Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self - By Danielle Evans Page 0,38

an advertisement for fraternities. Georgie started to walk out, convinced he’d been wrong about the whole plan, but when the boyfriend turned around and walked away from the counter, the redhead saw him and waved.

“Hey!” she called. “Where’s your little girl?”

“I came to pick up something to surprise her,” he said. “She’s been asking for a princess dress to go with the crown her mom got her.”

He was pleased with the lie, until the redhead, whose name tag read ANNIE, led him over to the dress section and he realized he’d worn suits to weddings that cost less.

“Come to think of it,” he said, “I’m not sure of her size. Maybe I oughta come back with her mother. Meantime, maybe she would like a wand.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Annie. “All the kids are into magic these days.”

Annie grabbed the wand that matched the crown and led him back to the register. The Mindy fliers had been replaced by a counter-length overhead banner. Mindy’s head sat suspended on a background of pink bubbles.

“What’s this Mindy kid do, anyway?” he asked.

“She sings.”

“She sing well?”

“It’s just cute, mostly. She has her own TV show, and her older sister sings, too, but sexier. You get tickets for your daughter?”

“Nah,” he said. “Bit pricey for a five-year-old. Maybe next year.”

“They ought to pay you people more. It’s a shame. It’s important, what you do.”

She said this like someone who had read it somewhere. It would have seemed stupid to disagree and pathetic to nod, so he stood there, waiting for his change.

“Hey,” said Annie. “We’re having this contest to win tickets to the show. Limo ride, dinner, backstage passes, the whole shebang. All you have to do is make a video of your daughter saying why she wants to go. I bet if your daughter talks about how good she was while you were gone, she’d have a shot. It’s right here, the contest info,” she said, picking up a flier and circling the website. “Doesn’t have to be anything fancy—you could do it on a camera phone.”

“Thanks,” he said, reaching to take the bag from her.

“Really,” she said. “I mean it. Who’s got a better story than you? Deadline’s Tuesday. It’d be nice if they gave it to someone who deserved it.”

He liked to think that Annie’s encouragement was tacit consent. He liked to think that if he’d had longer to think about it, he would have realized it was a bad idea. But as it was, by Sunday he’d convinced himself that it was a good idea, and by Monday he’d convinced Esther, who, after hearing the word “limousine,” needed only the slightest convincing that this was not the bad kind of lie. And when she started the first time, it wasn’t even a lie, really. Hi Glitter Girl, she began, all on her own, for a whole year while he was in Iraq, I missed my Daddy. OK, so he wasn’t her father, but he liked to think she had missed him that much. When she said how much she wanted for him to take her to the show now that he was back, he thought it was honest: she wanted not just to see the show but to see it with him. He had downloaded the video from his phone and played it back for her, and was ready to send it like that, when Esther decided it wasn’t good enough.

“Let’s tell how you saved people,” she said. “We have more time left.”

He hesitated, but before he could say no, she asked him to tell her who he’d saved, and looking at her—the hopeful glimmer in her eyes, her pigtails tied with elastics with red beads on the end, matching her jumpsuit and the ruffles on her socks—he realized her intentions had been more sincere than his. How could they not be? Esther didn’t doubt for a second that he had a heroic story to tell. He closed his eyes.

“Two girls,” he said, finally. “A girl about Mindy’s age. She was missing her two front teeth. And her little sister, who she loved a lot. Some bad men wanted to hurt them, and I scared off the bad men and helped them get away.”

“Where’d they go then?”

“Back to their families,” he said. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

“Start the movie over,” Esther said. “I’m going to say that too.”

Somehow, he was not expecting the cameras. It was such a small thing, he’d thought. But there