Breanne grabbed her throat. “Oh, good, it’s you.” Flip was holding a big box of books. “Sorry if that crash scared you. This slipped out of my hands out there.” He set the box down and looked at us. “But I shouldn’t be apologizing for scaring you — since you broke into my office. So, should I call the police, or are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?”
Flip didn’t look like the happy Flip I usually work with. I knew this was a bad idea.
“Who are all these kids?” TJ was still counting over at the picture wall.
“Is this your camera lens? I found it on the ground at the park.” Breanne handed the lens to Flip. “I hope you don’t mind that we followed you here. We knew you’d need it.”
Flip nodded his head. “Yeah, that’s mine. Funny — I sure thought I left it with the rest of my lenses on the picnic table.”
“Some kid at the park probably moved it.” Breanne was a good liar.
“Yeah — I’m sure that’s what it was.” Flip grabbed the lens from Breanne and put it back in his equipment bag.
“You have 200 pictures of kids on your wall. Who are they?” TJ wouldn’t let up.
Flip went over to the pile of clothes, picked up a wrinkled shirt, and put it on. He turned away from us, rubbed his temples, and then turned back around.
“I sponsor them.”
“What’s that mean?” TJ asked.
Flip walked over to the wall of pictures. “I give money to help take care of them. They’re all from different countries.” He began pointing to different rows of pictures. “These are from Africa, these are from South America . . .”
Suddenly, I thought of Maritza — a little girl my family sponsors from Honduras. We send thirty dollars a month to help her with education and medical needs. I started to do math in my head, which never works out, but I did realize that sponsoring two hundred kids meant a lot of money.
“Wait — you don’t sponsor all of them every month, do you?” I asked.
“Well . . . yeah. Lots of kids need help these days.”
“I know, but that’s like . . . a bunch of money.”
“Six thousand dollars a month. Seventy-two thousand dollars a year.” Breanne obviously knows more math than I do.
“It’s worth it.” Flip pointed to some more kids. “These are from Romania — ”
“Is that why you live in your office? No money left for a house?” Breanne looked around the room. “Where do you sleep, anyway?”
He pointed to the couch. “There. Hey — what did you guys do with my pillow?”
He rummaged through the clothes pile and pulled it out of the bottom. “Aw — it fell on the floor. I hate dirty pillows.” He brushed it off, threw it on the couch, and flopped down.
“See — just as comfortable as a bed.”
We all just stared at him.
“Look — I work a lot of hours. Makes no sense to have a house when I’m here all the time. It’s a waste of money. Bob’s okay with it — he likes having me here to keep an eye on things.”
“It was Breanne’s idea to follow you.” TJ just couldn’t keep her mouth shut.
Breanne gave her a really dirty look. I was pretty sure TJ wouldn’t make it home alive now.
Flip laughed. “It’s okay. Hey, I know I act really weird. I knew you guys were following me anyway. Got any more questions?”
Breanne just stared into Flip’s eyes. “Ummm, do you want to come to church tomorrow? We could share a muffin.”
He stared back. “Maybe.”
TJ rolled her eyes. “Breanne, we have to get home before Mom freaks out.”
The stare was broken as Breanne looked at her watch.
“Oops . . . yeah. I guess we better go. Come on, kids.” Kids?
Flip walked us down the hall and opened the office door. I took a step outside, but then Flip grabbed me and jerked me back in.
“Hey, I thought you wanted us to leave.”
Flip put his finger to his lips and pointed to a silver sports car that was parked across from the office entrance.
“One of your friends?” He whispered to Breanne.
“No. I didn’t bring anyone else.”
Flip told us all to hide behind the desk we had been behind earlier. My heart really started racing then. At least when we were hiding from Flip, we knew he wasn’t dangerous. Why was Flip so freaked out about this car? Was there some danger we didn’t know about?
Then we all heard an engine start, and the car squealed its tires out of the Swiftriver parking lot.
“Coast is clear,” Flip said. “You can come out now.”
“Maybe that was Mr. Hansen,” I said. I remembered him driving some sort of fancy car.
“Probably just some punks racing around.” TJ was still playing Nancy Drew.
“Yeah, rich punks probably.” Flip kept watching out the door, and didn’t let us out for a few minutes.
“We’ve really got to go.” Breanne was finally looking really nervous about the time.
“Okay.” He opened the door and looked around. “Just get right in the car and go straight home. And — this visit is going to be our little secret. I don’t want a bunch of people to know I live here. And Riley doesn’t want to get fired for snooping. So not a word to anyone, you girls got me?”
I certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone. I actually didn’t care about getting fired, but that would be the least of my problems if my mom found out what we had been up to that night.