“ALMOST THERE?”
My voice rings down the hall, aimed at Dad’s office. Leaning half in and half out of my bedroom, I can hear Dad tinkering around at the back of the house, through the open door of what my friends affectionately refer to as the “secret lair.” I glance in at my vanity, an old family hand-me-down that Mom insisted I have, which is now overcome by a Commodore Amiga 500. There’s a picture of the four of us—me, Charlie, Gabe, and Kimberly—tucked into the mirror frame. We’re sitting together at a booth in the diner, a bunch of food between us, laughing about something. That was from last summer, and there’s a weird, uncomfortable throb in my heart thinking about what this summer means, what’s coming at the end of it.
“Got it!” Dad calls from the shadow of his open office door. “Are we on?”
On my vanity, the beige plastic hulk of a computer blinks to life. A big orange extension cord winds its way out my door and down the hall. Dad wanted to hook it up to the surge protector in his office so we don’t trip any breakers.
I sit down at the stool in front of the vanity and brush my fingertips over the keyboard. “We’re on,” I say, not quite loud enough. But I’m too caught up in the crackly sound the thick keys make as I sweep a hand over them. I feel like a pianist getting acquainted with her instrument.
Dad either hears me or just has a little fatherly intuition, because his head pokes around the doorway. He’s a quiet man. Kind, patient. All those other things that First Corinthians says love is. He gets along with everyone in town. Well, everyone except Chief Albright. But according to Gabe, that’s only because his dad has a natural distrust for anyone in a white coat. My dad happens to have one draped over his arm at this very moment. He’s on his way to work. I can see the TerraCorp ID badge clipped to one lapel, flashing a picture of Dad that’s as old as I am.
“What do you think?” he asks with a sideways grin.
“I…” I glance over at the computer, at the swampy screen and the green flashing cursor. “It’s awesome, Dad. I can’t wait to get to work.”
“Good.” His grin gets wider. “Getting into MIT isn’t easy. You have to show them you really deserve to be there.”
I nod, looking away. “I know. I’ll make you proud. I promise.”
Dad steps into the room, leans over my chair. I can smell the bland fragrance of the soap he always uses. I feel his lips press into my nest of curls. “You already have, little one,” he says.
Down the hall, in the secret lair, Dad’s private phone rings. The loud jangle of it startles us both, and we laugh as he ducks back into the hall and jogs for the office.
“Don’t move!” he calls back to me. He promised to help me set up the computer before going in to the lab today, but I already know this phone call means our time is getting cut short. It doesn’t bother me, really. Not anymore. Whatever work they do at TerraCorp is important enough that Dad is willing to drop everything to go do it. Either I’ve come to accept it or I’m just numb to it now. If my feelings got hurt every time Dad got called into the lab, I’d be a sulky, miserable wreck.
Normally, when his private line rings, Dad slips into the office and closes the door. The latch has a very distinctive click, and the door always thumps perfectly into its frame, cutting Dad off from the world, his own private isolation room. But today I don’t hear the click or the thump. He must have pushed the door shut behind him but not hard enough for it to close all the way. I can hear his voice drifting down the hall to my room.
“… the hell are you talking about?” Dad says, his voice hushed but urgent. “I did not authorize … Well, who did?” He sounds angry, which is not an emotion I usually associate with my father. I can’t help myself; I get up and cross the room to my own door and lean against the frame so I can hear better. “You can tell Colonel Higgins that she has no business on TerraCorp property, and she is not to touch any part of our research. I … Yes, I know you’re not in charge of the army, Claudia. Neither am I. But I will get President Bush on the phone if I have to.”
Whoa. I’ve never heard that line before. TerraCorp is a government-contracted facility, which is pretty much all I know about it, but I didn’t realize Dad had such high-level connections. Unless he’s just bluffing for Claudia’s sake.
“… don’t care what kind of paperwork she shows you. Higgins does not enter that lab until I get there. Do you understand me? She stays on that airstrip. And with any luck, once I arrive, she won’t get past it. Keep stalling, Claudia. Give me twenty-five minutes at most.”
I hear the clack of the phone being dropped into its cradle, and I rush back to my chair, padding across the carpet as quickly and quietly as I can. Dad’s heavy footfalls shuffle across his office, pause at the entryway—maybe to inspect the door he left ajar—then come down the hall to my room again.
“Hey, little one,” he says, a slight perplexity in his voice.
I pretend to be busy examining the Commodore. “Hey.” Everything all right at work? almost slips out, but I catch it just in time. I don’t want him to know I was eavesdropping.
“You didn’t hear any of that, did you?”
“Hear any of what?” I say, not a beat missed.
He pauses. I can feel him watching me. Then: “You know what, never mind. I have to run, though. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured. It’s okay, Dad.”
“You sure?” He stares at me over his glasses.
“Of course,” I reply. “The great Dr. Alvaro Gutierrez is needed at the lab. This can wait.” It comes out sounding snarkier than I mean it to, but Dad knows I’m just jabbing him. The chime of his office phone has been a running joke in our family since I was a kid. While my friends call the office itself the secret lair, Mom and my little sister, Sophia, and I all refer to that phone as the “hotline.”
He rolls his eyes and grins, readjusting the folded lab coat on his arm self-consciously. “I don’t know when I’ll be back,” he says. “But as soon as I am, we’ll finish getting that thing working, okay?”
“Deal,” I say. I offer him a smile of my own, but it doesn’t feel genuine. I’ve been faking smiles a lot lately, for a lot of reasons. This afternoon, I’ll have to fake even more. These days, I dread spending time with my friends almost as much as I look forward to it.
Dad winks, pushes off my bedroom doorframe, and disappears down the other end of the hall. And then I’m alone.