Papa asked. “No. Joey locked up. Why?” Papa shook his head, dismissing me as he walked to the back, still looking at a scrap of printer paper in his hands. The door to the office slammed. “I’m gonna tell Mom!” I yelled toward the door. Papa probably couldn’t hear me, but I said it anyway. And I would tell Mom. He wasn’t supposed to be at 313 until his cardiologist gave him the all clear. How could he recover if he kept his stress level at a ten? Pissed and stressed were not the ideal moods for Papa to be in before I presented my idea for a marketing campaign. But it was now or never. As the newest and least known store, 313 needed customers if we wanted to keep it running. I didn’t have a complete advertisement with photos and slogans to show Papa, but I’d printed a rough draft of it as well as an outline of the marketing plan Landon and I created together. We’d fleshed out the details on the phone the previous night. After memorizing the information Landon passed to me from the Pilots sales team, I could recite the statistics about advertising with them like it was the Pledge of Allegiance.
