My phone is still lying on the ground. I grab it and click on Dad’s name. It rings and rings and then goes to voice mail. “Hi. This is Daniel Rhodes. I’m unable to answer the phone right now. Please leave your message and either I or my assistant will call you back as soon as possible. Thank you.”
I quickly hang up. That message gives me the creeps.
It is a joke, isn’t it?
I jump when, a second later, my phone vibrates in my hand and I see my father’s name on the caller ID.
“Dad?” I ask, my voice shaky.
“I only have a few minutes between setups, but I saw you called twice. What’s up?”
I pull the phone away from my ear and check the caller ID again, just to be sure it didn’t display another name. Because, let’s be honest, the man on the other end of the phone is not my dad. He sounds way too frazzled and stressed and serious. Like this whole talking-on-the-phone thing is just a big inconvenience.
“Everything okay?” I hear him ask through the speaker.
I quickly return the phone to my ear. “Yeah. Everything’s fine. I just haven’t seen you in a while. I went down to the basement and—”
But I’m suddenly cut off by a loud wailing in the background. It sounds like a baby crying. And then Dad shouts, “No! No! We’re not shooting him until eight! Right now it’s only the mother! Can someone quiet that kid down? I’m on the phone!” There’s a muffled noise and then my father says, “I’m sorry, honey. What were you saying about the basement?”
A chill starts at the top of my spine and travels all the way down to my toes. “Dad,” I begin warily. “Where are you?”
He sighs. “Still in New York, unfortunately. The Cuddles Diaper gig is taking longer than we expected, which means we had to push back the cat food job in Boston until next week. Tell your mother I’m sorry.”
New York?
Boston?
Diapers?
CAT FOOD?
“I-I,” I splutter, trying to find the words to form a question I don’t even understand. “I’m confused. Why are you in New York?”
He laughs. “I ask myself the same question every day. But I just go where the big bosses tell me to go.”
Big bosses? What big bosses?
Dad has never had a boss. He always loves to brag about how he’s his own boss. Then he makes stupid jokes like “Who’s the boss?” and “Bam! I just photographed that thing like a boss!”
Is he making another one of his lame jokes?
I’m about to ask this very question but then I hear a loud crash on the other end of the phone.
“Crap,” Dad swears. “Sorry, honey. I gotta go. An incompetent PA just knocked over a ten-foot wall of diapers. Give Frankie a hug for me. Bye.” I hear another muffled noise, followed by my dad shouting, “What is going—”
Then the call is ended.
I sit in the dimly lit basement, staring at my darkened phone screen as I attempt to run back through that bizarre conversation in my head. But each time I replay it, it becomes more puzzling.
Why is Dad in New York with screaming babies?
Why isn’t he here in this basement surrounded by the watchful eyes of a hundred family, friends, and strangers?
With sudden determination, I launch to my feet and bound up the two flights of stairs until I’m bursting through Frankie’s bedroom door. He’s seated at his desk, shuffling the deck of Cosmic cards from his What’s the Matter? board game.
“Frankie!” I say breathlessly. “I need to ask you something.”
When he sees me, he immediately brightens and sets the cards down on the desk. “Kennedy! Oh good, you’re home! I’ve made a list!”
He grabs his notebook from the bedside table and flips it open.
I squint. “What kind of list?”
“All of the things I’m positive are different about me in this universe.”
“Frankie, I—”
But he quickly shushes me. “Just listen.” He glances down at his notebook. “One, my compulsive need to buy a new toothbrush every six weeks.”
“That’s the same. Look, I need to ask you something about Dad.”
“Two, my extreme dislike for fabric softener commercials.”
“The same! Now, can you focus, please? This is important.”
He frowns at his notes, discouraged. “The same? How could that be the same?”
“You don’t like when companies use inanimate-objects-come-to-life to sell domestic products.”
“That bear is freaky!” he cries defensively.
“Frankie,” I urge. “What does Dad do for a living?”
“He’s a photographer,” he replies dismissively, glancing back at his list. “Three, my inability to pronounce the word wor-chest-sure.” He tilts his head. “Wor-chest-shire?”
I grab the notebook from his hand. “He’s a photographer?” I confirm.
“Wor-kest-sure?”
“Frankie!” I shout.
He finally focuses on me. “What?”
“You said he was a photographer?”
“Yes. Dad’s a photographer.”
“What’s the name of his camera?”
“Magnum. It’s named after some lame TV show from the eighties.”
“And he takes pictures of eyes, right?”
Frankie looks like I’m speaking in code. “Eyes?”
“Yeah, you know, eyeballs.”
“Like an ophthalmologist?”
“No. Like close-up pictures of eyes. You know, where they no longer look like eyes. They look like … other things.”
He still doesn’t seem to follow me and I feel my heart race.
“What do they look like?” he asks, suddenly interested.
I clench my fists to keep from screaming. “What does Dad photograph?”
Frankie shrugs. “Whatever they tell him to. Diapers. Dog food. Tires. Hamburgers.”
“Who?” I demand. “Whatever who tells him to?”
“The company he works for,” Frankie replies as though it’s obvious.
My breathing grows shallow. I want to curl into a ball and disappear. “What company?” I ask, barely audible, barely even a squeak.
Don’t say it.
Don’t say it.
Don’t say it.
“Jeffrey and Associates,” Frankie replies.
The walls start to close in on me. The Stephen Hawking poster glares at me with a smug expression that says, You really didn’t think this would be easy, did you? I collapse onto Frankie’s bed, feeling the weight of the universe cave in around me.
He said it.