Signs Point to Yes

by Sandy Hall

  “Nothing can beat cinematic serendipity.” Jane grabbed a cup and handed one to Teo.

  “Well, I have a theory on fro-yo,” he said.

  “Oh, I cannot wait,” Jane said.

  “It’s all about flavor palate and sticking to it. You could go fruit; you could go chocolate; you could go mixed nuts or cereal. You need to stick to a theme, and you will never be disappointed.”

  “And I tend to disagree. I like a little bit of everything all mixed together.”

  “Were you one of those kids who would put all different sodas in the same cup?”

  “One of those kids? I am still one of those kids, thank you very much,” Jane said, fake indignation in her voice. “What flavor palate are you going for tonight?”

  “Maybe nuts for nuts?” Teo said, surveying the flavor choices.

  “You could mix some of the pistachio with the chocolate hazelnut.”

  “Or I could go with cake batter and do most of the flavoring up with the toppings.”

  “Boring,” Jane said.

  “Well, what’s your plan?”

  “Peanut butter and strawberry.”

  Teo narrowed his eyes, trying to understand the connection.

  “Because it’s like peanut butter and jelly. Then I’ll do a mix of chocolate and fruit and put raspberry syrup on top,” Jane explained.

  “That actually sounds delicious.”

  “It will be.”

  They set to work getting their yogurt and then putting on the toppings.

  “But you do realize you’ve chosen a flavor palate,” Teo said.

  Jane put a heap of gummy bears and Fruity Pebbles on top just to prove Teo wrong.

  “Enjoy your weird mix of textures,” he said.

  When it was time to pay, Jane grabbed both cups, put them on the scale, and paid for them.

  “You didn’t have to pay,” Teo said.

  “I wanted to.”

  The bench outside was empty, so they sat down and watched the stream of people going in and out of the movie theater.

  “There’s something I want to talk to you about,” Teo said.

  Jane gripped her cup tighter and took a deep breath, as if preparing for some kind of major announcement. As if she was living the last moment of her life before everything changed.

  Something between them had shifted during the course of the evening, and this moment had to mean that Teo felt it, too.

  He touched the back of her hand, and Jane looked up to meet his gaze.

  “I want to meet my dad.”

  Jane’s face fell a little bit, but she covered it up with a spoonful of gummy bears.

  “Wow,” Jane said. “That wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what changed.”

  “This is a big decision. Huge. Epic, even.”

  “I know.”

  “I wish I could consult my Magic 8.”

  “What do you think it would say?”

  Jane pretended to hold the ball in her hand. “Should Teo meet Mateo Rodriguez?” She looked over at Teo with a frown. “‘Reply hazy, try again.’”

  Teo frowned.

  Jane sighed.

  “Hypothetically, what would I need to do? To see him?” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

  Jane ate a spoonful of her fro-yo and stared into space.

  “You’re really good at this stuff,” Teo continued. “I don’t even know where to start, but I feel like you probably do.”

  “Hmm, I could get contact information for you. Maybe you could write him a letter, explain who you think you might be.”

  “What if I wanted to go see him?”

  “That’s … one idea.”

  “One bad idea?”

  “There are a lot of things to consider. How would you get there? Where would you stay? What if we’re completely wrong about this guy and he’s not related to you in any way whatsoever and he also happens to run a human-trafficking ring?”

  “Let’s just assume he doesn’t.”

  “Never assume, Teo.”

  “Come on, Jane,” Teo said, his eyes pleading. “I need your help. And I don’t think you’re wrong. I think you’ve figured out something that I’ve spent years working on.”

  “Maybe,” Jane said, shrugging.

  “Definitely.”

  “What if—”

  “No, no what-ifs. There are too many what-ifs. I want to make this decision and stick to it. But I need your help to make it a reality. Please?”

  Jane couldn’t deny his enthusiasm. It was catching.

  “Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes and smiling.

  “So what would it take to make this happen?” he asked.

  “Well, first we’d need to check his schedule. I think if you want to show up out of nowhere, maybe showing up after a class makes more sense than showing up at his house. He probably has random kids approaching him all the time at work. You won’t seem as threatening.”

  “Why would I seem threatening?”

  “Maybe threatening isn’t the right word. But some guy showing up at his house claiming to be his son might freak him out.”

  Teo nodded. “What else?”

  “You’d need to decide how you want to get there. I don’t know exactly how far away it is, but you could fly there, or maybe take a bus? Or you could drive.”

  “I’ve never driven that far. It makes me kind of nervous.”

  “So driving’s out.”

  Teo nodded.

  “We’d need to figure out a lot of stuff. If you flew, how would you get to the airport? How much does a plane ticket cost? That kind of stuff.”

  “Can teenagers even buy plane tickets?” Teo asked.

  “Teenagers can do anything online as long as they have a credit card.”

  “I have a debit rewards card with a Visa logo.”

  “Does it have enough money on it to pay for a plane ticket?”

  “I have a lot of money. I’m a responsible saver.”

  “Well then, if you’re so independently wealthy, you probably should have paid for the fro-yo.”

  Teo laughed. “So you’ll help me?”

  “Yeah. It makes me a little nervous, the way you want to do this, but I’ll help you. Of course I’ll help. I started this whole mess in the first place.”

  “It’s not a mess.”

  “It’s a mess, just like this bucket of sludge I created. The Fruity Pebbles are dissolving and creating some kind of paste with the gummy bears.”

  “Mine is delicious. I appreciate the recommendation.”

  “Maybe you should share yours with me.”

  “Probably not.”

  “It was my idea.”

  “I don’t think so.” Teo stood up and started walking to the car.

  “Friends share food!” Jane yelled.

  “Come on, Jane. Let’s go home. We have a lot of work to do.”

  “I think you need to sleep on it,” she said, catching up to him.

  “I will. I promise. But maybe we can get together soon? To go over some ideas?”

  Jane nodded.

  Teo thought about kissing her—he really did, especially when he was dropping her off a few minutes later—but he didn’t want to cloud the issue. He didn’t want her to think he was kissing her as some kind of payment for helping him.

  They chatted idly on the way home. Every word she said made him want to kiss her. He couldn’t stop watching her mouth.

  “What?” she asked, looking at him intently as they pulled up in front of her house.

  “Nothing.”

  “Is it something else about your dad? You can tell me.”

  He shook his head. When it was time to kiss Jane, he wanted it to be about Jane. He didn’t want it getting all mixed up with this dad stuff.

  She got out of the car and then paused on the curb. “This was a lot of fun.”

  “It was,” Teo agreed.

  As soon as she walked through her fro
nt door, waving over her shoulder to him, he leaned his head on the steering wheel.

  “I really should have kissed her.”

  Chapter 19

  On Monday, Jane and Teo tried to discuss the plan, but there wasn’t much time and, as Teo pointed out, you never knew when his sisters were listening or what they were absorbing. But over the next couple of days, they managed to add more details to the plan whenever they had a moment without the girls around.

  Despite Jane’s reservations, Teo’s inexplicable optimism triumphed, and before she knew it, she was booking a plane ticket to Champaign, Illinois.

  “So there’s a flight from Philly to Chicago, and then you change planes and go from Chicago to Champaign.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Like, five hours if everything goes as planned. It’s kind of expensive.”

  Teo looked at the computer screen. “I don’t care. I have the money.”

  “How do you want to get from the airport to campus?”

  “There are different ways?”

  “Yes.”

  “See? This is why I need your help. I never would have thought of that. What are my choices?”

  “You could take a shuttle, or we could book a car, or you could hail a cab. Or, you know, there’s always the whole getting-in-touch-with-this-guy-and-finding-out-whether-he’s-your-dad-before-you-leave. And if he is your dad, I bet he’d be happy to pick you up at the airport.”

  “I really want the element of surprise on my side.”

  “Can we talk about how you reacted to the ‘surprise’ when I told you I found your dad? Do you want to do that to him?”

  Teo sighed. “I don’t know. It just feels like I should do it this way.”

  “You realize you could ask your mom. Or just flat-out tell her you found Mateo Rodriguez and you want to know the truth.”

  “That sounds like the most hellish confrontation I could ever imagine.”

  “Even as I was saying it, I realized how terrible it would be to live through,” Jane said. “When do you want me to schedule the flight back?”

  “I don’t know. Just book it one way.”

  Jane looked up at him, her face scared. “It’s a lot more expensive if we do that.”

  Teo shrugged. “I have the money.”

  “Fine, a one-way ticket for now.” Jane couldn’t hide how upset that made her, but she wasn’t sure Teo had noticed. He was lost in his own thoughts. Jane tapped away at the laptop, unable to ignore her shaking hands. It shouldn’t feel like she was sending Teo on a futile mission, but it did.

  The topic came up again and again as the trip got closer. It was one long, never ending conversation.

  “Whatever you find in Illinois could be a million times worse than anything you could expect,” Jane said.

  “If this is a pep talk, I need you to know that you’re doing it wrong.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just worried. My imagination keeps running off in all different directions.”

  “Like the human-trafficker theory?”

  “There’s that one. And the more realistic one where things go wrong in one way or another and you end up alone in a strange city with nowhere to stay. You’re hungry, it’s raining, your cell phone dies.”

  “Like I’m a stray puppy?”

  “Exactly like that,” Jane said, patting his head. “A stray puppy with a dead cell phone.”

  “I really do appreciate your concern. And I promise I won’t sit hungry in the rain.”

  “You definitely won’t, because I have a contingency plan for you,” she said, pulling a folded scrap of paper out of her pocket.

  Teo flipped it open and looked at it.

  “That’s the phone number of one of my fandom friends. Her name’s Mindy. She lives off campus and said you could give her a call if something went wrong.”

  “How do you have friends in Illinois?” Teo asked.

  “I told you, fandom.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It doesn’t matter. But you can call that number anytime—she knows about you. I bet she could even help you book a flight home if you’re worried about that.”

  He put the piece of paper in his wallet. “Thanks, Jane.”

  “I had to make sure you had a fail-safe. And don’t forget about the time difference.”

  “I totally would have forgotten about the time difference.”

  “It’s going to work in your favor on the way to Illinois, so you should easily get there before his class ends at three o’clock.”

  “I’m going to do this,” Teo said to himself as much as to Jane.

  “You are.”

  A few hours later, Teo whispered a question to Jane as she cleaned up from lunch.

  “How do I get to the airport on Wednesday morning?”

  “I’ll drive you to the bus stop at, like, four thirty. There’s a superearly bus to Philly that stops a couple of miles from here.”

  “How did you figure that out so fast?”

  “Because I knew you would need to get to the airport,” Jane said. “It’s all logic, Teo. If you sat down and thought about it, you would have gotten there eventually.”

  “You’re awesome,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  The twenty-four hours leading up to Teo’s departure seemed to drag on forever. Jane didn’t sleep at all Tuesday night, instead tossing and turning and thinking about what Teo was about to do.

  Around four o’clock on Wednesday morning, she got out of bed and dressed quickly. She sat down with her trusty Magic 8.

  “Will Teo be okay?” she asked.

  Most likely.

  “Will Teo be better than okay?”

  Cannot predict now.

  That was definitely not the answer she was looking for, but there was no time to ask more questions. No matter how she felt about this trip, she couldn’t be late picking up Teo. She slipped out of the house and prayed that no one would notice she was gone.

  The sound of her car starting seemed like an atomic bomb going off in the quiet predawn hours. She pulled around the corner and found Teo waiting on the curb.

  “Morning,” Teo said, getting into Jane’s car.

  “That’s a lie.” Jane yawned. “If it was morning, the sun would be up.”

  They drove through empty streets to the bus shelter on the other side of town. Jane parked the car and waited with Teo.

  “Thank you again for the millionth time,” Teo said.

  Jane smirked. “Just make sure you read all the signs going through the security lines at the airport. Do you have your ID?”

  “Yes.” He wiped his palms on his shorts. “I also left my mom a note saying my car wouldn’t start this morning and I had someone from work pick me up super early because we were going out for breakfast before active-adult water yoga.”

  “Okay, good to know.”

  “That means the minivan is blocked in, but that should help you. If the girls go to the pool today, they’ll notice I’m not there, and it’ll totally blow my cover.”

  “What if your mom or Buck tries to start your car this morning?”

  “They won’t. Mornings are too hectic. They won’t try until tonight.”

  “Are you going to talk to them at all?”

  “I think I’ll call later or in the morning, depending on how I’m feeling about everything.”

  “Let’s go over the plan one more time,” Jane said.

  “We know Mateo Rodriguez will be in his office on Wednesday afternoon for office hours. I took today, tomorrow, and Friday off from work. My mom probably won’t notice I’m gone until late tomorrow night. I could even tell her I’m staying at someone’s house for a couple of days. I could be gone almost the whole time before she would notice.”

  “Good.”

  “I have your friend Mindy’s phone number. And if worst comes to worst, I could take a bus to Chicago that runs every few hours from campus, then wait at the airport until I can get a flight hom
e.”

  “I really hope nothing goes wrong,” Jane said.

  “Nothing’s going to go wrong,” Teo said, rubbing her arm. “You planned it down to the minute.”

  “I feel like I should be the one reassuring you.”

  “No way. I am totally confident in you and your plan.”

  The bus came into view then, stopped at a light two blocks away. Jane and Teo stood.

  “Even if I’m not entirely confident in the plan, I swear I support this endeavor and will do whatever you need me to do on this end,” Jane said.

  “You have no idea how much that means to me.”

  They smiled at each other.

  As the bus pulled up, Jane felt a rush of panic. She handed Teo all the money in her pocket. “I know it’s only, like, ten bucks, but have breakfast at the airport on me.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “And please let me know that you’re alive and safe when you get there.”

  “I promise.”

  “All right. Please be careful. And I don’t mean just with the traveling but also with yourself. Take care of yourself.”

  “I will.”

  “And—”

  “Jane, come on, I gotta go.” The bus driver was staring at them.

  Jane stepped onto her tiptoes and hugged him tightly, as if she could hug all her feelings and good luck and hope into him if she could squeeze him hard enough.

  He squeezed back.

  “Bye,” he said, drawing away.

  “Good luck!” she said.

  He took the seat closest to the front and waved as the bus pulled away.

  Jane watched it until she could no longer see it.

  She sat down on the bench in the bus shelter, trying to sort out her emotions.

  She wished she had kissed him. But kissing him would have opened up a whole can of worms that she wasn’t prepared to deal with at 4:48 in the morning. Not to mention that she wouldn’t want Teo to have to deal with that kind of crap at this moment, either.

  Except that her feelings weren’t crap. They were growing every day, and this trip, and the way she felt about it, only cemented them for her.

  She knew she needed to get home before anyone noticed her absence, but each of her limbs felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, and her brain was clouded with worry. She sat on the bench a little longer.

  It was only when she was walking back to her car that she realized she was crying. She could only hope that Teo knew what he was getting himself into.