“Dennis.” Kyle shook his head. “Did you notice how he said ‘upon a toilet’ instead of ‘on?’”

She nodded, smiling despite her annoyance.

“Still trying to impress you.”

She hit his shoulder. “Knock it off.”

He watched Nick open his locker and take out a book, putting it in his backpack. He lowered his voice. “I know we need to take this seriously, be sober concerned parents and all. But…Taking a Shit?” Kyle chuckled. “That was pretty damn funny.”

“It was hard not to laugh,” Anita admitted, smiling.

Nick had slung the backpack over his shoulder and was already returning. “Okay, so you need to take him home,” Kyle told Anita as he approached. “I have to get back to the store.”

“I have to go back to work, too.”

“I know, but Gary’s out today. There’s just me, and I’m already half an hour late opening. These days, I need all the customers I can get. Someone stops by and sees that the store’s closed, they’re likely to go online or—”

Anita nodded. “I get it. I’ll take Nick.”

“Take me where?” he asked, walking up.

“Home,” Anita said sternly. “Where you will remain and do your schoolwork.”

Nick nodded. “So how long’s my suspension? He said it’s a ‘minimum two-day suspension,’ but he didn’t give a maximum, and kind of left it open, it seemed like.”

“Shit,” Anita said. “Wait here.” And she strode back to the principal’s office.

Neither Kyle nor Nick commented on the fact that she had just uttered the same curse that had gotten Nick suspended, and a moment later she emerged into the hallway. “Two days.”

Kyle nodded. “Two days.” They walked outside, where he pinched Nick’s shoulder and gave Anita a peck on the cheek. “See you guys at home.”

He headed across the faculty parking lot to where he’d pulled his Ram truck in between two teachers’ cars, and Anita and Nick made their way toward the field, where Anita had parked her Kia in the visitor’s lot.

2

On his way downtown, Kyle had allowed himself the fantasy that when he got to the shop, there would be two or three people waiting patiently in line for it to open. But of course the sidewalk was empty, and behind the name “Brave New World” painted on the front window, the bookstore was dark.

He pulled around the alley in back, his oversized pickup taking up two of the three spaces behind the building. Entering through the rear door, he switched on the lights as he walked in. From the safe beneath the bottom shelf of the small storage space next to the bathroom, he counted out money for the register before going up to the front of the store, unlocking the glass door and flipping the sign from Closed to Open. He popped a Mozart CD into the player behind the counter, and music issued from the speakers he’d mounted in the corners of the room.

What he hadn’t told Anita was that Gary was out today because he was interviewing for another job, at the Costco in Sirena.