Chapter 1 - She needs to know
17 days to go...
Sandy always had a mother's concern for what her son John is up to, but after his father Vincent died 7 years ago she had to start worrying for two people. They mourned Vincent and will always mourn him on some level, but at some point Sandy started to feel lonely and her girlfriends told her it was time to start dating again. She couldn't do it, she said, she needed to raise her son John. Now that he'd turned 18 and was heading off to college, it was dawning on her that he was going to be finally out of her hands, and she was going to be truly alone.
John and Sandy live in a small two bedroom apartment. Sandy is a high school teacher who decided not to do summer school classes this year to be closer to John before he headed off to college. She hopes John's growing up right but the fact is he hasn't had a father figure in his life for the formative years post puberty, and Sandy simply is at a loss at how to raise a young man through that emotional hailstorm. As a single parent raising one child, mourning the love of her life, things were very hard for her, but she felt lucky that her son was such a sweet boy.
John seemed to never talk back to her, or use any sort of emotional manipulation to get what he wanted, he seemed to step up after Vincent died, knowing that he couldn't be a little brat. He wasn't the "man of the house" necessarily but he knew he had to help out more with chores to make things easier on his mother, and one of the big ways he tried to help out was to simply not be a burden on her whenever possible. He studied hard without her prodding him, he avoided trouble at school, and he had his eyes on things that he thought would make his mother proud, namely going to college, getting a proper job, and becoming a proper man.
Sandy got John a computer freshman year of high school, a small laptop that he said was needed for his coursework. He used it to search on the internet for research topics, reading about math and science and literature, he said. He also started using it for computer games, she watched him play a few games from time to time and they seemed harmless enough. Not full of murder and violence or even sex, but just time wasters so it appeared. She figured everyone needs a way to de-stress every so often, so she was ok with it but she made sure to keep checking every month to understand what exactly he was spending all this time on.