Noah’s eyebrows shot upward. “Really? Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. Why?” Lara could feel Caroline’s shoulder muscles clench up. Her sister had stopped the constant tapping on her phone.
“Well, this bus doesn’t go anywhere near our house,” Noah said.
“What? I thought the 745 stopped on our street!”
Caroline glared, and Lara could just hear her saying “I told you so.”
“Yeah, the 745 does go by our house. But you want the bus going in the other direction. This bus will take you to Bothell if you stay on long enough,” Noah said. “I’m gonna take a wild guess and say you don’t want to go there.”
A heavy flush spread itself all over Lara’s face and neck. It was, she had to admit, kind of an embarrassing mistake. Both Caroline and Aviva looked most displeased. Lara couldn’t really blame them. She struggled to keep calm.
“Okay, so I made a little mistake. But it’s easy enough to fix it. We just get off at the next stop, cross the street, and get on the other bus. Right?”
Lara wished she could take back the shakiness that crept into her voice as she laid out the new plan.
Noah nodded. “Yeah, that’s definitely what you should do. Only . . . are you guys okay? Why isn’t Dad picking you up?”
“He wanted me to show Lina-Lin and Aviva how to take the bus,” Lara said. Her stomach squirmed at the lie. “And it’s definitely been an adventure, hasn’t it?”
A sharp poke from Caroline told Lara everything she needed to know about her sister’s opinion on the matter.
Noah opened his mouth to say more, but the sudden jerk of the bus prevented Lara from paying attention to whatever it was he had to say. She grabbed Caroline’s hand and leaped up from her seat. “Come on. We need to get off now.”
Lara supposed she should be grateful that the other two followed her without further comment.
As they waited for another bus to come around—the correct one, hopefully—a pressing question started to nag Lara. If the bus didn’t go to the Finkels’ house, then why was Noah still riding it?
* * *
Somehow, they made it back to the Finkel house without any further incident. Lara felt a burst of pride when she rounded the corner and saw that familiar yellow door. From the exhaustion drooping all over Caroline’s face, Lara knew better than to say “See! I told you I could get us home!”
But she certainly thought it.
Her next task was decidedly less pleasant, though she just didn’t see any way around it. Lara needed to talk with Dad.
He was in his office, of course. The door was completely closed, and Lara could hear the faintly tapping symphony of his keyboard. She tried to tell herself that he was typing very important things, things that would help him get a new job. Still, that didn’t change the basic facts. Dad had forgotten them.
Lara opened the door. Knocking seemed rather unnecessary. Her father’s head jerked toward the door immediately, and the moment he saw her, his mouth fell into a grimace. “L-Lara! Gosh, I’m so sorry . . . I must have lost track of time.”
“It’s okay,” Lara told him, even though it wasn’t. “We got home fine. We just went on the bus.”
“Good, good.” Dad’s expression still spoke plainly of discomfort. “But . . . Benny!”
It took a moment for Lara to catch her father’s meaning, but when she did, her face paled several shades. Benny! Was he still standing in front of his elementary school, waiting for a ride home that wouldn’t come?
Then she remembered and the fear went away. “It’s Tuesday. He goes over to his friend’s house on Tuesday and they work on robotics projects.”
“Right, of course.” Dad let out a breath loud enough to hear even over the laptop’s humming fan. “That was some smart thinking with the bus. I really don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am, Lara-bear. I know it’s a bogus excuse, but I was really busy working. I just got caught up in things and it completely slipped my mind that it was time to go pick you guys up.”
Lara’s skin felt as though she’d stumbled into a bathtub full of hot needles. She hadn’t really been mad at her father for forgetting to pick them up. Not really. But now, listening to the humongous lie, she felt very angry indeed.
“I know you lost your job,” Lara told him. Her voice trembled, which probably meant that she ought to stop talking, at least for a bit. She kept at it anyway. “Stop lying to me! I know you weren’t working! You were just here, doing . . . I don’t even know what you could have been doing.”
Lara’s skin prickled as she waited to hear what her father was going to say. For a very long time, he didn’t say anything at all.
She could imagine what he must be thinking. Mind your own business, Lara. Stop being so annoying, Lara. Leave things to the adults, Lara.
Dad didn’t say any of those things. When the silence finally came to an end, a single word came out. “Yes.”
Lara wished he would have told her off. She wished he would have done anything except just sit there, silent and still aside from the nervous twitching in his fingers.
“Do your siblings know?” he asked after another heavy silence.
“Caroline does,” Lara replied. “So does Aviva.”
Dad exhaled and nodded. “Please don’t tell anyone else. I don’t want to worry them. I’m going to find another job really soon.”
An alarming thought entered her mind. “Does . . . does Ima know?” she asked.
“Of course she does.” Dad looked bewildered at the question, and Lara allowed herself a small sigh of relief. “So does your aunt Miriam, of course. We just thought it would be best not to worry you kids.”
Lara thought back to Aviva’s anxious pacing when Dad failed to show up this afternoon. To Caroline’s nervous fidgets. She couldn’t help but think the grown-ups had done a very poor job of not worrying the rest of them.
She
