“Kevin supervises the probie,” Theo whispered back.
“We’ll send him to get it now. No one will miss him or his MetroGen stories,” Erin decided.
“I’ll cause a distraction when he sneaks out,” Theo said. “I have a plan.”
“We need more napkins,” Erin announced. “Come on, probie.”
Carver obediently followed her and stumbled when she pushed him into the gym.
“Do we store napkins in the gym?” Carver asked in confusion.
“We don’t. You forgot the Unbirthday cake from Giant Eagle.”
“I don’t get to eat?”
“I promise we’ll save some for you. You don’t get to eat now because you’re the probie,” she explained. “Lunch later, cake now.”
While Carver snuck out the back, Erin returned to the room with about five napkins she stole from the captain’s office. Theo did the rest.
“So, Mrs. Jones, I love the Unbirthday idea. Can you explain to me how it came about?” Theo was asking as Erin took her seat beside him again.
“Please don’t,” Kevin pleaded. He had no chance of hiding behind his tofu and sesame noodles.
“We celebrate because we know where you are this year,” his mother said resolutely.
“What?” Williams asked. “He went missing?”
Everyone turned toward the Jones family,
“Oh yes,” Kevin’s mother affirmed. “He was supposed to be at Case Western Reserve on a full scholarship, but instead, he went on Jay-Z’s world tour.”
“Really?” Chief Baker asked, sounding quite interested. Erin doubted these details were in Kevin’s personnel file. Otherwise, Williams wouldn’t have been so thrown, unlike Baker who was taking it stride.
Mrs. Jones waived a hand airily as if swatting a fly. “He told us weeks later with a postcard. He stayed a roadie for Jay-Z for two years. He had an almost perfect SAT score, and he was doing lights in Bangkok.”
“Why an Unbirthday Party, though?” Williams sounded more horrified by her announcement.
“It’s the day he came home, it was like his birthday, except it wasn’t. He came home with three tattoos. Three!” His mother emphasized by holding up three fingers.
Kevin was bright red, and the rest of the team was dying. Last year, they’d hired a singing clown to deliver the cake. It had been embarrassing for Kevin, but this year, the mortification was going above and beyond.
“Why not a homecoming or an anniversary?” Williams pressed.
“It was almost birth to me.” Ms. Jones patted Kevin’s hand as if to reassure herself he was sitting next to her. “For the first time in two years, I could stop worrying he’d die of food poisoning or wake up in a bathtub of ice without a kidney.”
Chief Baker coughed into his hand to preserve his straight face. “What a lovely story.”
“It was very stressful,” Kevin’s dad spoke for the first time. “You cannot imagine how difficult it was—the uncertainty.”
“Can we tell a different story? Anyone else?” Kevin begged. Erin thought he might crawl under the table at any second. It would be a long time before he could live this one down.
“So, then he follows it up with becoming a firefighter. We agreed to pay for college when he came back. Not that he went anywhere.” His father set down his fork.
“I have a college degree,” Kevin insisted and cracked his plastic fork on the table before dropping the pieces to the table.
“If you count graduating Lakeland Community College with a degree in Art,” Mrs. Jones added.
Feeling the tension between parents and child, Baker cleared his throat. “We encourage any college, and he has a degree, so—”
