let me finish." She held up a hand. "Your grades are still excellent. I know that. But grades at a public high school are not the ceiling, Owen. You told us your goal is to be a scientist. Real science — the kind you're actually capable of — requires everything you have. The absolute top tier of that world doesn't leave room for distraction, and I don't want to watch you shortchange yourself." She paused. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes," Owen said. And meant it. "You're right. I got carried away. I'll refocus."
Lisa studied him. Decided he was being genuine. Nodded.
"Good," she said, and picked up her fork.
Jack leaned forward with the expression of a man who had a contribution to make. "For what it's worth — Owen, at your age, having some social life isn't the end of the world. It's normal. It's healthy. The scientific community, historically speaking, is not exactly—"
"Jack."
"I'm making a factual observation." Jack straightened. "Einstein. Feynman. Schrödinger — actually, especially Schrödinger. Hawking. These are not men who lived like monks, Lisa, and it didn't stop them from—"
"I know what you're about to say."
"I'm saying that a certain amount of—"
"Jack."
Jack paused. Looked at Lisa. Recalibrated.
"What I'm saying," he said carefully, "is just — be smart about it, Owen. Be thoughtful. Be considerate of people's feelings. And—" he pointed gently, "—after dinner. My study. We're going to have a quick practical conversation that I should have had with you a while ago."
"Got it, Uncle Jack," Owen said.
Lisa looked at the ceiling briefly, then back at her dinner, with the expression of a woman who had made her peace with the fact that she had married Jack Samson and was, on balance, glad about it.
The practical conversation in Jack's study lasted twelve minutes and covered ground that Owen, thanks to a prior conversation with the System, had already addressed from a different angle.
He thanked Jack, accepted the items Jack pressed into his hand with the solemn gravity of a man performing a duty, and went back to his room.
He sat on his bed and looked at the ceiling.
Three months ago, he'd raised the topic with the System himself — partly out of curiosity, partly because it was the kind of thing that needed to be understood clearly in a universe where the American Pie cast were his actual classmates and Karen Jackson existed as a real person three blocks away.
The System had been, characteristically, thorough.
"Existence Points represent movement toward immortality," it had said. "The biological concerns of ordinary human lifespans don't apply in the same way to the Owner."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning the System has addressed the relevant variables as part of Skill 1's base functionality. Additionally, given the multi-universe nature of the Owner's existence — including future traversal to negative pole universes — a comprehensive immunity framework has been built in. Pathogens. Cellular deterioration. Infection vectors of all known types, including those specific to certain supernatural universes."
Owen had sat with that for a moment. "Even if I end up in a universe with, say, biological hazards of a more exotic variety?"
"Zombies, vampires, and related supernatural infection mechanics are included, yes."
"Right."
"System products are always premium."
Owen looked at the ceiling of his Chicago bedroom and thought, not for the first time, that the System had a very specific sense of what comprehensive meant.
He was almost asleep when Lisa knocked on his door.
"Come in."
She stood in the doorway, holding a mug of tea, and had the look of someone with a postscript.
"One more thing," she said. "I forgot to mention it at dinner. A friend of mine — we went to college together, lost touch for years, just reconnected. Her family spent the last several years in Africa — her husband does international public health work."
"Okay," Owen said.
"They just got back. Settled in the neighborhood, actually, not far from us." Lisa leaned against the doorframe. "Their daughter has been homeschooled her whole life — she's never been in a conventional school. She's starting at North Shore next week." She looked at Owen. "I told her mother I'd ask you to keep an eye out. Help her find her footing."
"Sure," Owen said. "What's her name?"
"Joanna," Lisa said. "Joanna Bailey. Apparently she's very sharp — the homeschooling was serious, academic, the real thing. But socially—" Lisa made a small gesture that meant uncharted territory. "Just be kind. Be a friendly face."
"I can do that," Owen said.
Lisa smiled. "I know you can." She started to pull the door closed, then paused. "Owen."
"Yeah."
"I meant what I said at dinner. About your potential." She looked at him steadily. "Don't waste it. Not even a little bit."
"I know," he said. "I won't."
She closed the door.
Owen lay back and looked at the ceiling.
Joanna Bailey, he thought. Homeschooled. International background. Starting cold at a public high school.
He ran through what he knew of the integrated universe's secondary character roster. The name didn't immediately connect to anything he recognized. Which meant either she was an original addition to the integrated universe — a character who existed in this version but not in any specific source material — or she was someone he'd missed.
Both possibilities were interesting.
"System," he said quietly.
"Yes, Owner."
"New contact incoming. Joanna Bailey. North Shore High School, starting next week."
"Noted. Monitoring."
Owen closed his eyes.
Outside, Chicago settled into its nighttime sounds — the distant train, the wind off the lake, the low ongoing hum of a city that didn't fully stop.
New semester. New contact. Frank occupied with his own incoming problems. The Gallagher situation repositioned from threat to managed variable.
Things were moving.
He fell asleep thinking about parabolas.
Let's push the story forward!
Rewards System:
500 Power Stones = New Chapter
10 Reviews = New Chapter
20+ chapters waiting on P3treon – DarkFoxx