Little Do We Know(67)

As I was shutting my locker, my phone chirped.

Dad: Need to see you in my office.

“That’s weird.” I showed Alyssa the screen. “Come with me. I’m sure it will just take a sec.” We changed course, heading for the office instead of the cafeteria.

I opened the glass door. Dad’s assistant was on the phone, but she covered the mouthpiece and said, “Go in. He’s expecting you.”

“What’s up?” I asked as I flung the door open. And then my stomach dropped. Aaron was sitting in one of the chairs on the other side of his desk, facing Dad. They both looked upset.

No.

He knows about Aaron and me.

How can he know about Aaron and me?

“Have a seat,” Dad said. “Alyssa, would you excuse us, please?”

This is bad. This is very, very bad.

Alyssa backed out of his office and closed the door behind her.

Aaron is going to lose his job. Because of me.

“What’s going on?”

They looked at each other. My heart was beating so hard I could feel the steady thump in the back of my throat.

“We need to tell you something,” Dad said. “We were planning to tell you and Luke later today, but now it can’t wait.”

Luke? What did he have to do with it?

“What’s going on?”

I was waiting for my dad to reply, but Aaron jumped in instead. “I’ve been sending all our promotional videos to the local pastors so they could help us promote Admissions Night.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I know. And?”

“A couple of them have been really helpful and especially vocal. Like the pastor at Lakeside.”

Lakeside Christian Church was a few towns away from us and easily three, maybe four times bigger than we were. They televised their Sunday services, streamed sermons on their website, and had a huge following on YouTube. Dad had never told me which churches invested in the school, but I’d always assumed Lakeside was one of them.

Aaron looked at Dad. Dad looked at me.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I sent him Luke’s video. I told him it wasn’t part of the campaign…that I was only sending it because I thought he would find it powerful and inspiring.”

My stomach dropped. “You didn’t…”

“I told him to,” Dad quickly added.

I looked at my dad, and then back at Aaron, trying to decide which one of them to scream at first. Instead I asked a stupid question. “When?”

“On Saturday,” Aaron said. I could tell by the look on his face that he had more to say. “He posted it online.”

“He what?” I dug my fingernails into the leather chair and stared at him, trying not to scream.

“I’m sorry,” Aaron said. “I’m so sorry.”

I looked at Dad, waiting for him to parrot Aaron’s words, but he didn’t. “Come see this,” he said as he curled his finger toward him. I stood and walked around to his side of the desk. Luke’s video was open on his monitor.

Dad pressed PLAY.

“Hi. My name is Luke…”

Dad pointed to the lower left-hand corner and I saw a heart next to the number 5,438. As I was watching, it climbed to 5,439. 5,440. 5,441.

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I wanted to yell, and I wanted to storm out of the room, and I wanted to drive straight to Foothill High and find Luke so I could tell him what they had done. But my feet seemed to be rooted to the floor; my mouth no longer seemed capable of forming words.

“I’m sure he thought he was doing Covenant a favor by posting it,” Dad said. “There’s a link to the website and details about Luke speaking at Admissions Night.”

There was something about the way he said it, as if the fact that it was serving a purpose made it somehow okay. I narrowed my eyes on him. “Why hasn’t it been deleted yet?”

Dad folded his arms across his chest. “Because it’s working. More than a hundred people have downloaded applications since yesterday,” he said. “The phone has been ringing off the hook. We’ve been getting RSVPs to Admissions Night all afternoon.”

I looked back and forth at the two of them. “You’re kidding me right now. You shared Luke’s video without his permission and you’re talking about applications?”

The numbers on Dad’s screen climbed higher:

5,459

5,467





5,475




“Luke trusted me. I trusted you, Aaron. And you both…” I couldn’t finish my sentence.

“It was an accident,” Aaron said.

I covered my mouth. “I don’t believe you,” I said. It might have been a mistake initially, but neither one of them had done anything to stop it or fix it. Dad still hadn’t even apologized for his role in the whole thing.

“You have to see something,” Dad said. He closed the video and opened an email.

The message was addressed to Luke. The writer identified herself as a forty-two-year-old woman with stage four bone cancer and three kids, two sons and a daughter, all in high school. She’d seen Luke’s video, and she had to write to thank him, because his words had given her and her whole family hope—not that she would survive, because they knew that was impossible—but that she would be going to a good place. She called his message a gift from God, an answered prayer.