The odd one out

You hated looking at his profile but you **** yourself to check it occasionally just to make sure he wasn’t on his way back to the house he so rarely visited.

Name: John Cooper
Role: NPG Subject, Father
Age: 47
Distance: 23,570m

There seemed to be nothing out of sorts when you took a quick at the figure and you were about to close the app when you saw he was still far away when something made you reconsider. The distance was enough for you to not worry about him dropping by but he should have been a lot further away if he was anywhere near where he worked.

You even remembered seeing a similar number when you had checked on him a few days ago but it had only been a few hours since he had left you all at the church and you had assumed he was still on his way back to work at the time. The figure stayed at the same value as you continued staring at the screen, not even moving a meter as you watched. There was probably a good reason as to why he was only a few towns over at most but ‘good’ was not a word you’d use to describe your father now that you knew what he had done to Mom.

Sarah made a noise at the side of you that broke you out of your trance, making you realise your hands had been tightly clenched while you had been absorbed in your thoughts. Sarah shuffled in her sleep for only a moment and you could hear her breathing go back to a steady rhythm after only a few more seconds.

You didn’t want to dwell on your father for longer than you needed to but now that you had spotted something fishy, you knew it was gonna bother you. There was no chance that you could suddenly rush off on a 23km journey without Mom organising a manhunt to track you down and doing it on a school day would only anger her more, potentially losing you some of the progress you had been making with her.

So going off and trying to find him was a no-go at least until next weekend but narrowing down where he was could hopefully still be done without too much effort on your part. You’d need a few things before you started and preferably a wide-open space to work with but a plan was forming in your mind. You scanned your room from where you sat on your bed to find what you were looking for when you noticed something missing from your room.

Your school bag that you basically carried around everywhere on most days was nowhere to be seen. You hurriedly looked around, scanning the rest of the floor to see if you had missed it but there were no signs of it. Taking a deep breath to calm yourself down slightly, you thought back to the last place you remembered having it. You had it in the gym as Grace told you to leave it by the door to her office while you were having the interview. You also remember her passing it to you as you left and then you put it on the back seat of the car…

It hit you immediately once you realised where it was. With Grace acting worried as you were about to leave her last night, you ended up hugging her and completely forgetting to grab it once you had settled her down. You let out a sigh when you realised you hadn’t lost it somewhere further away but you would still need to go around to next door and grab it before Grace took the car and dropped Emma off at school. You may still be able to catch them in the school's car park but the safer and more appealing option was to just go there earlier.

You’d also get to test out Grace’s level up now that she had rested and her level 2 effects were available. Given that you might be in a rush, her active effect might be a bit difficult to use but her passive was something you definitely wanted to test. With a plan in mind, you were ready to start taking action and as much as you wanted to mess around with Sarah while she was here, taking one look at her still soundly asleep, told you that your chances were pretty slim.

With everything ready, you were still **** to leave the warm confines of your bed but you got up and quietly headed for the door, taking extra caution not to trip on any of your discarded clothes and wake up your sister. With the new rules in place, you didn’t feel the need to put on any extra clothes and stuck with the underwear you had left on last night to keep Sarah happy. You still had your phone in your hand but placed it on the cabinet by the side of your door, tucking it out of view just in case anyone tried to grab it while you were in the shower.

You slowly undid the lock on your door before twisting the handle and walking out into the hallway, making sure Sarah hadn’t been woken up as you slowly closed the door behind you. You casually walked down the rest of the hallway now that you didn’t have to worry about staying quiet, only slowing your pace as you got closer to Lucy’s room. The distant sound of water running told you that someone else was already in the shower but as you neared the bathroom, you saw that the door was wide open with nobody inside.

The sound being distant told you that Mom must be using her ensuite and even with the bit of a time crunch you couldn’t help but want to investigate. While you were outside the bathroom, you felt the need to freshen up while you had the chance, brushing your teeth and taking care of your basic needs before still finding yourself drawn towards Mom’s room. Her door was partially open and a peek inside told you that she was already in her bathroom, letting you sneak inside her room without being spotted.

You rarely came in here as Mom didn’t spend much time in her room before getting on with the rest of her day but you could tell everything in here had been placed by your mother, with nothing except an occasional piece of clothing sticking out of a drawer belonging to your father. Everything looked immaculately placed and you had the feeling that if you moved anything out of its right place then Mom would find out almost instantly. You wanted to continue snooping around but right now, the potential time you could spend in the shower with Mom was dwindling and the longer you spent in here, the greater the risk of her finishing before you got the chance to have some fun.

Keeping your footsteps light, you slowly walked towards her bathroom door and was surprised to see the door was cracked open slightly. You weren’t sure if she had done it accidentally but you took it as good fortune on your part and tried to peek through the gap. Unfortunately, the bath out of your line of sight and the mirror that could have helped you take a look was fogged up completely, leaving you with only a blurry skin coloured figure that you could only assume was your mother.

The chances of it being Lucy again when the other bathroom was free were already pretty slim but you took extra care to try and take note of the hair colour you could see and with it not being the dyed black you would expect from Lucy, you considered yourself safe. With all your precautions checked, the only thing left to do was to just...well walk in there. The only thing holding you back was how to approach this. Should you sneak up and surprise her like you did with Lucy or would it be better to announce your presence as soon as you entered?

You quickly came to a decision and finally moved your feet.