Chapter 13

"Did you just say you needed a cobbler?" Traci asked me.

I was surprised that I had said my thought aloud. I had noticed that my defenses around Traci had been dropping some over the past couple of months, and this was not the first time I had slipped. I wondered if it was a subconscious effort on my part, trying to blow my cover so that I would be forced to confess my past. However, her knowing my past could only do harm and not good, so I quickly came up with a plausible answer. "Yeah, I think the heel of one of my dress shoes is loose."

She shrugged and went back to reading her book.

I made a mental note to throw out a pair of dress shoes to keep up the ruse. The 'cobbler' that I had been thinking about was a person who specialized in forging documents. What I needed was a 'shoe', a passport. I knew of several cobblers in Europe and the Middle East, as well as some in the States, but the closest one was in Los Angeles. Along with the distance, another problem would be explaining how I knew where to find one. Perhaps I had better explore all of the legal routes, first.

After Traci went home, I grabbed a knife from the kitchen, went to the master bedroom, paused briefly in the walk-in closet to pry one of the shoes' heels loose, and then did my evening routine. I had some questions I wanted to ask Rose so, after returning the knife, I slipped on a pair of sweat pants and a tee shirt, then headed up to her room. I knocked gently and, after a brief moment, Rose told me to come in.

Rose was wearing pajamas and already in bed. It appeared that she had been reading a novel, so I asked if it was okay if I asked her a few questions. She shrugged and said sure. I sat down at the foot of her bed, and turned to face her.

"Do you have a passport?"

I think that, of all of the questions she was expecting me to ask, that was the furthest from her mind. She nodded and said, "Yeah, I do. Well, actually, Mom has my passport."

"Where does she keep it?" I asked her.

"At the bank in our, I mean HER, safety deposit box."

"I guess you don't have the key, do you?"

"No. Mom keeps it in her jewelry box," Rose answered.

I shifted my gaze from her, and started to plan how to obtain the passport. It would require a black bag operation, and the fewer 'plumbers', the better. I would need a driver and somebody who could pass as Mrs. Goodrich. I thought I could talk Mike Richards into being the driver for when I broke into Mrs. Goodrich's house. I could make an impression of the key and create the copy myself. I was going to have to observe Rose's mom's behavior before I could consider somebody to pass as her...

I realized Rose had said something, and I had missed it. I turned to her and asked if she could repeat what she had just said.

"Oh, it was nothing. I was just saying that I got the passport when I was eight. Mom started doing her missionary work, then, and would take me down to South America during the summers. I wasn't able to go last summer because I had summer school, though."

I did not know if it was a good thing that my defenses were dropping or not, but Rose saw the look of relief on my face. She frowned slightly, and she wanted to know why I had wanted to know about her having a passport.

"Maybe I'm getting wise and plan to dump Traci and marry my maid. Just thinking of where we could go on our honeymoon."

She rolled her eyes at me and wanted to know the truth. It is a great deal easier telling the truth than keeping track of a lie. I knew there was no harm in letting Rose in on my plan. I knew that she could keep a secret very well. After all, she was able to conceal her sexuality for the past couple of years, and she had yet to mention to anybody else where the entrance to the basement was.

"I'll tell you, but you have to promise me that you will keep it between the two of us." After she nodded, I continued, "I want to take Traci, Lori, and Marge someplace for Spring Break. I would also like it if you could come along, as well."

Well, it was mostly the truth. I had left out a couple of details, like who else might be joining us. Rose immediately wanted to know where, and I told her she could find out on Christmas. She gave a small pout and said that she would just die before then.

"Curiosity killed the cat," I told her.

She replied, "But satisfaction brought it back."

"Well, I thought it was going to be an ordeal to get your passport back, but it turns out that it has expired, since you got it when you were eight. Minors' passports only last for five years. Luckily, now you're over fourteen, so you can apply for it yourself. You will need a certified birth certificate, identification card, and sometimes they require parental consent, but we can cross that bridge when we reach it."

"Mom still has my birth certificate."

I detected the bitterness in her voice when she mentioned her mom, but pretended not to notice. Instead, I asked, "Where were you born?"

"Santa Barbra."

Santa Barbra was in the adjacent county to the south, and it was just about an hour and half drive. The only problem was that it would require missing school, since the County Clerk's Office was not open on the weekends. It would cost more to do the request over the internet, but I would rather spend the extra cash than have me, Rose, and whomever I could convince to give us a ride down there miss school.

"Meet me in the library at lunch, and we can order it online. When the others ask where we were, we can tell them we were having a nooner."

It took a second for Rose to figure out what I meant, then she pointed out, "You're the wrong gender for me."

I assured her, "My tongue is just as good, if not better, than Pollyanna's."

"Prove it!"

Rose let out a squeal when I started to crawl up her bed. She pulled the covers over her head and did not bring them back down until she felt me get off the bed. When I saw her, I was unable to tell if her blush was from embarrassment or sexual excitement. She tensed slightly when I moved towards her again, but she allowed me to give her a peck on her forehead when she realized that's all I was going to do.

I told her, "I'll see you in the morning."

When I returned to my room, I was tempted into enabling the feeds and watching what might be transpiring in Rose's room. That only lasted for a moment before guilt washed over me for even considering that. It then got really strange when I felt glad that I was feeling guilty. Could it mean that I was becoming more like a normal person, and not the drone that I was before?

It took less than ten minutes to complete the request for the birth certificate. It would have been faster if Rose had not misplaced her social security number. I had told her that we would need it before we left for school, and that it was on the attendance sheets, so any of her teachers could tell her. She had gotten the required information, written it down on a piece of scrap paper, and tossed it in her backpack. Rose kept the house well-cleaned and organized, but when it came to her backpack, it was another world unto itself. I was just about to suggest we go find one of her teachers when she recovered the elusive piece of paper.

Of course, I had her number memorized, but I did not want to have to answer why.

When we joined the rest of the girls, they naturally wanted to know where we had been. Everybody chuckled when Rose told them about us having a nooner, but Traci did give me a puzzled look. I had been expecting it, so I made sure that my gaze was focused somewhere else. Since we had planned to take care of the birth certificate during the first part of the lunch break, Rose had made me a sack lunch instead of me having to do my usual salad bar stop. As I ate, I was glad that the girls resumed the conversation that they were having before Rose and I joined them. By the time the bell rung, Traci seemed to have forgotten what she wanted to ask me.

Only, Traci did remember what she wanted to ask, because I found her waiting to confront me about it at the dance studio. The second I got there, she pulled me aside and asked me what Rose and I had been doing over lunch. I told her it was between Rose and me. When she pressed on, I told her, "Curiosity killed the cat."

"But satisfaction brought it back," she retorted.

It was the second occurrence in my lifetime that I had heard that answer, and it was less than twenty-four hours since the first one. I made a mental note not to use that expression around the girls any more. I told her that it had nothing to do with her, and that I was just helping Rose with a little problem. It was not an outright lie, but it was not the honest truth. She finally let the matter go, but I only think it was because class had begun.

After class, I thought Traci was going to pester me some more about what Rose and I had been doing at lunch; however, she surprised me, and inquired if I had canceled the anime club meeting for that coming Sunday. The guys had been disappointed when I told them there could not be a meeting when we ate lunch the previous day, but they quickly understood when I explained the reason why to them -- which I passed on to Traci. She hushed me before I could tell her more when she spotted Rose approaching us, and the three of us collected our books from the lockers and headed home.

While Traci and I were finished with water polo, Lori always either still had cheerleading practice, or she had to attend the winter sports games, so Rose, Traci, and I would walk home together. We would wait until Lori got back so that the four of us could do our homework all together, usually watching the plasma or gossiping about the latest rumors at school. That day, when we entered my house, Traci grabbed my hand and started to drag me back to my room.

Rose rolled her eyes and complained loudly, "I just changed his sheets. Traci, you better not mess them up too much."

Traci shot back, "A good maid is a silent one. You should go be useful and clean something."

My suspicions were confirmed, however, when Traci did not jump me when we entered the room but started to ask questions about Sunday. I told Traci I still needed a few more items to complete my project, but that Lori was going to drive me to a store that would have what I required.

I asked Traci, "How's it going on your end?"

Traci told me, "Mrs. Hunington will be taking Pollyanna and Rose to the late movie Saturday night, and Michelle and Jean will be coming over while those two are out."

We spent the next half-hour going over what we still had to do and what we needed; Traci finally said we had better leave the bedroom before Rose grew suspicious.

"I can last a lot longer than fifteen minutes."

She countered, "You can barely last five minutes before you blow your load into my mouth."

I said, "Prove it," but when she reached towards my crotch, I batted her hands away. She had been right, at least about Rose growing suspicious. As for my lasting power, I swore that next time I would use a stopwatch and prove her wrong.

Traci and I went into the living room and watched a couple of programs that the DVR had recorded, and Rose joined us after she finished vacuuming the rooms upstairs. When Lori arrived, we moved to the dining room table and did our schoolwork. We kept at it until the pizza we had ordered arrived, then decided to put off the rest until later.

While we were eating, Lori asked me, "After dinner, can you go over to Vicky Carson's place and help her set up her new home entertainment system?"

Vicky was on the cheerleading squad with Lori, so I said, "Of course; I am always willing to go to a sexy cheerleader's house." I then quickly shoved down my last bite of my pizza and left the table before Traci took out her wrath on me. She knew that I was not going over to Vicky's house, but she could not let that comment pass without some form of punishment.