Chapter 2: Connecting the Dots

Alan and his parents arrived home, and his mom heated some leftover chicken for dinner. There was little conversation at the dinner table. Alan's grandfather was deteriorating rapidly. The doctor had spoken to them while his grandfather was sleeping, telling him that Alan's grandfather had told the medical team in the CCU that he did not want any heroic measures taken to prolong his life, and by the doctor's estimation the end could come anytime from within a few hours to a few days. After dinner Alan's mother sat on the couch and began to cry softly. His dad sat down next to her and held her, and he could see that they were rocking forward and back, at a slow pace. His mom was taking this very hard. Her mother, too, had died a lingering death, of cancer, even before Alan was born, and the emotional toll of now watching her dad slip away was trying on her. Alan sat down on the other side of her and took her hand in his, and this seemed to brighten her spirits. She came out of her shell a bit, turned to him and kissed him on the cheek, tousling his hair. She smiled at him, and took a deep breath. He was glad he could be a comfort to his mom.

Alan's dad rose to answer the phone, and his mom put her arm around his shoulder. They sat quietly for a few minutes. "So," his mom asked, "how was school today?" Alan started to turn a little pink, but his mom was looking straight ahead, and didn't notice. Alan told her it was just another regular day, a short smile forming on his lips.

Later that night Alan was awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. He was still shocked about the day's events. His life had taken a strange turn, not a bad one to be sure, but strange nonetheless. Some of what had happened could be explained. Having sex with an older woman, his teacher even, was unexpected, but not out of the scope of rationality. He peeled the blanket off of him and looked down at his body. The thing he couldn't begin to understand was the sudden growth spurt in his penis. He began to review the day's events in his mind, and was brought up short. Just before Ms. Kelly had taken his penis in her hands he had been worried about it size, but when she touched it, it suddenly grew. Alan got out of bed and turned on his desk lamp, pulling open the drawer to get his ruler. The memory of Ms. Kelly holding his penis was arousing him, and he wanted to measure his cock.

He pumped it in his fist a few times, and it began to grow to full length. With his left hand he place the edge of the ruler at the base, and saw that his erection measured nine inches. He was dumbfounded. Getting back into bed he thought back again to the tryst with Ms. Kelly and suddenly it hit him. That buzzing sensation, that was the key. He first felt it in the hospital during the strange encounter with the old man, and later, right before Ms. Kelly kissed him during lunch period. Again when he saw her after school, and the kicker, his cock had tingled right before she grasped at it. Whatever was happening to him, that buzzing, tingly, sensation was the common factor. He looked down again at his crotch and imagined his penis before it had grown, and it began tingling again. He watch in astonishment as it reverted back to six inches, and just to be sure, he wanted to measure it. He got out of bed again and stepped towards the desk, reaching for the ruler. When he was about two feet from the desk the ruler levitated and floated into his hand.

Alan was breathing hard now, a little scared by what was happening. He tried to remember what the voice in his head had said when the old man held his forearm. "You have the power to control the actions of others, and more powers will come to you as you develop your skills." The old man had given him something. Some kind of power. He had used it to fuck his teacher. He had used it to make his penis grow. He had used it to summon the ruler from the desk. And he realized he had almost no control. "Develop your skills," the voice had said. Alan went back to bed and concentrated on his penis. It started tingling again, and almost instantly returned to nine inches. He decided to see what else he could do. Going into the bathroom he looked at his hair. It was chestnut brown, like his mom's hair, medium length and a bit messy-bed hair. He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated. When he opened them his hair was smoothed out, like he had just combed it. He closed his eyes again, and upon opening them he was a blond. Again, and he was completely bald, like Michael Jordan. One last time, and his hair was back to normal.

Looking down at his torso he saw that the long winter, followed by all the time spent sitting in the hospital with his grandfather, had left him about five to ten pounds over his "fighting" weight. Most of Alan's exercise came from bicycling, and he had barely put his ass in the saddle since autumn. Over the winter his parents had given him a car, the old one, when they bought a new model for his mom to use. He hadn't even been biking to school anymore, even when the weather had warmed up.

Thinking about it deeply he closed his eyes and felt his whole body tingle, and when he looked down he saw that he had slimmed down and toned up. He was having fun, and decided to slightly increase the muscle mass of his arms and legs, but his first effort was shaky, leaving him looking like Ah-nuld. "Too freaky," he said to himself, chuckling, and dialed it down considerably. He spent a good hour playing with his body, but in the end he looked almost exactly as he had, though he kept the nine inch dick and the improved muscle tone. Just as he was slipping under the covers, around one in the morning, dad knocked on the door with a grim look. "Alan," his dad started, "It happened. Grandpa Joe is gone. Mom's getting dressed, and we're going over now." Alan began to get dressed, all thoughts of the Seed pushed to the back of his mind.

A few miles away Megan Kelly couldn't sleep. She felt like she was going crazy. "How could I have let that happen?" she asked herself. "I could lose my job, be blacklisted from every school in the country. Everything I have worked for, down the tubes." For some reason it didn't matter to her as much as it should have. She knew in her heart that she was developing real feelings for the boy, and part of her brain was telling her that love was more important than a career in teaching. But for Megan Kelly teaching was a defiant act against the expectations of her upper-class parents. She really didn't need the job to support herself, her family was rich, and she was well provided for up until her recent twenty-fifth birthday by her mom and dad, when the trust left to her in her grandfather's will came under her control. People wouldn't have guessed by her middle-class lifestyle, but her trust contained millions of dollars, almost ten million to be exact. When she began teaching she could sense the unspoken disapproval from her parents. They had expected her to be an upper class wife and mother, Junior League, the right benefit committees, and the rest. They didn't understand why she wanted to work at all, let alone be a teacher.

The men from the funeral home retrieved the body of Grandpa Joe from the hospital, and Alan and his parents watched it disappear around the corner. His dad has his arm around his mother, supporting her, and Alan took the keys from him to get the car and bring it around. The funeral was going to be held the next day, and Alan took his parents home. They needed to sleep. It was almost three in the morning, and they planned to meet the funeral director at ten. On the car ride home Alan's dad told him that he wanted him to stay home from school tomorrow, because he and mom would be out making arrangements, and someone needed to be home to answer the phone.

When fifth period came around, Ms. Kelly was anxious to see Alan, but was disappointed by his absence. One of the other students in class told her that she and Alan were in the same homeroom, and the teacher there had told the class that Alan's grandfather had died. Megan was torn between her relief at not having to confront him over their inappropriateness the day before, and her desire to be with him again, to hold him close to her body and feel his warmth, and feel the warmth running through her own body.

Later, in the principal's office, she asked the secretary about Alan and the funeral. The secretary told her that the funeral was tomorrow, Thursday, in the afternoon, and that the family would be receiving visitors that evening, after the burial. Megan didn't know if it was proper etiquette for her to show up at the house, but the secretary informed her that a good-sized contingent from the school would be going. Megan didn't know until then that Alan's mother was on the school board, but was glad that this gave her a good excuse to go to their house. The lesson in fifth period had went well, and she didn't know if it was because she lacked the distraction that Alan would have presented to her.

While his parents spent the morning at the funeral home making arrangements Alan used his unexpected free time alone to experiment with his abilities. The phone rang intermittently, mostly friends of his mom, and he had a quiet house to himself. He started with making objects move. He levitated some of the living room furniture and set it down softly. Once, when the phone was ringing and he was headed to the kitchen where he had left the cordless headset he realized that he needn't do so. Just as the phone reached him he opened his hand to take it. Since no one else was around he couldn't use his power to influence people, and the more he thought about doing it, the more questions in his mind opened. He wondered about the ethics of taking control of people. One problem he foresaw was that he had no one to talk to about his situation. He didn't think his parents would understand, let alone believe him if he were to tell them about the Seed. The other problem facing him was that there was no one to help him. The old man who gave it to him was dead, and he didn't know if any other living person had a seed of their own. Maybe he was the only one, maybe there were hundreds or even thousands of seed people. They might even be clubs or associations, Alan didn't know, and furthermore had no idea whom to ask, or even if asking was a good idea.

So far, he thought, he had only influenced one person, Ms. Kelly. He didn't not know about the assistant principal, or Mr. Stanton, his Physics teacher. Both of them were about to discover Alan and Megan together, the former during the lunchtime kiss, and the latter while Alan and Megan were having sex. The Seed had sent out a signal to each, at the behest of Alan's subconscious to stay away from the English classroom.

Around three o'clock Alan's parents returned. After the funeral home they had gone to Grandpa Joe's house to get him a suit of clothes to wear for the burial. Alan could see that his mother was physically and emotionally debilitated and he did what he could to console her. Thoughts of the Seed and his new powers evaporated.

The next morning Alan stayed home from school again. His father hadn't said anything to him about staying home, but since the funeral was today, at three in the afternoon, he figured that he would have to leave school early anyway, to change into his suit, etc. Plus, he his mom had begun to depend on him, and he wanted to be there for her. Around noon a few of Alan's friends from school showed up, giving up their lunch breaks to pay their respects. A bunch of his mom's friends had been milling about the house since after breakfast, and Alan was glad for it because they occupied his mom, keeping her mind off her loss. Alan took his friends out to the back porch and they shot the breeze for about a half an hour, until the time came that they had to head back to school.

After the funeral and the burial, the limousine dropped Alan and his folks off at their house. The street was lined with cars. Some of their friends and neighbors had gone to their house after the funeral to set up for the evening. Alan saw that the dinner table was pushed against the wall, groaning with plates of food and cakes. Someone had set up big coffee urns in the kitchen, and the house was littered with folding chairs which had been lent by the funeral home. Alan's mother sat on the living room couch and people came in dribs and drabs to pay their sympathies. Alan sat next to his mom for a while, but after a bit she shooed him away, telling him to hang out with his friends, so he did. There were a great many people in the house, friends and neighbors, relatives, people from his dad's law firm, and a bunch of people who knew his mom through her work on the school board. Alan even saw his principal from across the room. Some of his teachers, past and present, came over to him to offer their sympathies. He started to wonder if Ms. Kelly was here; he figured she wasn't. Ms. Kelly was relatively new in town, and he didn't think she knew his mother in a professional capacity. His mother had never mentioned knowing her, and Ms. Kelly had never indicated to him that she knew about his mother's position.

As he stepped into the kitchen to get a soda he saw her. She was standing around with a klatch of teachers from his school, and when he entered their eyes met. All of the teachers in her group turned and they greeted him individually, Ms. Kelly last. A few of them had hugged him, and she thought that since some already had, she could also. Megan stood on her tiptoes and put her arms around his neck, her cheek resting for an instant on his. They parted, Alan got his drink and decided to leave the kitchen, thinking that his presence made Ms. Kelly uncomfortable.

As the hour grew late, the crowd in the house began to thin. As his friends left Alan would walk them to their car, and his dad did the same when his work colleagues left. Around nine o'clock he saw a bunch of people leave, and Ms. Kelly was at the coat rack which had been placed in the foyer, another loan from the funeral home. He excused himself from conversation had had been having with his dad, turning to Ms. Kelly and speaking in a voice loud enough so that the people still at the house could hear him, he addressed his teacher, "Wait up, Ms. Kelly, I'll walk you to the car and you can tell me about the reading assignments I missed." He saw her eyes widen for a brief second, and she responded, "Don't worry Alan, you can make those up anytime."

Alan approached her and said, still in a voice audible to the room, "OK, thanks Ms. Kelly." He paused for a second. "I'll walk you to your car anyway." Alan's dad watched them leave together, and he nodded his head in approval. "We've raised such a little gentleman," he commented to his wife, and she agreed. She didn't know what she would have done without Alan these past few days.