Spy-in-Training Read Online Free Page B

so sorry.” He slumps down heavily on a stool. “Get it together,” he says to himself, almost under his breath but just loud enough for me to hear. He shakes his head sorrowfully. “I’ve got no excuses, Bridge. I would have hated it if this had happened to me when I was your age. But I promise I’ll make it up to you. Where do you wanna go? What do you wanna do? Pick a place to eat and a movie you want to see. Call Joanna, see if she wants to come with. Then we’ll go into the office and get you a gift card. A sixty-dollar one. And again, I’m sorry.”
    Dad gives me a consoling hug and a kiss on the forehead. He leaves the kitchen and, as he heads upstairs, I hear him talking on his Bluetooth. “We are officially theworst parents in the world. We forgot Bridget’s birthday. We’re taking her out tonight. Buy her something on your way home. Like balloons or a unicorn or something.”
    His voice fades away. Now I’m confused. He’s not playing one of his pranks. He forgot my birthday for real. They all did. So where did that bag come from?

CHAPTER FOUR
Whole New You
    I t doesn’t come up. The subject of the brown-and-pink-striped bag and the contents therein does not come up. It does not come up because I do not bring it up. It also does not come up because we do not go out as a family-plus-Joanna to the street dance sequel I have picked for us to see. We do not go out after the movie as a family-plus-Joanna to dinner at my favorite restaurant, Leatherby’s Family Creamery. We got ready to go out as a family-plus-Joanna but then Mom received a last-minute call from her head office that there was a van filled with wigs that should have been delivered to a wigstore but was still in the depot and the wig-store owner was furious. “Flipping his wig,” I cracked, but no one was listening. Mom had to go and put out that fire. She promised to join us as soon as the wig crisis was over. Ryan didn’t show. No message. No excuses. So it was just me, Dad, Natalie, and Joanna.
    Dad slept through the movie. Joanna ate three bags of popcorn and then spent the duration of the movie picking kernels out of her teeth. Natalie tried to turn off her phone out of courtesy to other moviegoers but texts from her many, many friends kept flooding in and she felt it would be rude to ignore them. Dad didn’t turn his phone off, either. It woke him twenty minutes before the climactic dance-off, which I never got to see because the call was from Ryan. We had to pick him up from the police station. (He had nothing to do with throwing eggs at a bus filled with nuns. It was the people he was with. Right .) The evening ended with me sitting in the back of the Jeep Compass squished between Natalie and Ryan, who was talking about his regular visits to the holding cell in Reindeer Crescent’s police precinct.
    â€œYou’re taking a man’s freedom away, that’s a tough pill to swallow,” reflected Ryan of his forty-seven minutes of incarceration. “But they’re just walls, walls and bars. They can’t cage the kid’s soul.”
    Natalie stopped replying to the newest batch of texts. “I’m going to start writing to prisoners,” she announced.
    â€œYou’re not,” said Dad.
    â€œThey need to know someone cares,” she said.
    â€œWhat if you started writing to a serial killer who likes wearing little girls’ skins?” Ryan laughed. “What if you invited him over for Thanksgiving?”
    â€œHe’s not coming for Thanksgiving,” said Dad. “We’ve already got Grandma Jean to deal with.”
    â€œI’m going to write to prisoners, I don’t care what you think,” said Natalie. “Everyone needs to know there’s someone out there who’s listening to them.”
    â€œThanks for coming out for my birthday,” I said.
    Ryan kept laughing at Natalie, who kept arguing