I call Dad on his cell.
“Just leaving,” he says. “Want to meet somewhere for lunch?”
I tell him I’ll cook.
He makes me promise no actual flames until he gets home. I spend half an hour shredding up string-cheese sticks and cracking eggs. I peel two cucumbers, cut them up, and put them in a bowl. I stack four pieces of bread next to the toaster.
Dad comes in while I’m setting the table. I make us scrambled eggs with cheese, making sure the cheese is nice and melted before I turn off the heat.
“Can I help?” Dad asks.
“You could salt the cucumbers,” I tell him. “And put ice in our glasses.”
We eat. “I love scrambled eggs!” Dad announces. “How could I have forgotten how much I love scrambled eggs?”
I sit there thinking the secret to good scrambled eggs was probably the one true thing Safer ever told me.
“So?” Dad says. “Tell me things!”
I pour my heart out. I tell him everything about what happened with Safer and Mr. X, all of it.
“I can’t be friends with someone like that,” I tell Dad.
“Someone like what?”
“Someone who lies.”
“Was it a lie? Or was it a game?”
“I hate games. I hate people who play games.”
Dad nods. “Maybe you’re right to be mad. But isn’t playing games a way of being friends?”
“Not if you don’t know it’s a game!”
“What if he didn’t know you didn’t know?”
“He knew.”
“Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t.”
“He did.”
“How did all this get started?”
I think. “The Spy Club.”
“And did you go down there thinking you would find real spies?”
“No. Obviously.”
“So weren’t you kind of on notice from the beginning that it was a game?”
“He acted serious. Like he believed it.”
“Some games are played that way.”
“I hate games,” I say.
And then I pour my heart out for the second time in ten minutes, this time about Dallas Llewellyn and Carter Dixon. And the taste test.
Dad looks miserable. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have done something, a long time ago.”
I shrug. “It’s just dumb stuff. You know, kids being kids. I know none of it will matter in a few years.”
He stares at me. “Who told you that?”
“Mom. She always says to look at the big picture. How all of the little things don’t matter in the long run.”
He blinks. “But they matter now, Georges. They matter a lot. What were you planning to do, just hold your breath all the way through middle school?”
“No. No one can hold their breath that long.”
“Look, I know Mom talks about the big picture. She wants you to remember that you’ll find new friends, that life is always changing, sometimes in really good ways. But life is also what’s happening now, Georges. What Dallas and Carter are doing is happening now, and you can’t just wait for it to be over. We have to do something about it. Now.”
It’s weird, because I know Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other.
The dots matter.
“First thing in the morning,” Dad says, “I’m going down to school with you and we’re airing this whole thing out. There are rules about this kind of thing, Georges. Important ones.”
And I feel so good when he says that. I’m about to say yes, let’s go to Everybody’s Favorite Diner and get egg sandwiches and then walk to school together and all this can be over. But then I hear myself telling him no. Because I have an idea.
There are all kinds of rules. There are written-down school rules like Dad is talking about, and there are rules we just live with without even asking ourselves why. Candy is right. Why shouldn’t her table be the cool table? Who says I have to try to steal the other team’s flag? Why does Bob have to spell dumb with a B?
What if you decided to make your own rules?
“But you’ll tell me if you need me?” Dad says after I explain. “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“I’m so sorry, Georges. I should have been around more lately. I should have … been here, cooked for you,” he says. “Yum Li is right. It hasn’t been easy because Mom hasn’t wanted to force you to—”
I stop him. “So cook something,” I say.
He looks at me a second, then stands up and starts going through the fridge. “I know,” he says. “I know exactly what to cook.”
Dad cooks milk shakes. In the blender. Then we kick back with Sir Ott for some baseball. I don’t think about Safer, and I don’t think about Dallas, or the taste test, or my big idea that may or may not work. I just drink my milk shake, sit next to Dad, and think about how this now is the best one I’ve had in a while.
Before bed that night, I spell Mom a note:
There’s a shortage of S’s and only two M’s, so the last one is an upside-down W. I fall asleep to the sound of Dad murmuring into the phone behind his bedroom door.
In the morning there’s a message from Mom: