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Buck slid his wedding ring up and down, twirling it round and around. His knee constantly bounced on the floor, vibrating his hands to the point where the golden loop slipped from his fingers. He snatched it from the air in a lightning fast motion born, the years of honing his reflexes heightened by his anxiety.
“You alright there, babe?” Tommy asked. “You seem a little nervous.”
Buck twisted his ring back onto his finger, before curling himself forward, trying to keep his energy locked inside his body. “Are you not? I feel like I’ve been called into the teacher’s office.”
Tommy gave him his patented unimpressed look as he waved his hand at the finger paintings and word-of-the-day displays around the classroom. “That is literally what’s happening.”
“Yeah, but I mean… it’s just giving me flashbacks, okay.” He couldn’t seem to sit still. And not just because they’d been forced to fold themselves into a pair of too small, plastic chairs.
“I take it you spent a lot of time in the teacher’s office,” Tommy asked.
“I was a kid with undiagnosed ADHD who got their parents’ attention by being reckless. I practically lived there!” Buck remembered the number of times he’d sat in Mrs McKlusky’s homeroom, receiving the ‘I’m not angry, just disappointed’ talk his parents would later neglect to give him. They were turning out to be much better grandparents than they’d ever been parents – they absolutely doted on both Jee and Stella – but it had been Mrs MK that picked up the slack when he was younger. He should really send her a thank you card.
“I take it you didn’t spend a lot of time in the teacher’s office, Mr Perfect Boy Scout?” Buck said, stretching out, hoping that might ease the feeling of being wound up like a spring, waiting to be let out.
Tommy replied in a deadpan. “I was a closeted kid with an abusive father who did everything to not get their parent’s attention. I did everything I could to make sure I never got called into the teacher’s office.”
“Eugh!” Buck said, sliding down in the seat until he was almost sprawled across the floor. “You know I hate it when you out Bad Childhood me.”
Tommy cracked a smile, grabbing Buck’s shoulder to help pull him back into his seat just as the door swung open and Stella’s teacher, Ms Sanchez, walked in.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said brightly. They both tried to stand up to greet her, but Tommy’s knees cracked in protest while Buck struggled to untangle himself from his chair legs. “Oh no please! Sit, sit.”
Buck finally righted himself in his seat, mentally reminding himself that he was the 40-something-year old father of a 6-year-old, and not a tear-away teen who’d gotten themselves into trouble. Again.
“Thank you both for coming in a little early to chat,” Ms Sanchez said, as she stopped to shake both their hands before taking her own chair behind her desk.
“No problem. Anything for our little girl,” said Tommy with his usual ease.
“So,” said Buck, his voice spiking a little too high. “What is uh… what is this all about?”
Ms Sanchez smiled at them warmly. “There’s no need to worry. It’s just a small thing. Stella is an absolute joy to teach and a pleasure to have in the class.”
The genuine affection in her voice relieved the tension in Buck’s chest. At least he was pretty sure his daughter wasn’t running a racket on fruit roll ups or setting fire to the classroom.
“That’s good to hear,” Buck sighed. “I mean, we obviously think she’s the best thing in the world, but it’s always nice when other people say it.” He felt his lips curl into a wide grin, just as they always did when he was talking about their daughter.
“Oh, I can see where she gets her smile from,” said the teacher
“Well technically, it’s not my smile,” Buck said. The teacher’s eyes went wide, flicking between Tommy and Buck as she realised too late her misstep. “I mean, it’s my sister’s,” he added quickly, as his people pleasing instincts cut in, urging him to smooth over the awkwardness. “We’re both Stella’s Dads, but Tommy is her father biologically and we wanted our child to be related to both of us so when we were looking into it we asked my sister if we could use one of her eggs and Tommy’s sperm and-”
“Evan,” said Tommy, gently laying a hand on top of Buck’s.
“Thank you,” Buck whispered.
Ms Sanchez stared at him for a moment, before recovering enough to pull herself back behind a wall of professionalism. She leaned over and pulled out a file labelled ‘Stella Buckley-Kinard’, and flicked to a page of their daughter’s familiar scrawl. “That is actually good to know. Stella said that her Mom was her ‘Aunt Maddy; when we were doing a ‘My family’ project the other week, and so that information takes this conversation in a much more comfortable direction.”
Buck and Tommy had made a point of ensuring Stella knew exactly where she came from and how she was born. They were trying to make it normal from the very beginning, so she’d never have to endure the shock of having the truth dumped on her later in life as it had been for Buck. She’d met their surrogate several times as Tommy still played basketball with her husband and Stella seemed to understand that. She had a bit more trouble grasping what an ‘egg donor’ was, though.
“Well, I’m just glad you decided to talk to us rather than calling child services,” Tommy said, giving one of his winning smiles, while simultaneously squeezing Buck’s hand just a little too tight.
“Those kinds of projects can throw up… some issues we’ve found in the past,” said Ms Sanchez. “It’s actually one of the reasons we still do them – to identify kids who might have some problems at home so we can keep an eye on them.”
“So a ‘who is my Daddy and what does he do?’ situation,” Tommy asked, only to receive blank looks from both Buck and the teacher. “ Kindergarten Cop ? Arnold Schwatzernegger pretending to be an elementary school teacher to find the child of a drug dealer. Seriously, neither of you? Man. I am old.”
Buck gave him a sympathetic look, making a mental note to remind Tommy just how much he appreciated the age difference between them.
“Well, we try to handle it a bit more kindly than that. We make sure the kids know that there’s lots of things ‘family’ can mean, that it’s not just about DNA and who you’re related to,” Ms Sanchez said, obviously still nervous after her previous misstep.
“Oh, our Stella is more than aware of that,” Buck said. “She has, like, 15 aunts and uncles, only one of which she’s actually related to.”
Ms Sanchez nodded before tapping her hands back down on the folder in front of her. “Anyway, back to the matter at hand.” She turned the page, revealing a sheet of much more neatly written notes, evidently been made by Ms Sanchez herself. “Now, as I said Stella is an asset to the classroom. She’s always keen to learn, keen to speak up, and she has an absolutely fantastic imagination. Some of the pictures she comes up with in Art Class are truly inspired.”
A flush of pride sweptthrough Buck. Both his and Tommy’s locker’s were filled with her brightly coloured creations, and even Bobby had one of her artworks taped to his desk.
“ But, ” said Ms Sanchez with a little too much emphasis, “Sometimes she can be a little too imaginative.”
“Too imaginative?” Buck asked.
“Yes,” said Ms Sanchez. “You see, recently we’ve been talking in class about lying.”
Tommy and Buck gave each other a side-ways glance. “Stella’s been lying?” Tommy asked. “She’s always been so honest with us.”
“Sometimes a little too honest,” said Buck, remembering how she’d told him how the hospital gown made him look ‘chubby’ when he was getting his kidney stones removed, only to turn around last night and comment on how ‘skinny’ his arms were getting since cutting back his previous high-protein diet. “She can be pretty brutal, actually.”
“Now, it’s not a big problem,” said Ms Sanchez, with an elementary school teacher’s usual soothing tones. “Kids make up stories all the time. Every year one of the kids will claim to secretly be a mermaid or a fairy or some such. But earlier today, Stella was telling a story, and one of the other children called her out about it being made up. Stella kept insisting it was true and got quite upset when no one would believe her.”
A vision of Stella’s face, twisted with upset, floated in front of Buck’s vision. He wanted to sprint down the hall to her after school club and sweep her up in his arms.
“She’s okay, right,” Tommy asked, Buck’s concern reflected in his own.
“We had Music Time right after that, so she forgot all about it within five minutes. But I did want to talk to you both because it was clearly obvious that Stella believed that what she was saying was true.”
Buck twisted his hand against the edge of his sleve. “What was it she said?”
“She said that we had been born on a flying boat in the middle of a hurricane, that was then capsized by a tidal wave.”
Ms Sanchez fixed them with such a kind expression, but it only served to make Buck’s slow realisation of what had happened all the more embarrassing.
“Ooooh, I think I know what happened,” Buck said, sliding down in his chair again.
“We told her the story of how we met the other day,” said Tommy.
“Right after Chris’s graduation party,” said Buck.
“She must have got the stories confused.”
“Umm,” said Ms Sanchez. “I don’t think I follow.”
“We’re firefighters,” Tommy said, slipping back into his usual charm. “I’m a helicopter flight instructor now, but I used to be a pilot for the LAFD. Evan and I met on a search and rescue operation to find a cruise ship that had capsized during a hurricane.”
“And I delivered Stella in the back of an air ambulance he was flying when our surrogate got involved in an accident during a storm,” Buck continued.
“She must have got the two stories confused,” Tommy said. “You know – helicopter, storm, both of us were there.”
“And a few days ago Chris, her…”
“Honorary cousin, I guess?”
“We were having a party for his college graduation, and he was telling her about when he and I got caught up in the tsunami a few years ago.”
“We’ll be careful to make sure she keeps things straight in future,” Tommy finished off.
Ms Sanchez’s gaze continued to ping pong back and forth between the two of them for a moment before lookingback down at the notes in front of her. “So… her story… was true?”
“Well,” said Buck. “For certain values of true. Kinda.”
“But we completely understand why you wouldn’t believe her,” Tommy assured the teacher.
Ms Sanchez struck a red line through part of the notes in her folder before regrouping. “Okay. Well. Um… it might be that Stella is having trouble keeping various stories straight in her head. For instance, the other day she took a copy of the Kids Classic version of Frankenstein from the library.”
Tommy bumped Buck’s knee, beaming with pride. He spent hours teaching Stella to read, looking for any signs that she’d inherited his own reading difficulties so he could give her any boost or extra help she needed. The result was she was reading well above her grade level.
Ms Sanchez continued. “The next day, she was going around telling the other children that her Daddy had been raised from the dead by a lighting strike, just like in the book.”
Buck stilled instantly. Beside him, Tommy whispered a quiet ‘oh, no’ as Buck turned to him with a furious glare.
“You told our daughter I died?”
Tommy didn’t even try to deny it, merely lent away to distance himself from his husband’s rage. “I didn’t say it like that! She was talking about the book and the lightning strike and it… it just slipped out.”
“It slipped out?” Buck asked, incensed.
“You know how she is, she tricked me!”
“She’s six! ”
“I’m sorry,” Ms Sanchez cut in, blinking a few too many times as she gestured towards Buck. “You… um… you died?”
Suddenly remembering they were in front of Stella’s teacher, Buck pulled himself back up straight. “Yeah, but… only for like three minutes.”
“And seventeen seconds,” Tommy added under his breath, earning another glare.
“It was actually the lightning strike that stopped my heart,” Buck explained. “I was raised from the dead by an expert team of paramedics. But you uh… you can see where she might get mixed up.”
Ms Sanchez stared at him unblinkingly. “Well, wasn’t that fortunate.” She crossed off another line from her notes before moving down to the next. “I feel I should probably check whether her grandfather ever was actually dragged into the desert by wolves?”
That one stumped Buck. Where would they ever have come across wolves? “I don’t think my Dad has ever been near a desert. He hates dry heat. It makes his hair go frizzy.”
“You don’t even get wolves in the desert,” said Tommy. “The closest thing is coyotes.”
Understanding hit Buck like a brick. “Bobby! The whole thing with the cartell.”
Tommy snapped his fingers in recognition before turning to the teacher. “Her honorary grandfather had a run in with some immigrant traffickers this one time. There was a whole thing in a desert with this guy whose wife he sorta killed, it’s a long story.”
“That is very inappropriate for a six-year old and we will be having words.”
Ms Sanchez barely seemed to register what they were saying. “Her uncle’s head exploded when he got a railway spike through his brain?”
“It was a piece of rebar, not a railway spike,” Tommy said, somewhat apologetically.
“Phineas Gage was the one with the railway spike – went straight through his frontal lobe! He was a railway worker back in…” Buck trailed off under Ms Sanchez’s intense stare. “Um, her Uncle Chimney was fine though. Miraculous recovery. We had a cake shaped like his head.”
“He did have encephalitis a few years after that, on his wedding day,” said Tommy. “Chim always describes that one a bit too graphically, so that’s probably where the exploding comes from.”
“Would that have been the same uncle,” Ms Sanchez asked while scanning down her notes, “Who married a ghost?”
“No,” said Buck trying to shrink back into his chair. “That would be her Uncle Eddie. And technically they just dated.”
“They just dated,” the teacher said, a hint of the manic creeping into her voice. “Her uncle and a ghost. They just dated.”
“No of course not,” Tommy laughed away. “She wasn’t a ghost. Just a complete doppelganger of his dead wife.”
“Her aunt robbed a bank with a scorpion,” Ms Sanchez fired off.
“Oh Hen had nothing to do with the robbery,” Buck said, panicking she thought they were related to some criminal mastermind. “She just got spiked with the scorpion venom by the guy who was.”
“And again,” said Tommy, “We will be having words about appropriate stories to share with a six year old.”
“She spent the weekend with a goddess who can fly!” The woman was practically yelling now, on the verge of some kind of breakdown. “That one can’t possibly be true.”
Buck braced himself as Tommy threw his hands to the sky. “Seriously?”
“Come on now honey, don’t take it like that,” Buck soothed, but Tommy was having none of it.
“Athena lands a plane one time, one time , and she’s the one who can fly?” He crossed his arms in annoyance. “I took her on a flight for her birthday. I let her use the joystick I didn’t tell her wasn’t wired in. But apparently that’s not good enough, not after she’s spent the weekend with a goddess.” He lent back heavily, making the plastic back bend at an alarming angle. Buck patted his husband’s arm in sympathy, but he doubted it would do much to ease Tommy’s wounded pride.
“Athena…” said the teacher, dropping her pen on the table in defeat. “Goddess of Wisdom.”
“And also the name of Bobby’s wife,” said Buck. “The one who got dragged into the desert by wolves. Coyotes. Traffickers.”
“Of course she is,” Ms Sanchez said with a shrug. She rubbed her eyes as if she was trying to crush them against her skull before sitting up straight. “Well. It looks like you all certainly have an interesting life. I am sorry for not believing your daughter and for calling you both down here.”
“No, we’re sorry,” said Tommy. “We should have realised she’d start telling other people these stories and they are all a little unbelievable.”
Buck nodded in agreement. “I mean, I wouldn’t believe half of them if I hadn’t, you know… been there.”
They were spared any more awkwardness by the sound of the bell ringing, signalling the end of the various after-school clubs going on around the building. They quickly bid farewell to Ms Sanchez, leaving her alone in the classroom to contemplate her life choices.
Tommy puffed out his cheeks as they walked back towards the entrance. “Well.”
“Yeah,” said Buck.
“We should-”
“Probably.”
“And Bobby-”
“I know!”
“But Eddie-”
“No idea.”
At that moment, the double doors swung open, unleashing a horde of tiny humans smeared with paint and glitter came scurrying through from the Art Room. And there, front and centre showing her latest artwork to her friends, was their tiny human. Buck’s heart swelled at the sight of her – shift patterns meant he hadn’t seen Stella awake for two whole days.
“There’s my girl,” he called.
She beamed back, breaking into a run before leaping up at him. Buck scooped her up, hoisting her into the air to give her a great big kiss.
“Daddy!”
“I’ve missed you,” he said, rubbing their noses together, which always made her laugh.
“And what do we have here?” Tommy asked, carefully extracting the painting before she crushed it in her excitement. Buck looked down at the colourful blobs, just about making out something that looked like a helicopter – a recurring motif in Ms Buckley-Kinard’s early work – but which seemed to have some extra lines and blobs coming off of it.
“It’s a halicorn,” Stella announced.
“A halicorn,” Buck said in amazement. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a halicorn before. What is that?”
“A helicopter alicorn.”
“What’s an alicorn?” Tommy asked, examining the picture for clues.
“Well Papa, if it’s a horse with a horn it's a unicorn,” she said, perfectly mimicking Buck’s intonations. Just in case there was any doubt as to where she had learned this particular nugget of information. “If it's a horse with wings it's a platypus.”
“Pterripus,” Buck softly whispered into her ear.
“A P-terripin,” she corrected. “But if it has wings and a horn, it is an alicorn.”
Tommy nodded in genuine interest. “I did not know that! But did you know that helicopters have rotors, not wings.”
“I did,” Stella preened. “That is why a halicorn has wings and rotors.”
Sure enough, not only did her work of art feature lurid green rotor blades, but a set of purple wings as well. “Wasn’t that smart of you.”
Buck manoeuvred her so he was balancing most of her weight on his waist as they began their walk to the car. She snuggled in against his neck, tapping his chest in time with his heartbeat. He had a sudden flash back to the night she was born, when he’d cradled a much smaller, much lighter, Stella against his chest for the first time. Speaking of which…
“Hey, sweetheart. Do you remember how we told you the story about how your Papa and I met the other day,” he said. “I think you might have got a little confused…”