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“Ms. Guzman is calling me!” Olivia shouted.
“Olivia, your dad is here to pick you up,” Ms. Guzman said when Olivia reached her.
She had black hair and brown eyes that crinkled at the corner when she smiled.
“But it’s not Wednesday,” Olivia pointed out. Her dad picked her up from school on Wednesdays and then she spent the night at his house. They had pizza or hamburgers or chicken tenders and then he took her to school the next morning. Today was Monday. “Plus, it’s recess.”
No one ever picked her up at recess.
“I know,” Ms. Guzman said, “but he’s waiting in the office.”
Olivia’s shoulders sagged. She liked being with her dad okay, but now she wouldn’t beat Tasha.
Not that she’d been trying to beat Tasha. It was fun just to play.
But still.
“Okay.” Olivia set the rock down next to the brick building of the school. Maybe it would still be there when she came back tomorrow for recess.
Mrs. Guzman said something to one of the other TAs and then she and Olivia went inside, down the long hallway lined with classrooms, to the left (Olivia knew it was left because her mom had taught her where her heart was and it was on the left), and into the principal’s office where her dad was waiting in his uniform.
He was holding her purple backpack and he smiled when he saw her, but it looked kind of funny on his face, like he didn’t really mean it, the way her mom smiled after she cried in the bathroom when she thought Olivia couldn’t hear her. “Hey, Livie.”
“Hi,” she said. “It’s not Wednesday.”
“I know, but I have a special surprise for you today.”
“You do?”
He scooped her up like he had when she was a baby, before she started kindergarten, and even though she wasn’t a baby anymore she liked it. “I do. And I’ve already signed you out.”
“What’s the surprise?” she asked.
“If I tell you it won’t be a surprise now will it?” he said. “Come on, let’s go.”
He thanked the ladies in the principal’s office and set her down. Then he took her hand in his and led her outside where his car was waiting, not the police car he rode in when he worked — he’d let Olivia sit in it lots of times and even let her press some of the buttons and pretend to talk on the radio — but his real car.
“You don’t have to work?” Olivia asked.
“Not today,” he said. “I took a night shift so I could come and give you the surprise this morning.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Look in the back,” he said, opening the back door of his car.
There was a big giant bag, and it saidMacy’son it, and she knew it saidMacy’sbecause her mom was teaching her to read at home and they practiced on all the words around the city.
“It’s for me?” she asked.
“Sure is,” he said. “Take a look.”
She peeked in the bag and saw a bundle of sparkly purple fabric encased in plastic.
She gasped. “You bought it for me?”
It was the comforter she’d really wanted for her bed at her dad’s house, but he’d said it was too expensive so she got a pink one instead.
It wasn’t sparkly but she liked it fine.
