Chapter 32: Career Day

"I have to," I said.

Her face fell.

"I have to, because I want to," I said. "Write my name down."

She uncapped her purple marker and wrote it on the form in big letters before I could change my mind.

Then she crossed something out and wrote it again.

I turned the paper around.

Under GROWN-UP'S NAME she had written DR. LUNA, crossed it out, and written MY AUNT.

On Thursday morning I took a kitchen scale to the fourth grade.

Ciara walked me down the hall by the hand like a prisoner she was proud of.

The classroom smelled like crayons and floor wax.

There were twenty-six desks and a hamster.

A firefighter had gone first.

He'd brought a helmet, and every child had tried it on.

A dentist had gone second, with a giant toothbrush, and she was still being forgiven for it.

Then the teacher said, "Ciara, would you like to introduce your guest?"

Ciara stood up at the front of the room.

She had her hands behind her back and her braids done extra tight for the occasion.

Fergus had redone them twice that morning.

"This is my aunt," she said. "For real, not kind of. She's the doctor from the news."

A boy in the second row gasped.

"The food truck lady?"

"She's not a lunch lady," Ciara said darkly. "We've been over this."

"She's both," said the boy, who I was fairly sure had once eaten paste.

The whole class turned to look at me.

Somebody had the gala clip on a school tablet already.

I could hear my own voice coming out of it, tinny, saying "metabolic physician".

The teacher took the tablet away and then, very quietly, asked if she could have a picture with me after.

I put the kitchen scale on Ciara's desk.

"This is the most important thing I own," I said.

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