family to match, so we are her straight A’s: Aster, Afton, Ada, Abby.
Afton’s idea is that every time Mom got pregnant, Ruthie told Mom to go on a baby-naming website and make a list of the names she liked, but Mom never made it past the landing page, which was the letter A, before she got called away for a patient or an emergency surgery.
Afton is probably right.
Abby’s face is all lit up now. “Holy smokes!” she yells, which is hilarious because it makes her sound just like Pop. “We all have A’s!”
“Yes, we do.”
“What’s Pop’s first name?”
“Ryan,” I say. “A long time ago Pop told me his name means ‘little king.’ Which I guess would make you a princess.”
But her face falls. “Pop’s different from us. He’s not a A.”
“That’s a good thing,” I say. “It would be boring if we were all the same.”
My father’s name is Aaron, I realize with an inward cringe.
Dear god. We can’t lose Pop.
My phone starts to ring. Abby grabs it out of my bag and holds it up. Yep. Pop. As if he could hear us talking about him from two thousand miles away. Calling to video chat.
Abby presses accept before I can decide whether talking to him right now is doable.
“Poppy!” Ada beams.
“Hi, sweeties!” He’s smiling. He has a particular smile he uses almost exclusively for Abby, so big and wide it shows his back molars. I love that smile. I even tried to draw it once, but the teeth turned out kind of scary. I’m not good with teeth.
“We went swimming!” Abby cries.
“I can see that, Abby-cakes! And now you’re all wet!”
“I’m getting drier, though. We went down all the slides, but I need a quiet time now so I’m going to go in the hammock, and Ada’s going to read me Amelia Bedelia.” Without waiting a second longer, she runs to the hammock and flings herself in. I can hear Pop’s chuckles as the white rope envelops her. I gather up our bag and sunscreen and stuff and jog after her. It takes me a few tries to figure out how to get into the hammock without tipping us over. Finally I just kind of back my butt in and swing myself down.
Abby shifts the phone so Pop can see both of us.
My eyes prickle, seeing his face. This is a bad idea. I’ve never kept a secret like this from Pop before. I’ve never felt like I had to.
He’s at work. He’s wearing his scrubs and directly behind him there’s a shelf full of medical supplies.
“Are you hiding in the supply closet?” I ask.
“It’s been one of those days.” He gives me a look that means, I’ll tell you later. Pop loves to try to gross me out with stories of bizarre or improbable things that happen in the ER. But not in front of Abby, who screams like someone is murdering her whenever she sees or hears anything blood-related. “How’s the trip going?” he asks.
“Great!” Abby says. “We saw dolphins, and we saw a volcano, and we rode a big bus, and we ate a lot of pineapple and pigs.”
Abby often insists on calling food by the source. She calls pork pigs, and bacon flat pigs, and beef cows, and so on. She doesn’t mind eating meat, but she wants to know where it came from.
“Awesome!” Pop says. “What about you, Ada-bean? What’s happening with you?”
I force my face into a casual expression. “Dolphins, volcanoes, pigs. That’s a fairly accurate description of our trip so far.” I poke Abby in the side. I have an idea. “Tell her we should go paddleboarding on the lagoon,” I say to Pop.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Are you sure she’s big enough for that? She’s only five.”
“It will be fine!” I rant. “She’s a great swimmer! She’ll wear a life jacket! I’ll do all the work!” I sigh. “Never mind.”
Pop is looking at me intently. Even through the phone, I can feel his dark brown eyes examining me, like I am a patient he needs to figure out a diagnosis for. “What’s going on with you, Ada? What’s wrong?”
Both of my parents have asked me this today. I obviously need to get better at acting like things are fine.
“Ada and Afton are having a fight,” Abby volunteers.
Pop’s bushy eyebrows lift. “A fight? Still?”
“Again,” I say with a sigh. “Or, kind of still.”
“What about? It’s not like you two not to get along.”