Identity Crisis

Who: Tad
Where: Tad's room
When: After school

To say the very least Tad was frustrated and overwhelmed. It had been four or five really long days with a ton going on and he was starting to feel like he was going through some sort of sensory overload. When he got home from school he immediately dropped his bag, coat and shoes at the door making a beeline for his room where he flopped onto his bed face down, head buried in his pillow.

From meeting Kaysen and Porter, working with Dean on their project, Tad had been on social overload. It was great having friends, but he'd sort of burned out a little on social stimuli. That didn't even start into yesterday with Kaysen, Chance and the fire. He'd been fine mustering his way through ignoring his possible crush on Kaysen because she had a boyfriend. Only that wasn't the case now. Tad's emotions had been running rampant since he'd left Kaysen at her house the day before and that was probably more exhausting than the social overload from the past few days.

It didn't help that he couldn't talk to her at school. That meant if he wanted to talk to her he'd have to find a reason to meet up with her first. If his reason to was to hash out where they stood she might very well try and kill him. In it's own way though, it was a blessing. He wasn't sure how to approach her that didn't involve coming up behind her and resting his chin on the top of her head, because it would fit so perfectly. All that would probably get him though was a elbow to his already bruised ribs.

Rolling over to his back he raised his t-shirt up to look at the bruises that still lined his abdomen. His face had healed nicely but the bruises on his stomach had taken a lot longer to appear and now seemed determined to stay purple and black. A thought twinged in the back of Tad's mind that he might need more medical attention than the first aid kit, but the spots only hurt when he touched them, not when he breathed. That was a good sign. Plus he'd had broken ribs before (that was definitely one of his worse days, even if he'd probably had some of his best quips in the process) and he knew how it felt. This wasn't that kind of pain.

Groaning he sat back up, hand musing in his hair as he thought over the past few days. As much research as he'd done and almost straight up interrogating that poor girl ghost, he still was no where with his parents. Jesse hadn't been much help and Porter hadn't gotten back to him about finding anything on the internet. Actually the whole thing had left him feeling rather terrible about his jaded outlook on life and as if he'd really messed up somewhere earlier when he didn't need to know about his parents. The stories weren't holding up like they used to and he felt as if he'd been lying to himself for longer than he should have. But then again, he'd never had friends to wake him up out of his fantasy world until now.

One hand still tangled in his curls Tad got up from the bed and headed to his computer. Waking it up with a push on the mouse he was greeted by...nothing. His email was full of junk and spam and there wasn't anyone online at the moment. Pulling up a web browser he typed his parents name in the Google search bar: James and Emily Kennedy. A dentist in Florida, a couple of homemade web-pages and a few other random listings. After tabbing through about 15 pages in the browser with nothing of use coming up, he started the search again. This time he tried the day of their accident, which was easy to remember because it was his 10th birthday and "car accident." The hits were more reasonable this time, but still nothing that seemed really right. There was one in Indiana, a car that drove off the road at a blind curve, but the couple both died at the scene. Tad knew his mother lived at least another day because she'd called home.

Another hit, buried a few pages into the search was for an accident in a small town in Wisconsin that wasn't terribly far from Marquette. The article had only been written because the accident had been the fourth in a three week span in the same area. According to the reports there had been four fatal accidents, with the final being a Bob and Laura Petrie on Tad's birthday. The local authorities were astounded as the stretch of road didn't have any major obstacles and the town had suffered more accidental deaths in a month's span than it normally had in years.

The name of the couple made him chuckle as it was so close to the couple on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Having grown up with Grams he'd watched more reruns of black and white tv shows than was probably necessary, plus Dick Van Dyke was one of her favorites. He chuckled again thinking of how Grams refused to call Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore by anything other than their real names, and how whenever she try and use the character names, she got it wrong and called them "Bob and Laura" instead of "Rob and Laura." His laughter stopped short when he glanced back at the computer screen though. Re-reading the names of the victims in the car accident his jaw dropped open and he pushed away from the desk so quickly he toppled out of his chair.

That couldn't be right, could it? It's not like his parents wouldn't have known about Grams and her mixing up of the names. Hell, his mother might have even watched it with Grams when she was a little girl. But why would the newspaper list their names as Bob and Laura? Not James and Emily? And his last name was Kennedy? Where did Petrie come from? A wave of panic flooded through his veins as he glanced at the computer again. There it was, plain as day, Bob and Laura Petrie drove off the road in the night on his birthday. Bob was DOA and Laura had died later at the hospital. They weren't locals and must have been visitors passing through town.

Hyperventilating Tad shoved his head between his knees, not really sure how it was supposed to help and waiting for his breathing to calm and world around him to stop spinning. After a few moments he felt like he could see straight without passing out and he raised his head. There was no way these two people weren't his parents, there were too many similarities between what he knew and what had actually happened. But why were they using different names? Bob and Laura were aliases, he felt comfortable with that, but why not just say they were James and Emily Kennedy? But wouldn't the hospital eventually check identification, especially if the patients died? Wouldn't they notice that the names were wrong? That could only mean they'd have identification that said they were Bob and Laura.

Frantic he pushed away from the desk, this time on his feet and didn't stop until he banged into his closed door. His hands were buried in his hair and he was visibly shaking. Who the hell were his parents that they'd carry IDs with fake names?

Worse yet...who the hell was he?