Dewey Fairchild, Sibling Problem Solver

by Lorri Horn

  “No problem at all. Can I use your computer?”

  Dewey made himself at home with a stack of pancakes, two slices of bacon and found an old Ren & Stimpy cartoon to watch on the computer. Then he checked in with Clara, began to flip through his notes a bit, texted Colin, and played some Minecraft until he got a text from Claire saying they’d be back soon. She suggested he hide out next in her room, as she’d be doing some homework, and Adam would be upstairs since he needed to shower.

  Dewey rinsed his plate and made sure the kitchen looked the same as he’d found it, albeit three pancakes and two bacons shorter, and headed up to Claire’s closet.

  As he opened Claire’s closet door and moved some things around to make space, he spotted Claire’s binders on her desk and considered how he might have brought some homework along for the downtime. He had five math problems to finish and had to start a chapter in a new independent reading book. Maybe he could just find a book to read in Claire’s room. He stepped out of her closet to look at Claire’s bookshelves to see if anything interested him. He found some he’d liked in fourth grade. What else? He pulled a book that looked like science fiction off the shelf, sat down on the white bedspread of her neatly made bed, and began to read.

  Murder, mystery, outer space: he got lost in it within about forty-five seconds of reading, and forgot his place in the universe, let alone about the Bautista-Knickerbocker’s return, until he heard the door open downstairs. Dewey jumped off Claire’s bed and grabbed the book and got back into the closet to hide.

  Claire came up to her room and plopped her stuff down on her desk chair. Before Dewey could stick his head out for a friendly hello, Adam was hot on her heels.

  “Stop it!” she yelled.

  “Three, two . . .” Adam counted down, shaking and threatening to open the soda can.

  “Mom!!” Claire yelled, running out of the room as he chased her.

  “In the yard, Claire.”

  Claire ran from Adam as he chased her like a mad bee at a picnic. She ran back into her room and tried to slam her bedroom door, but he pushed it open and in he came.

  “One!” He pulled the tab. From inside the closet, Dewey heard the pressurized can’s explosion and Claire’s scream as the sound of soda spraying hard and fast hit the air.

  “Uh oh,” Adam said.

  Diet cola had sprayed all over Claire’s bedspread, walls, and dripped from the ceiling down onto the carpet. Wow. How could there be so much liquid in one small can, Dewey wondered, peering out through a crack in the closet door.

  “Uh, oh,” Adam said again, paralyzed as the cola dripped down onto his head in large drops. He also wondered how such a small can could produce so much liquid. It was better than he’d ever imagined. And worse.

  Claire’s face, chest and arms dripped in sticky wet cola. She stood frozen, stunned, like a statue in the rain, her hair wet with droplets of soda, her eyes crying drops of diet cola tears.

  Adam slowly walked backwards out of the room, reached the doorknob with his back toward the door, and fumbled with the door behind him, never taking his eyes off Claire. He wasn’t sure what she might do to him, but he was pretty sure he’d gone too far and he wasn’t sticking around to find out.

  Dewey slowly opened the door to Claire’s closet and looked at her.

  “Borrow this?” he asked, gingerly holding up the book.

  She nodded ever so slightly so as not to shake any extra drops off her wet self.

  “I’ll just let myself out. I’d say I’ve got enough data. Yup. P-lenty. We’ll talk tomorrow. Tonight maybe.”

  Claire just stood there, getting stickier by the moment, and offered another almost indiscernible nod and licked her lips.

  “Okay, then.” Dewey could find no good closure. No easy exit. He couldn’t very well offer to help her clean it up and risk getting caught. Leaving her in that mess was cruel! He handed her a tissue, and then another. Then, he carefully placed his hand on her damp shoulder.

  “You’re in a sticky situation, alright,” he nodded slowly as she just stared at him.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.” He kept nodding on his way out, more to convince himself than Claire. “Thanks for the book?”

  He thought teacher problems were hard? He should have known! Sibling problems would be a nightmare!

  The Big Reveal

  Dewey remembered the day his baby sister was born. They had all talked about what would happen that special day—how Clara would come babysit, and how his parents would go to the hospital to have the baby.

  Still, when he came into the kitchen and found Clara and not his mother or father, Dewey still remembered how his small heart jumped.

  “They’re at the hospital,” Stephanie said, eating a bowl of cereal.

  Clara sat down and patted her lap for Dewey to hop up.

  “The baby is on her way!” she added. “You’ll get to meet her soon.”

  Dewey had wanted a baby brother, not another sister. He already had a sister. He wanted a boy. But, he did feel excited to meet any baby now. He and his mom had decorated the baby’s room with some of his paintings. They had a list of names, and he got to peek when no one else did. He wondered which name they would pick.

  “When can we go?” he asked jumping off Clara’s lap and then up and down.

  “As soon as we get the call.”

  Dewey remembered that day staying home and baking cookies with Clara. Little did he know, six years later, those same warm cookies and that very same Clara would be sitting with him on a comfy couch together in their small attic office, learning about kids and new siblings.

  “What a disaster!”

  Kid after kid had parent after parent thinking it was fun to surprise them with the big reveal news. Kids popped balloons filled with either pink or blue confetti. Kids bit into cupcakes with pink or blue frosting to reveal what ‘flavor’ their new baby would be.

  But in YouTube video after video, the big reveal Clara and Dewey witnessed on their big screen was that the kids didn’t think that this was a fun game at all!

  “I don’t want to pop it!” What little kid would? Well, Dewey would, but he got why that little guy was afraid. It was a big fat balloon and was going to make a big fat noise, and little kids like to hang onto their balloons. Everybody knows that, Dewey thought.

  Dewey and Clara watched as the mom in the video tried to pop it for the little guy.

  She went to grab the balloon, but her big pregnant belly wouldn’t let her reach it. She bumped it by mistake with her belly and it floated to the floor, at which point she tried to bend and pick it up, but no luck there either. She was coaxing her son to pick it up. Finally, the camera dipped and Clara and Dewey were watching their ceiling as her husband got the balloon and a pencil and hand them to the kid.

  Finally, the kid closed his eyes, stuck in the pencil tip, and out shot pink confetti. “So!” the parents coaxed the kid. “What do you say! You’re going to have a baby sister!”

  Dewey watched as the kid dropped his head like an anvil.

  “I don’t want a baby. I want a balloon!” he cried, stomping his foot. “Waah!!” he wailed and wailed.

  “What a bust,” Dewey laughed at his own play on words. “Get it? Bust?”

  “Got it, sir.”

  “Wonder how that all worked out?” Dewey stuffed some popcorn into his mouth.

  Next came the kid with the gender reveal cupcake.

  “Okay, Mommy and Daddy have a surprise for you today! We have a cupcake for you! If it’s blue inside it’s a boy, and if it’s pink inside, it’s a girl!

  She just ate her little cuppie cake, happy as can be, when wham. She hit the blue center.

  “Oh, nooo! I want pinkkk!” she was crying. “I want pink! No fair!!”

  “But it’s not a girl. It’s a boy. You’re going to have a little brother,” they explained.

  That little kid in a pink top, with a picture
of a pink scientist bear on it with a pink bow and pink and purple beakers, folded her arms across her little chest and wailed with her blue tongue, “Give him back!”

  “These are funny,” Dewey laughed. “But they’re awful! And look at these pictures of when the babies come home. Do these siblings look happy?!”

  Dewey flipped through a bunch of pictures of babies being held by older siblings. One girl frowned so much Dewey laughed, commenting on how he thought people only drew sad mouths turned down that much. Another boy looked as if he’d flush that baby down the toilet, given the chance. These were some funny pictures, and some unhappy siblings.

  “Wonder how it went when they told Claire about the new baby and brought him home? They’re only eighteen months apart. But wouldn’t it make more sense, then, that she’d torture him, not the other way around?

  “I don’t remember anything from eighteen months. Claire’s not gonna either. She’ll have to ask some questions. There’s got to be something to all of this that can help me figure out how to help her.”

  “Eighteen months apart, you say? I do have one thought, sir.”

  Dewey looked up hopeful and nodded her on.

  “Baboons don’t laugh at each other’s bottoms.”

  If there was one thing Dewey had learned, it was that when he had no idea what Clara was talking about, help was on the way.

  “Baboons? Bottoms?”

  “Ever seen one?”

  “Maybe at the zoo? They have those big long faces?”

  “Right,” she said, pulling up an image.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said, looking at the picture. “And they have those big red puffy butts!” Dewey laughed. “I love those!”

  “That’s right. Shaggy all over. Except, sir, their faces. And their rather pronounced bottoms.”

  “Ah,” Dewey nodded, still not understanding why in the world they were talking about baboons and their bottoms.

  “Adam and Claire, you’ve said, are close in age. Perhaps a common cause,” she said, smoothing her already smooth grey bun.

  Dewey didn’t dare interrupt with a question.

  He looked at her, hardly daring to blink.

  She looked back at him, smiling gently.

  “Alrighty, then,” she slapped her knees and stood up.

  “What? Huh?”

  She looked at him, waiting for him to continue.

  He looked at her, waiting for the same.

  “The baboons? Their bottoms? I don’t get it.”

  “The saying?” she asked.

  “I guess so?” If she didn’t know, he knew he sure didn’t.

  “Oh, it’s an old idiom. Perhaps two peas who find themselves in the same pod might feel sympathy toward one another if the circumstances warrant it.”

  Now she had introduced peas in a pod. She was layering idiom atop idiom.

  Peas. Pods. Baboons. Bottoms. Hang on, thought Dewey. I can get this.

  “You mean the baboons don’t laugh at each other’s ridiculous butts because they’re in it together?”

  “Precisely.” She gave one nod of her head.

  “Okay!” Dewey clapped his hands together. “But Claire and Adam aren’t in it together.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Oh,” Dewey drew out the word, and as he did so, his mouth formed the same round “o” as that very small word he had just made very long.

  Heads Up, Dewey

  The plan seemed simple enough. Dewey had to get Adam and Claire to have a united cause. Five minutes into thinking about it, Dewey was already smacking his own forehead. Simple enough? What was he thinking? Simple would be getting Seraphina excited about flying mini-drones and Colin out there collecting rocks. Adam’s last stunt was going to make this a humongous task.

  Dewey spent the morning trying to come up with what they could possibly have as a common plight, given that they were not both sitting on red swollen bottoms. Nothing came to him though.

  “I’m hungry,” he grumbled. “My legs hurt from sitting in this chair for so long.” He got himself a snack and played a few rounds of Clash of Clans to clear his mind. Then, he went online to see what he could find on the topic of helping siblings to get along.

  “Ha! Make them hold hands until they’re friendly again?! I don’t think so!” he laughed, shoving a pretzel into his mouth. This was a funny idea—t-shirts sewn together trapping siblings to make them figure out how to get along.

  “Haha! If all else fails,” Dewey laughed. “I wonder if they have three-headed ones? I can just see me, Pooh, and Steph all crammed in one of those! Money jars for each fight. Lots of talking about feeeeelings. Share something positive at the dinner table.” What, like, ‘I’m positive this can of soda is going to explode all over you?’, Dewey thought to himself.

  Nothing he read seemed quite right. These all worked with what they didn’t have in common.

  Maybe I’m going about this the wrong way. I gotta figure out something that gets Adam to put all of his torture talents into defending Claire instead of tormenting her. Good, Dewey thought. Good! Hmm. What did they share in common that he might want to defend her about?

  He texted Claire and asked her to send him a list of everything she could think of that she and Adam had in common.

  everything food games people hobbies whatever you can think of

  Dewey also decided as bitter a pill it would be for Claire to swallow, he actually liked the idea of sharing one positive thing at the dinner table. It might prime Adam’s pump if Claire said something nice about him. Dewey would tell Claire to suggest the idea to her parents as something they learned in health class. Whose parents wouldn’t go for that? That’s just the kind of thing parents eat up at dinner, he chuckled to himself.

  Phew. Things were sort of moving the right direction. He’d wait for the list back from Claire and then feed her the dinner conversation suggestion.

  “Get it, Clara? See what I did there? ‘Feed her the dinner table conversation.’”

  Clara’s eyes crinkled in a smile.

  After Dewey had finished all of this problem solving and catching Clara up, he felt he needed to catch up with his friends. He wondered if Elinor and Seraphina would have another sleepover this weekend. Colin and Dewey wanted to figure out how to use their mini quad-copters to take pictures instead of just flying it around. He texted Colin a GIF of a mini-quad hovering. Colin returned one with an owl doing the identical kind of hover. Dewey then sent a cat trying to bat around and catch a mini-quad flying over a bed, and Colin sent a GIF of a rat flying, a mini-quad attached to its head and tail. Dewey laughed.

  when we go out?

  tomorrow

  When Dewey got to Colin’s he realized he’d forgotten to bring extra propellers.

  “Do you have any?”

  “Yeah, pretty sure.”

  But he didn’t.

  “We’d better go out on the grass, then.”

  They rode their bikes to the open elementary school field.

  “I remembered the memory card, though,” Colin said, sliding it into his mini-drone.

  “You know my dad says the military uses these to study how animals do stuff so they can imitate them?”

  “I know, right? Cool.”

  “Yeah. They figure if they can learn how to fly like a bat or swim like a fish or whatever, then they’ll have one leg up.”

  “Or a fin.”

  Dewey rolled his eyes.

  “They’re also trying to make these things as small as bugs.”

  “I think they already have.”

  “So cool.”

  “Okay, so what do we wanna do?”

  “Some selfies and overheads. Maybe some stills of those buildings?”

  Dewey began to lift his mini-quad off the ground, but it just hovered and crashed back down on the grass.

  “Maybe some flying practice?” Colin laughed.

  “I’m rusty,”
Dewey said flatly as he blew grass blades off his drone.

  Colin set his ’copter down and did some warm-up tricks.

  “Why don’t we just try with mine to start so we can save the battery in the other one?”

  Dewey agreed and they set off to find something they’d want to film.

  “Climb the tree. I’ll fly it up and take pictures,” Colin said.

  Dewey looked around to make sure no one would object, handed Colin his mini-quad, and shimmied up the tree.

  A cool breeze blew on his face, and his hands felt a bit raw from his quick ascension.

  He looked down at Colin, who began to send the humming mini-quad up.

  “Make a face. Do something.”

  Dewey slid himself out a bit more on the limb and wrapped his legs tightly around the thick branch. Grabbing on with his hands, he swung his body so he hung upside down. Out dropped his phone and some loose change.

  “Oh! Good! Stay there!” Colin yelled from below. He lowered the drone until it hovered just in front of Dewey’s face. As the blood rushed to Dewey’s head his tongue began to feel heavy in his mouth, and his ears got full like they were underwater. He felt his upper cheek bones thicken as if someone drew them in with heavy black lines and a slight headache loomed in the background. This was fun! He wondered how it was turning out.

  “Okay, that’s it!” he groaned and laughed as he pulled himself up, the drone still hovering and filming.

  “That was great!”

  Dewey climbed back down and felt the blood run back to his face as the laws of nature righted themselves in his body.

  “Did we get anything good?”

  Dewey picked up the change and his phone. Phew. No cracks. But there was a text. It was from Claire. She had sent her list of things in common with her brother. Dewey couldn’t believe what he read.

  Dewey’s Got Visitors

  Claire’s list read as follows:

  Both want a dog but can’t have one

  Both like ice cream, different kinds