Page 88 of The Boss Problem

I grinned and reached for the large dinosaur cutout that he’d made and picked up his marker. “Don’t worry, Lucas. She’ll spot us. Once you write her name on this, we’ll be the ones with the best sign in the whole terminal.”

Slowly, he nodded. “Okay, but only this once. And if Erin isn’t fun, I’m telling her she owes me extra bedtime stories.”

I smiled. “Agreed, little man. Let’s go meet your aunt.”

42

CHLOE

Early the next morning, I woke up to a shrill call on my phone.

I groggily blinked my eyes open. The morning sun was slicing through the curtains and dispelling the warm, gooey thoughts I’d been having. The room swayed, and for a moment, I wondered if I was still dreaming. I’d had dreams of Sean tossing me over his shoulder and whisking me off to a private room, but, no, this wasn’t that. This wobbly sensation was all too real.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, hazy bits of the fragility of my bed coming to mind. The bed creaked, as though protesting my movement. With a splintering crack, one of the legs detached from the frame. I teetered, arms flailing, trying to regain balance. My shoulder collided with the side table, and I winced, pain radiating through my arm as the side table fell and books and my alarm clock toppled.

I stood up immediately, nursing my bruised shoulder, and surveyed the aftermath. The bed leg lay on the ground, and the bed was a sorry figure, tilting sideways. The side table was fine, but the bruise on my shoulder was dark, and I knew it would be a few days before the pain went away.

And miserably, there wasn’t any sign of Sean in the room. I sighed, realizing I’d been dreaming, and gingerly reached for my phone, checking to see whose call I’d missed. It was from Luna Moore, a friend I’d made at work. I called her back, and when she answered, I apologized for missing her call.

“Is Henry fine?” she asked, mentioning that she had seen the news about the fire at his college on the TV yesterday.

“He is, thankfully.”

“Oh good,” Luna responded. “Because the news article made it seem like he was scarred for life or something.”

I ran to my laptop, phone still pressed against my ear as I switched it on. “What newspaper was this?” I asked as I pulled up the search bar. I forgot everything about my bruised shoulder from then on.

I typed in the name of the newspaper she had given me—The City Observer—and stared with a sense of doom at the first article that showed up.

Chaos at Hudson Ridge Community College during an emergency lockdown.Drill Coordinator Ian Marcus and Student LeaderHenry Nichols failed to prepare the students for an emergency situation.

My heart almost stopped when I reached Henry’s name in that sentence.

“God,” I muttered, reading the rest of the article quickly.

It wasn’t true—Henry had tried his best to get the college’s Public Safety Department to conduct safety drills. I’d seen him on many occasions writing letters or speaking on the phone to raise awareness.The rest of the article tried to put the blame on the college for not being up to the mark on the ISO standards for safety, but Henry’s name kept coming up in a way that made him seem at fault—Henry didn’t take his role seriously and wasn’t responding to the calls on the speaker during the actual emergency, adding to the stress of the crisis.

How dare they? He had been locked in the building, and there was no way he could have responded to any call unless someone let him out.

Bristling, I ended the call and dashed out of the room, hoping to find Henry and prepare him for the twisted versions of this article that he might face.

On the way, I passed Henry’s room and saw that his computer was on even though he wasn’t in there. My heart sank when I saw the same news article about the emergency incident at college on the screen.

Shoot. He was already going to have a hard time getting mentally ready to face college again after yesterday’s traumatic event. This was just making it worse and worse for him.

I ran into the living room and saw Henry had rolled over to the window and was looking out. From his posture, I could sense that all was not well with him.

“Henry,” I began, walking up slowly to him.

He didn’t turn to me for a long moment, and when he did, I could see it in his face.

The broken look. It was there in the set of his jaw and that hopeless look in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, going over and leaning down to put my arm around his shoulders.

He nodded, resting his hand on mine for a second before pulling away.

“How do you feel about lasagna for dinner?” he asked, wheeling himself into the kitchen. “Looks like I’m not going to be student leader much longer, so I’ll be home early after all. I’ll cook. I need the distraction.”

---