Nothing but Trouble

by Jacqueline Davies

  “Where’s your friend?” Grandpop pivoted in his wheelchair, turning away from the TV to track her as she climbed the stairs.

  “Home. Not here. Who cares? She doesn’t come over every day.”

  “Well, pretty near every day. Or you go over there. Seems like you two are cats with your tails tied together. And the way that girl eats! It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen! Not a single Wheat Thin left in the house.”

  “Well, don’t worry. Your Wheat Thins are safe. She won’t be coming around anymore.”

  “Oh,” said Grandpop quietly. He shifted in his chair. “You had a fight?”

  “She had a fight. I just happened to be in the room.” Maggie sat down at the bottom of the stairs and rested her head in her hand.

  “Hmm.” He rubbed his stump of a leg, the one half taken by disease. Maggie stared at it and imagined her grandfather being eaten alive by sickness. The lump of ice cream in her stomach turned over. She stood up abruptly.

  “I’m going upstairs, Grandpop.”

  “Well, hold on, there. Who’s making dinner?” he asked. “Your mother hasn’t come home yet, and who knows what time she’ll get in?”

  “I’m not hungry,” said Maggie. She picked up her backpack and turned to go upstairs.

  “Well, that doesn’t mean I’m not! And I’m tired of heating up cans of soup. Come in the kitchen with me. We’ll scrounge up something.”

  “I don’t feel like—”

  “Get!” he said, pointing to the kitchen. Maggie did as she was told.

  After a thorough review of every cupboard, shelf, and the refrigerator, both Maggie and her grandfather agreed there was absolutely nothing to eat in the entire house.

  “What kind of a mother have you got?” asked Grandpop, as if her mother wasn’t in any way, shape, or form related to him, too.

  “She’s busy. She works,” said Maggie, slumped at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. She wasn’t used to defending her mother, but Grandpop’s refusal to allow her to retreat to her room made her feel like picking a fight. “You know, you could go to the store, too. The van can pick you up and bring you back, Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  “Your grandmom did the grocery shopping,” said Grandpop definitively.

  “Well, hear the news. Grandmom isn’t here anymore.” Maggie was tired. Her stomach still felt floppy, and she desperately wanted to lie down in the quiet of her room.

  Her grandfather pushed himself farther away in his wheelchair as if he needed to distance himself to see her properly. “What a wicked thing to say.”

  Maggie flipped through the pile of mail on the kitchen table. Junk. Junk. Junk. What a surprise. She could feel that bad part of her taking over, the part she didn’t want anyone to see. She knew she should care about Grandpop’s feelings, but right now she didn’t. He was right. She was wicked. And she couldn’t stop. “You know, sometimes I think how lucky Grandmom was . . . getting out.”

  “Really?” said Grandpop, wheeling his chair away from her. “Lucky? Your grandmom loved this town. And she loved me. And hear this news: She loved you, too. So if you’ve got some romantic notion in that addled head of yours that being dead is better than being in Odawahaka, then I think you might want to keep that ugly thought to yourself.”

  Maggie stared at her grandfather, still in the iron grip of anger, but ashamed of herself and how she’d behaved—and not knowing how to say I’m sorry.

  Yes, explosions are a fact of life.

  Which is why Maggie turned and threw up all over the kitchen floor.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “I’M SORRY.” LENA STOOD IN THE doorway of Maggie’s bedroom. It was dark out now, but Maggie didn’t know what time it was. No one had called her for dinner. She had fallen asleep and been surprised to hear the knocking on her bedroom door and even more surprised to see Lena standing on the other side when she opened up.

  Maggie rubbed her face. Her hair had taken on the appearance of a dandelion gone to seed—springy and puffed out. She could feel a strand of it stuck in her mouth. She raked her fingers over her tongue until she finally snagged the hair and extracted it, wiping her saliva-covered fingers on her jeans. She turned away from Lena and went back to her bed. While she’d been sleeping, she’d accidentally knocked the box with her father’s things to the floor, and all the contents had spilled out. She knelt down to gather the notebooks, photos, and newspaper clippings.

  “I didn’t mean to get you all upset like that,” said Lena, following her. “I don’t even know what I said, but it doesn’t matter because I did get you upset and I’m really, really sorry. Do you want to talk about it?” She crouched down next to Maggie and reached out to help gather the contents of the box.

  “Don’t touch it!” said Maggie. “Don’t . . . touch . . . anything.” She continued to organize and straighten the papers. There were so few of them, really. Her head felt like it was stuffed with mashed potatoes.

  Lena sat down on the floor, cross-legged. She didn’t seem angry, which was hard for Maggie to understand. In Maggie’s house, angry words followed angry words. And sometimes there was vomiting. But Lena seemed almost calm.

  Maggie put the last scrap of paper back in the box. “That’s everything I know about my dad. Everything. In that box.” She nudged the box with her foot. “I’ve spent years looking on the internet. I’ve asked my mom. But that’s it. That’s every last thing I know about him.”

  “It’s not a whole lot,” said Lena, looking at the photo on the top of the pile.

  Maggie shook her head. “It’s not enough. It’ll never be enough.” She pushed her hair back, wondering if she might catch the sound of her father whispering in her ear, but there was nothing. He was slipping away. Maggie tried hard to find a way to put this fear into words. “Sometimes I think I hack because it helps me feel like he’s near. It helps me feel like he’s still alive. But there isn’t enough,” she said, nudging the box again, “to keep him alive. And my mom won’t talk about him, ever. So when I read through his notes and then I follow his instructions, it’s like he’s still . . . being my dad.”

  Lena nodded thoughtfully. “I get what you’re saying. It’s kind of like how I keep rearranging my mom’s glassblowing stuff. You know, move it around, so it doesn’t just sit there. So it feels like she’s still in the house. Not so far away.”

  That should have made Maggie feel better, to know that she wasn’t the only one who had to work to pull a parent closer.

  But tonight, all she could feel was the differences, the things that made her and Lena seem like complete opposites. The hair, the height, the style, the vision, the mission, the way of looking at the world. Maggie thought again of the unkind things she had said to her grandfather, and she knew that Lena would never say such things—to anyone.

  A question popped into Maggie’s scientist brain, and she asked it without thinking. “How did we get to be friends?”

  Lena opened her eyes wide in surprise, as if she couldn’t believe that Maggie didn’t know the answer. “I chose you,” she said. “That very first day of school. You were the Girl Hiding in the Bushes. You were the Girl with the Secret Package. I took one look at you and said to myself, ‘That girl isn’t like everyone else. That girl does things her own way. And that’s my new best friend.’” Lena laughed and threw up her hands. “You were doomed, absolutely doomed, from that moment on.”

  Maggie was speechless. To be seen, really seen. To be understood. And still chosen? It seemed like a miracle to her—that is, if she’d been the kind of girl who believed in miracles. Believing in miracles, though—that was Lena’s department.

  In the end, the girls decided to do it Lena’s way. It was time for the Mouse to be more than a hack. Or perhaps to be the greatest hack that had ever been pulled off.

  Instead of sneaking into the school through the rusted rear door, Lena and Maggie had decided to ask the sixth graders to do their part. But would they? Would they get involved? Would they care? Enoug
h?

  People almost always let you down, grumbled Maggie’s father as the girls crept through the sleeping town at five o’clock in the morning.

  But Maggie had decided to trust Lena, and Lena was sure this hack would work. “Strength in numbers,” Lena said with confidence. “I believe.”

  “Okay,” said Maggie, trying to have some faith, too.

  Maggie and Lena crept along empty streets, each carrying a bundle of tightly rolled posters tied with string.

  “Whose house is this?” asked Lena, whispering as they approached a tidy two-story house on Berger Avenue. The porch was covered in Halloween decorations, with several blowing ghosts hanging in a straight row as if they were trying out for the Rockettes. A giant furry spider the size of a Hula Hoop leaned against the carport.

  “Jenna’s,” said Maggie. She quietly tiptoed onto the porch and left a rolled-up poster on the plastic table by the door. The poster was tied with a bright red ribbon that had a note attached to it:

  WILL YOU PLEASE HANG THIS POSTER FOR ME?

  YOUR FRIEND AND FUTURE CLASS PRESIDENT—

  roar!

  There was also a small, neat cube of Swiss cheese hanging from the ribbon.

  “I feel like I’m leaving a piece of my heart,” Lena whispered.

  Maggie and Lena continued, winding through town, leaving the posters on the porches of their classmates.

  One poster remained, strapped onto Maggie’s backpack as they hurried into school. They had run out of time and didn’t want to risk being late, which might have aroused suspicion. “We’ll sneak in the back door,” said Maggie. “It’ll be faster.”

  “Maybe there will still be daisies!” said Lena with enthusiasm. But the bush had turned brown without a single bloom left.

  Maggie pulled up on the doorknob as she always did, prepared to whack the door with her hip to make it swing open on its rusty hinges. The door didn’t move. She tried again. “How weird . . .” She bent down to examine the doorknob and its lock. The doorknob was brand-new, the lock shiny and expensive.

  “Maggie?” said Lena in a carefully controlled voice. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Maggie stood up and followed Lena’s frightened gaze. There was a small security camera bolted to the side of the building about fifteen feet off the ground. It was pointed directly at the door.

  There’s no law against trying to get to school on time! whispered her father fiercely.

  “Okay,” said Maggie to Lena. “Let’s not freak out. We’ll just walk away. Like we were late for school—”

  “We are late for school,” hissed Lena.

  “You don’t have to whisper! It’s not recording sound!” Then the two girls broke into a run and hurried to the front of the school.

  They made it to B-1 after the first bell had rung, but Mrs. Dornbusch hadn’t arrived yet. Kayla was taking attendance. “I won’t mark you tardy,” she said, smiling, and Maggie knew Kayla was in full campaign mode.

  “Give me the poster,” whispered Lena.

  “No! We should just crumple it up. Throw it out. Get rid of it. Wait! Do you think Shute put security cameras in every classroom?” Maggie began to scan the corners of B-1. For someone who loved technology as much as she did, the thought of a Shute-controlled surveillance system sent shivers up her spine.

  “Give me the poster,” said Lena calmly. “I believe.”

  Maggie’s hand felt shaky as she handed the poster to Lena. Inside her head, she said, I believe, too. Even though she didn’t, she wanted to.

  Lena carried the rolled-up poster, with its bright red ribbon and offering of cheese, and laid it carefully on Mrs. Dornbusch’s desk. No one noticed. Kayla was busy with attendance; Colt was reading a book; Becky, Grace, Brianna, and Shana were talking about the upcoming game against the Mount Carmel Red Tornadoes, which was expected to be a steamrolling since the Tornadoes had lost every game that season; Max and Tyler were playing keep-away with Chris’s sneaker while Stevie and Riley cheered them on; Jenna was looking out the window at a flock of birds migrating south; and Lyle was slowly eating a pencil eraser.

  A moment later, Mrs. Dornbusch swept into the room and told Kayla, who was lecturing the sixth graders about something, to “put a sock in it.” The students immediately sensed that the Dungeon Dragon was in a “scorched earth” mood, and the volume of chatter in the class dropped by half.

  Mrs. Dornbusch looked at the poster on her desk, flipped the card over once, then ripped the red ribbon off with one vicious snap of her wrist. Maggie happened to know that it was the poster declaring that Everyone deserves a turn AT BAT, and she was certain Mrs. Dornbusch would understand that the poster was a protest against Principal Shute, a man whom Mrs. Dornbusch despised. Would she join the revolution? Would she be on their side? Would she, at the very least, hang the poster on her wall? Perhaps on the chalkboard directly beneath the number 149, which was the number of days she had left at Oda M?

  Mrs. Dornbusch’s eyes swept over the poster. Then, with unusual force, she crushed it and dropped it in the trash can next to her desk.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  LUCKILY FOR THE CANDIDACY OF THE Mouse, the sixth graders who had received the anonymous posters that morning had not had the same reaction as Mrs. Dornbusch. The posters were everywhere. They overwhelmed the hallways. Crowded the entrance to the cafeteria. Dominated the gym. It seemed like wherever you turned, there was the Mouse staring back at you with his simple message: You Matter.

  The other candidates had made posters, too. Colt’s was handmade, featuring lightning bolts and planets, with the simple slogan: “Vote for Colt.” Kayla’s poster was more impressive: it looked like she was running for president of the United States. A real photographer had taken her picture, and the professionally printed slogan at the bottom read, Go for the Gold!

  Still, most of the sixth-grade students were talking about the Mouse—and the fact that Principal Shute had failed to pin responsibility for the posters on any one particular student. After all, there was no rule against helping a candidate hang posters, even if you had no idea who that candidate was.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Platt, delighted by the way the sixth graders were getting involved, had hung a few posters of his own that said, I bet the Mouse would join the Robotics Club if it could. How about you? Meetings are Tuesdays after school in Room 217. ROAR! Maggie was sure that no one would attend that afternoon’s meeting, but she admired Mr. Platt’s never-say-die attitude. He was so sure his Robotics Club would be a great success. Someday.

  Maggie was waiting for Lena by the flagpole after school, still thinking about Mr. Platt’s indomitable spirit, when Lena grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. “Talk about a home run! The posters have only been up for a day, and everyone is talking about them. What a great campaign.”

  As Maggie turned, she caught sight of Allie and Emily getting into Emily’s mother’s car. Tuesday was the day they rehearsed with the high school chorus. Maggie watched as her old friends laughed about something, completely unaware that she was watching them. Unaware that she was even there.

  Maggie and Lena started to hike up the hill, and Maggie nodded to Lena’s chatter about the campaign posters. Lena took out her camera and began a series of action photos of the tops of her shoes as she walked and talked, but Maggie was lost in thought. Seeing Emily and Allie had gotten her thinking about change: how some things change and some things don’t. Ever. The bigger things. Her grandfather’s creeping illness. Her mother’s unending sadness. The things that really mattered.

  “You’re quiet,” said Lena. “Anything wrong?”

  “No,” said Maggie. “Just thinking.”

  They continued for a block in silence, before Lena raised the question of their next challenge: the candidate speech. The speech was absolutely mandatory. No speech, no campaign. Maggie and Lena had been kicking around a few ideas that all involved some pretty expensive equipment, like speakers and wireless transmitters. When they reached Maggie’s
house, a service truck was pulling away.

  “Oh, what’s he gone and done now?” asked Maggie in exasperation. There was a rule in the house that Grandpop was not supposed to call any service people until Maggie had taken a first look. She could fix most plumbing problems, a lot of wiring issues, and even some structural weaknesses (a couple of which had been caused by her own explosions in the basement).

  But when Maggie and Lena walked into the living room, they found Grandpop grinning as if he had just invented the electric lightbulb.

  “I got us that Wi-Fi!” he said. “They just finished installing it. There’s waves going all through the house,” he said, swishing his hands back and forth as if he could see them. “And that means I can finally see what that Vinnie is up to. Go get that computer of yours, Maggie. Bring it down here and fire it up. I’m going on the internet!”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?” asked Lena.

  “You go back downstairs and stall him,” said Maggie, waiting for her system to boot up. “He’ll talk to you all day. Have a Moxie together. I need at least five minutes.”

  “But what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to wipe the page. I’ll just disconnect the address. Take it off-line.”

  “But won’t that make him suspicious? That Vinnie’s Vintage Auto Parts has suddenly disappeared?”

  “He can’t see that website. If he sees the inventory, he’s going to know it’s his.” By now, Maggie had logged into her ISP and was preparing to remove the home page remotely, but she immediately realized that taking down the home page wouldn’t be enough. She would have to take down every page on the site. Her business would be destroyed.

  “Wow. It’s really a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Lena.

  “What?” Maggie was tapping furiously on her keyboard.

  Are you sure you want to delete the file