I’m still going to get an A in Biology.

I’m still going to be a scientist.

Better Than a Puppy

Ready for the surprise?

Want to know what’s better than a puppy?

I practically burst through the school doors after the last bell rang, and Mom was there waiting for me in the pickup zone. She knew I wouldn’t be doing any slowpoking today. (Although I’m not ever really what you could call a slowpoke. Mom says I’m a human espresso. Well, I espressoed my way to the van, that’s for sure.)

I yanked open the back door. “So it’s time to go get my new puppy, right?”

Mom laughed. “You’ll see. Wait till we get home.”

I admit, I had my suspicions that the surprise had something to do with my sister. Mom and Nonny had been talking on the phone a lot lately. Like, seriously a lot. There was almost no day that I didn’t come out from school and see Mom talking on her phone while she waited for me. And I knew it was Nonny she was talking to, because I could tell by the way she gestured with her hands, and sometimes I would open the car door and hear her say something like, “Love you, too, sweetheart,” or once I heard her say, “Let me know how the appointment goes.”

I also knew their phone calls had something to do with Thomas’s job. He does special welding for big projects, and a couple of months ago the company he worked for had to lay off lots of people. Thomas was one of them, which makes me think that the company wasn’t very smart because Thomas was definitely their best guy. He’d been trying to get another job but it wasn’t working out so well.

I had asked Mom about fifty times what was going on, but Mom kept saying she’d talk to me about it later. I hate later. Later is the worst.

But maybe Later was finally Now.

Mom usually had splotches of sugar or flour on her clothes somewhere, because she always came straight to my school from the bakery, and she usually went back for a couple of hours before dinner. Today she didn’t. Today she was clean.

“Tell me! Tell me!” I said.

Mom grinned. “You’ll see.”

When you don’t know when Later is coming it sucks, but knowing that it’s almost here and that it’s getting closer and closer is wonderful and exciting, and being excited is the best feeling in the world.

It had been an exciting day.

On the drive home, a drive I’d done millions of times before, every tree seemed new and beautiful. Every house seemed important, like the person who would figure out how to cure cancer could be living inside it.

And when we got home, there was the surprise, waiting for me on the front steps, her big-sister arms open wide enough to jump into.