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It’s bare wood. Hard.
Extremely painful to sit on if you were a bad girl just the night before.
But I grin and bear it. Well, Igrimaceand bear it. What else can I do?
There’s a food stall half a block down which Miss Gregory—all right,Lana—considers the best in town. She’s watching me eat like she has some vested interest in the food truck, and I’m the most feared sandwich critic in the state.
I got the egg salad. It’s not bad. Then again, the bar for egg salad sandwiches isn’t all that high to begin with.
“It was okay,” I say, nibbling on a crust as my father slowly rebuilds his sandwichsanstomato. I’ve never known him to eat one in his entire life, yet he never asks for no tomato. Even Mom used to serve him salad with the tomatoes in.
I guess it keeps him busy.
“Just okay?” Dad stares at me, genuinely concerned. “You don’t like your subjects?”
“Uhm, no, I mean, they’re okay—”
“Are they treating you well?” He blinks at me through his spectacles. “Because if they’re not—”
My mind briefly goes back to last night. “I’m being treated… fairly.” I crumple up the paper bag my sandwich came in, rolling it between my palms. “How is your project coming along?”
“Oh, the project, yes.” Dad nudges his spectacles up his nose with a knuckle. “Fine, my dear. Fine. It’s taken a few days to get back on track, but working remotely has been…refreshing.”
That means he hates it. My stomach grows heavy, as if the egg sandwich has turned into hot lead. We look at each other, and I knowhe knowsthat I know.
He drops his head, peeking at Lana. “This is a really good sandwich.”
She peers down at his carefully reconstructed sandwich. “You haven’t eaten anything yet.”
“No, but I can tell.” He smiles at her, and then looks over at me. That smile fades a little, and a moment passes between us again.
We’ve always had that, me and my dad. When Mom was in one of her moods, or having one of her migraines, we’d communicate through this kind of telepathy. She’d accuse us of scheming sometimes. That’s usually when Dad got his car keys and we left to go watch a movie. We wouldn’t say a single word to each other. I guess we didn’t have to. We both lived in the same house.
“And you’ve been keeping your nose clean?” Dad asks. “Remember, they’re strict around here…”
I’m starting to regret the sandwich, because now it’s churning around in my belly like the water inside a dishwasher, mid-cycle. “No time to get into trouble, Dad. I’m too busy studying.”
“You have a smart daughter, Hagan,” Lana says before turning to me. “Have you declared your major yet?”
My father bought her a pretzel, but all she’s done is break off some pieces to feed to the pigeons circling us like vultures from a few yards away.
Judging from her skinny form, she could live off that pretzel for a week. She looks like she got all dandied up for this. Her makeup—although plentiful—is a little uneven, like she doesn’t wear it often enough to be particularly proficient at applying it.
I must be a little sadistic, because I find it hilarious that this stick-thin thirty-something thought this would be a date.
She must be really bad at reading people.
Sure, my father gets enthusiastic about architecture, but that’s because he spends all day building structures that are eventually clad in said architecture. But it’s a massive leap from being interested in something to being interested insomeone.
Right?
“You did say you would declare before the end of the month,” Dad says, wrenching me out of my thoughts.
“Yeah… I just… haven’t decided yet.”
He shares a smile with Lana. “I don’t know where she gets it from. I was eight when I knew I would become an engineer.”
Lana lays her hand on my father’s arm. I smirk over at her, waiting for him to shake her off.
