-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tuck Season, Wabbit Season, Tuck Season! Part 12 -*- Copyright 1999, 2010 by either Joel Lawrence or Ellen Hayes Any resemblance between the writings in this work, and any actual persons or places, living or dead, are purely coincidental, except when used for satirical purposes. This work contains adult situations, adult language, adult concepts, and possibly sex. If you are legally not allowed to read materials containing such things, then you will be breaking the law by reading this. I am not responsible. Continuing to read this document, or storing it or reproducing it in any format means that you explicitly affirm that you are legally allowed to possess and read such materials in your city, county/parish, state, and country. All rights reserved. See the bottom for distribution rights. *** Tucker had obviously miscalculated the sun's path, because it was barely nine o'clock and yet the sun was full on him, starting to roast him in his own juices. He got out of the broiler bag as quickly as he could manage without ripping it up - except he mangled the stupid bag anyway, so it was definitely a 'garbage' bag now - and then he could move into the shade. *At least my gear was over here... and I ate the pizza earlier. I think a Dew would go well...* The ice was gone but the Dews were still wet and cool. He opened one, and then sat down... And then the dream came back to him full force. *I was dressed like Valerie, IN FRONT OF MY PARENTS, even BRIAN, and they weren't doing anything- hell, if anything, they looked pleased about me looking like that.* Though a lot of the 'pleased' was Debbie. *And I TOLD them I was Valerie, and... no, wait, I told Brian, and they just kind of nodded, like they already KNEW that name; and they sure didn't look surprised to find me in a dress.* He'd had those dreams, about his parents catching him in girl's clothing, months before, and they hadn't gone well. *REM sleep just sucks,* he decided. John woke up in a panic as the alarm scared him awake. *God I hate that thing...* *Why was I- Why does my tongue hurt?* It felt like he'd bitten- *Oh my god!* Obviously, Tucker realized, his parents had sent him here under false pretenses, to get him used to being a girl, because they KNEW something about those medical tests he'd had and they hadn't told HIM. Though at this point, he had a pretty good guess. *Damnit, that makes too much sense... Though why would they toss me in here without telling me- *Dude,* he realized, *this is just like one of Dad's survival tests. Shows how you can handle yourself under stress and shit, and that along with the girl stuff... so they lie to me to get me to go, and then send me to- to 'boot camp with fake tits',* he remembered from last night. *'Cause if I could handle all this crap, I ought to be able to handle being a girl or whatever, and whatever else kind of crap the world and school and stuff could throw at me.* That made altogether too much sense, if you'd lived under Tucker's dad. Which Tucker had. *That son of a bitch...* John dialed one more time, his fingers practically doing the job themselves by now, and it rang, and rang, and rang, and then FINALLY someone picked up with a worried-sounding, "Thompson resi-" "It's Joan," he said frantically. "I just got a call- I mean, I got a call this morning..." *Oh,* Tucker remembered, *and if I get through this, I get a Libretto with all the trimmings.* *Oh shit.* And he'd just tossed that. *Maybe...* This definitely required some thought. "Drugged?" Jane repeated. "She mentioned it a number of times, Aunt Jane," Joan emphasized. "I think that had her really scared. Like she thought it would happen again and she wouldn't wake up the second time." "If she thought... But why would she think something like that?" "She mentioned Jeffrey Dahmer, and-" "THAT is who she compared me to?!" Jane protested vehemently, as the others in the room erupted in shock and dismay. "Don't yell at me, please, and don't interrupt," Joan said primly. "I'm sorry," Jane said reflexively, still trying to comprehend- "Well, you said you wanted the new kids scared, Aunt Jane, when they got there. I think you scared this one too much." "Dear God," Art murmured. And, Tucker knew from previous tests and exercises, if he called and whined about this one, or aborted, he'd flunk, and he'd have to do it again. *Still,* Tucker argued, *this crap was WAY out of bounds. Even if Dad was running this as an exercise, this is just... I mean... just WAY too far. Jane must've gone apeshit or 'accidentally forgotten' something, 'cause Dad would never have let me think I'd be sold to porn slavers. He KNOWS I'd kill them first. *So I've got that as a bargaining point. If they know Dad, or MOM, they'd rather not have either of MY parents find out what they've been doing, or have my side presented.* Tucker figured he had a good enough case to get the lot of them arrested for child abuse at least, and investigated for child porn and other things, which would definitely ruin everyone's lives for several years and possibly force them to move out of Northeast America entirely. *Especially if the media, like via Trish's mom, gets hold of this. So they DON'T want me to blab. *What the fuck was Jane THINKING? Or does she hate men that much? That's gotta be part of it,* Tucker realized. *Oh, jeez, and if MOM mentioned a few things I've done...* Luckily, Mom only knew about a few of the things he'd done, though none of them had resulted in an arrest or anything like that. *But even the stuff she knows about, if she told Jane the man-hater about 'em, she'd be all over my case, like I was the distilled essence of masculine evil or something like that. And she WAS all over my case...* *But what if Jane called my parents already?* "Fuck," he accidentally said out loud, startling himself into a secondary, "Ah!" *Goddamnit don't DO that!* "Miz Thompson," Charlie said gently, trying to finesse the inevitable explosion so it wouldn't be directed at HIM, "we've heard about stuff like this, or at least some of it, in school and st-" "In SCHOOL?!" Jane almost shrieked, and then had a coughing fit. Grateful for the coughing fit, Charlie waited until she finished before reciting, "'Don't go anywhere with a stranger, don't accept gifts or loans from adults you don't know, don't go anywhere alone, NEVER accept food or drink from someone you don't know'..." Jane gasped, "But how could she think..." Which was why Charlie had voluntarily donned one of the youngest dresses in his closet, and done his morning makeup and hair to match. He grabbed the edges of the skimpy skirt and pulled them outwards while dipping his head, then looked back up at her. "You made her dress like this, Miz Thompson," he said in the highest, girliest voice he could manage. Astral rlogins with Mike and Debbie - or, Tucker was forced to admit, the combination of fatigue, partial but insufficient REM sleep, caffeine, starvation, stress, sunlight, and familiarity with the two of them - had given him some part of an idea. Very unfortunately, he'd need Pauline to make it work. And he couldn't talk to her from up here. Also he needed fresh clothing and new coats of sunblock and makeup. But he could do those. He could do them up here, in fact; especially since he had a signal mirror in his social work gear, and a bunch of expensive new clothes from Wal-Mart yesterday. "Hello?" "Pauline? This is Valerie again... would you like to get lunch again? I could REALLY use a couple of rides today." Pauline sighed. "Lemme think about it." "I could do dinner, too..." "You think it would take that long?" Pauline caught. "Um... I hope not, but it might," she admitted. "Um... I need- Can I call you back?" "I can call you in, like, half an hour. Would that be enough time?" "Um, yeah," Pauline admitted, surprised that Valerie was actually going to give her time to think. Trish never did. "Okay, so, ten-thirty, right?" Pauline was forced to look for a clock. "Um, yeah." "Okay bye." Tucker checked the note he'd made for the L.A. outdial he'd need next. "Bet that ice melted by now... and if it didn't, no problem, I save a quarter. Oh wait..." He had to hook up the earphone-output-to- phone-microphone-input first. "510 area code? Where is that?" Darryl asked. "Berkeley, I think," Charlene answered offhandedly, then looked startled. "Answer it!" Jane hissed. "I'm going to!" he protested, though he didn't want to. Sighing to himself, he set the phone on speaker before he picked up the handset and said, "Thompson residence, this is Darla." This time Valerie played two guitar riffs and a couple of vocalists squalling, "You got another thing comin'!" before she hung up. "Judas Priest?" Charlene yelped. "Charlene! Blasphemy-" "It's the name of the BAND!" Charlene complained back. "No, I just kinda want to get away from Trish for a while," Pauline said. It wasn't quite a lie. Mom sighed and glared at her, but she wasn't saying 'no' yet, which was a pretty good sign. "Wow, I love the beach," Tucker decided. Out of all the places he could walk to, the beach was probably the best, at least for normal times. *Though I wonder, do runaways show up at beaches a lot?* He hoped not. Also, by being at the beach while the entire world was also there - or so it seemed, though the other parking lot across the street wasn't full yet - he was making it harder to pick him out of the crowd. *Now if I can just find a pay phone, and call Pauline... Or... no,* he decided, *I'm sort of running low on sound clips. Better save what I have for later.* *Why don't you try some planning, fuckwit?* Mike complained. "Oh, yeah, good point," Tucker agreed. "Hello?" Pauline answered. "Pauline? It's Valerie." *Wow, right on time,* she thought, checking the clock; ten-thirty on the dot. "So, um, is it okay?" Valerie asked. "Yeah. But you said like lunch AND dinner, right?" She complained, "Oh man!" Before Pauline could say anything, Valerie sighed and said, "Yeah, okay, if it takes that long. And definitely lunch." "Okay, so, where are you?" "Not the place we went yesterday... Um, it's called 'Scarborough State Beach', I-" "Oh yeah, I know it," Pauline nodded. "Okay, so I'm like- I mean, I can see the parking lot, so just pull in and go kinda slow, okay? Past the buildings, on the beach side." "Okay, see you," Pauline smiled. "Wait! About how long?" Valerie asked. "Oh, uh... about... fifteen or twenty minutes?" That was a guess, and sort of depended on whether she could escape The Tard. "Okay, no problem. See you in twenty minutes!" "Okay bye!" "So she's got to know where a mall and stuff are," Tucker said to himself. "So, like, no problem!" he smirked in a very Amanda sort of way, like he'd been talking to Pauline. "Except, what the hell do I tell Mike?" *Oh, damnit.* That was going to be tricky. "Well," Charlie said, "may I fix something for myself?" Darla looked at him weird and replied in her cultured voice, "Well, yes, of course," like he was an idiot for asking. "Thank you," Charlie said, out of Jane-induced habit, and went to the kitchen. He wished Valerie would stop calling from wherever she was, because it was making everyone crazier. "Hey," someone said to Tucker. He looked up, and there was a younger male smiling at him, so of course Tucker stood up, rubbed his elbows against his body to check for knives, and visually looked for the real assailants. *Wish I hadn't shifted my gear into Civ mode-* "You new in town?" the male asked, still smiling, but not using the voice tones males usually used on males when they were getting ready to be assholes. *Why is he sound- Oh, right, I'm a girl,* Tucker remembered. "Um, yeah," he admitted, and then remembered to smile. "I'm waiting for a friend of mine to pick me up." He checked his primary watch, which was now on his left wrist where it belonged. *Just five fucking minutes... IF she's on time. Awww, MAN! I was so close!* "Oh," the guy said. Then he smiled and said, "Boy friend or girl friend?" "Oh, girlfriend. Actually the sister of one of my friends," Tucker remembered. "She's taking me to run a couple errands today." "Oh that's cool," the guy agreed. *I think he's sort of hitting on me,* Tucker identified, and then he found himself wishing he'd worn more makeup so he'd look older. He'd gone light, since trying to do a lot of eye makeup while trying to balance a mirror on his gear hadn't worked, and holding the mirror in one hand and using the other hadn't worked, and putting the mirror on the surface of the roof and bending over hadn't worked, and trying to balance it on his knees hadn't worked... he'd given up quickly, after he'd gotten about as much as Marie had let him wear on that outing a week ago. Though he still had some left on from yesterday, it wasn't much. Christian Toone thought the girl in front of him was pretty cute, though she was pretty young judging by her figure. But she was definitely old enough, out of the lower grades and out of the boy-hating phase girls went through. She had dyed her hair in two colors, though, and she was wearing more makeup than girls her age usually did, to try and look older. And she was wearing the kind of scruffy clothing - Army pants, a wrinkled men's long-sleeved shirt over a pink string-strapped top, and flipflops - girls wore when they were convinced they were good-looking already; those girls tended to like hanging with older guys like himself. He had a girl he was dating already, but of course he was always on the lookout for someone new. And 'new' was always attractive. At least when they weren't college girls; he knew it was going to take him a few years before he could chat THEM up with any chance of success. Trying to keep the conversation going, he asked the girl in front of him, "So, um," and he pointed at her large duffel bag, "did you just get here or something?" "Wh- Oh, no. I was thinking I was going to leave today, but I think the plans changed." "Oh, wow. So how long do you think you'll be here?" She shrugged. "Depends. I dunno, really; there's some kind of negotiation going on." "Oh. Divorced parents?" he guessed. "Little more complicated than that," she said. Then she didn't explain any further. *Come ON Pauline!* Tucker did not really want to be standing here chatting with this preschool (well, pre-high-school) Romeo, but it did give him visual cover of a sort, and if he was going to stay, he needed to at least avoid giving the locals like Romeo-lite reasons to hate him. And while he only had a vague idea what sort of image he presented today - though he knew it wasn't 'stuck up bitch trying to look inappropriately adult' or 'stuck up bitch dressed by idiot parents', or worse, like he'd been forced into over the last week - he was pretty sure that standing here, talking with a relatively attractive junior- high guy, would spoof anyone looking for him. And the guy was relatively attractive for his age, with curly brown hair darker than Tucker's and lighter blue eyes, and showing tanned arms and legs and enough muscle to detect, since he was wearing a tank top and ripped jean shorts. The kid was about his height and probably outweighed him by twenty pounds of muscle. *Damnit.* "So," Tucker said after the kid had apparently failed his last Fast-Talk roll. *Thank Ghu he's not going for Sex Appeal!* "You live around here?" he confirmed. "Yah, over in Wakefield," he said. *Wakefield, Wakefield...* Tucker sort of remembered that on the map, but not quite where it was. "I know where Kingston is," Tucker offered. "And West Kingston," he remembered, though the two weren't really far apart. "Yeah, it's like," and the guy turned around and pointed vaguely off to the west. *So's the rest of North America, bozo,* Tucker thought, which made him smile. Christian turned back to see the girl smiling, which was definitely a good sign. "So, um, could you show me on a map? I got one yesterday," she said, and reached into one of the pockets in her pants and pulled out a road map and began unfolding it. "You wanna sit down," he suggested to her. "So the map doesn't fly off!" he added, as her map tried to do just that in the wind. "Oh, uh, yeah, that..." and then she stopped talking, dropped her bag and sat. Christian went around to the other side of her bag and sat down, because he knew that the less he looked like he was chasing her, the less he would HAVE to chase her. Tucker glanced over and made sure his duffle was locked. *What the hell is he doing?* "See, we're," he said, and made a hasty grab at the map, to keep it from getting airborne and escaping. Putting it on top of Tucker's duffle and leaning on it with his left forearm, he leaned over and pointed with his right index finger. "See," he restarted, "we're... here, that's where the beach is." Tucker said, "Uh huh?" in a higher than usual pitch, to make sure he didn't appear too smart. Jane wasn't too sure if her vomiting was a symptom of whatever accursed infection she'd picked up, or if it was from pure stress. *Not that it really makes a difference,* she reflected as she retched again. She regretted not eating breakfast; it would be easier if she had something in her stomach to purge, because purging she was apparently going to be, for a while. "Well, there she is, I think," Tucker said to himself as Pauline- presumed pulled into the parking lot. *Plate issssssss MATCH!* he thought when he could finally see the front license plate. He stood up, taking the map with him, and waved at her. "That's your ride?" "Oh, yeah," Tucker admitted, wishing for a moment the guy hadn't seen Pauline and her minivan, so he couldn't describe it later. *Get OVER it,* he told himself as he folded the map back up and slipped it into his thigh pocket. Movement startled him, and when he saw the guy lifting the duffle Tucker almost went for a knife, but a lockup due to awareness of the immense number of potential witnesses gave the guy time to start hauling the bag towards Pauline. *Okay, don't kill him unless he tries to take off,* Tucker told himself as he hurried after his gear. "Wow, what is in here?" the guy wanted to know as he heaved along. "Oh, lots of bricks," Tucker said in an airhead voice. "What?" "I can carry it if you..." Tucker knew that insinuating it was too heavy would insult the guy's masculinity, thus making it impossible to get his bag back, but he couldn't think of another way to say it. "No, it's okay," the guy said. *Of course,* Tucker confirmed sourly. The side door flew open and Trish signed, Tucker signed back. "That's your friend?" the guy asked, sounding surprised. Unpleasantly surprised. "Yeah?" Tucker replied. He didn't miss Trish looking at the guy, recognizing him, and not being happy about it. "Thanks for carrying my stuff!" he chirped happily at the guy, and took the straps before the guy could get some sort of clever idea. "I'll see ya around maybe," he added as a closing line as he threw his bag in, just missing Trish who dodged back in her seat, then climbed in himself. "Thanks for keeping me company, bye!" he said, and smiled as he shut the door and then waved. Pauline started off as Trish grabbed his arm and started saying nasty things. "Yeah yeah yeah. SEAT BELT," he said slowly and broadly to Trish's face, because he was using both his hands to try and find one to put on. "What..." *It couldn't be,* Lisa thought. "It's a pregnancy simulator," the woman said, half proudly. Lisa tuned out her explanation of why she had such a thing and why they were selling it at a garage sale, which sounded bogus to her anyway. When the woman got to a stopping point, Lisa asked, "How much?" It was brimming with potential. *Where the fuck can I get some more money?* Tucker desperately wanted to know. He was running critically low. *Maybe I can extort some from Jane? No, then Mom'd make me pay it back. Fine?* His parents fined him for all sorts of crimes; maybe he could... *No, JUST like with my parents, they'd demand they get the money, and I MIGHT get some tiny percentage of it eventually. But probably not. Damnit...* Trish seemed just as happy to be eating up his savings as Pauline was. he signed back. He felt sick. And poor. "Poor Marie, she still feels sick herself," Darryl reported. "And we're running out of cough syrup." "Well, I guess I can go into town and get some," Art said, frowning. "Oh, and..." He wasn't sure what Momma-Jane was taking, though he wasn't entirely sure if she could get anything out of the drugs if she didn't digest them. "Well. I think I need to make a list. Or I could go?" "Well, one of us has to stay here," Art reminded him while looking up toward Jane's bedroom. Darryl sighed, and thought about it. "Why don't," he finally said, "I stay? Let me make a list... Can you go to the grocery store too?" Tucker wound up the mix of truth, deductions, guesses, and lies with, they both signed at him. he signed back, with a sigh. Trish made a lot of violent moves, apparently happy about it; her hands were incoherent. Pauline was a lot less happy about it, even after she punched Trish's shoulder and moved herself and her food sideways, away from the happy-spazzing Trish. "So, like, all summer?" Tucker replied. Trish ordered. Tucker signed at her. "So, like, what do you need me for?" Pauline asked. Tucker shook his head. Or worse, but he wasn't going to tell them that. Trish enthused. Tucker was less enthused that she'd caught it exactly, but he couldn't really think of a way to tell her 'no'. Not and be believed. "Dude, I don't KNOW what the little shit is doing," Mike complained back to Dan. "You think he got recaptured, maybe?" "Maybe..." Mike was forced to admit. *That WOULD explain the weird dreams last night.* "But I dunno. It hasn't been that long, so we don't do anything yet." Dan sighed, then looked at the floor. "More operations are ruined by impatience than anything else," Mike reminded him, and blocked the punch. "Ha!" And blocked the kick. "Lamer roundeye!" Tucker sighed and gave Pauline the $11. *With any luck...* Without luck, he'd have to rely on Mike and Dan, and possibly some of the girls, to extract the $11 plus interest out of Pauline's flesh. "So I drop you two off?" Pauline confirmed. "Yeah, and then what you do, is..." He had to check the cheat sheet. "Why don't you let me have that?" Pauline asked. "Because, if y- It's not secure," he said instead. He didn't want Pauline to be thinking of things like 'capture' or 'interrogation' or 'arrest'. Or 'torture'. He wouldn't mind not thinking about them himself, but that wasn't gonna happen; Mike had trained him too well, building on Dad's proactive paranoia, and he couldn't stop. *I hope Diana gets ice cream,* Charlie realized, WAY too late. *EVERYONE likes ice cream when they're sick, though.* Except, probably Jane; she didn't do anything else normally, so she probably wouldn't get sick normally either. "Oh," Darla said, "I forgot to thank you for helping with the meals, yesterday and today. You've been a real help, and nobody needed to tell y-" The phone rang, and both Charlie and Darla looked at it. It rang again. "Could you PLEASE get that?" Darla asked. "If I answer again, I might..." It rang a third time, as Darla left in a hurry, muttering something about Jane. Charlie sighed, but managed to get it just before the answering machine got it, cutting the fourth ring in half. "Thompson residence this is Charlene?" he said, fairly certain that was how Darla did it. "Charlene! Since when did they let you answer the phone?" "Valerie?!" he spluttered, but quietly. "Yah. Listen, I called Joan like you said, and I've been thinking, and I think I could come back, if I can set some ground rules that Jane would stick to." Charlie gasped, "Rules? YOU want to set rules for JANE?" "Look," Tucker snapped angrily, "if I come back, it'd have to be on MY terms. I can't put up with this bullshit she's been doing, and I'm not gonna be treated like a prisoner. She treated me like a prisoner, I escaped, right?" He was a little proud of that, actually; like Dad always had said, if you train right, the real thing left you going 'What? That's IT? Where's the hard parts?' Though Dad likely hadn't meant that to apply to summer camps. "So," he continued, "if she wants me back, she's gonna have to agree to treat me like a human being, with rights and things." There was a pause. Charlene said finally, "Oh boy." "Yeah, I dunno if she'll go for it," Tucker admitted. "You think there's a chance?" Charlie thought it was about 50/50. On the one hand, Jane had been severely stressed out about it, and having Valerie come back would sort of end the crisis, and without any damage. On the other, she HATED it when someone defied her, and Valerie had not only done that but run off and then rubbed her face in it for over a day. "Oh boy," he said again. "I don't know, I really don't." Then he remembered that Valerie hadn't been here the last couple of days. "Oh, and after you left? She got sick, and maybe gave it to Marie too, so..." "Oh great," Valerie said, but she didn't sound sincere. "So you're sort of on your own there?" "No..." Charlie admitted. "Momma-Jane?" Jane opened her eyes. "Oh, Darla," she sighed, as she closed them again. "Is there anything I can do? Diana's gone out to the pharmacy and the store..." "How is Marie?" Jane didn't like the way she sounded; her carefully cultivated voice sounded like someone had taken a file to it. "She's not as bad off as you," Darla said candidly, "but at least I didn't have to tie her to the bed to get her to rest." "Good," Jane said. *Rest would be good...* "Huh," Tucker said. *Well, it kind of figures, I guess; she had to be a pervert somehow to dress me up like that, so I guess it makes sense that she'd be a closet lesbian.* *Jeez, what would the daughter be like?* "How much does she actually hate..." That was not something he actually wanted to say out loud around at least one lip reader, like he was sure Trish was. "Um. I mean, that's a lot of women in that house; does Jane have something against men?" *Oh hell.* This wasn't something Charlie really wanted to explain, especially since Darla and Diana had explained why they weren't appearing as males, when Joan had left. "Um, no," he said cautiously. "Oh, remember that guy that came over? Robert something?" "Yeah?" "Well, she didn't hate him, right?" "I don't THINK so, but does she? You know her better than I do." That was arguable. "I don't think she does, it's just, y'know, like I said. Or like Joan said," he remembered. "Oh, I'm still... Your twelve hours," he mentioned. "Oh, thanks," she said. "That really is a help... except I may end up busting it. Not your fault, and I'll try and keep you out of it," she said, which made Charlie depressed when he thought about how little chance there was about keeping his silence quiet. So to speak. "So," she said, "can Jane negotiate? Or what?" "I think you'd better do that with Darla," Charlie replied. "She's the only one here besides me who isn't sick. I dunno if she'll do it, I mean agree to do it; she might not-" "Might not what?" Darla asked, making Charlie twitch. "Who's on the phone?" "Is that her?" Valerie asked. Charlie said, "Hold on," to Darla while shaking a hand at her to indicate he was busy, and "Yes, that's her," to Valerie. "Let me try her," Valerie commanded. "Wait! Go put on the clothes you were wearing Friday." "What? Why?" "Trust me, okay? Have I done it wrong yet?" *Well, no...* "Darla? I- She wants to talk to you," Charlie said as he pulled the phone away from his ear and offered it to Darla. "She who?" Darla asked as she came forward. As she took the phone, Charlie answered, "Valerie." Then left to go change. "Valerie?" Tucker heard, and it sounded like the person who'd been answering the phone lately. "Yeah, hey, s'up?" he said, reverting to a Brooklyn accent for some reason. Probably because he was feeling like an asshole, come to think of it. "What's UP? You're asking me what's UP?!" *Uh oh. She sounds like my mom about to explode. Jane actually might be better to negotiate with...* "Yeah, hey, just wondered how you kids was doin' back dere," he said to keep her occupied. She actually choked, not getting any words out. *Maybe NOT a good idea,* he realized too late. *Maybe I can use this... if she's that angry, she's not thinking clearly... Mike! Help me!* Mike helped. "Are you Darla?" The accent had disappeared entirely. "Yes," Darryl got out. "Listen closely. I am free and clear, and you will never catch me on your own. I could be anywhere in the world by now." None of this was new to Darryl, and he wondered why 'Valerie' was stating it now. "I am POSSIBLY willing to return to Jane's house, under certain specific conditions." Darryl had to sit down when he said that. "You have sixty, six-zero, minutes starting from," Tucker looked at his watch, then set the countdown timer going. "Now. You must be at the bank of pay phones at the lower floor of Rhode Island Mall in sixty minutes." "Sixty minutes! There's no WAY I can make that-" Tucker interrupted, "You can if you hurry." The reason to make her hurry was, of course, to keep her from making 'alternate arrangements' with cops, slavers, friends, street gangs, the FBI, the KGB, and any possible alien or magical threat groups. "You will receive further instructions at that place and time. The bank of pay phones on the lower level of Rhode Island Mall, in six zero minutes. Don't be late," Tucker said and hung up.