I stare out the passenger window of the General’s Escalade. I am only vaguely aware of the transformation from my father’s suburban home to the once green but now dormant brown, rolling, wide-open rural spaces to the cold gray world of the cityscape, of the Exclave. And with the Exclave comes the snow. I watch the flakes hit the car window and immediately melt. The General drives more than half the ninety-minute trek to the funeral before I find my words. The irony, a wordsmith in search of words.

“Dad.” I pull the rectangular box from the backpack at my feet. “What if you wanted … let’s say…”—I turn to him—“to keep track of someone without them knowing it?”

The General smiles as if he’d expected the question, pulls a small manila envelope from his shirt pocket, and hands it to me. Always up to something.

“Be careful. If you drop it, you’ll catch hell finding it,” he warns.

I look inside the envelope and then empty the contents out into my palm. It’s a light brown, tiny circular piece of cardboard—no, rubber—about half the diameter of a dime. There’s also a small booklet. I examine the miniature disk and know exactly what it is: a tracking device.

“You only get one chance to plant that when you peel the paper off the back. The adhesive is permanent. Use your phone to program it to link to one of the watches.”

I smirk as I look out of the passenger window. We are stopped at a light, and a homeless man with a leathery face approaches, his hand out for a handout, fingers protruding through a worn woolish glove. The light changes, and we pull away. I escape another debate with the General about why we should or should not patronize the homeless.

“You’ll have to make up a story for your mother about where you are while she’s here, something about basketball and Coach Fears would probably do the trick. But if you get caught…”

I look at him, not sure what he means. Sometimes it takes a second. He’s always cloak-and-dagger, so cryptic. What else would I expect? At the very least, it keeps me on my toes.

“Are you familiar with the term plausible deniability?” he asks.

“Yeah, that means your name is Wes, and you’re not in this mess.”

He nods. “And make sure you spend some time with your mother. She’ll only be here for two weeks this time.”

“I always spend time with her when she’s here,” I say and then realize I sound defensive. After a stretch of silence, I clear my throat. “I was thinking. Since I conceded—”

“Conceded?”

“Since I didn’t make a fuss about going to International Academy for high school, I was thinking I could take the semester off from there this summer, work on my writing, maybe get my mind right for ninth grade.”

“Do you think you’re ready? Remember, it’s not the institution; it’s the individual, and change is good.”

Silence is the academic answer for what we both already know. The General’s maneuvers have prepared me well. I spend the last part of our journey programming the tracking device.

THE GENERAL PULLS up next to the curb in front of the cemetery. “Give everyone my condolences.”

“What time do you have to be at the airport?”

“In one hour and tw … I have time.”

The snow is still coming down, not hard but steady and beginning to stick on the manicured lawn inside the cemetery gates. I put on my black hunting hat and move to get out of the car. The General grabs me by the shoulder. “Your orders are to observe, discourage, and report, only.”

I nod.