It’s five a.m. and there are lights in our woods. I can see them out the bedroom balcony window, trajectories of light, all angular—all up, all down, piercing the silent trees standing clueless; and then a car, emerging slowly through them along a path Will raked so he could use it more quietly coming and going from his secret garage. What the—?! Bill’s up too, having helped boy get out safely, standing ready in case the two of them had to pull the ol’ “You take the truck” switcher-oo. There was even a code system of horn blasts they worked out at dinner last night that would signal the all clear, or the “He’s here!” Take cover!” Horn blasts. From my back woods, surrounded by neighbors. At 0-dark hundred. There’s a treat.

And where is boy headed at this hour? To stake out his mark. Senior assassin, round four. Gettin’ down to the wire on who will take out whom. Will takes it all very seriously. Been sleeping in his car to avoid the guy who’s after him. This morning he’s on the offensive, week ticking away. Because the whole time you have an unknown assassin stalking your every move, trying to nail you with a water gun, you also have a target you have to eliminate by midnight Saturday or forfeit the game. So it’s a two-fer at the stress store: As the week wears on, any relief and satisfaction you might feel at evading your would be-assailant is overwritten by the pressure to get yours. As if a senior in high school a few clicks shy of graduation, loaded up with AP and final exams, with two jobs and a volunteer coaching gig needs more pressure. Is cool dude in the shades feeling it as he comes and goes? Don’t know. I can’t tell. As for Agent double 0-57 here, my head is about to explode.

I wonder what the fake security camera thinks about all these shenanigans. Installed in March 2020 when the world shut down and Will moved out, it has remained strapped to its tree at the edge of our woods, keeping faithful watch over our yard and house for years now. I see it every morning as I sit with my coffee by the kitchen window and watch the day begin. Like the one who installed it, it’s grown. It’s probably 2-3 feet higher in the tree than when he put it up. Well beyond what a conventional ladder could reach to take it down. It has never worked. It was a dummy decoy. When he first ordered it, Will put it in the upstairs kids’ bathroom. Tee hee he–THUNK. His sisters threatened fratricide. He took it down. Then he installed it over his tent for—safety? security? For what??! In the long weeks and months that was Tent Life 2020. It has never worked, never received a signal, never given out a single image or piece of intel. Never pretended it would. It is a fake security camera. Yet it remains, steadfast tin soldier like, never abandoning its post.

Since those days, Will has upped his game. The house is rigged and wired up like a safe house. Motion detectors, security lights. We go on a wiring binge that made the honey-do back in 2005 but suddenly ratchets to the top of the list. I see a few Amazon purchases cross my desk. Far beyond fart spray and bubble wrap (see Master of Crime, March 2020), his skills at tactical evasion are—well, alarming. Dinner table, mouthful o’ dinner (me) and he drops this one like a comment on the weather: “found out it’s ok you can hide in someone’s crawlspace.” He’s had two targets thus far, both girls. After pulling some intel off the internet, several hours of surveillance and a couple mornings of crack-o-dawn departures, these lovely ladies are quickly dispatched. You can go on their property, in fact you kinda have to, since school property is completely off-limits, as is any place of employ. So on his second attempt with mark #2 he hides under the mother’s car until she comes out to get in her own and drive to school. But not before she is eliminated by stealth boy. Seriously sleep-deprived stealth boy, who evaporated his bed and driveway at 5:40 that morning, leaving me the kind of text that could land you in the hot one: “Hi Mom, hope you have a good day. I’m going to get my target.”

But when his assassin comes for him it’s like some scene out of The Unforgiven. Luckily, Will’s special forces had been briefed (good idea, Agent Teen), so I knew when the white truck came trolling down our street at 7:21 in the morning that I had our man. I was out walking in the neighborhood. Waited till the truck crested a little rise in the road before calling Will, who was getting ready for school and plotting his escape. The house is only as safe as your smooth departure each morning. Most kids get hit in their own driveways, or right on the front steps/bushes. Then again, most people have a pretty narrow understanding of the term “exit” when thinking about the doors in their house. Will thinks way outside that box. At dinner one night he rattles off the “doors” in ours. Oh yeah…well, you got our front door and the back door (true) and you also got that patio door (still true, as long as you move the furniture that blocks it). Then you got the balcony (15′ drop), the garage doors, and you got the dining room door… Right. Wait a minute—what?? “Will, there’s no—we don’t have a—” I wondered why I came home and found that large house plant moved away from the dining room the window. Only thing he doesn’t list is the chimney. Which he mighta, since his next stunt rivals Santy Clause.

After I sound the alarm, Will checks his cameras and gets a read on the assassin skulking around our shed and bushes. Sure enough, guy is staked out at the corner, right under Will’s bedroom window, in fact. A blurry figure, hoodie hood up. Now we got both our heart rates up. Ok son, this is it! Game on. Watcha gonna do? He shakes his head smiling, shrugs. Dunno, really. Guess I’ll go take a shower? So we do. Deadly assassin prowling our property, we go about our business. Sorry, dude. Be right out. I’m unloading the dishwasher when Will comes down with Master Plan A: Put the dog out. Copy that. Good idea. Check. Silly ol’ Gus. Goes out, sniffs out the perp, and promptly lays down at his feet. Plan B: Mom distract at the front door calling in the dog while Will sneaks out the back, rounds the corner, and takes his would-be assailant by surprise. Good idea, says mom, handful a’ forks, heart racing. I’m good. I can do this. I love suspense. Danger and risk taking—I eat that stuff for breakfast. We nod, agree, part. All that’s missing is the spit shake. After shower Will comes down with a different plan, one I am still kicking myself for saying yes to. “OK, mom. Ok, see…I’m worried about him cheating, saying I didn’t really get him. So I’m going up on the roof. It’ll only take a minute.” He really did say that, “It’ll only take a minute” (weeping smiley-face emoji), and I slack-jawed, still in jammies, the clean glasses warm in my hands as I stack them in the cupboard. “I’ll go up on the roof and shoot down at him.” (Wide-eyed-deer-in-the headlight emoji). Who needs coffee with a day-start like this one? My eyes make their way to the ceiling at the sound of running feet overhead and I know. That ain’t Prancer up there.

After three weeks of this stuff and three rounds, you can imagine the pressure mounts to (a) get your guy but also to (b) avoid being gotten. At this aspect our boy excels. Remember, he’s been in training for years. He lived in a tent for months. He’s read all the books. Chris McCandless, Everett Ruess, Christopher Knight—guys that went out into the wilderness and never came back. As crazy as it sounds, I get it. I’ve had the same thought, riding in a car, Shenandoah mountains rolling by and my eyes long into them, musing… What if… What if you could just disappear...?? And so he does. Boy has toyed with the grid for some years now, such that going off it is like flipping a switch. He’s gone before dawn and home after dark, avoiding the house between the most dangerous hours. He’s carrying a wad of keys to all three vehicles (and a Tile to protect this $400 investment), just in case he suddenly needs a different get-away vehicle. And also to keep his enemy wondering till the last day, what in the he** car does he drive??! Then he takes to sleeping in his. Per the rules of the game, you’re safe in your car. His car, he assures me, could house him for days. Mom, don’t worry. If I have to hole up out there somewhere, I got everything I need. What’s that, son—cereal bars and a charging cable?

Like those movies where they construct an entire army of fake tanks or set up dummy troops of painted plywood to fool the enemy, Will takes on subterfuge with glee and purpose. Ph-yougottabekidding-D in this arena, from the days of old. The car switching is a no brainer. For the first few days he drives my car to school to set the assassin on the wrong tail. Now when my car is the only one in the driveway, guy will be staking out our place and not trolling town for Will, who is off doing what he needs to do or being where he’s supposed to be in his car. The bike team stickers are all blacked out or covered with duct tape so guy can’t get far with his online “research.” Heaven help him if he even tries to pull up Will’s schedule. In the blink of an evening, Will invents a fake bike team with a fake website and a fake practice schedule, photo shops himself into some of their fake publicity, uses A-I to create a head coach and head coach bio, and then starts posting updates on the fake team’s Instagram. Better still, he chooses a park 40 minutes away where a legit bike team really does meet for practice. Genius. Sure enough, later that week he passes his very real assassin on his way to the fake bike practice and Will is free to come home for dinner and a shower. The lengths, right? I tell you what.

The cyber-stealth is a little creepy to be sure. If I can find your address on Google, I can find your house on Google earth, and if I can find that—well, I can hone right in on your backyard. How many steps lead up to your front door, detached garage or no, and maybe how you oughta clean the pool. I love me some Google! So on the day Will gets assigned his third mark, within ten minutes I have his mom’s name, his father’s name, his address, his mom’s work and work address and pictures of his dad’s deep sea fishing trip in 2018. Thank you, Facebook. Creepy, really. I could tell you a lot more about these kind, unsuspecting people, but probably somebody else out there got a read on me as well. What the house is worth. What I’m doing this weekend. What’s in my crawlspace.

But I’m no dupe. I’m careful. I vary my routines, dress incognito for my walks—sometime a a hat or a pony, sometimes not; different jackets, that sort of thing. So maybe you see a post on my FB about our day in Richmond or our upcoming trip to Hawaii. Don’t be fooled. I’m right here, wearing a raincoat and sunglasses to walk to the mailbox. My sister says I am too invested. Ya think? I would have to agree, but still. I’m only following family protocol: your problems are my problems, Your struggles are my struggles. Remember Team Sophie. It was just about this time of year. We don’t leave our man behind. You goin’ in? I’ll cover you.

You can imagine that the stakes are only going to get higher, being as teen boys are already a risk-taking set. You dangle $2000 prize money in front of a bunch of folks missing their prefrontal cortex and see what happens. The stress-buzz over the house and our weekday lives never simmers down. We are all of us on edge, watching the road for unfamiliar cars, checking the yard for bodies hiding in the bushes and woods, never coming or going without a sweep of the property or entire neighborhood. Never relaxing, not for a moment. Case in point: Will came home on senior release one afternoon and happened on his assassin’s truck, parked a few streets away. So he parked his own car in another cul-de-sac and approached the house on foot, snuck through a neighbor’s woods and made a run for our back patio door without being seen. Once he let himself in (wad-a-keys always at the ready), he was blissfully free for the afternoon, stuck in his own house, in his own room, with his assassin at bay thinking he was still at large. “Could you relax then?” I asked later, hearing the tale. No mom, not really. You can’t let down your guard in this game. That’s what gets you killed.

Ultimately what we learn. There’s no shame in all-in. There’s no shame in taking the thing that comes at you as seriously as it wants to be taken. A sort of purity of investment. I admire that quality in the boy. He’s always had it, and the senior assassin game simply tapped into a unique skill set that was just lookin’ for a job. As I wrote on his graduation announcement— “there hasn’t been a day that was half used.” Truer things may have been said, but I don’t know what they are.

And just like that we’re out of the game. His target and his assassin team up against him. Will’s been on him all day. Left the house at 5 am to find him, make his plan, waiting through the guy’s soccer practice, through a stall dinner at Chik-fil-A and is tailing him to what he believes is the boy’s house. Will knows he has this one chance. One chance to take him out. We switched vehicles too, so as to travel low profile. For this reason, it is my car that will wear the battle scar in perpetuity, not his. Pull into the guy’s drive, leap from the car, commence the chase of the target across his front lawn only to be met by—what’s this?!—Will’s own assassin coming from behind the house, gun blazing and, well… It is a devastating moment, a place of no return. The proof photo (another protocol of the game is a posted photo showing the defeat) is one where Will’s face is trying to twist into a grin, into a sheepish “Oh well, it’s all in fun” smile. But he’s not smiling. He looks pained and exhausted, shell-shocked. He looks devastated. As am I. I would have punched the steering wheel and broken my hand, too.

Later that night, after the Ortho On-call appointment with Will’s hand bandaged in a temporary splint resembling the big right paw of a honey bear, he asks if we can meet someone at Chick-fil-A. It’s just down the street. ‘Course. Can you drive? Yeah, he can drive. Three fingers emerge from the wadding and he still as his left hand. We’re both so hungry and wrung out I propose we get Chick-fil-A . The restaurant chain in our area has banned the playing of Senior Assassin on their property, so it’s a safe zone. But after the day, and week we’ve had I’m not putting two and two together. I agree to the meet up. That’s good. Then you can meet X. “X??! The guy that just took you out? No, ma not my assassin, my target. I look at him incredulously. “Yeah, the guy I was trying to get. X. He’s gonna buy my water gun. He’s going after his mark tonight and he needs a better weapon.” I am floored. I want to laugh out loud in the nuggets line. I want to weep with relief, I want to crawl into the back seat of my car and sleep for days. Now he smiles. Big one. Pats my shoulder lightly, with a hand wrapped in 6″ of ER fiberglass and gauze. S’all good mom. It’s good. It’s just a game.

To watch two teen boys chillin’ in a parking lot, chuckling over their exploits, fist bumping (gently!) and detailing the merits of this Amazon toy… I am relieved, so relieved for how quickly Mr. broke hand boy has regained his perspective, if not the use of his right hand. That’s weeks away, at least. But the devastation is behind us in the time it takes to ready a #2 take-out. How quickly it’s all in the rearview mirror—assassins and tails and surveillance and subterfuge… It’s all in the background now, making way for other things. Schoolwork, for one, and sleeping in his own bed and cutting the grass in broad daylight. And for all the fun things still to come his senior year way. It’s over. Yeah, says boy, breathing out a long sigh. We’re driving slowly home. It’s good to be free.

I hope you know it’s not about the game. It was never about the game, although it would have been so fun to see the underdog win. Extra victory soundtrack for that one. It was just that: Victory. Victory over all that is behind us and a bead on the future that won’t let go. Won’t ever give up. Victory over the expected, the mundane, and the systems that prevail, and victory over the stuff that wears us down, the setbacks and the failures and all the undone and broken that is life these days. The stuff that just seems to wait for you in the bushes. Victory over all that. This is a redemption story, you will recall. And there are many chapters. Ask the fake security camera, now standing its faithful watch over an empty tent pad, a 15-foot hole, and an elaborate fake garage deep in the woods in the furthest corner of our property, made of pallets and brush piles where you could hide for weeks. Such are the landmarks of our stealth agent, who will evaporate our grid again in the not too distant future, leaving behind some pretty real adventures, bound for new ones.

Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com