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Was he losing his mind?
He stopped at another light and regained his bearings.
This situation might be insane, but at least they didn’t have to go live during the drive.
He turned to Schuman. “How long will this altered state last?”
“A couple of hours…possibly more.”
“Hours?” he echoed.
“And we’re almost to the community center where the Denver Singing Grannies Choral group practices,” the man continued. “You’ll want to take the next right.”
They were minutes away. How would they pull this off?
They had to show up. They couldn’t forfeit the first challenge.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. Harper had zoned out. And that might not be a bad thing. He’d take her Zen and contemplative over her noshing on the door handles or conversing with body parts.
“Are you familiar with this choral group, besides it being their first anniversary?” he asked. He might as well pick Schuman’s brain.
“I was, but I’m not anymore,” the man answered.
That was an odd response.
“Did you get to read the email that explained the contest’s format?” Schuman asked.
“I read it while the cookies were baking.”
While he and his double-dog dare wife might be minutes away from walking into a giant livestreamed clusterfuck, Mr. Sweet’s question didn’t freak him out. Usually, when someone had asked if he’d read something, his chest tightened and his pulse raced.
But not today.
And he had the tripping beauty in the back seat to thank for it.
When she’d asked the teacher to chat about Aria’s learning style, every cell in his body was ready to explode. Heart pounding, it felt as if a spotlight had been directed toward his deficiencies. But when Aria’s teacher held out her phone, he could barely believe his eyes.
Welcome to Whitmore’s Website.
It wasn’t the banal message that blew him away but the ease with which he’d read it.
The OpenDyslexic font unscrambled his brain.
When he’d opened his email to check the contest messages, he’d had the same reaction. He wasn’t greeted with a spaghetti maze of lines, spaces, and curves. Thanks to Harper loading the font onto his phone, checking his email was no longer a nightmare. Akin to what it must be like for a person with blurred vision to slip on a pair of prescription glasses, everything came into focus. It wasn’t perfect. There were a few flipped letters, but skimming the text no longer felt like gazing into a bowl of alphabet soup.
Still, he wasn’t about to shout his excitement from the rooftops. No, he still needed to keep his neurodivergent learning status under wraps and far from the prying eyes of the inquisitive tabloids and internet trolls.
“There’s the community center,” Schuman said, cutting into his thoughts, as a sprawling one-story brick building shaded by towering oaks came into view.
He nodded. “The email said to park in the back, and a production assistant would meet us at the door. How are we on time?”
Schuman pulled the timer from the box placed next to his feet. “Four minutes. We made it.”
That was a good sign.
They sailed through the packed lot and found the space behind the building buzzing with activity. Men and women crossed the pavement, removing lighting equipment from a trailer withCelebrity Bake or Bustemblazoned across the side.
A young man in a Bake or Bust T-shirt with an iPad waved for him to stop. “Landon Paige and Harper Presley, you made it with two minutes to go,” the guy said as he tapped the screen. “Park here, and a PA will be out to get you when they’re ready inside. It shouldn’t be long.”
