My Dad, the Private Eye: The Falling Star

CHAPTER 2

I should probably introduce myself. My name is Krista Winnette. I'm 15, and I go to Etobicoke School of the Arts in Toronto, Canada. It sounds all fancy and private, but it's actually a public high school for artsy kids like me. It's also the perfect school for kids with ADHD, OCD and a bunch of other acronyms – again, like me. Basically, if you can't hack it in regular high school, they send you here, hoping the more artistic and less academic setting will calm you down. And it pretty much does. For me, anyway.

Don't get the idea that I have "issues" because my home life is some kind of mess. Sure, my parents split up a year ago, and living with my super-achiever mom is no picnic. And I really miss my dad not being around more. But let's face it, I'd be a square peg in the round hole of life even if my home life was perfect. My therapist says I'm grieving the fact that I'm not "normal", so I'll always have to work harder than most "normal" people to get along in life. Which sucks.

Anyway, now I hang around a bunch of artsy types who don't really fit in, like me, so I guess we kind of fit in together.

But, like I said, I do miss my dad. And more than that, I worry about him. I mean, since my mom kicked him out, he lives in that cheap, smelly motel room. And he's trying to get work in a field he knows nothing about. Basically, his life really sucks right now.

My dad, Drew Winnette, is 38, has a receding hairline, and is a little flabby around the waist. He got laid off last year after being a mailman for sixteen years. It was a simple job but a good one. When he was 22, he met my mom at a mutual friend's party, and before you knew it, they got married and I popped out. Basically, they were happy together, had a perfect little girl, and they were comfortably making payments on our little house. They had friends, they had fun, they had a life.

But, as the years went on, the internet really kicked in. People started to do everything by email, and now everybody was getting nothing but junk mail in their mailbox. Then they started putting in those community mailboxes, and fewer people were needed to deliver the mail.

So, Dad got fired.

It was all downhill from there. Dad couldn't find another job. After about a year, my mom lost her patience with him and filed for divorce.

My dad knew how to do one thing, and he did it well. Then it went away, and now he didn't know how to do anything.

Which is why he took a chance trying to become a private investigator. I mean, why not? Private eyes could set their own hours, pick their own cases. And how hard could it be to learn how to be one?

Anyway, that's when Dad decided to make a commercial for himself. But, unfortunately, making the commercial forced him to accept the obvious: that not knowing anything about something might be a bad way to get people to hire you to do that thing.

But then he realized, hey, maybe not knowing anything about being a private detective was a good thing. Maybe it was actually his superpower!

So Dad started recording his commercial again: "Why hire me? Well, you ever wondered how a private eye finds a missing person? Or trails a cheating husband? So have I! So hire me, and I'll figure it out. I'll try stuff the other guys won't even consider – 'cause I don't know any better.

"Hire me, Drew Winnette, 'Your On the Fly Private Eye', 'cause I'll put my ass on the line for you!"