“Hello?” a child’s voice greets him, and he can hear faint clattering and noise in the background; it is probably breakfast time and this young girl is somewhere else, perhaps she has already finished.
John wonders if he has the wrong number, because if that’s not the case, then he’ll have to accept that he’s missed a whole lot more of his son’s life than his childhood; this child could be his granddaughter, and he wouldn’t know what she looks like, wouldn’t know who his son had married, if he had any more children.
“Hello,” he answers back, a little hesitantly. “Is Matt Rivers there?”
“Yep,” the little girl says cheerfully and John's heart races, “I’ll call him for you.” There’s a moment where he can’t hear anything from the other end
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You know who it is?” His son speaks and it’s as if the air has been knocked from his lungs. He sounds so grown-up, almost nothing like the little boy he had known.
“No, but I can ask,” the girl- his granddaughter- replies, and there’s a loud noise from where he assumes she picks up the receiver and almost lets it drop. He can hear her giggling in the background.
“Who are you?” she finally asks, and his voice catches in his
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“You’re my grandpa?” she gasps, full of wonder. Her voice sounds more far away as she turns away from the phone, probably towards her father.
“Daddy, it’s your daddy.” She says matter-of-factly, and John can almost hear the child’s enthusiasm.
There’s a moment of silence, where the background chatter ceases and it’s almost as if time itself has stopped.
“Come on, Lian, let’s leave your dad alone for a while,” a woman’s voice breaks the silence, and John instantly knows it is the woman his son has married. “He hasn’t spoken to his daddy for a long time...” their voices are getting fainter; he assumes they’re walking away.
“But can we talk to Grandpa again, Mommy? Can we visit him? Can I paint his nails?”
“I don’t know, we’ll have to see…”
The girl- Lian- sounds very excited, her mother fondly amused, and caught up in listening to them, John doesn’t notice his son has picked up the phone, not until he hears him laugh at his daughter’s last suggestion involving nail
“No please, let me explain,” Harry holds his hands up to show he means no harm. “I’m the father.”
“What mum?,” Shocked to hear her mum’s voice she calls out again. “ Mum! Is that you?”
He looked around, then asked his mom where Dad was. She choked a little before explaining, “Dad’s really busy right now with saving more people, like the men who rescued you.”
Jonas is an eleven year old boy who lives in a community where everything is the same. Jonas has a flashback seeing a jet fly over the community, and everyone was frightened. The speaker comes on and tells everyone that a pilot in training was lost, and was to be released. Jonas says that being released was an “Overwhelming statement of failure.” Jonas' family has to tell their feelings every evening. His sister Lily talks about a visiting group of sevens’ who went to the school who had not obeyed the rules. She implied that they behaved like animals. Jonas’ father, who is a nurturer, tells them about a baby boy who doesn't seem to be growing and developing, as he should. He then states that the baby may be released. Lily wants to
“Hello, my name is Jessie Hamasaki. I guess you can call me back anytime at this number. Thank you I hope to be hearing from you soon.” She hung up the phone, with a strange look on her face. With that she put her phone down on the nightstand and laid down for a little while longer.
During the week, John is with his mom which basically means she asks him the same old questions of "How was your day?" or "Do you want take out?" then ending with what his mom refers to "resting" which is sitting in the dark in the living room. Every weekend, John goes to Boston and has the same routine of getting ignored by his Dad. Yet, while John is in Boston, turning in his first zine going by the name "Gio", he reads one that he is fairly interested in and waits for the writer to come in the next day and talk about her zine and the writer would be no other than Marisol Guzman
“What do you think you are doing, Sarah? How could you do something like that! I ought to call Grandfather! No, your mother. How could you?”
“She comes in and he lets into her right away. Carrying on. Set up in his E-Z lounger like he is king for a day. You bring me this or that he might say.” When her mom comes from the hospital her dad acts like she is not weak or sick.
‘“Everything changes now,” he says. “It’s time I got to know my own son, who had his mind poisoned against me”’(page 100)
Finally, he speaks, “Your parent's worst nightmare, I’m going to turn you and your brother into a lost girl and a lost boy.”
“Avery!” She yells it again louder than before, after a while we heard something, at first I just thought it was a animal, but we heard the sound again.
“That's good to hear regar-” the calls cuts out. Flipping around her phone, revealed the phone to be lifeless.
"I'm Amy, and this is my husband Calvin. He may look grumpy but he's super sweet." Amy tells us as we walk down a long hall. We come to a door on the left that lead to a living room.
“Right, then. I’d be happy to call you a son. But remember, you are lucky to have my daughter.”
But then in a more sympathetic posture he reaches out, placing both of his large hands on the shoulders of the old man. Josef looks up at him as a child would to the eyes of parent, as Yoseph