“It’ll be less suspicious,” I say. She nods in agreement. Luckily. It’s not that I’m embarrassed to be seen with her. I glance at her T-shirt that has a picture of a skunk in a canoe. Okay, it’s partly that. “We’ll get on the bus, get out with everyone else, and then skip out of the planetarium.”

“Ooh!” she cries. I clap a hand over her mouth and shush her.

“Be quiet, Mattie. We don’t want Mrs. Leeds coming in here.”

She wrenches my hand away. “Well, just now Ms. Garcia let me go, so it’ll probably be easy. I didn’t think she would. She’s so scary. I sometimes think she’s—”

“Mattie, we’re getting off topic. Can we summarize? We’ll sneak out of the field trip and then go find him.”

We both jump at a bang. Outside of the stall, we hear the bathroom door slam open and then shut. We listen to the click of heels. These are not kid shoes. I peek under the stall. These are teacher shoes.

We stare at each other in frozen silence. I’m afraid the teacher can hear my pounding heart. At last the water runs and the paper towels dispense and the clicking heels click away.

“You’ll know where to go, right?” Mattie whispers as soon as the coast is clear. “Since you’ve been there before?” She has a little hiccup in her voice, like she’s trying not to panic.

“It’s going to be easy-peasy,” I assure her. Although, actually, I have no idea. But she looks so worried, I say, “We’ll just get to his office, pop in, and say, ‘Hi, we’re your kids,’ and sneak on the bus back to school. No big deal,” I add as if I really believe it’s no big deal. “I’m sure we can find one professor in one little college.”

Mattie looks at me.

“How hard could it be?”

“I’m still bringing all the stuff for Operation D.A.D.”

CHAPTER 19 Mattie

Coming home from school the next day, I almost missed my stop. I was trying to imagine what it will be like to actually meet Francisco Gómez. In four days—no, three and half. I was thinking about the photo on my desk. About my mom and how she had been his actual wife. About how they got divorced before I was born, but if they hadn’t, he would be my actual father. Or something. I was thinking about all the things I don’t really understand. And then I saw my new house out of the corner of my eye. I had to shout at the bus driver to stop and let me out. I could feel everyone staring at me as I shuffled down the aisle.