30

STRIKE—DAY 8

Early Monday morning, my dad came in and woke me up.

“I’m going out of town for two days. Business trip,” he told me. “Been scheduled for a while.”

I rubbed my eyes but didn’t look at him. “Okay.”

“Mom told me about this TV guy who’s coming to talk to you today.”

“Brody Newhouse. He has a show everyone watches. He might want to put me on Wednesday night.”

My dad stared down at me. “Why would you assume I would let this happen?”

So here it was, finally. My dad waited and waited—after I told everyone I knew about the TV show—and now, at the last minute, he was going to cancel the whole thing.

“I have no idea,” I said, waiting for the ax to fall.

Finally my dad let out a big sigh.

“You can meet the guy,” he said. “We’ll talk later about the rest of it.” He took a deep breath. “You have your assignments for this week?”

“Mrs. Bender sent me everything,” I said, still not quite believing that my dad was going to maybe let me go on TV and talk about the strike.

My dad picked up his briefcase. “Just make sure that whatever you tell him, you don’t say anything bad about our family,” he said. “Never say anything bad about your family. We stick together through thick and thin.”

“Okay,” I said.

My dad closed his eyes tight for a second, then opened them. “I know I haven’t dealt with this in the best way. I know the easy thing to do is just to say fine, go do what you want to do, but I’m not prepared to do that just yet. I don’t want you to think you can just pull this stunt and then suddenly get your way about everything. What kind of message would that send?”

He sat down on the couch next to me. “But I’ve been thinking about things, Jack, and I know we’ll be able to figure all this out on Wednesday when I get back.” He actually tried to smile a little. “And I’m pretty sure I know where to find you.”

Then he kissed me on the top of my head and was gone.

*   *   *

Later that morning, I asked my mom how she got my dad to go along with the whole TV show thing.

“Well, because I told him we should be proud of your bravery and your ability to stand up for something you believe in, and everyone should know it,” she said.

I looked at her. “No, really.”

My mom winked.

“I told him it would be good for college,” she said.