Hope stared at the ceiling, where a juvenile spider monkey named Mabel was currently attempting to unscrew a lightbulb.
Her father looked up from a spreadsheet, saw the notebook, and sighed. He took off his glasses, polished them on his shirt, and said the words that would change everything: hope harper daddy's monkey business
The real issue wasn’t the flyer. The real issue was that Hope, at seventeen, had already submitted early applications to three colleges far, far away. The personal essay was titled “Growing Up Human in a Non-Human World.” She’d written about responsibility, resilience, and the time she’d had to teach a howler monkey named Kevin not to throw feces at the mailman. Hope stared at the ceiling, where a juvenile
The monkeys weren’t performers. They were cover. The whole operation – the poker games, the tax-filing mandrill, the sequined vests – was a front for laundering money and smuggling confiscated primate habitats out of Africa. The real issue was that Hope, at seventeen,
Hope Harper knew two things for certain by the age of twelve: her father loved her more than anything in the world, and he was absolutely, certifiably insane about monkeys.
The second week, things got weird.