The Rule of Threes

by Marcy Campbell

  She went bustling out of the room just as the phone rang, and I heard her talking to someone about flu shots. The call got increasingly tense, at least what I could hear of it. “It’s only available that one day . . . well, I really can’t . . . you don’t need to use that language with me . . .”

  I heard her hang up the phone, then she came back in and handed me a glass of water. “Sorry about that,” she said. She pushed her hair off her forehead and let out an exasperated sigh. “Seems like everybody wants something from me today, and the day hasn’t barely started yet.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. Have you eaten breakfast?”

  “Not much,” I answered, remembering my half a Pop-Tart.

  “Let me get you some crackers.”

  She opened the army-green metal cabinet on the wall and started shoving things around. I saw a roll of gauze and some of those ice packs you smack against something to make them cold. There were several pink bottles of Pepto-Bismol, but next to those, something caught my eye—a white box with red letters and a picture of a bottle shaped like the allergy spray my mom squirted up her nose on heavy pollen days like today. I’d seen her using it this morning. NARCAN was written on the box in all caps.

  I pointed. “Have you ever used that?”

  “That? Goodness no,” Mrs. Sherman said, pulling out a basket full of packaged saltines. “Here they are.” She handed me a pack and closed the cabinet. “Drink all that water,” she said. “Lots of headaches are caused by dehydration, you know.”

  I nodded and nibbled a cracker. The other cracker in the pack was crunched to bits. All those little white cracker flakes in the bottom of the bag unfortunately reminded me again of my broken shell, and Tony. Just the thought of our argument made my head throb even more. I wished at that moment he were an exchange student. Then there would be a set date for his departure.

  “Do you have any Tylenol?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Sherman said. She patted my knee. “I can’t give you any medicine, hon, even over-the-counter stuff, not without a parent’s written permission. Your parents would have to come down here and sign a form.”

  She leaned against the table and rolled her eyes. “I know, I know,” she continued, though I hadn’t said anything. “If they’re going to come down here and fill out a form, they might as well give you some Tylenol themselves. Or take you home.” She rested a warm hand on my shoulder. “Is there anything else I can help you with? Anything you want to talk about?”

  Suddenly, all my anxieties and worries, every issue, big and small, that had been jamming up my brain at night while I tried to sleep, came rushing into that spot behind my eyes where the headache was. Maybe that was why it hurt. I opened my mouth, but didn’t know where to start.

  Mrs. Sherman tilted her head. “I’m not a psychologist or anything, but people have said I’m a good listener.”

  She looked at me with these big puppy-dog eyes, like she couldn’t wait for me to spill my guts. It felt weird. I started noticing how uncomfortable I was on the hard table. The tag in my shirt was scratching the back of my neck, and I was way too warm. I felt myself shut down.

  I took a big swig of water. “Thank you, but . . . I think this water is working already. I think I was just dehydrated.”

  “Whatever you say,” she said and gave my knee another pat.

  I could tell I’d disappointed her. It seemed clear she actually enjoyed talking with kids about their problems, and she could tell I had some problems to talk about. In fact, the only thing that looked more disappointed than her face was this room. The whole place was so industrial-looking, the walls a pea green that looked like the soup Olive’s brother was allergic to. There was no art, just a poster on how to give the Heimlich maneuver.

  Maybe when the Spirit Week contest was over, I’d give this place a redo, just for fun.

  Why not? It wasn’t so different from doing the outer office. This was just another outer office on a smaller scale. I couldn’t get it done in time for the judging, and Mr. V probably wouldn’t let us have two entries anyway, but maybe I could get started. Talk about school spirit! What was more spirited than going above and beyond the contest just to do something nice for a nice person?

  “Have you thought about redecorating in here?” I asked, following Mrs. Sherman back to the main room.

  She laughed loudly. “What, you don’t like my artwork?” Besides the Heimlich poster, the only “art” was a diagram on an easel about how to properly blow your nose so you wouldn’t spread germs.

  She stopped laughing when she saw I wasn’t. “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I’m working on the outer office where Mrs. Abbott sits for the Spirit Week contest, and this space has a lot in common with that one.”

  “Well, I . . .” Her face softened, and I could see her picturing what could be. We both were.

  Just then, her phone rang, but before she picked it up, she said, “I’d love that, hon.”

  I got out just as a boy went in, clutching his stomach and looking very pale. I started down the hall toward my locker while taking my hand sanitizer out of my front backpack pocket. I gave myself a spritz. My head was feeling better already.

  Call It Done

  “I’m proud of you girls,” Mrs. Abbott said. She was standing in front of her desk holding her bowl of lemon drops. I’d already eaten three, and so had Olive. Because it was Saturday, Mrs. Abbott was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with a big, fat bird on it. During the school week, she wore a skirt and blouse. She looked even more comfortable (and even less chic) in her weekend clothes. She also looked very happy with us, with everything we’d done.

  “You girls have sure made a difference in here,” she said. “I think I’m really going to look forward to coming to the office!”

  I smiled. There was nothing as great as knowing you’d made your client happy. And once I finished a design, I just wanted to get right to work on another one. I needed to tell Olive about redecorating Mrs. Sherman’s office, and Rachel, too, if she ever wanted to hang out with us again.

  “I hope all the students feel the same way you do!” I said.

  They’d have the chance to look at the entries on Monday, before they voted. Olive and I had checked the other rooms when we’d arrived at the school this morning, and no one had set up yet.

  “We have to tell people to vote for us!” Olive told her. “The cheerleaders were handing out flyers in study hall yesterday, telling people to vote for the main hallway. And this kid had a Blow Pop and said the math team had given it to him.”

  “Can they do that?” I asked.

  Olive shrugged. “I guess?”

  “So, you’ve got the cheerleading team and the math team. Who else?” Mrs. Abbott asked.

  “There’s the boys’ basketball team,” I said. “They got the hallway outside the gym, and student council has the car loop hallway, plus science club is in the science room, which was a lucky draw for them.” I’d seen no plans from any of those groups. Had they even made a plan? Who knew what they were going to do? It was all one big question mark.

  “You look worried,” Olive said to me. “Don’t be worried. Come on.” She motioned me over to our beautiful blue bookcase. Tony had done a great job helping me paint it, and Olive had added a swirly white pattern along the sides that almost looked like the Milky Way and matched the swirls in a rug we’d found.

  She handed Mrs. Abbott her phone. “Will you take our picture?”

  “Absolutely!” she said. “Smile!”

  “Now, one over here,” Olive said and moved to the poster of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night that Mrs. Abbott had found when Olive asked her if she had any posters. I’d put it in one of the many frames I had lying around, a silver one that looked expensive but wasn’t. It was totally normal to take photos of our “afters”; I usually took them myself and put them in a portfolio to show future clients. But I wasn’t usually
in them. Still, this was fun.

  “Wait,” I said, “we can’t forget the new filing system!”

  I pulled open a drawer full of copies of blank forms, stuff like permission slips that got sent home to parents. I didn’t have enough money to buy a new cabinet, but I’d completely reorganized and labeled everything because Mrs. Abbott said she never had time to get to that.

  “Say cheese,” Mrs. Abbott said as we posed by the cabinet.

  “No, not cheese. Say BFFs!” Olive yelled.

  “BFFs,” I said, but my smile was weak. I’d texted Rachel to say we were setting up the room, my last-ditch effort to get her involved. As usual, she didn’t respond.

  “Rachel didn’t happen to text you today, did she?” I asked Olive.

  “Nope,” Olive said, but I couldn’t see her face. She moved back by Mrs. Abbott’s desk and spread her arms wide. “It really is fantabulous!” she declared.

  She was right. For once, Olive’s mash-up of fantastic and fabulous worked. The room was too great for just one adjective. The rug we picked out, and the chairs we refinished, and the painted bookshelf, and the art, and the office supplies—they all looked wonderful. And that didn’t even take into account the way we’d rearranged the space to give it better flow. No more banged shins on the mini refrigerator. Hooray! I was really, really pleased.

  But I was still me, so I couldn’t help worrying.

  “The basketball team has a ton of kids,” I said, biting my lip. All the other teams had way more members than just little old me and Olive. There were no rules about team size.

  “Sure, they have quantity,” Olive said, “but do they have quality? Have they been doing this as long as we have? Do they have our special brand of design know-how-ed-ness?”

  I laughed. “Okay, okay, I see your point.” Olive leaned close to Mrs. Abbott and took a selfie in front of the bowl of lemon drops.

  “You girls crack me up,” Mrs. Abbot said. She popped a drop into her mouth. “What do you say? Should we call it done?”

  I backed up a bit, looked carefully at each area of the room. I walked over to the trio of items on top of the filing cabinet: the yellow paper sorter we’d bought at the Shoppe, a rectangular basket, and a 3-D metal L for Long Branch. I moved the L slightly to the right while I thought about starting on Mrs. Sherman’s office. Heck, maybe I could redesign Mr. V’s office. Why not?

  I stood back, looked again, and smiled. This was probably our best job yet.

  “Done!” I declared.

  Olive’s mom came to pick us up. Noah was asleep in his car seat, and Olive sat next to him with me on her other side.

  “He’s always falling asleep in the car,” she whispered to me. “Sometimes my mom takes him for a drive when she can’t get him to sleep any other way.”

  I wondered what it would be like to have a baby brother, crying in the night, making a mess of everything. I used to think the worst part of having a baby sibling was that they’d break your stuff, but apparently breaking stuff was something some people never grew out of. I shook the thought from my head and instead looked out as all the familiar stores and houses went by my window.

  I noticed the brightly painted doors on Elm, as though all the neighbors on the block had gotten together with a bunch of color swatches and decided to make something beautiful. I thought of the outer office and felt a little flutter in my chest that I realized must have been pride. We’d just done something huge, a major design project for our new school that would really help us make a name for ourselves. Maybe someday I’d be accepting a mega design award, and I’d point back to this very contest as the moment that started it all.

  And we’d done it with just the two of us, although Rachel had helped in the beginning, and Tony had helped later on. Come to think of it, I guessed there were always three people involved, just not the same three. And of course, there was Grandma, who didn’t do any hands-on work but always inspired me. Would she be there to see me get an award someday? I didn’t want to think about that, either.

  Olive leaned over as I got out of the car. “You did good,” she whispered, careful not to wake Noah.

  “We did good,” I whispered back.

  Mom opened the front door before I got to it.

  “Where were you?” she asked, looking confused. I noticed she was wearing the same striped top and sweatpants she’d had on yesterday.

  “At school with Olive, remember? We were setting up the room? Dad took the bookcase over there yesterday.”

  “Oh . . . yes, yes, that’s right.” She stepped aside to let me in and pulled her limp, kind of greasy-looking hair back into a ponytail with an elastic she had around her wrist.

  “How’s Grandma?” I asked, because I had a feeling my mom’s messy look had something to do with her. “Is she . . . okay?” Okay wasn’t the right word, but I didn’t have another one.

  Mom said, “I was just on the phone with the assisted living facility about the room we’re waiting for in the memory care unit. They still don’t have one, but there’s a room in another unit, and they could transfer her later, and I really think . . .”

  She paused, and it seemed like she was figuring something out. Then she put an arm around me and squeezed me close. “I don’t need to bother you with this stuff,” she said. “We’ll get through it, somehow.”

  I pushed away from her. “Why does she need to go anyway?” I asked. I had thought I wouldn’t like it, having more people in our small house, but now the idea of Grandma going away made me anxious. And she was fine just yesterday.

  Mom sighed. “Honey, you know why. Grandma’s disease is getting worse. I know sometimes it doesn’t seem like it—”

  “You just want to get rid of her!” My voice had gotten so loud so quickly, and I surprised myself with how angry I felt.

  Mom’s jaw clenched, and she looked like she wanted to pick up the nearest fragile object and smash it. Luckily, the only things within reach were our fall coats. After a few deep breaths, she said, “I’m not even going to reply to that.”

  “Good!” I said. “Don’t!”

  I ran to my room, gathered up an armful of magazines, dumped them on my rug, and sat in the middle, flipping through pages, staring at the pictures, and stopping to read captions about things like apron sinks or pendant lights.

  The thing about decorating magazines? The thing that made me feel calm when I looked at them? They offered solutions. It didn’t matter how messy a “before” was, because an “after” was coming, and it would be awesome. Of course, it didn’t happen by magic. There was a lot of work involved, a lot of time. It didn’t happen in the seconds it took to turn a couple pages.

  I felt myself slowly calming down. I shouldn’t have said that to my mom, I knew that. But also, I didn’t see why we couldn’t give the current situation more of a chance. Mom and Dad were telling me I had to adapt to Tony being in the house, so why couldn’t everyone adapt to Grandma?

  I heard Grandma flip down the footrest on the recliner in the spare room, making its big clunking sound. She’d been sitting in the chair to work on a cross-stitch she’d started after she got here. She’d done cross-stitch for as long as I could remember.

  Maybe she’d want to look through a magazine with me. I grabbed one and tiptoed to her doorway, peeking in. She smiled, and set her fabric down on her lap. The smile meant the coast was clear, that she was okay with visitors, that she remembered me.

  “What are you up to today?” she said as I sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Well, actually, I just got back from putting the final touches on that room I decorated at my school, for the contest.”

  “How wonderful!” Grandma exclaimed.

  She remembered! “I can show you some pictures if you want, on my phone,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, “but maybe later, dear one. My eyes are tired.” She looked down at the fabric and the yellow floss in her lap. “I should stop this for today.”

  She’d made a lot of pro
gress on her cross-stitch since I’d last seen it. I wasn’t sure what it was before, but now it was clearly a house, her house, the one Mom said she’d probably never live in again. Grandma had a big magnifying glass that hung on a string around her neck and helped her to better see the holes in the fabric, and she wasn’t wearing a scarf, which made her neck look naked. The string from the magnifier had cut into her skin, leaving a red line right below the low bun in her hair.

  I’d brought in a Better Homes and Gardens magazine because it was Grandma’s favorite. At her house, there was a bookshelf in the basement filled with tons of them, all dusty and musty. She never seemed to recycle any. When we used to visit her and Grandpa on Sundays, I’d push over a stool to reach them, and I remembered, when I was really little, accidentally pulling down a whole shelf full and watching them cascade onto the tiled floor. I remembered being scared Grandma would yell at me for making a mess, but instead she sat down on the floor with me, picked one up, and said I could look at anything I wanted, as long as I showed her the pictures I liked most.

  Grandma’s favorites were the garden photos. I’d found one in a recent issue that I knew she’d like. I held out the page in front of her, and she took the magnifier from around her neck and put on her regular reading glasses.

  “Look at all the goldfish,” I said. There was a pond next to a little stone patio with an old iron table and chairs.

  “Oh, now wouldn’t it be nice to sit there in the morning with a cup of coffee?” She reached back and rubbed her neck where the red line was.

  “I thought you hated coffee, Grandma,” I said. She always said she didn’t need it, that the birds were enough to wake her up.

  “Oh?” she said, lost in thought for a moment. “Well, tea, then.” She smiled.

  Next to the pond was a bed of wildflowers, all different kinds, all growing every which way.

  “It’s so random,” I said, “but it still looks nice.”

  “It only looks random,” she said, pointing. “Look here, see how the color carries through. How there’s purple here, here, and here.” Grandma moved her finger across the page. “See how the shape of this flower is copied in the stone planter, and even in the finial on top of the gate.”