I’m not sure I like Mrs. Lehman. She’s got a bird-chirpy voice that’s always chirping out instructions to us during fifth grade Sunday school. Every time she says something she thinks is important, she looks up from her clipboard with her eyebrows way up by her hair-sprayed fluffy bangs, like she’s waiting for someone to agree with her.
Especially me.
I don’t like to. No one likes a show off, and I’m already a show off even if I don’t want to be one.
Dad is famous. Lots of people know him, all over the world. He’s famous for his orating, and his charismatic TV presence. Mom says he’s even more magnetic than his dad, Grandfather McDowell. He had a heart attack when I was a baby and went to be with Jesus.
My friends’ dads get to be at home on weekends, but not dad. He works every day—all seven—and for him, the “day of rest” is the busiest. Every single Sunday, he gets up before the sun and drives over to Parkside, near the San Francisco zoo. Sometimes don’t see him face-to-face again until Monday.
Sometimes we come by here after I get out of school and see him in his office. But we never go up to the third floor pastoral wing on a Sunday.
Never.
That frog in my throat flexes his muscles. I do a loud cough to try to get him loose, so I can breathe.
Mrs. Lehman glances back at me before she opens the third-floor door.
“You’re not in trouble,” she says birdishly. But I know she’s lying. She looks like she just smelled something gross. “I just want to have a brief word with your father. Then I’ll let your mother take you.”
Something whooshes in between my ears, a crashing ocean wave that makes my heart feel like it’s beating in my eyes. What did I do?
But I know, don’t I? It was what happened with Sally and Simon. I don’t like either one of them. Twin brats, if you ask me.
“Come along,” Mrs. Lehman chirps.
I smell the smell of my dad’s office even from the far end of the hall. It’s a coffee smell. My dad drinks a lot of coffee.
Mrs. Lehman walks past the giant paintings—one a desert, one a garden—hanging on the left wall…past the wall of windows on the right. Then she turns back and sees I’m falling behind. Her pink lips pinch.
“Come on along.”
I know I need to, but my feet won’t move. I feel…like I’m going to throw up. I can feel it like some bad slime rising in me, trying to get out.
I nod. Her face goes weird and blurry as my eyes ache. “Okay.” It’s a whisper. I can’t breathe or talk because of the frog.
She leads me through the doors to dad’s wing and past the sitting area. Past the long, white marble counter where people are standing in small groups, wearing headsets, holding clipboards. They all look spit-shined and ready to go. Some of them smile at us. Mrs. Lehman smiles and nods, but I can’t look at them.
We pass the fountain on the left, the small library on the right. Then we’re to the long wall with the artifacts in frames, some family photos scattered between those old, important things. There’s a gold door in the brown wall—the door to my dad’s office.
Mrs. Lehman stops in front of it and knocks twice.
I hear my father clear his throat. I swallow super hard, trying to get the frog out. No luck. My whole body seems to flicker, like I’m going into ghost mode. My face and chest feel weird and cold as the door slowly opens.
I suck air through my nose and let my hot eyes reach up till they find my dad’s brown ones.
“Son?” His eyebrows scrunch up as he looks from me to Mrs. Lehman.
“We had a— Something came up. I couldn’t find your wife.” She looks at me with her eyes narrowed, then back at my father, who already has TV makeup on and looks all ready for the cameras in his navy suit.
“May I speak to you in private for a moment?” she asks.
He frowns at me. “Certainly. Come on inside.”
He lifts one brow at me, telling me to stay put. They disappear inside, and my face feels like it’s on fire.
Rules are stupid. You don’t blindly follow rules. Sometimes you have to go with what feels right in your heart. You have to go against the grain. I know that. Dad has told me that for years now. Mrs. Lehman is just dumb. All of this…overreaction is just—
The door opens, and Mrs. Lehman starts to clack-clack-clack away with her blonde head down. Her eyes don’t lift to meet mine as she passes.
I feel sweat pop out on my back as my father’s gaze locks onto mine. “Come in, son. We’ve got just a minute. Let’s talk.”