Let Me Fix That for You

by Janice Erlbaum

  I count back from her birthday to today. “So three weeks and a day?”

  Mabey’s eyes perform their automatic roll. “She said ‘around then.’ You’re such a lawyer. You’re being so much like Dad.”

  “I am not.”

  (And if I am, why is that a bad thing? All I want to know is when Mom’s coming, so I know how much time we have to prepare and how long I have to wait. I haven’t seen her in over a year and a half. I’m excited, so sue me.)

  “Speaking of,” Mabey warns me, “you can’t tell Dad. Or Agnes. That would be the same as telling Dad.”

  I frown. I’m used to hiding things from Dad, but I don’t like hiding things from Agnes, not since the day Mom forgot to pick her up from first grade. Agnes can keep secrets. She’s the only person I trust to keep mine. She deserves to know what’s happening.

  “Okay, but why can’t Dad know? I mean, he’s going to figure it out when she gets here.”

  “When she gets her plane ticket, she’ll tell Dad. But if something happens and Mom can’t make it, she doesn’t want him to use it against her, like he always does. Remember when she couldn’t come for Thanksgiving? He still mentions that all the time.”

  Mabey picks up her phone and checks some texts. She is in an awfully good mood. She sure does love being the oldest and bossiest and Mom’s favorite. She’s going to be a nightmare if she passes her driver’s test next month.

  “Did you call Mom, or did she call you?” I ask.

  Mabey continues to look at her phone and not at me. She absentmindedly twirls her hair with one hand as she speaks. “Why, are you jealous of me and Mom talking?”

  Yes. “No.”

  She raises her head and gives me an “oh really?” eyebrow, then goes back to her texting. “So why does it matter?”

  Because if Mom called to talk to Mabey alone, I’ll feel left out. But if Mabey called Mom, then I can call Mom, too.

  “If you don’t like what you hear,” Mabey continues smugly, “maybe you shouldn’t listen to other people’s conversations.”

  “I wasn’t listening to your conversation!”

  That came out louder than I meant it to, but I can’t help it. I wasn’t even trying to eavesdrop, for once! I just wanted something to eat. That’s the only reason I came up here. I didn’t mean to interrupt Mabey’s special phone call with Mom. I didn’t ask her to tell me about their super-secret plan. I’m starting to wish I hadn’t heard it at all.

  Mabey chuckles at my raised voice. “Riiiiiiiiight.”

  Since she’s being obnoxious, I think I’ll instigate a little. I rise from my seat on the beanbag, wiping a pile of powdered sugar off my lap. “I’m gonna go text Dad,” I say.

  Mabey takes the bait. “No! I literally just told you not to tell Dad! What is wrong with you?”

  “I’m texting him about groceries! God!”

  Ha. I leave through the hatch, step down the ladder, and go to my room.

  7

  Three Hours Later

  I’m downstairs in the basement blabbing to Agnes.

  I mean, I have to talk to somebody. I’m excited, I’m upset, I’m confused, and talking to Mabey some more isn’t going to make me feel better. Agnes deserves to know what’s happening, and if I want to fix Dad in time for Mom’s visit, I’m going to need her help.

  So I wait awhile after dinner, until Mabey hides herself in her attic, and I head down to the basement. Agnes is sitting at her lab table, using a stencil to make labels for some empty mason jars. She’s already made labels that say WATER, AMMONIA, and ECTOPLASM. It is Agnes’s dearest wish to become a Ghostbuster.

  “I have news.” I drop into the busted old recliner Dad dragged down here when he bought a new one for upstairs. “It’s about Mom.”

  “What is it?” Agnes keeps her eyes on her work, guiding her marker carefully down the stencil’s edge for a perfectly straight line.

  I pause for an imaginary drumroll, then I drop my bomb. “Mom’s coming for a visit next month.”

  Agnes looks up with a happy, hopeful face. “Really? She is? She said so?”

  Her reaction makes me smile, too. “Yep. Mabey talked to her earlier, and she said she’s coming for her birthday.”

  Agnes considers this. Her eager expression dims over the “Mabey talked to her” part, but she’s still excited. “How long is she coming for?”

  “A few days,” I guess. Then I admit it. “We’re still short on the details.”

  Agnes’s eagerness dims further. “What does Dad say?”

  Sigh. Here’s the delicate part. “Dad doesn’t know yet. And you can’t tell him, okay?”

  The happy expression is gone. Now she’s straight-up frowning. “Why not?”

  “Just in case something happens,” I say casually. I don’t really know what “thing” could happen. I’m just repeating Mabey’s words. “You know how Dad gets.”

  Agnes goes quiet, turning back to her stencil and labels. I watch her squint as she drags her marker around the curve of a C. After a minute: “Is she really going to come, though?”

  I draw back, surprised. “Why wouldn’t she?”

  She shrugs one shoulder, eyes on her work. “Sometimes she says she’s going to do something, and then it never happens.”

  “But you know the Thanksgiving thing wasn’t her fault, that was Dad—”

  Agnes interrupts me. “It’s not just that. Remember when she kept saying she’d take us to the aquarium, and she never did? She kept promising she’d watch the first episode of Cosmos with me, and she never did. And there was that year she was going to make us all handmade Halloween costumes.”

  Right. Mom didn’t make anything until October 30, when Agnes and I started to cry. Then she threw something together at the last minute, scavenging big cardboard boxes from the recycling pile and cutting holes in them for our heads, legs, and arms. “There you go,” she said, satisfied. “You’re an Amazon delivery.”

  Technically, those were handmade costumes.

  I’m starting to doubt my decision to tell Agnes about Mom’s visit. Agnes’s skepticism is contagious, and I don’t want to catch it. I shift the topic a little. “Anyway, I need your help. We have to fix up Dad before Mom gets here.”

  She shakes her head no, still concentrating on her work. “I like Dad the way he is.”

  Argh. Now I understand why Mabey’s always rolling her eyes at me. It’s not easy to be patient with little sisters. “I just mean the small things. Like the slurping. And the nagging. And the way he always has to be right.”

  She thinks about this. There’s a twitch of her lip as she puts the finishing touches on ETHYL ALCOHOL. As alike as they are, Agnes has her own complaints about Dad. “And how he works too much,” she adds finally. “And how he doesn’t pay attention sometimes.”

  “And maybe he could get new clothes or something. And shave the beard.” Mom hated the beard Dad grew a few years ago, but he liked the way it looked and wouldn’t get rid of it.

  Agnes looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Had I not been present for the Great Beard Wars of 2017? Can I have forgotten so soon? “Dad won’t shave his beard.”

  “He will if you ask him.”

  “I don’t want him to shave it.”

  Okay. Deeeeeeeep breath. Agnes is not trying to annoy me on purpose; still, she couldn’t do a better job if she tried. “But don’t you want Mom to come home?”

  “Yes,” says Agnes simply.

  “So you’ll help me fix up Dad?”

  Agnes goes silent again. Now she’s working on a label that starts with the letters POI. I sincerely hope it’s going to say POINTY THINGS when it’s finished. “Okay,” she finally agrees. “But not the beard, unless we really have to.”

  Yes! I allow myself a small internal fist pump. With Agnes’s superior brain on board, the mission will surely be a success. I know I can get Mabey to join us, too. Agnes and I will work on fixing Dad, and then Mabey will convince Mom to give the new Dad a chance. We’ll
be an unstoppable team. “Deal.”

  I rise from my seat and leave Agnes to her work. As many times as I’ve heard it, it feels so strange to be the one to say it as I start up the basement stairs: “I owe you one.”

  8

  Wednesday Morning

  Sophie Nelson needs to return $450 to the student council fund in the next two weeks, or there will be no spring dance.

  Oh, and also: Sophie Nelson needs $450.

  When Sophie first told me this in the lunchroom on Monday, I thought she was telling an unfunny joke. When I realized she was serious, it got unfunnier.

  She must have seen my surprise, because she winced a little and made an “I’m sorry, don’t be mad, I’m so cute” face. But honestly, what did she think I could do for her and her cute face? Returning Liz Kotlinski’s scarf was one thing; returning almost five hundred dollars that Sophie didn’t have was a whole other thing. The amount was too big, the job was impossible, and money is outside my area of expertise.

  Sophie was out of luck. Quickly I established that the money was all spent, there was nothing she could return or resell for money, she had no money saved, and there was nobody she could ask for money. So how was I going to help her? If I knew how to get $450, you can bet I’d be sitting here with $450 right now.

  But the more Sophie blushed and begged and stressed the importance of bailing out her “friend,” the more I started to think, Hmmm. Maybe. She would be so grateful, she’d want to be my friend for life, because I had performed this incredible favor. “A favor,” Sophie cooed, “that only you could do.”

  And, I mean, besides wanting Sophie to like me, I knew she was in serious trouble. I couldn’t let her—or her invisible “friend”—get caught for stealing that much money. There would definitely be some unpleasant consequences.

  So I said, “I’ll try.”

  I am so wishing right now that I said no.

  Sophie is waiting for me on the steps of the side exit of the gym this morning, as planned. She’s in full dance squad mode—they rehearse in the gym a few mornings a week—spangly leotard, ponytail with ribbons, duckface pout. She squeals and claps and air-kisses me when she sees me. We sit down on the steps and get straight to business.

  “So are we good?” Sophie eagerly demands.

  I’m taken aback. Did Sophie assume I would take care of everything for her, and so quickly? She looks like she expects me to put $450 dollars in her hand right now, then she’ll air-kiss me again, tell me she owes me one, and run her spangly butt back to her friends in the gym. Problem solved.

  Sophie must have realized this isn’t happening, because she furrows her brow in dismay. “I mean, what should we do?”

  What should “we” do? What does she mean, “we”? I didn’t take any money. I didn’t ask to get dragged into this situation. It’s way out of my league—I deal with lost retainers and anonymous chocolates; I don’t deal with major theft. I just wish people would realize that the absolute best solution to any problem is to avoid making the problem in the first place.

  But I did come up with a pretty good plan for her, so I tell her what she needs to do.

  “You have to tell the council that you took the money.”

  Sophie looks at me in horror. I can see her getting ready to remind me that (a) this is the exact, total opposite of what she wants to do and (b) she didn’t take it, her “friend” did.

  I cut her off.

  The strategy I’m suggesting is called Getting There First. Nobody knows that the cash (raised from last week’s bake sale, which left everyone in school in a carb coma for the entirety of the afternoon) is missing from the envelope in the locked filing cabinet in the student council HQ, where it’s supposed to be, but someone is sure to find out soon. When they do, they’ll look at all the people with keys to the cabinet first, and Sophie will be one of the prime suspects. So she needs to buy herself some time.

  “Here’s what you tell them. You stopped by the council office yesterday after school when nobody was around. You noticed that the file cabinet was unlocked, so you went to check the envelope, and the money was there. And you were so relieved that nobody had taken it.

  “But it made you nervous that the cabinet was left open, and you wanted to make sure the money was safe. So you put the envelope in your bag, and when your mom picked you up from school, you asked her to take you to the bank. The money is safe in the bank, and you can get it in two weeks, when it’s needed. You got it?”

  Sophie nods, speechless.

  “Step one, cover up the problem. Then you can move on to step two—getting the money.”

  Sophie’s vocal cords rally for a second, then quit again. “You … that…” She shakes her head as though she’s trying to wake herself from a dream. “Whoa.”

  I don’t know if this is a good whoa or a bad whoa, until she takes my hand and presses it between hers like she’s about to ask me to marry her. Her face breaks into a huge, lip-glossy smile.

  “You. Are. A genius.” She is still a little mind-blown, and she is squeezing my hand hard enough to liquefy it, but she manages a few more words. “That’s … that’s, like, the perfect story.”

  I feel myself blushing with pride. This is why I do what I do: the gratitude, and the compliments, and the satisfaction of a job well done. I can already see myself sitting next to Sophie in free study or getting picked for her team in gym. I’m going to need some new clothes. “Well, I’m not a genius…”

  Sophie lets go of my hand, thank God, and shakes her head slowly in disbelief. Her eyes are so wide, it looks like she just saw Bigfoot. “No, you are. Everybody knows it, too. Everyone says, ‘Glad can get you out of anything,’ and they’re right! You are a genius liar. You’re like the Einstein of lies.”

  Ouch.

  I know Sophie means this as a compliment, but words like liar and lies offend me. I don’t tell lies. I tell stories. And, as far as I know, the stories are true. I mean, I don’t know what Sophie was doing yesterday after school—maybe she stopped by the student council office, saw the cash in the unlocked cabinet, and took it to the bank. And if she didn’t, well, I’m not the one who’s going to the council to tell them that story. It’s a story when I come up with it. It only becomes a lie when she says it.

  I’m not a liar. I’m a helper.

  “Not lies,” I correct her. “Excuses, alibis, and cover stories, but never lies.”

  “Right,” says Sophie. “Whatever. I could, like, kiss you right now. I can’t wait to hear step two.”

  Fortunately, she’s not serious about the kissing, because I am saving my first kiss for a day when the thought of kissing someone outside my family doesn’t nauseate me. “You’ll hear step two,” I say. “After you do step one.”

  (Also, after I figure out what step two is going to be.)

  Sophie jumps to her feet and claps, as if the dance squad has spilled out from the gym onto the steps. “Okay, well. I better get back inside. You’re amazing, Glad! Thanks!”

  And that’s it. She bounces through the door and it swings shut behind her. I hear her laughing and clapping and rejoining her squad. One loose spangle glitters at me from where she sat two seconds ago.

  I am amazing. I am a genius. Everybody says so. I am the best.

  I am also—as usual—alone.

  9

  Wednesday Fifth Period

  I’m at my desk in the back row, taking notes on the important history lessons of the day.

  TREATY OF GHENT

  - Ended War of 1812

  - War was between US and UK/Ireland

  - But treaty was signed in Belgium?

  - Canada was also somehow involved?

  - Unclear, also, boring

  TREATY OF SAM BOYD AND EVELYN FERSZT

  Dear Evelyn,

  I’m sorry Ms. Mundaca gave you detention for looking at my test on Monday. I should have pushed my paper closer to you so you didn’t have to lean over so far to see it. Next time I promise to make it easier
for you to see. Remember, if you kill me, you’ll have to look at Jackson’s answers instead of mine, and Jackson sucks at math. So please accept my apologies. Also, you are very beautiful.

  Sam

  MADISON’S DAILY REVERSE- CATFISHING TEXTS

  › madison plz dont be mad cuz i cant visit at spring break like i promised

  › i wish i cld but u know my medical condition means i cant fly

  › ILY so much

  WHAT I WISH I COULD SAY TO TAYE

  Taye. Dude. If you want a response to your gifts, YOU HAVE TO SAY THE GIFTS ARE FROM YOU. This should BE A LOT MORE OBVIOUS TO YOU.

  OPERATION MOM

  Visit Preparation

  - Plan fun things:

  Pottery studio

  Feed ducks at park

  Karaoke

  - Reservations at fancy restaurant?

  - Get food she likes—IMPORTANT: must be organic

  - CLEAN UP and make house look nice.

  - Fresh flowers

  - 1980s music

  - Mood lighting

  - Slippers and robe in case she forgets hers

  - AVOID letting her do housework, treat her like a guest.

  - Make sure she doesn’t even touch a dirty dish.

  Hide Upcoming Visit from Dad

  - Use code words.

  - Meet in attic or basement.

  - When it’s time to tell him, have Agnes do it.

  Fix Up Dad

  - Clothes

  - Beard

  - Personality

  - Tone of voice/tiny smile

  - Slurping!

  - Have Agnes save up good grades, tell Dad about them right before Mom comes.

  - Have Mabey be nice to Dad.

  - All of us stay out of trouble.

  Things to Say to Mom About Dad

  - “Dad’s really lightened up a lot lately. He lets me watch PG-13 movies now, even though I’m still twelve.”

  - “Dad was saying how much he misses your singing around the house.”

  - “Last time Dad talked to Grandma June, he said she was being too critical and picky and that every time you and Grandma June argued, you were right.”