Page 37 of Troublemaker: The Big Picture Edition

“No one. How many cars are you up to?”

“Twelve.”

“You’re missing one right now.”

He looks out the window again, and I check my phone for a reply that hasn’t come yet.

“Is it Uncle Shane asking you to meet that lady that Willa knows again?” he asks, still looking out the window.

“Nope.”

“Are you going to meet that lady?”

“Don’t plan to.”

“Good. I don’t like her.”

“You haven’t met her.”

“I don’t like the sound of her.”

EMILIA STILES: Message received.

ME: Yes, but are you REALLY getting the message?

EMILIA STILES: Please behave yourself, Mr. Vega.

ME: I hope your skirt behaves itself, Miss Stiles. Or maybe I don’t.

EMILIA: Seriously. We need to keep our attention on the kids. Ignore me!

ME: Try being a little harder to ignore. And I will remind you that I’m the guy who controls entire film sets full of people. I think I can handle five kids.

EMILIA: I thought you were in charge of the big picture? The big picture here is that you shouldn’t be sending me flirty texts while you’re sitting next to your son on a school bus, remember?

ME: Roger that.

ME: But you really should borrow my sunglasses when we’re outside. You can’t keep an eye on the kids with half of the Mojave Desert blowing into it.

EMILIA: No thank you!

“No thank you.”Welp. Welcome to your first fall in Los Angeles, new girl. This is how you learn, Miss Stiles. This is how you learn.

In my experience, it takes fifteen times longer to get a kid out of the house and into your car than it does to get him out of the car and into the place you were taking him to. But for some reason, it took about five minutes to get fifteen kids into the bus and thirty years to get them off of it and assembled so that Miss Stiles can do her second head count of the morning. And we aren’t even inside the observatory yet.

I look over at Miguel’s mom while we stand back and wait for the teacher to remind the students of the rules of the field trip.“¿Cómo te va todo, Juanita?”

“¿Ahhh, tu hablas español?

“Sí, mi padre es de España.”

“Ah sí, ahora puedo verlo.”She smiles beautifully, pats me on the arm, and then lowers her voice and says, in English, “You had better be single, Mister Vega.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because. I see the way you look at Miss Stiles. Even through those sunglasses. You will get her pregnant if you keep looking at her like that.” She gives me the stink eye and then smiles again.

“I have been divorced for a few years, and I promise to behave myself today.”