The Unexpected Everything

“Okay,” I said, looking around the kitchen.

“Outside,” my dad said, walking toward the side door. “Ready?”

“Sure,” I said, setting my glass down, utterly baffled as to what this could be. I honestly wasn’t sure there was anything I wanted, unless standing on the driveway would be Palmer, Toby, and Bri, all having made up, having forgiven each other and me, along with Clark and Bertie, everything somehow fixed and okay. I stepped outside, and the heat hit me like a slap in the face. “Ugh,” I said, wincing. It was boiling already, and humid, like I’d just walked face-first into a hot shower.

“Yeah,” my dad said, grimacing at me. “It’s going to be a hot one today.”

“Going to be?”

“Okay, let’s go to the garage,” my dad said, talking fast, sounding excited. I had a sudden Christmas-morning flashback of both my parents sitting on the couch watching me open my biggest present, waiting to see my reaction. But it wasn’t Christmas, and it was nowhere near my birthday. So what was this, exactly?

I followed my dad to the garage door, which was closed, and looked around, in case I was missing something. But a second later my dad pulled out the garage door opener from his pocket and took a breath. “Okay,” he said, his thumb on the button, but not pressing it yet. “This is something that I hadn’t planned on doing just yet, but . . .”

A loud, low-pitched BEEP! made us both jump, and I looked over to see a bus chugging up to our driveway. It started to turn in, but then stopped and backed up a few feet with a beep-beep-beep sound that seemed unnecessarily loud on our totally quiet street, sending some birds from nearby trees into flight.

“What the heck?” my dad asked, striding down toward the end of the driveway, sounding annoyed. I followed a few paces behind, and as I got closer, felt my steps slow.

There was a giant picture of my dad’s face on the bus, taken from his last campaign photo shoot. WALKER FOR CONGRESS, it read in giant red and white letters. Underneath this, but only slightly smaller, was printed, TOWARD THE FUTURE.

“Peter!” my dad yelled, as he walked up to the bus. His face was starting to turn red, and since he’d been fine just a moment before, I had a feeling this was due to the bus and not the heat.

The doors opened with a squeak and a sound of air releasing, and a moment later Peter was striding down the steps and smiling at us. “Morning,” he said, then winced. “Jeez, it’s hot out today. Luckily, the bus has AC.”

“Why is this even here?” my dad asked, staring at it. “When did we decide we were going ahead with this?”

“We didn’t,” Peter said as he pulled out his BlackBerry. “An intern forgot to cancel, and it had already been paid for, so it showed up this morning. Along with the driver, Walt. Hey, Walt,” Peter called into the bus. The driver—Walt—who had a short blond crew cut and looked to be in his late fifties, just lifted an eyebrow at Peter before raising the paper in front of his face, hiding it from view. “Anyway, thought we might as well get some use out of it. Ride to this rally in style.”

My dad just looked at the bus, a small frown still on his face.

“Great,” Peter said as though my dad had agreed, eyes on his phone screen. “I’ve got to catch up on some e-mails, but let’s plan on leaving in ten, okay?” He looked up and frowned at me as his eyes drifted down to the pajamas I was wearing. “Andie, you’re, uh, not coming, are you?”

“No,” my dad and I said at the same time.

“Gotcha,” Peter said, relief clearly etched on his face. “See you later, then.” He climbed back onto the bus, fingers already flying over his keypad.

“Bye,” I called, even though I had a feeling Peter could no longer hear me. Behind the wheel, Walt lowered his paper and rolled his eyes before raising it again—he’d clearly had more than enough of Peter already.

“Okay,” my dad said, holding up the garage door opener, smiling at me again. “Ready to do this?”

We walked back up the driveway, the asphalt warm under my bare feet. I looked back toward the bus for just a second, my dad’s huge face giving a confident but trustworthy smile to the street. Despite whatever Peter had said, campaign buses didn’t show up by accident—not unless there was a campaign that would require them. “Dad—” I started, right as the garage door opened and I found myself looking at a yellow ’65 Mustang.

“Surprise!” my dad said, making a little flourish with his arms, smiling big as he looked from me to the car.

“Is that . . . ?” I asked, taking a step closer to it. “Is it Mom’s?” It looked just like it, but I couldn’t be sure. “Didn’t you say you didn’t know where it was?”

“I said that, yes,” my dad said, grinning now, and I could see that he was incredibly pleased with himself. “I didn’t want to give the surprise away. It’s been in a storage facility upstate. Your mother asked me to give it to you when you turned eighteen, but when you started asking about it, I thought maybe now was the moment.”

“This is great,” I said a beat too late. “Really great,” I repeated, trying to bring some enthusiasm into my voice. “Thank you.”

“I’ve made sure that it’s ready to be driven,” he said, walking toward the car, running his hand along the side of it. “It got fully overhauled, detailed, everything. And I’ll have to teach you how to drive stick, but after that, you should be good to go.” He looked at me and his smile faltered a little.