As we get closer to the anthropology department, I get a strange feeling in my toes. What if Mom was right? What if he doesn’t want to meet me? What if he only wants to meet Mattie? His first daughter? I shake my head. Is this what it feels like to be Mattie? To worry about everything?

“Can I help you?”

I stop and Mattie bumps into me. Blocking our way is a woman in a green fleece jacket over a blue dress. She’s wearing striped tights and brown clogs. Hopeless fashion sense. The door from which the woman has appeared says: ANTHROPOLOGY DEPARTMENT. PLEASE KNOCK IF DOOR IS LOCKED.

“Um, hi,” I say. “Just looking for—” My voice cracks. I cough, clear my throat.

“Our brother,” Mattie says.

The woman taps her clogged foot. “Who? Do you two know where you’re going?” Her arms are full of papers. “I have to go. I’m late.”

She doesn’t wait for us to answer before she clogs away, a disastrous style blur around the corner.

“Now what?”

I shrug and continue into the maze of corridors. I can feel the nervous ball of energy behind me that is Mattie. The doors along the hallway are closed. Each one has a little plaque on it with a room number and a name. The office doors have flyers taped to them. And postcards. And sticky notes. Some have printed schedules, some have cartoons cut from magazines.

This is completely different from Mom’s office. She works in a tall glass building in San Francisco. The wall of windows in her office faces the Bay Bridge. The room is so big, it has a couch and an espresso maker and a whole conference table. Her assistant always has a bowl of M&Ms that has a little silver spoon so that you don’t touch the candies when you take some. The other people at Mom’s work are in smaller offices, but there are so many windows both into the rooms and looking out at the city. The furniture and the carpet and walls are sleek white and bright green to match her company’s logo.

This hallway of offices at Northern Madrone College is nothing like a downtown office. It’s totally depressing. There are no windows, and the only light comes from flickering bulbs over our heads. Outside some of the offices’ closed doors are chairs for people to wait. None of the chairs match—some are wooden with orange seats, some are blue plastic, and one isn’t a chair at all, just a stool with three legs.

And then, we see it.

ROOM H-122

DUPREE VISITING PROFESSOR

PROF. F. GOMEZ FLORES

All the blood in my entire body seems to rush first to my hands and then back to my brain. This is it. We are really going to meet him. What will he say? What will I say? What will Mattie say?