As soon as you step outside you immediately hear the door behind you shut. It seemed that your dad was a little too eager to hurry you along. But you’re not sure if it’s because you’re about to be late or if he just doesn’t want to see your attempt to impersonate him in front of his friend.
“Hey, Steve! Having some car trouble?” Evan asks you as you approach his truck.
“Yeah. The old thing completely stopped working last night.” you lie. Hopping into the passenger seat, you feel your sweaty palms clench onto the seatbelt as you put it on and into place. Yep. You were super nervous. You can definitely feel the pressure knowing you not only had to fool your dad’s friend but his entire workplace for the whole day.
At least you could try and see if you could pull off pretending to be your dad first on his friend before at his job.
“Damn! Yesterday was fucking rough.” Evan begins to say as he pulls out of your driveway and on the road. “I swear, I collapsed onto my bed right when I got home.”
Evan then begins to go on about your dad’s job and the current project, going into details that fly over your head while elaborating on the hard day of work yesterday was. You make sure to say to nod and murmur a few short responses to his conversation. It’s not until Evan is pulling into the construction site that he asks you something.
“What’s the matter, Steve? You’re not saying much today?” Evan asks you, although it’s more out of concern than suspicion.
Remembering what your dad told you to say, you decide to stick to the story he made up. “Sorry, I’m still feeling a bit under the weather today. I couldn’t come in yesterday because I had a cold… in fact, my throat is still a bit sore.” you tell him, while attempting your best to sound sick from a cold. Hopefully, Evan bought it.
“Man that sucks! Luckily you missed yesterday because I think today’s supposed to be an easy day.” Evan says, completely believing your story. After he parks, you step out of the truck and follow Evan. Your dad had told you to personally stick to Evan and just do whatever you were told to do. If there came a time when you needed help, you could just text or call him.
Fortunately for you, Evan’s right and the day is pretty easy. You and another employee are assigned to bring some supplies to the construction site. Since you both have to go to pretty far locations to pick them up, most of the day is spent with you in the passenger seat of the other employee’s vehicle retrieving supplies. The most work you do all day is lifting construction supplies into the other employee’s vehicle, which you find yourself able to do easily with your dad’s body and strength.
Since your dad isn’t friends with the guy you were assigned with, you don’t find yourself even having to strike any conversations or make up any lies for him. The whole shift goes by easily, but it’s not until your lunch break that you realize your dad hasn’t contacted you. You check your phone and find no new calls or texts from him. That didn’t give you any reassurance but since you still had a few hours left at work, you just hoped your dad found them in that timeframe.
After a few more hours pass and you still haven’t received anything from your dad, you begin to worry. Why didn’t your dad contact you yet?
Eventually you clock out at 4 and meet Evan back at his truck. You don’t have much to say with your worries but it seemed Evan was also a bit too tired to strike up any conversations. Eventually, Evan drops you off at your house.
“Thanks for the ride Evan.” you say and get out of the truck. “I’ll try to get this thing running tonight,” you say and point towards your dad’s car, “if not, I hope you can give me another ride tomorrow.”
“It’s not big deal. Just text me if you still need a ride before tomorrow morning.” Evan says. “See you tomorrow… and I hope you feel better.”
“Thanks.” you wave goodbye to Evan as he leaves and head inside your house.
“I’m home!” you call out, just like your dad always does, as you step inside. But as you close the front door, you hear no response… just silence.
The whole house is empty.
You’re know that your mom is still on her business trip and that your brother, Tim, still hadn’t been dropped off by the school bus. But! Where was your dad? He should definitely have been home by now.
You head to your parents’ bedroom and open the door to find it just as you expected: empty. Dropping your dad’s phone and wallet on to his bed, his wallet bounces off the bed and on to the floor. Groaning, you bend down to pick it up, which you find is a big mistake. Your find it harder to do in your dad’s body as you kneel down, but it was too late. You groan and realize you shouldn’t have assumed and tried to do the same things you always do in your original body.
Grabbing the wallet, you notice something sticking out from under the bed. It was something completely white with a hint of green.
Feeling your heart begin to race, you drop the wallet and immediately stick your hand under the bed before pulling it out to find the one thing you’ve been looking for this whole time: the magic socks!
They were still bundled together the way you left them before they disappeared. You can’t believe it! You slowly pick yourself up from the ground, ignoring it’s difficulty, and sit on your parents’ bed. Turning the socks around in your hands, you find yourself unable to believe that you were currently holding and touching the missing magic socks.
“They’re back!” you say aloud, as if to confirm it. Suddenly, you feel a huge weight fall of your shoulders as you take a deep breath and exhale all your stress and worries. Now that you had the magic socks back, everything would be back to normal.
As you turn the socks in your hands, you wonder how the socks ended up under the bed. Then you remember how you placed the socks in your back pocket before going to the mall. The socks must have fallen out of your back pocket and rolled under the bed right before you left. You guess that in the spur of the moment and with all your excitement, you must’ve never noticed that they weren’t in your pocket.
Feeling incredibly stupid and embarrassed, you lie down on your parents’ bed, relieved. Now all you had to do was tell your dad.
Suddenly, you hear the front door open before slamming shut as a pair of footsteps race toward your direction. You get up and turn to find your dad, out of breath, grasping on to the doorway of your parents’ bedroom.
“I’m… I’m… sorry Son.” your dad says, gasping for air. “I looked everywhere! But I couldn’t find them.”
He places your phone on the bed. “I even forgot to charge your phone last night, so I couldn’t contact you.” Your dad looks incredibly crestfallen as he looks at you, expecting you to be disappointed by his news. However, he looks confused at your lack of reaction. You know that in just a few seconds your dad will be just as relieved as you are.
“Dad… don’t worry… I found them!” you say as you pull them out in front of him. Your dad face lights up as he grabs them and pulls you into a hug.
He lets you go before talking again. “I can’t believe it, Son!” He holds them for a few seconds before handing them back to you. “Where were they?” he asks.
You chuckle awkwardly. “I… sorta… dropped them under the bed accidentally.” you say before adding insult to injury. “Right before we left to the mall.”
You turn away from your dad, expecting him to be disappointed at you for roping him into this whole mess. You feel his hand grasp your shoulder.
“It doesn’t matter where they were Son or how they got there… only that we found them!” your dad tells you with a grin. You find yourself happy at your dad’s understanding response and feel yourself calming down.
“Now what do we do?” your dad asks you.