On Thursday night, Mom picked up a pizza for dinner.
“So,” she said as she passed out paper plates. “Is there any news that’s fit to print?” That’s her way of asking if anything interesting happened during the day. I don’t know why she just doesn’t ask it the normal way.
I shrugged. I’d spent most of the day watching a cartoon marathon and going through a whole bottle of nail-polish remover and two bottles of polish. I couldn’t quite mix the exact shade of green I wanted.
“I reached the fifth level of Zombie Bounty Hunters,” Sam said.
“I’m guessing that’s a good thing,” Mom said with a laugh.
“Well, I got a bit of good news today,” Dad announced. “Remember that big paper I had to write for my child psychology class? I got an A.”
We all whooped and clapped and gave Dad high fives.
“This calls for a celebration,” Mom said. “I think there’s some ice cream in the freezer.”
“You know what I’d really like?” Dad asked. “A cake. Eliza, will you make me one?”
“Do monkeys have tails?” I asked.
“I can never remember,” Dad teased. “Do they?”
After dinner Dad and I went to the grocery store to get stuff to make a chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. Dad put the Jeep’s top down. The two of us love doing this on summer nights. You can lean your head back and see the whole navy sky, feel the warm air on your skin, and hear all the traffic around you. Mom and Sam prefer closed windows and air-conditioning.
“The Jeep reminds me of riding a roller coaster,” I told Dad as we drove down the road.
Dad laughed. “It reminds me of being twenty-two, fresh out of college,” he said. “I saved up for this car for four years. It was the last impractical thing I bought before I became a grown-up.”
I couldn’t picture my dad as a twenty-two-year-old man. Or as a kid. I wondered if he was the kind of boy who was nice, like Tony. Or if he was mean, like David Ruckers, who called me a hyperhen when I couldn’t sit still in math class ’cause I’d forgotten my medicine that morning.
“Dad,” I asked. “When you were my age, did you want to be an architect?”
Dad chuckled. “Nope. When I was your age, I didn’t even know what an architect was.”
“Then why did you become one?”
“Well, when I was in college, I thought I wanted to.”
I considered his answer.
Dad went on. “The thing is, Eliza, sometimes we don’t really know what we want. We just think we do.”
I was quiet for a minute before I asked my next question. “Do you wish you were still one? An architect, I mean.”
Dad kept his eyes on the road but knitted his brow. “Yes and no,” he said. “I wish I had a steady job so I could afford all the things you, Sam, and your mom want. But no, it wasn’t a good job for me. It didn’t make me happy.”
“Do you think being a teacher will make you happy?” I asked.
“Yes,” Dad said with a smile. “I do.”
I knew exactly what would make me happy. To make cakes with Tony at our own shop.