Craig got me a Green Bay Packers calendar when he saw me printing out the month of January before the new year. Every night as I give myself a star for surviving the day, I mentally prepare for the next one. I wake up and get ready. Breakfast is a flurry of everybody eating and making small talk. School is school. I keep my head down. I come home and do homework. Every night is different, but it’s a rotating series of dinners with one or two family members or Sarah and me on our own. I prefer just the two of us. When Paula is at the dinner table, she asks me questions about my day and school. She told me she’s sick of hearing me always respond with “fine” because that’s what this life is. Fine.

A little over a week into the new year, on day twenty-seven of my sentence, Sheriff Gleason calls. I sit down as he delivers the news: the grand jury has issued their indictment against Dad. He’s being charged with thirty-three counts. Thirty-three. There are two kidnapping charges, two for interference of custody, ten counts of forgery, and then I kind of blank out. It’s too much to take.

But he has a suggestion for me, and I’m going to do everything I can to help Dad.

The biggest hurdle is that I need Paula’s help.

I find her rushing around the kitchen, putting together her version of Taco Tuesday. I offer to help, but I still don’t know where most of the items she needs are and I end up mostly being in the way.

I appreciate that they’re doing this for me. I mentioned it one night when Craig asked me about the meals I used to have. Craig thought it sounded like a great idea and we should do it.

Since we had a tradition for almost each day of the week, I’m reminded every day about something we’d done. I get the saddest on Wednesday. That was when we’d watch a really bad movie. We would laugh so much at the horrible dialogue, bad special effects, and how on earth something like Troll 2 could have been made. Like, the original Troll was such a hit, Hollywood thought the people needed more! Then we went through a phase where we’d only watch those movies where some species would be mega or combined with another species. I, of course, am talking about the cinematic masterpieces featuring Mega Python, Dinoshark, or Zombeavers, or something of the ilk. And I have zero shame in admitting that a new Sharknado was like Super Bowl Sunday to us.