That Wednesday I took a sick day from school in order to go pay Ken-Co a visit at Thief Valley Elementary. If his business was anything like mine, then the only way I could get an appointment was to show up on a school day. Which was risky business for me.

First, it meant I had to sneak around another school even though I wasn’t a student there. In my experience, schools typically don’t like random people, especially those older than their students (like me), just hanging around and acting suspiciously. It gives off the wrong kind of vibe, and if I was caught, it would almost definitely get back to Dickerson somehow. I was pretty sure that all principals were not only friends outside of work, but probably had some sort of Secret Suit Society that met every other Saturday night in a clearing in the woods behind the local Walmart. They all probably wore bathrobes over their business suits and sieves as hats, and recited enchantments and cast spells on their especially challenging troublemakers, and boiled cauldrons full of burned coffee and giggled and ate popcorn, and told stories, and then finished with a rousing game of truth or dare before sacrificing a goat to Principal Emperor Mr. Belding. You never could know for sure with principals.

And the other reason that it was risky was that I had to skip school. Because school was obviously not like your parents’ jobs where they just get vacation days. I mean, all absences needed to be excused somehow. Especially for me with Dickerson all over me like he had been. Luckily getting kids out of school used to be one of my specialties. It was one of the more popular requests I got back when I’d run my business.

When kids needed a way out of school, I always called in Mike “My-Me” Winslow. He was the master of impressions. He could impersonate anyone or anything. In class he once did this impression of a squeaky wheel every time the teacher sat in her chair. It sounded so real that the teacher kept calling down to the office to get the chair fixed. The teacher called down so many times that eventually the school just bought her a whole new chair. Then when she sat in the new chair for the first time My-Me did the squeaking noise again, but this time just slightly different. The look on the teacher’s face was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen in my life. Even though I did feel kind of bad for her—I mean, I definitely hoped My-Me’s prank didn’t have anything to do with this teacher’s mental breakdown later that year where she showed up to school wearing waffles on her feet and shoes on her hands.

So, anyways, the thing was My-Me could impersonate adult voices so well that the attendance secretary never called the parents at work to verify that the sick calls were real like she sometimes did if the call sounded suspicious in any way. Part of his trick, in addition to just the awesome adult sound of his impressions, was that he was the master of using weird phrases and words that only old people used, such as: “I’m afraid he’s come down with a case of the chills” or “He’s sick as a dog” or “She’s a bit under the weather today.”

So my day started with an early morning phone call to My-Me. He was used to this. My waking him at six or sometimes even five in the morning for emergency cases was something he was typically well-compensated for in our past dealings.

“Mac. Haven’t heard from you in a while,” he said, sounding half-asleep still.

“Yeah, well, as you know, I’m not really in business anymore.”

“Yeah, exactly, so what’s up?” He didn’t sound angry or annoyed but definitely curious as to why I’d interrupted his dreams a full hour before he probably normally woke up each morning.

“I need a personal favor this time, one which you’ll still be paid the usual fee for,” I said.

“You need a sick call for yourself?” he asked, sounding surprised.

I’d never actually had My-Me call me personally in sick before. I’d always made it a habit to not miss school in the past, since, when you had a business operation like the one I’d been running for the past five years, missing school meant lost business. Lost business meant lost profits.

“You up for it?”

“Hey!” he said, transforming his voice into that of a shouting forty-year-old dude from Brooklyn, an impression of this old comedian that he sometimes did. “Hey! What do I look like? A sausage? Of course I’m up for it! Hey!”

I laughed. “Great. Just give me the standard sick call. One day is all I need.”

“Hey, you got it, pal,” he said, still in character. “Hey!”