As the academic year ground to a halt and the ambient tension in the Harper household calmed down, Jake turned ten.
Two distinct events marked the milestone. The first was a mandatory, mentally taxing afternoon at a local pizza parlor with his youth soccer team. Spending three hours surrounded by screaming ten-year-olds hopped up on refined sugar and arcade tokens was agonizing, but maintaining the facade of a somewhat normal childhood kept his family happy, so he just did it.
The second event was a quiet family dinner to celebrate his academic achievement in completing the Van Nuys curriculum. By perfectly navigating district credits, overload schedules, and challenge exams, Jake had successfully compressed two years of high school into one.
With the summer classes he had already registered for, he would officially be considered a High School Senior by the fall.
To celebrate, Judith had prepared a meticulously plated, impossibly dry poached salmon, a recipe she had clipped from a high-end lifestyle magazine to project an image of effortless upper-middle-class sophistication.
During dinner, Judith talked endlessly about her own mother's reaction to Jake's academic leaps, while Alan picked at his food, his face pale and his left leg bouncing neurotically under the table.
Jake noticed his father's elevated heart rate and the light sheen of sweat on his forehead.
Usually, Alan's anxiety was triggered by something trivial, like a misaligned throw pillow or a microscopic scratch on his Chrysler, so Jake initially filed the behavior away as standard background noise.
But an hour later, the noise came to his bedroom.
Jake was sitting at his computer, when Alan slipped into the room and gently closed the door. He hovered near the bookshelf, his hands jammed into his pockets, trying and failing to arrange his face into a mask of casual authority.
"Hey, buddy. Just... looking at the old book collection," Alan said, his voice entirely too loud for the small room. He picked up a copy of Treasure Island, stared at the cover as if he had never seen a book before, and put it back upside down. "You know, when I was your age—"
"Dad," Jake interrupted, not taking his eyes off his CRT monitor. "Do you want to ask me something?"
Alan's fake smile collapsed. He slumped against the doorframe, the posture of a man completely defeated. "I need some money, Jake."
Jake finally turned around, his eyebrows knitting together in genuine confusion. He knew the exact state of the family's finances and the SBLOC they were living on was stretched, but it hadn't snapped yet. "What? Dad, I know our expenses. We might be burning capital, but you shouldn't be completely strapped for cash. Not yet, anyway."
"Well, you know, you can't calculate everything in life," Alan said defensively, aggressively scratching the back of his neck. "Sometimes expenses just... jump out of nowhere. The market fluctuates, unseen costs arise, and suddenly you're underwater."
"If you're hitting the limit on the credit line, just ask Grandma for an extension," Jake said, testing him.
"Oh, you know I just don't want to bother her," Alan deflected, his neck-scratching intensifying. His voice pitched up into a frantic, reedy frequency. "She's so busy, and it's just a minor... liquidity issue."
It was the most obvious tell in the world, so Jake crossed his arms. "Dad. How much money did you spend?"
"Oh, well, you know... a few hundred here, a few hundred there..." Alan muttered, refusing to make eye contact.
Jake didn't blink. He had mapped his father's psychological profile months ago. Alan hadn't just bought another Rolex, but probably made a massive, catastrophic impulse purchase.
"What did you buy?" Jake asked softly.
"What?" Alan blinked.
"You bought something expensive. Something you can't hide. What is it?"
"What? What? What?! That's crazy, Jake!" Alan nearly jumped, his voice hitting a decibel that threatened to alert Judith down the hall. Repeating the word three times was the ultimate confirmation. He was caught red-handed.
Jake gave him a long, flat, utterly serious look. He didn't say a word and just let the silence stretch until Alan's fragile nerves shattered.
"A boat," Alan blurted out, his shoulders dropping.
Jake blinked as Out of all the variables he had calculated, maritime assets hadn't been on the board. "How much?" he asked, a mix of genuine curiosity and morbid amusement.
"Eighty thousand dollars."
Jake instinctively dragged a hand down his face. "Eighty thousand... Dad, just take it back to the dealership. Or sell it to a broker. Take the ten percent depreciation hit and get out of it before Mom finds out."
"Well..." Alan shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking like a toddler who had just broken a vase. "There is a tiny bit of a problem with that."
"What happened?"
Alan swallowed hard. "I sank it."
For a full ten seconds, Jake was truly speechless. In a world governed by probability and logic, Alan Harper was a walking anomaly of sheer, unadulterated failure. In a way, it was impressive, since no one else could manage to do this.
"How," Jake started, forcing his voice to remain perfectly level, "did you sink an eighty-thousand-dollar boat?"
"I was taking it out for a spin, just to get a feel for the helm!" Alan pleaded, waving his hands defensively. "And I saw a giant shark in Castaic Lake! I swerved to avoid it, and before I noticed, I hit the rocks near the dam!"
"Dad," Jake said, staring at him. "Castaic Lake is a freshwater reservoir. There are no sharks."
"Jake, I swear to God it was a shark! I saw the fin!" Alan was practically hyperventilating now, his eyes wide with desperate conviction. "It was massive! Prehistoric!"
Jake let out a long, slow breath. "Okay, Fine. It was a freshwater Megalodon. I get it. You just need some cash to cover the gap until the insurance check clears, right?"
"Y-yeah! Right!" Alan nodded eagerly. "Just a few months until the adjusters—"
"Dad."
"Yes, son?"
"You didn't have insurance."
Alan slumped completely, burying his face in his hands. "I didn't have insurance."
"How do you even drive a boat off the lot without insurance?!"
"Well, son, technically it's not driving a boat, it's called navigating—"
"Dad," Jake interrupted his dad's incoming speech "Just answer the question."
"The premiums were astronomical!" Alan whined. "I was just going to use it this one time to make sure the hull was sound before I registered it fully! Who could have predicted an apex predator in a Los Angeles municipal water supply?!"
Jake let out an incredulous sigh, rubbing his temples. He had always known Alan was going to crash and burn, but he hadn't expected the crash to be literal, or aquatic.
Still, Jake was nothing if not prepared. He knew the future, but anomalies like black swan events, crises, or sheer human stupidity could sometimes not be prevented. You never put all your eggs in the same basket after all.
"There is gold buried in the backyard," Jake said flatly.
Alan froze, his hands slowly lowering from his face. "What?"
"I asked Malcolm and his brother to help me dig a hole near the old oak tree a few months ago. I put ten thousand dollars' worth of gold bullion in a waterproof lockbox and buried it."
Now it was Alan's turn to be utterly speechless. He stared at his ten-year-old son, his brain short-circuiting. "Why... why would you bury gold in the backyard?"
"Because of things exactly like this," Jake replied, turning back to his computer monitor. "Do you want it or not?"
Alan didn't care about how anymore. After all,l he was a drowning man, and his ten-year-old had just thrown him a life preserver made of solid bullion. "Yes. God, yes, please. I want it."
"Alright. Tomorrow morning, before Mom wakes up, I'll show you exactly where to dig."
"Thank you, son. Thank you so much," Alan whispered, tears of relief welling in his eyes. "I'll pay it back, I swear with interest, I'll—"
"Alright, Dad. Shut the door on your way out. Good night," Jake said, cutting off the pathetic display.
As the door clicked shut, Jake leaned back in his chair. The eighty-thousand-dollar hole Alan had just blown in their finances was the fatal strike. Judith would find out eventually, a collection agency, a bank notice, something would slip through it always does.
Jake closed his eyes, dismissing the chaotic variables of his father's life from his mind, and silently commanded Argus to initiate the [Sleep Module].