I add it in. “And even if I might have been a handful at previous carnivals—”
Someone tosses a wadded-up straw wrapper at me.
“—this year, I’ll be there in aprofessional capacity,so not a drop of Founder’s Day punch shall pass my—”
My phone rings.
It’s my dad?
For a second, I stare.
Holy shit. My dad’s calling.
Henevercalls me.
Dread chills everything in my body, a head-to-toe rush that has me answering in a scramble.
“What’s wrong?” I demand before the phone’s even against my ear.
Orok, Crescentia, and Ivo all look at me with furrowed brows.
“Sebastian,” comes Dad’s voice in my ear. There’s a too-long pause, and that creeping sense of horror wraps around my throat.
Is it Mom? My brothers or sister, their kids? Shit, what the hell happened?
“You have a minute to chat with your father, don’t you?” Dad continues.
I scramble up from the booth. Orok gives me a look that’s a whole unspoken conversation, but I shake my head; I don’t know, my heart’s stopped.
“What’s wrong?” I ask again and duck through the restaurant, toward the hall with the restrooms. “Is everyone okay? What did—”
“Everyone’s fine, just fine. I was calling to see how your first week of classes went.”
The back hall is dark, one side piled with boxes that advertise chili sauce and hot dog buns next to the bathroom. The door to the kitchen is on the other side, blocked by a frayed sheet, and the heater ripples it, the air rich with the smell of fried pork and garlic and sharp cheddar.
I’m grabbing at those small, mundane things that make sense. Because my dad calling like this? Doesnotmake sense.
“I—” My heart beats again, heavy, painful thuds. “I assumed you were calling to tell me someone had been in a terrible accident.”
He sighs. “Put aside your theatrics, Sebastian. I want to have an honest conversation. Are you capable of that?”
The adrenaline that spiked at his call comes hurtling down, a landslide barreling through my body in tiny, agonizing quakes.
“Yessir,” I say mechanically.
Movement next to me is Orok, who stops fast.
The colonel?he mouths.
I nod.
His eyes widen.
“Good,” Dad says. “Now tell me how your first week of classes went.”
In my whole collegiate career, he’snever,not once, called tosee how classes went.
There’d been a time, though. Before high school. I always aced my arcane classes and I was well on my way to not only following in the Walsh family’s footsteps, but to surpassing many of them.
