by Neil Hetzner
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Unlike what would be true for most fifteen-year old girls, any and all thought of pursuing the Mystery of the Lost Path did not disappear from Prissi’s mind an hour after leaving Dr. Smarkzy. In fact, her new-found interest made her eager to finish up and go home—well, not exactly home, but to the New York Public Datarium.
Since her arrival in Manhattan, the NYPD had been one of the teener’s favorite haunts. Having an excuse to go there and having a mystery to solve took away much of the dread of spending three long, slow silent weeks with her father. As Prissi walked back to her dorm the energy that had been generated by her talk with Dr. Smarkzy had quickly drained away as she thought of how her father had always been thoughtful, caring, polite, but he never had been talkative, clever or entertaining, like Dr. Smarkzy and Joshua Fflowers. The daughter had accepted her father as he was until the previous summer. After nine months of living on a campus filled with bright adults and, in her opinion, brighter teenerz saying clever things in machine gun fashion, after a thousand quick contests of quick wits, like cat fights with words, Prissi had found spending much time with a very nice, but distant, dogged parent to be beyond dull.
Prissi’s emotions made her feel both disloyal and guilty. Her father seemed bored doing whatever he was doing. He never talked about work, and that was how his daughter knew that it didn’t engage him like his re-gen work in Africa. What made it worse for Prissi was that she assumed most of the money he made doing what he didn’t like doing was being handed over to Dutton. Even without his saying a word, that guilted her.
By the end of the previous summer, her father’s emotional state reminded Prissi of an accident victim wandering around in a stupor. In fact, she often imagined that both he and her mother had been in the truclet. Her mother had died. Her father had survived, but barely. He was in shock. He needed help. And, she hated herself for feeling that the role of savior should be played by someone other than herself.
Now, instead of spending the three weeks of break flying over the skies of Manhattan until she could fly no more and had to come home, Prissi Langue had a goal, a mystery, to keep her going. Her father might be dull, but the intrigued teener was sure Joshua Fflowers and the Secret of the Lost Path was not.