He enters the school's main office and stands at the counter, waiting to be noticed, but the secretary is too busy shuffling papers. "Excuse me . . ."
Finally, she looks up. "Can I help you, dear?"
He clears his throat. "My name is Levi Calder, and I've been kidnapped by two runaway Unwinds."
The woman, who really wasn't paying attention before, suddenly focuses her attention entirely on him. "What did you say?"
"I was kidnapped. We were hiding in a bathroom, but I got away. They're still there. They've got a baby, too."
The woman stands up and calls out, her voice shaky, like she's looking at a ghost. She calls in the principal, and the principal calls in a security guard.
* * *
A minute later, Lev sits in the nurse's office, with the nurse doting on him like he's got a fever.
"Don't you worry," she says. "Whatever happened to you, it's all over now."
From here in the nurse's office, Lev has no way of knowing if they've captured Connor and Risa. He hopes that, if they have, they don't bring them here. The thought of having to face them makes him feel ashamed. Doing the right thing shouldn't make you ashamed.
"The police have been called, everything's being taken care of," the nurse tells him. "You'll be going home soon."
"I'm not going home," he tells her. The nurse looks at him strangely, and he decides not to go into it. "Never mind. Can I call my parents?"
She looks at him, incredulous. "You mean, no one's done that for you?" She looks at the school phone in the corner, then fumbles for the cell phone in her pocket instead. "You call and let them know you're okay—and talk as long as you like."
She looks at him for a moment, then decides to give him his privacy, stepping out of the room. "I'll be right here if you need me."
Lev begins to dial, but stops himself. It's not his parents he wants to talk to. He erases the numbers and keys in a different one, hesitates for a moment, then hits the send button.
It's picked up on the second ring.
"Hello?"
"Pastor Dan?"
There's only a split second of dead air, and then recognition. "Dear God, Lev? Lev, is that you? Where are you?"
ly offended, Lev says, "Tithing's in the Bible; you're supposed to give 10 percent of everything. And storking's in the Bible too."
"No, it isn't!"
"Moses," says Lev. "Moses was put in a basket in the Nile and was found by Pharaoh's daughter. He was the first storked baby, and look what happened to him!"
"Yeah," says Connor, "but what happened to the next baby she found in the Nile?"
"Will you keep your voices down?" says Risa. "People could hear you in the hall, and anyway, you might wake Didi."
Connor takes a moment to collect his thoughts. When he speaks again, it's a whisper, but in a tiled room there are no whispers. "We got storked when I was seven."
"Big deal," says Risa.
"No, this was a big deal. For a whole lot of reasons. See, there were already two natural kids in the family. My parents weren't planning on any more. Anyway, this baby shows up at our door, my parents start freaking out. . . and then they have an idea."
"Do I want to hear this?" Risa asks.
"Probably not." But Connor's not about to stop. He knows if he doesn't spill this now, he's never going to. "It was early in the morning, and my parents figured no one saw the baby left at the door, right? So the next morning, before the rest of us got up, my dad put the baby on a doorstep across the street."
"That's illegal," announces Lev. "Once you get storked, that baby's yours."