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The carpool honked at 7:12, and Chris went out ready, because Chris was always ready. Theo followed three steps behind in the green dino hoodie, Chris's notebook zipped into the front of it where he could get at it with both hands. Nobody upstairs heard the door.
Buck came down at 7:40 and set two bowls on the table before the quiet registered.
Theo's chair was pushed in. Theo never pushed his chair in. In fact, Theo typically fled the table like he was running from a five-alarm fire.
"Theo?" Buck checked under the sink first, one of Theo's first hiding spots, and exactly why he had to find a new spot for the cleaning chemicals. Nothing. Behind the chair. The coat closet, where he'd turned up twice last week. Nope. "Spiderman, I haven't had my coffee yet. Can we play hide-and-seek later?"
Silence, aside from the shower running down the hall. Buck didn't want to say it because saying it made it real.
He had no choice. "Eddie." Then louder. "Eddie, is Theo in there with you?"
The water turned off.
"He's not down there?" Eddie peeked his head out the doorway, hair dripping on the floor. He ended up crashing on the couch last night after an 11 pm meltdown about a sound the fridge made that sounded too scary to be just a kitchen appliance, and Chris had taken his room without question, and Buck had lost track of how grateful he was for the Diaz family somewhere around 2 am.
"I thought he—" Buck had his phone out. Neither of them said it. Fine. Almost certainly fine. Kid was just damn good at hide and seek. They'd find him under a bed laughing in a second. His thumb kept sliding off the screen.
TikTok was at the top of the stack. Chris posted a new video. Six minutes ago.
He opened it because his hands were already there and, well, ADHD is real.
Theo up in the air. Somebody's arms hooked under his and swinging them, Theo shrieking with his whole body, hood knocked sideways. Lockers behind him. A girl off camera says, "Oh my god, he's the best thing that's ever happened to this school." A boy, closer to the camera: "That's Diaz's little brother. I can't believe you did it, man."
The caption: he asked permission for this in full dinosaur roars. they can only get mad if they admit they don't speak dinosaur. Theo: 1 Dads: 0.
This morning, Theo had barrelled into his bedroom before his alarm, already dressed in his dinosaur hoodie, the one where the hood actually looks like a T-Rex face, with his arms up in claw formation, roaring and roaring. Buck had said, "Yeah, sure, bud," the way you do to a four-year-old yelling at you unintelligibly because what could the dinosaur possibly want that is that serious? Right? Apparently, very wrong. Theo had roared one more time with a grin like that closed the deal, and to Theo, it had.
Eddie leaned over his shoulder, dripping on him now. Watched it through once. Read the caption. "You didn't."
"I think I did."
They both watched it again. On screen, Theo got set on his feet, fixed his own hood with enormous care, and opened the notebook to show the camera something. The camera cut off before they could see it clearly.
Eddie stood there in a towel with a puddle spreading around one foot. He wasn't moving. Buck noticed that neither of them had made any sign that they planned on leaving the house at all.
"We're both off," Eddie said, slow. Like he was talking himself into it and out of it at the same time.
"We are."
"The school has his emergency contacts. If they've got a problem, I'm sure they'll call, and we can go grab him."
"And if they don't have any problems?"
Eddie looked at the phone again, the video still playing on a loop. Theo was clearly delighted beyond words. "Then he's having the best day of his life."
"With his brother." Buck sounded a little breathless. Eddie smiled softly.
"Correct."
"And Chris called me dad," Buck added.
"Mhmm."
Eddie was already moving again, off to trade in the towel he had thrown around him in his rush out of the shower for actual pants. Buck stood there for another minute or two with the video still going in his hand.
The school did end up calling, but not until 9:20.
Buck answered, bracing for impact. He'd been waiting for it all morning and had cleaned the entire kitchen trying to keep himself busy.
"Mr. Buckley. Hi. This is Dana. I work in the front office at Christopher's school. I'm calling to confirm that you're aware Theodore is here today."
"Um, yeah. We're aware."
"Okay. Good." Buck could hear the relief in her voice and a shuffle of papers behind it. "It's technically a supervision thing. We need a guardian to acknowledge he's on campus, which you're doing, so great. He's with Christopher. He's been very good."
"He's been good."
"He raised his hand in Mr. Okafor's second period and told the class that the T. Rex could not actually see you if you stood still, which Mr. Okafor tells me is a movie thing and not a real thing, but he didn't want to disappoint the kid." She stopped. "It's already kind of a wild day here."
"I'm guessing this was part of some prank?"
"Anything but a backpack day. Someone brought a goat. A four-year-old interrupting world history with dino facts is barely scratching the surface."
"Do you need me to come get him?"
"You could come get the goat if you wanted."
Buck laughed loudly at that. He did not want to come get the goat.
"Honestly, Mr. Buckley, both of your boys are amazing. We're happy to have Theo if you don't mind him being here." Buck noticed her voice was warm, albeit tired. "Last I heard, he was drawing a Brachiosaurus in Ms. Reyes class. She said it was almost a circle. He's very proud."
"Yeah, he's good at those."
Eddie discovered the 118 knew when Hen texted him a screenshot instead of a hello. It was the video from this morning, timestamped, forty thousand views. Below it, a voice memo he did not open.
The group chat had already moved on without him. He scrolled up. Chimney had captioned a still of Theo mid-air with a football-broadcast arrow drawn over it. Ravi asked how many rules Chris managed to break, to which Hen insisted that Chris had never done a thing wrong in his life.
Eddie
he had permission.
Hen
from who???
Eddie
Buck.
Eddie looked across the kitchen at Buck, who was distracted with lunch prep.
Ravi
Buck gave a preschooler permission to attend high school for a day?
Eddie
its complicated.
Eddie included zero context and turned his phone face down, which did nothing because it buzzed again for the next several minutes.
Chris texted at 11:04 to the group chat with Eddie and Buck.
Chris
hes taking notes.
Eddie
notes on what??
Chris
idk. he keeps writing and won't show me. he told marcus its classified.
Eddie
is he okay?
Chris
hes living the dream dad. he made friends with some of the seniors. Priya is his favorite. she said she wants to keep him.
Eddie
how did you get him to listen?
He looked up at Buck, who was now reading the conversation on his own phone.
Buck
i bet chris bribed him.
Chris
maybe.
The lunch thing they didn't hear from Chris. Not directly, anyway.
It was a repost. Somebody named jordan_eats_glue had filmed it, and Chris had shared it to his own account with the additional caption "priya to the rescue." By the time Buck's phone lit up, the whole thing was already over, forty seconds long.
Turns out the high school cafeteria had not had dinosaur nuggets.
The video opened on the aftermath of that discovery. Theo stood very still by the tray return, holding his notebook against his chest with both arms, staring at a tray of the wrong nuggets. The fact that they looked closer to his earlier drawing of the Brachiosaurus did nothing to sway him. These were not dinosaurs. Buck knew that face. It was the face Theo made about two seconds before the world ended, his little intake of breath, the bottom lip poking out.
"Oh no," Buck said out loud to nobody, watching a clip of something that probably happened an hour ago.
"What?" Eddie came around the island. "What, oh no?"
Theo didn't scream. The reality was probably worse, at least for Chris. Big fat tears began to roll down his bright red cheeks. He looked betrayed by the entire concept of Chris bringing him somewhere that would do this to him.
And then a hand came into frame with a Lunchable. A little yellow box with turkey and crackers. A girl's voice, off camera, was careful and kind. "Hey, I have these. You want them? You can build a dinosaur with the crackers. Want me to show you?"
Theo considered this, sniffed bravely, and nodded. The camera followed him as he sat down in the girl's lap at a nearby table. Together they began to break apart the ingredients, and Theo assembled the vague shape of a stegosaurus out of round crackers and turkey.
The video stopped, then started over again, the way they do.
"Priya," Eddie said finally. "She wants to keep Theo."
"She can't keep him." Buck was still watching. "But she can have Thanksgiving. And I'll buy her enough Lunchables for the rest of the school year."
They both went for pickup, yet another chore they forced to be a two-person activity. They parked, too. Which neither of them had done for Chris since before he started middle school.
They stood at the curb where the carpool line stacked up. Chris came out first in a crowd of kids. Theo was on Priya's back. The notebook was clamped between his chest and her shoulder blades, and he was talking 100 miles a minute. He didn't stop till he saw them.
"It's my Buck and my Eddie!"
Priya crouched when he started squirming enough that safety was about to be an issue. Theo came off her back and hit the sidewalk running. He did not slow down when he reached them, either. Buck got to him first, catching him under his arms and swooping him up into the air. Theo shrieked.
The notebook jabbed Buck in the collarbone. Theo was already flipping it open before he was fully caught, pages turning, urgent, showing him.
"I took notes!"
It was scribbles. Full pages of loops and hard lines and one thing that could have been what Dana had referred to as the Brachiosaurus but was definitely mostly a circle. Theo turned the pages fast, narrating the day as he went, that Buck only caught about 40% of: Priya, the goat, a boy who could burp the alphabet, teaching Mr. Okafor about the T-Rex, and Buck just kept nodding like he was in the middle of the most important briefing of his life.
Chris walked up, looking pleased with himself. Eddie narrowed his eyes at him, but there was no heat behind it.
"He asked permission."
"He roared at Buck."
"He asked, and Buck agreed. I'm not gonna be the one to tell him that doesn't count. Are you?" He reached over and fixed Theo's hood so the spikes stood up like they were supposed to.
Eddie knew damn well he was absolutely not going to be the one to break that particular news to the kid.
Theo, upside down over Buck's arm now for reasons only known to Theo, held the notebook out toward Eddie. It was opened to a specific page.
"This one's yours." He insisted. Eddie took it, looked at it. Mostly scribbles and stick people. In the top corner, their names had been written neatly by someone other than Theo, and under each stick person, Theo had clearly tried to copy the names. There was Buck, and Eddie, and Chris, and Theo all lined up next to a tree. Eddie did not point out that Buck was taller than the tree. Maybe he'd learn proportions in elementary school.
This was definitely going on the fridge.