WHEN WE GET TO THE RESTAURANT, my dad hurries over to us with a huge grin on his face. “Finally! What took you so long? The photographer will be here any minute. Quick, kids, put these on.”

We’re still in the parking lot as he hands us each a neon-colored T-shirt. I notice that he’s careful not to unfold them so that we can’t see the drawing on the front. I don’t know why, since he’s sporting his own neon-yellow T. As soon as he hands out all the shirts, his chest is in full view and so is the horrible design — a huge dinosaur sitting on top of a badly drawn image of our restaurant. The dinosaur is eating an ice-cream cone, and drips are slipping down the front window. Little faces peek out the window around the drips. I think they are supposed to be ours.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sara says. “Seriously, Dad?”

My mom gives her a warning look.

“What?” my dad asks as he helps Charlie pull an electric-blue shirt over his head.

“We all have dinosaurs?” I ask.

“What’s wrong with dinosaurs? Kids love ’em. Right, Charlie?”

Charlie nods excitedly and roars.

“What do dinosaurs have to do with Christmas?” I ask. “These are for the annual card, right?”

“Come on, come on, come on. We don’t have time for dillydallying,” my dad says, ignoring my question.

I pull my own bright orange T over my head. It feels bulky over the T-shirt I’m already wearing. Sara puts hers on inside out. My dad is so busy fussing with Charlie, he doesn’t even notice.

“I can’t believe we have to do this,” Holden says, stretching his neon-green T-shirt out in front of him. “And why did I have to get green? It makes me look pale.”

My mom clears her throat in this way she has that means we’re supposed to look over at her without making it obvious. We all look and watch as her right hand, which is in a fist, slowly unclenches and she stretches out five fingers.

Holden, Sara, and I exchange glances. We wait.

My mom sighs and slowly unclenches her other fist. Five more fingers. That’s ten bucks each if we keep our mouths shut and cooperate.

We’re in.

I don’t know when my mom turned to silent bribery to prevent family conflicts, but it seems to work. It’s not that we want to disappoint my dad. We know he means well. But why do his ideas always have to be so lame and humiliating? And why does the humiliating part always have to include us?

We all follow my dad to the front of the restaurant, where he starts to position us under the window just as a van pulls into the parking lot blasting the Grateful Dead. It’s “Uncle John’s Band,” Charlie’s favorite, and he immediately starts shaking his bum.

“They’re here!” my dad yells.

Sara fidgets with her dreadlocks again. “At least they have good taste in music.”

“Everyone, this is Eric,” my dad says when the photographer walks over to us. “And Sky,” he says, gesturing to a woman wearing a head scarf.

“I love your hair,” Sky says to Sara.

“Uh, that’s not a regular camera,” Holden points out when Eric lifts the camera to his shoulder.

“That’s the surprise!” my dad yells. “Surprise! We’re making a commercial! Isn’t that great?”

“Yay!” Charlie yells, and runs over to hug Eric’s legs.

We all look at my mom. “Um, wow, honey!” she says. “I had no idea!” She makes an apologetic face at us, but she knows very well there is no amount of money that is going to make us be OK with this plan.

“That’s why it’s a surprise!” my dad says. He’s beaming, as if this is the best idea he has ever had. “OK, OK. Let’s get set up.” He puts his hands on my shoulders and walks me backward so I’m standing under the huge sign in front of the restaurant. “You look terrific, sweetheart!” he says in my ear. His stale coffee breath is particularly pungent.

“Holden? You next. Right here beside Ferny.”

“I want Ferny!” Charlie whines. He grabs hold of my legs so tightly, I almost fall over.

“Watch it!” I yell. “And don’t call me Ferny!” I hate that name.

“Daddy said it first!”

“You’re not Dad!”

“Stop it, Fern,” my mom says. “He’s paying you a compliment.” Any time Charlie bugs me and I complain about it, my mom tells me I should be flattered. Flattered because he’s the only one in this family who ever pays any attention to me? I don’t think she gets how insulting that is.

My dad continues to line us up so that finally Sara, Holden, and I are squeezed in between my mom and dad. My dad picks up Charlie and perches him on his shoulder.

“I’m not doing this,” Sara says, stepping out of line.

“Now, look, honey,” my dad says. “I’m paying these people a lot of money. And with any luck, we’ll get it back tenfold when the business starts booming.”

“I don’t want business to boom. That’s just more work for me.”

“More money for you, sweetheart,” my dad says through gritted teeth. “You want your own car to take with you to college next year?”

My sister perks right up. “Seriously?”

My dad nods. “Now try to look happy.”

Sara gets back in line, and we all plaster on our happy faces.

“Just try to act normal,” Eric says, fiddling with the camera lens.

“That’ll be a first,” Holden mumbles.

“That’s us, one big normal family,” I whisper back.

“Hush, you two,” my mom hisses.

“Harry, you ready?”

We all look at my dad. His name is George.

“Ready when you are!” my dad says.

Eric holds up his hand and counts silently on his fingers. Five, four, three, two, one, then points to my dad.

“WELCOME TO HARRY’S!” my dad booms.

Holden’s sweaty arm rubs against mine. My mom is stiff behind me. I hope the camera is zoomed in on my dad because I think I cringed when he started talking. I try to smile as he lists off the most popular flavors of ice cream we sell.

“. . . and our most popular, Dinosaur Crunch!”

I hear Charlie chomp like a dinosaur. My dad laughs way too loud, then clears his throat. “IF YOU HAVEN’T BEEN TO HARRY’S, YOU HAVEN’T BEEN TO HEAVEN!” he yells.

Sky motions for all of us to wave. Charlie flaps his arm frantically and shouts, “See you at Hawee’s!” in his worst baby voice yet.

I think my ears are bleeding.

“Aaaaand cut,” Eric says.

My dad tosses Charlie in the air. “Great line, buddy!” he yells. “Should we do another take, Eric? I’m not sure how that came out.”

“Nah, Harry. It was perfect. We’ll cut anything that doesn’t look quite right and pan in on some scenes I’ll take inside. I’d like to film some customers eating cones, sundaes — stuff like that.”

“Sure, sure, sure,” my dad says. “Right this way.” We all follow him into the restaurant, which is half empty. Right away I can tell my dad has planted “customers”— our regular employees and their kids or little sisters and brothers. They all say hi to my dad like he’s a local hero, though I notice none of them call him by his real name.

My dad never corrects people when they call him Harry. He says it’s good for business because people like to think they’re talking to the guy the restaurant is named after (who was actually my grandfather). I’m pretty sure this drives my mom a little nuts, but she doesn’t say anything. My mom almost never yells or gets upset. Whenever she looks like she might start to lose it, she heads up to my dad’s stuffy office and shuts the door so she can meditate. There’s a sign on the door that she flips around before she closes and locks it. On one side, it says, Please knock. On the other, it says, Mom is finding her inner peace. Come back later. I’m not really sure what would happen if we interrupted her during meditation, and I don’t really want to find out.

Charlie follows Eric around for the next hour while he films people eating burgers and licking ice-cream cones. Sara, Holden, and I sit at one of the booths.

“I can’t believe this,” Sara says for like the hundredth time as we watch the film crew. “Thank God I’m out of high school. I would never live this one down.”

“Oh, thanks a lot,” Holden says. “I’m just starting! I have enough stacked against me already. Now this?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Just forget it.”

But I think I know.

I lean back in the booth and sigh. “We’re doomed,” I say.

Sara shakes her head. She doesn’t even bother to try to cheer us up because she knows we’re right.

The bell on the front door tinkles, and Random Smith walks in. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says GLOW on it, and I wonder what it’s supposed to mean. Ran is always wearing T-shirts with sayings on them that don’t quite make sense to me. Last year, he gave me one for my birthday that said real. I think he was upset that I never wore it. I smile at him as he comes up to the table and waves the way he always does — elbow at his waist, hand swishing back and forth like a windshield wiper. Like a robot.

“Hey, Fern,” he says.

“Hey, Ran.” When I slide over, the back of my thighs stick to the red vinyl seat and make a disgusting sound. Honestly, could my life get any more embarrassing?

A few things about Ran have changed since our days of swapping germs:

1. His mom, who was really sick from cancer back then, won her battle, and she and Ran’s dad started an online T-shirt company that makes a ton of money.
   
   

2. Ran shaved his head when his mom lost all her hair from chemotherapy, and he just decided he liked being bald. So now his head is shaved really close. I don’t think most people could pull this off, but Ran is a very no-nonsense kind of person, and he doesn’t really care what other people think. Also, it actually looks pretty good.
   
   

3. Despite his weirdness, Ran became my best friend. With his mom all better, he also stopped being so messy and sick all the time, which is a good thing, because being his best friend meant I was sick almost just as much.

Sara winks at me and I blush.

“What’s going on?” Ran asks, taking in the scene.

“My dad is ending our lives as we know it,” I say.

“TV commercial,” Holden explains.

Ran cringes just as Charlie comes racing across the room and hugs him.

“Hey, little man,” Ran says. They do their special handshake, which involves rubbing palms together. I don’t think Ran knows or else cares how risky it is to touch Charlie’s hands. No one knows where they’ve been — but most likely in some pretty disgusting places.

“Wanna sundae?” Charlie asks.

“Yeah!” Ran follows Charlie to the ice-cream counter, and they disappear behind it. A few minutes later, they return with a huge banana-split bowl filled with every topping we sell. They each have a spoon but share the bowl.

“That’s disgusting,” Sara says.

Charlie and Ran ignore her and go to town. Miraculously, they eat the whole thing. When they finish, Charlie’s mouth has an almost-perfect chocolate circle around it that slowly drips down his chin. He looks just like the dinosaur on his T-shirt.

Ran carefully wipes his mouth with a napkin from the dispenser on the table. Then, instead of getting a new one, he just folds it over and wipes Charlie’s mouth for him. Charlie beams.

In the distance, my dad tries to get the line cooks behind the counter to say, “See you at Harry’s,” but they look kind of confused. Instead, Charlie yells it from our table.

I hide my face in my hands.

“What’s wrong?” Ran asks with his familiar bewildered look.

“Can’t you tell how lame this commercial is going to be?” I ask him.

“Well, yes,” he says slowly. “But that’s not your fault.”

“Since when does it matter if an embarrassing moment is your fault or not?” I ask him. “Do you not remember the elf cards? It took months for me to live that down.”

“Only because you let it bother you,” he says calmly.

“Whatever,” I say, staring at the orange letters on his T-shirt. GLOW. Yeah. Why is it so easy for Ran to just glow, when I’m the one wearing the neon T-shirt?