"Nice to finally meet you, Mr... Grodmen wasn't it?" Mr. Higgs said, shaking the hand of my dad.
"That's correct. I've heard a lot about you from Tim. I'd like to thank you for being so... understanding with him. He's been through a lot, you know."
"Yes, I know," Higgs said, giving me an emotional look that I instantly responded with a fake but convincing weak grin.
"Where's Joey?" I asked as we sat down.
"I decided it would be best to have separate meetings with you two, seeing how last year you both didn't get along too well."
"They've reconciled their differences for the time being," my mom answered for me. "Joey is for the most part back to being his old self, but..."
"But I'm not," I continued for my mom. "I may not have all my memories yet, and emotions still elude me for the most part, but I'm not handicapped by these things."
"From what I understand," Higgs interrupted before either of my parents could argue with my statement. "Your mental and emotional, er, recovery is just a factor of time, correct?"
"Mental yes," my mother replied hesitantly.
"It's the emotional recovery we're not certain about," my dad continued. "He's resisting the return of his feelings."
"I am not," I said calmly. "I've only had a few emotional sensations since I woke up, and while I have said I don't wish to restore them, I haven't resisted feeling them when they happen. They just don't last very long, and are not very strong, that's all."
"That may be a problem," Higgs said, sitting back in his chair with a frown. "I had to have Joey removed from school for a few weeks last year to go through intensive psychiatric therapy after he exploded in the middle of class and started throwing the desks around. If you suddenly have a strong emotional moment while in class, who knows what you might do. At least Joey could be subdued physically. I don't think anyone could stop you if.. er, if you put your mind to it."
"Sounds like we will have to go with my idea after all," my dad said confidently.
"What was that?" Mr. Higgs asked.
"He want's to hire a scholar and copy their high school and college knowledge into my head instead of me bothering to learn any of it on my own," I replied.
"You said yourself that's what you did half the time anyway," my dad pointed out.
"Yes, but then what would I do all day? I liked school, and to simply be programmed with someone else's knowledge like that seems like cheating on life. And when I did it before, I always took different portions from different people so I wouldn't get a one sided view of it all. Mr. Higgs, I think I would get a better education here, at school, while I am with my friends than from some stuffy scholar who doesn't remember what high school was like.
"And to be honest with you, the few emotional moments I've had have all been positive feelings. Oh, there is one emotion I've had for almost the entire time though. But my mom has been helping me control it and I think I'm strong enough that you wouldn't have to worry about it."
"What emotion is it? Fear? Sadness? Anger?"
"No, nothing like that. I just get horny pretty easy, but I know now I can't just have sex with any girl I like. I can't say I won't have sex, but I promise not to force anyone to do it with me."
My dad snorted, and while I and Mr. Higgs had ignored it, apparently my mom took offense for I sensed her opening a telepathic channel to probably let him know exactly what she though about it.
(I had spent a considerable amount of time talking about my dad and his enslaving habits with Mr. Higgs in the years past. While I haven't mentioned any of these discussions before, they did take place, so Mr. Higgs knew exactly how my father felt about my so called "exaggerated code of conduct.")
(I had just recovered that moral code of conduct that morning when I woke up with a terrified bedmate. I had forgotten to restore the commands in her mind after she had passed out the night before, but she still felt emotionally attached to me even though I was no longer using any sort of emotional or mental control on her. This bit of knowledge would prove to be important, but at the time it only bothered me that I had caused such a thing.)
I sat there with endless patience as Mr. Higgs took a few moments to consider my words and my parents proceeded to argue in silence.
When Mr. Higgs was ready, he cleared his throat to speak in an attempt to get my parent's attention, but didn't bother beyond that since they obviously were too deep in their silent argument to have heard.
"I'm glad you still feel motivated to continue to go to school, and I would like nothing more that permit it. However.."
Mr. Higgs dropped the official principal act and leaned forward with an apologetic expression. "I'm sorry, Tim. I can't take the chance that you're wrong about your stability. You haven't had a psychiatric evaluation since you tried to kill yourself, and even then I wasn't all that sure of her opinion after you mentioned what you did for her. Even if you went out and got the top psychiatrists to say you were as stable and mentally fit as anyone could be, I would not be able to rule out that someone did not make them think that, whether or not it was you who did it.
"Another reason is I have never been comfortable about the way you just take your knowledge from others rather than learning it on your own. I know you did attempt to do the work, and you put a decent effort into getting caught up on your missed assignments, but you have not completed three out of six semesters, and even taking in account your college credits, you still could not graduate at the end of this year without me risking my job and possibly ruining my career as a high school principal.
"That may sound like a cop out to you, but any other principal would say the same thing given the facts of your situation. School is about learning as much as being with your friends and gaining knowledge. If you had proved to me in the past you were coming to school to learn as much as to have fun, then things might be different. Perhaps your father is right after all. At least you would be paying for your knowledge instead of just taking it like you have in the past."
I sat there stunned, finding even my ability to think disrupted by his words that I knew came not only out of reason, from his heart as well.
"Are you saying you refuse to allow my son to return to school?" my father demanded.
"I'm afraid so. Believe me that I regret making this kind of.."
"Dad," I said, warning him to stop his attempt to alter Mr. Higgs' mind.
"Well? What do you expect me to do?" he said grumpily after stopping. "You want to go to this school or not?"
"Yes, I want to, but not like that," I said calmly.
"Honey, aren't you just a little upset about this?" she said hopefully.
"Mom, right now I am probably experiencing the strongest emotional reaction I have had since I woke up. But I am in complete control of myself and I am not allowing them to have an affect on me."
The door to Higgs office opened at that moment, and a somewhat familiar man walked in saying, "I'm glad to here it, Tim. Looks like you just passed your entrance exam."
"Charles? What are you doing here?" my mom queried the Inquisitor.
"Samantha, Charles, if you examine your own minds, you will find a memory block which you placed yourselves after I left your home yesterday. Please remove it so you can explain to your son the reason you called me."
"Excuse me, but who is this man?" Mr. Higgs asked.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Higgs. Just give me a moment to undo yours..." the Inquisitor replied.
"Okay.." I said, realizing I had been had. "What's going on? Why did you go through all this trouble to trick me?"
"I'm sorry, dear," my mother said. "When I talked to Mr. Higgs on Friday to arrange this meeting, he told me he would need proof that you could control yourself."
"That's when she called me and asked me to test you somehow, and after talking to Mr. Higgs here yesterday..."
"It was mostly my idea," Higgs said, feeling rather proud of himself. "Before I could truly consider allowing you back in school, I needed a psychiatric evaluation on you that I could trust. I admit that this wasn't something a psychiatrist would try, but I'm content with its results to trust you can control yourself for the time being."
"I fail to see how this proves anything," I said. "If I remember correctly, Joey was stable for several months before he started to lose control of himself. While I don't believe the same will happen to me, none of us can know whether I won't just suddenly snap and do something I would never normally consider. And if you meant everything you said before this... test ended, I believe your arguments are still valid."
"Tim, you are defeating the purpose of us even testing you by talking that way," my dad said.
"Oh, I don't know about that," Higgs said with a grin. "If he hadn't had said something like that, he wouldn't be the Tim I know."
Then to me Higgs said, "Tim, your mother said Joey's emotional surges during his recovery were very easy to detect beforehand, and Suzi's parents said the same thing about hers. So unless your condition proves otherwise, you are to report any kind of strong emotions to me immediately and if necessary remove yourself from the school before you can... explode. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly."
"If you have any doubts about your ability to follow these... procedures, you should tell me now."
"I have none of consequence," I said honestly.
"Good. Then I expect you here tomorrow morning bright and early, but first there's the matter of making up your finals from last year..."
Even in the emotionless state I was in, those words made wonder if I really did want to return to school... heh
----------
"Hey," Joey said when I answered the phone later that day. "Did they let you back in school?"
"Si," I replied. "It wasn't easy, but Higgs let me in conditionally."
"Shit. Sounds like you had almost as hard of a time as I did."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I had to go back to that woman psychologist and get my brain turned inside out. Shit, Tim. You created a monster by helping her figure out her telepathy. Oh, do you remember that?"
"Not really, no. But what did she do to you that makes her a monster?"
"Shit.. I don't know... I guess she's just really good at poking her nose into stuff you really don't want anyone know about. She had me tell her about what happened this summer and... Hey, Tim?"
"Huh?"
"Can I come over? I need to talk to you about some stuff that's bothering me."
"Sure you can. But I thought you were going to go to Suzi's after she gets out of school today?"
"I will if this doesn't take too long, but I need to get some things off my chest after talking to the shrink bitch. I want you to hear it from me first, and not from her or someone else."
"Uhm, all right. I'll be in the kitchen, so just let yourself in, okay?"
When he came into the kitchen about a half hour later, he took a deep breath and said, "You're cooking spaghetti sauce?"
"Yeah. It's not gonna be ready for a while," I said while spooning out some of the excess grease from the top.
"Shit, Tim. I know you like it, but..." he said as he looked in the huge pot I was cooking it in.
"I'm going to freeze most of it. I figured it would save time later... What's the matter? Don't you like it?"
"Haven't you tasted it?" he asked after putting the spoon down he had used to sample it with.
"No. I followed the recipe exactly like it said.." I said as I blew on the spoon of sauce then put it in my mouth.
"I see what you mean," I said a moment later. "I wondered why it said a cup and not a teaspoon.. Oh well. Could you help me dump it down sink?"
He took a hold of one handle, and between the two of us, we carried the ten gallon pot over to the sink, then ended up putting it back on the stove when we realized we'd scald ourselves if we tried to dump it while it was hot.
"How about a little mud wrestling while we wait?" Joey suggested.
"Mud wrestling? Oh yeah. Uhm, thanks, but I don't want to today."
"Oh.. Then how about we see if the go carts still run?"
"They're up at the North mansion," I simply said.
"All right. Then lets... Uhm.."
"Joey, you came over here for a reason, right? Lets go sit down somewhere so you can tell me what's on your mind, then you can go to Suzi's like you planned."
"I.." he started, then saw the emotionless expression on my face and for a moment looked startled.
But then he sat down at the table, so I took the seat next to him and waited for him to begin.
"You and I have been friends a long time, and we've done a lot of things together. I know you already know that I wasn't myself when I.. did stuff, but.."
"But?"
"I just need to say that I'm sorry and I'll never betray you again... Like every minute I expect you to remember something you can't forgive me for... I don't know if anything I say or could do would prove.."
"You don't have to prove anything to me because you already did. You could have enslaved me the moment I opened my eyes, but you didn't. And then you brought me home when I asked you to, even though you didn't want to go yourself. What more proof do I need?"
"Okay, okay.." he said unconvincingly. "Then what about Suzi."
"What about her?"
"She was your girlfriend first, then you shared her with me. I love her more than anything else in my life, but... I feel like I'm stealing her from you. Like I'm betray.."
"You are allowing your guilt to control you, Joey. You are not stealing her away from me. She has the right to choose, and she has chosen you. I don't have any problems with her being your girlfriend and not mine. If it makes you both happy, then that is all I could want."
"What about me?" he said after a hesitation.
"You?"
"Yeah... Shit, Tim. Don't you realize how... Time consuming it is to be in love with someone? When the three of us were going together, we hardly spoke to our other friends. I know if I.. if I let Suzi and I get close again, I won't spend much time with you like I have been. I just want to know if you need me."
"I don't need you," I said a bit too quickly. "Uhm, let me say that differently."
"That's okay. I understood what you mean," Joey said softly. "But I still feel like I owe you something."
"Well as long as it isn't a kiss, you can.." I stopped when I realized he had been considering that exact thing.
"I better get going if I'm going to meet Suzi when she gets home," Joey said a bit hurriedly as he got up. "Thanks Tim. For everything."
"You're welcome, amigo," I said before he left the room without looking back.
As I watched Joey's car go down the drive, I had the feeling that in his own way Joey had put me through another kind of test. Strangely enough, the only thing that bothered me about that was the not knowing...
What do _you_ think? Did I pass?