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She followed the kid’s instructions, then felt paper touch her skin. She opened her eyes and stared at the wrinkled envelope.
The breath caught in her throat as memories of the last time someone had handed her a sealed envelope reared their ugly head.
“Should I open it?” she asked, working to keep her voice even.
“Not yet. First, I have to show you this.” Aria held up a drawing of a half-circle divided into five different colored segments with a moveable needle in the center. It resembled a speedometer, but there were no numbers, only five blocks of color with faces drawn in, ranging from frowns to wide grins. “It’s a Likert scale. I bet you don’t know what that is,” the child spouted like a pint-sized professor.
“I don’t.”
“My teacher said most people don’t know about these scales. It’s a special second-grade thing we make at my new school, and I wanted it to be a surprise for you.”
“I’m surprised, for sure, but I’m not sure I understand what I’m looking at.”
“These scales can help you understand when you’re sad about something or when you’re super happy. And that made me think about you, Aunt Harper.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, so I asked Uncle Landy to help me make mine because I had to do it for homework on the first day of school, and you couldn’t help because you were really sleepy because you ate too much candy. That’s when I decided to make it a surprise.”
Landon had mentioned he’d helped Aria with her homework, but she hadn’t heard anything about this fancy scale.
“Uncle Landy was confused when I told him about my homework,” Aria continued. “So, I did what my teacher did. I asked him if he’d ever used a scale to figure out information—like a scale to weigh yourself. And he said you’d mentioned a scale. Something mushy and gushy called the romance scale of…What was it again?” she asked Landon.
“Romance scale of devotion,” she supplied before the man could answer.
“It must be an aunt and uncle thing,” Aria shot back, unimpressed with the example—the exact example—they’d sung about at New Beats.
What were the chances?
“One, two, three, eyes on me. Are you listening, Aunt Harper?” Aria chided.
She must have picked that up at school, too.
“I am,” she replied, snapping back from putting the pieces together.
“Anyway, I had to make a scale to help with feelings. Knowing how you’re feeling is really important in second grade. It’s called emotional intelligence.”
Whitmore was one hell of a good school.
“I didn’t learn anything like that in second grade.”
“My teacher says we’re a brilliant class, so she can teach us this higher-level stuff,” Aria answered with a hefty slice of swagger. Still, she’d gladly take the kid’s swagger. It was a godsend to see the girl so confident when it came to academics.
“This scale starts with green,” Aria explained. “It’s green because we think lime lollipops are the worst. Remember, you told me that you didn’t like the green ones either the first time I met you, and we played on my mom’s piano.”
She’d never forget the tangled-haired mini heathen perched in the garage rafters.
“I remember.”
“So green is grouchy because I was real grouchy that day.” She tapped the next segment with a slightly less angry expression. “The next part is yellow because we don’t like yellow lollipops that much either. That means sort of grouchy. I was a yellow last week when Oscar stood next to Cassie Klein in line to go to lunch.”
“Okay,” she answered, unsure if she was holding back laughter or tears.
“Red is for cherry,” Aria continued. “We like cherry lollipops.”
“We do,” she answered, her throat thickening with emotion.
“Yeah, we really do. Especially when we’re in dance clubs,” Landon added, referencing the night in the club when he charged in to save her from Mr. Handsy Drunk. She’d been noshing on one of the bridal party’s cherry treats.
