"Oh no."

This wouldn't be good. Sam kept her face hidden so her mom couldn't see her start to panic, trying to figure out what her mom was 'oh no'ing about. Mom was not phased and turned from where she was peeking out the window to fix Sam with a death-glare. Sam could feel a full name coming on.

"Samantha Elizabeth Gregor!" There it was. "Why for the love of all things good is there a police officer walking up to our doorstep?"

Sam took this as her cue to stand up and join her mother where she was peering out of the window. Sure enough, a policeman was walking straight towards their front porch. More on instinct than anything else, Sam reached down and checked the pockets of her jeans.

"Did you steal something? Is that why you're checking your pockets?" Mom asked. She looked ready to arrest Sam herself. The teen raised her hands in surrender.

"No, Mom. I haven't done anything." She peeked out of the window again. The officer was almost to the door. "I told you, nothing like that is gonna happen again."

Though Sam cringed at the disbelieving scoff that her mom gave her, she didn't say anything more. Instead, she jumped back onto the couch and waited. The call was for her, she supposed. She didn't have a rogue brother that may have robbed a store or a sister to do something equally crazy.

"Hello, officer, how are you today?"

Every time Sam's mom was nervous or worried, she defaulted to an overly-friendly suburban housewife demeanor. Sam really hoped that the worry was in vain. She honestly couldn't remember doing anything recently that would warrant a visit from the police, but no one's memory is flawless.

When the policeman smiled, Sam allowed herself to relax a bit. No one smiles much when they're about to arrest someone.

"I'm doing well, but I have a notice for your daughter," the man said. He pulled a folded piece of paper out of the side of his coat and handed it to Mom where she stood.

Though Sam couldn't see her mom's face, she guessed that she wasn't satisfied just yet. She never was.

"But she hasn't done anything wrong? Are you certain?" Mom sounded like she was searching for something to be mad at Sam about. If it weren't for the fact that frequently Sam actually had done something wrong, she might feel hurt.

With a clipped laugh, the policeman pointed out Sam's very thoughts. "Ma'am, I promise you that this has nothing to do with criminal behavior... But it sounds to me like you're looking for some charge on which to condemn her."

Mom didn't answer, just hummed in response. Sam started to worry that she was going to say something more, but then she nodded and tucked the paper into a pocket of her jacket, waving goodbye to the officer. As soon as the door was shut, she whirled around with the paper in hand again. She didn't say anything, and Sam figured that it was time for an explanation.

"I have no clue what that is, I swear," Sam argued, holding her palms open and leaning back against the couch cushion behind her. "He said it's nothing bad, though. I told you it wouldn't be."

Mom hummed again, unfolding the note that the policeman had given her and skimming it. Nothing else to do, Sam waited. She was trying to get her mom to trust her a bit, and figured her best chance at mending the gap was showing patience and honesty. She had already checked off honesty with this particular situation, now came patience.

After a couple minutes, Sam felt the paper being pressed into her hand. "Well, it seems you're right. Nothing bad. Some government organization needs you to help them."

"What?" Sam pulled open the note and tried to scan through it, but found that it far to dense with words. She looked back up. "Why would anyone want me to help them?"

"Samantha, I don't know what this is, but it seems like whoever they are, they just chose a random group of students. Go read through the letter and see if you want to go to their meeting."

Sam looked at the paper and frowned. She wasn't just acting on a low self-esteem. There really was no way that she was the best option for a beta run of anything! Unless, maybe, it were some sort of juvie rehab thing.

"I don't know if I—" Sam started, but Mom cut her off.

"Go look over it, and then you can decide whether you want to participate. Personally, I though you ought to, but I suppose I can't force you to," Mom told her, pointing towards Sam's bedroom.

Instead of arguing further, Sam sulked back to her room. She could always pretend to read it and say she didn't want to go. No point in making it all into a big, unnecessary fight.

Or maybe she should read over the letter anyway, Sam considered as she sat down on her bed, kicking her shoes off and crossing her legs. Mom would likely ask for the reason she wasn't up for the letter's offer, so she needed a story ready.

It wasn't super likely, but perhaps the message would be a little interesting. Sam had never been one to avoid an adventure, and maybe the proposition of helping the government did intrigue her a bit. Not a lot. Just a bit. She certainly wasn't some honors class, straight-A, attendance-award pushover. But this sounded like more than some geek squad mission to file papers, so Sam unfolded the letter.

"Gregor Residence,

Miss Samantha Gregor has been formally enlisted in a new program being developed to help youth find their paths in life. This top-of-the-line mentorship program will help students see how those similar to themselves get along as adults. Samantha has been accepted from a pool of automatically-enlisted applicants, and a mentor has already been located.

If she chooses to not be a part of this trial run of our Counterparts Program, Samantha may be dropped from the beta. However, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it is not recommended that the accepted student be dropped from the program. The following letter will explain the basics of what is expected from any students participating in our beta test."

Samantha set the letter to the side and frowned, refraining from reading the whole thing quite yet. Okay, so she was intrigued. She was a bit angry that she was as interested as she was, as this was supposed to be something she could easily say no to and get on with her life. But now it looked like maybe she would have to do something else on top of school, trying to get her license again, and convincing her therapist to please leave her alone and that she was perfectly fine.

This was likely a terrible idea. Sam picked up the letter anyway and continued to read from where she left off.

"The afore-discussed Counterparts Program is a dual system of a computer algorithm used to match similar individuals and a government run agency which will make sure that the paired individuals are able to meet and get the full experience of interacting with their "counterpart". This experience should help the younger participant to understand what is going on around them from the eyes of someone who went through a similar situation when they were younger.

In the final run of the Counterparts Program, the two pools of participants will be aged 12 years old and 30 years old. At the moment, however, that would require more to be done by the individuals involved, especially by the younger pool, so it is not reasonable at the moment. Instead, the pools being tried are 16 year old students and 24 year old government employed individuals.

The purpose of these mentorships will not be the same as in the final version of this program. Instead of being to help guide the children through their adolescence and early adulthood altogether, the current participants will be simply be helping their younger counterparts to make this way through college applications and college itself.

The information from the younger participants has already been collected and an older individual of the same gender and similar interests and personality has been found from our older volunteers. There will be no work require from the younger individual except to clear time for: 1) a meeting with the directors of this program to discuss the feedback expected from the participants, 2) at least one trip to see their older counterpart at their place of work, and 3) at least three trips to see their counterpart in total.

These meetings are necessary to test the algorithm predicting the best matches of individuals, so that the Counterparts Program runs smoothly by the time it is put into affect.

All pairs that have been matched were also done so with consideration of geography, though that is not planned to be an issue in the future. Neither younger or older participants will be further than two cities away, as determined by the new layout plan that is currently being applied.

Any more information needed will be supplied at the meeting with the program directors. The date, time, and location of Samantha Gregor's meeting are listed below:

6:00-7:30 pm; February 8, 2108; B-7 Classroom 217

Thank you, and from the directors of the Counterparts Program, we hope you will join us in developing this breakthrough system."

There was an ink signature at the bottom of the letter, but judging by the way it was printed, Sam got the feeling that the whole thing was just a fill-in-the-blank that her name was typed into. That was probably it, seeing as there were likely thousands of these letters being sent out to families around the country. She breathed a sigh of relief at that, though, as it meant that there were no personal details about her in the letter.

After all, the fact that they already had information about her to do this whole matching thing meant that they had gotten into her therapy files. And therapy files meant that they knew more things about her than she would prefer making public information, even to her mom, quite yet. They were supposed to be confidential, but as long as they weren't out in the open Sam wasn't going to pitch a fit.

Sam ran her thumb over the edge of the paper. This wasn't a juvie thing, it would seem. Or, if it was, it wasn't focusing on that. She guessed that she would have to go to the meeting, seeing as it would be something she would probably regret if she did not.

The meeting was about half a week away, coming up the next Wednesday. Going over to the school building in the evening wasn't her top wish any day, but the time of the meeting overlapped with when her therapy session would have been, so she would be able to get out of that. Mom had said she wanted her to be part of the program, so going would be the best option.

"Best to RSVP," Sam muttered, pushing off of her bed with the letter in hand, heading to where Mom was waiting.

She would be waiting, as things like this were ones that Mom tended to wait for. Instead of doing something else and leaving Sam alone to take her time, she would wait in the living room or the kitchen or wherever and just tap her toes until Sam came back out to tell her what she had decided upon.

Sam handed the paper back without an eye roll, even when she saw her mom leaning against the countertop in the kitchen and eyes glued where Sam came in from. She never got props for not rolling her eyes when Mom did ridiculous stuff like that, and Sam thought that was completely unfair.

"Sure, I'll go. I mean, might as well, right?"

Instead of staying to experience the awkwardness of her mom trying to praise her while also not really trusting her not to steal something the next minute, Sam stuck back to her bedroom. She did appreciate that she had made Mom happy, but that was not enough to stay.

Maybe one of these days she would convince the family that she was no criminal in the making just because of ten string of dumb stuff she had done in tenth grade. Until then, she would do her best not to get caught up in the tornado-like destruction that was aftermath of her actions.

So she would get a "counterpart". That's... nice. Sam hoped that this wasn't all some sort of sham. That would be disappointing, for she was rather looking forwards to what sort of maniac she would get paired with. After all, though Sam was very solidly convinced that she was fine, everyone around her seemed to think that she was a loose end.

If she was paired with someone who was actually like her, that would be nice. Who would know, though, until another four days had passed. Sam sufficed to pull out her laptop and bug her friends online for a while. As there was no homework over the weekend this time, her options were to message someone or spend the rest of the weekend being bored or possibly going outside to do something. With all the construction going on to switch the city into a mathematician's wet dream of straight rows and numbered blocks, it wasn't the best thing ever to just go on a walk by herself.

Besides, at least half of her school friends would be online. Sam logged in to the school's coms site and typed in the password she chose all the way back when she was eight, magicious. Then she crossed her fingers that one of the others had been invited to the same crazy project that she had.