The States

knocked me off my feet again

now:

The phone rings and Alfred jumps at the opportunity to get a break from doing paperwork with Sera.

He loves her and all, but paperwork. "Hold on a sec, Sera. I gotta answer this."

Sera rolls her eyes as he brings the phone up to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Is this Mr. Alfred Jones?"

"Yes?"

"I'm calling from your children's school, please come pick up your children. They're being suspended."

Alfred paused. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Please pick the children up immediately."

The call ends with a sharp click, and Alfred just stares for a moment.

Sera is looking at him with concern. "Alfred?"

"I have to go pick one of the kids up from school- they didn't tell me who. I'll be back in a while, 'kay?"

Sera nods quickly. "Yeah, you have to do that, I can handle this, alright?"

✩

Alfred's thinking it's going to be some combination of Isabel, Talia, or Diego.

Talia had been suspended before for punching a boy who snapped her bra straps, and Isabel had some issues with boys not understanding that when she said no, it didn't matter how short her cheer skirt was. He'd pulled them out schools before, even called Addison once to bring legal action to the table.

It's fully prepared to hear his kid's side, raise hell if appropriate, and then possibly take them out for ice cream, depending on where their actions fell on the morality scale.

He hadn't even considered that he'd walk into the headmistress's office and see Lani and Sasha sitting in those office chairs, Sasha with a split lip and Lani's tights with rips in the knees.

Two other kids sit two chairs down.

Alfred clenches his jaw.

The receptionist smiles tightly at him. "If you could have a seat, the headmistress will be with you shortly.

✩

The office feels packed, with four children and five parents crammed into it.

One of the mothers- the blonde kid's mom- shoots Alfred a look and mutters something to her husband.

"As you know, we have a zero-tolerance policy for fighting. As it was found that-" The headmistress shuffles her papers. "Braginski-Jones and Jones-Hoapili started the fight, they will receive three extra days suspension." She manages to mangle both of their surnames so that they're nearly unrecognizable.

Murmuring from the blond kid's parents again.

Alfred knows his kids, which is why he feels a hundred percent sure of what went down. "And what," he pauses slightly for dramatic effect, something he might have gotten from Cal or Brooke or they got from him, "Is your policy on bullying?"

before:

This is Sasha's eleventh new school. There'd been a handful of gap years and years of homeschool tossed in, but you never forgot the feeling of being the new kid.

He can't imagine what it would be like to be alone, to not have Lani next to him, or Isabel and Talia and Diego in the High School building across the courtyard.