by T. M. Meek
“We can't be too loud or we'll wake up my baby sister, Leah. She’s taking a nap," Leena whispered to Alex as they passed Leah's room and entered Leena's bedroom.
"How old is she?" Alex whispered back.
"She's three and she's super cute," Leena smiled. “I like your black and white checkered backpack,” Leena smiled.
"Thanks. I like styles from the 1950’s.”
“Or the 1980’s,” Leena joked.
“ Yeah,” Alex shrugged. “Is Julio still coming over?" Alex asked.
"Yeah. He should be here any minute." Leena said as they entered her bedroom. “So why did your Aunt bring you over instead of your mom? Where’s your mom?”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” Alex said quietly.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. We can talk about something else,” Leena said sympathetically.
"I like your room," Alex said as she hoisted herself up to sit on the end of Leena's bed. She then leaned her crutches against a nearby wall.
Leena's room looked like it was furnished with designs as old as the home itself. Although her room was mostly white and pink colors, two adjoining walls were painted in a pastel pink and the other adjoining wall had a 1950's pattern of white and pastel blue. Other decorative items had additional pastel colors of light greens and yellows.
"Your room is like my middle name," Alex said.
"What's your middle name?" Leena asked.
"Spring. What's yours?"
"Starlight," Leena replied with a flirtatious smile.
"Wow," Alex said rather mesmerized.
"Leena Starlight Lilly," Leena said proudly. "But I think your middle name is a bit misleading," she slyly added.
"Why do you say that?" Alex asked puzzled.
"Because I think you're the kind of friend people prefer to have all yearlong," Leena smiled cleverly.
Alex smiled. "So I'm not seasonal, huh?"
"I'm an expert in things like that," Leena chuckled softly.
"Oh. I'll have to remember that," Alex replied. "I really like your middle name. I think the name 'Starlight' is cooler than 'Spring'."
"I think my parents were on drugs when they named me," Leena quickly joked.
"At least your mom might have been. After all, she had just given birth to you," Alex joked. They both laughed.
Leena's laughter died down a little earlier than Alex's did. "I really shouldn't joke about being on drugs,” Leena added timidly.
"Why?" Alex asked curiously.
"I used to have another little sister, Lacy. When she was nine, she went over to visit a friend named Sela at her house. Sela had an older sister named Sandra and Sandra had some friends over. They were huffing," Leena said somberly.
“Huffing What's that?" Alex asked.
"It's when you inhale the aerosol from a spray can, like sniffing spray paint, or a can of air duster or Freon from an air conditioner. You get a short high that can kill you if you inhale too much. But nobody knows how much their body can really handle since everyone has different body and blood chemistry. So what may kill one person more slowly may kill someone else more quickly. Some people die their first time they try huffing. That's what happened to Lacy. She died on her first time trying it," Leena said. Alex listened intently in shock.
"Sandra didn't know that Lacy and Sela were spying on them. So Lacy and Sela learned it from seeing Sandra and her friends trying it. Sela was going to try it after Lacy, but she never did after she realized she couldn't get Lacy to wake up. Lacy never woke up," Leena said as her eyes filled with tears. A few tears fell and she wiped them away with an embarrassed smile.
“Sorry, Alex. If I bummed you out, I didn't mean to. I just made that dumb joke about my mom being on drugs and...I guess I didn't think it would remind me of Lacy until I really thought about it," Leena said.
"It's okay to cry. You're not bumming me out. I would've never known that about you if you hadn't told me," Alex reassured her.
"Thanks," Leena smiled as she wiped away another tear.
"When did it happen?" Alex asked compassionately.
"That was two years ago."
"I'm so sorry about Lacy," Alex said sincerely. Alex then pointed down to make a statement about Leena's room. "This room is officially a drug free zone," Alex said seriously.
"Forever," Leena emphasized.
"Forever," Alex agreed. "That includes my room at my house too."
"We're going to have a drug free friendship," Leena smiled in relief.
"One hundred percent drug free. Guaranteed," Alex said. Alex put her hand up to give Leena a high-five. But Leena wasn't a high-five type, so she gave Alex a warm hug instead. Alex hugged Leena back.
After a few tender moments, a mock police megaphone voice was suddenly heard to say, "Attention: Leena Lilly, please remove your arms from around the hostage and step away from the hostage." Both Leena and Alex recognized the mock voice immediately. They stopped their brief hug. The mock voice continued.
"This is Captain Julio Lopez of the police, SWAT team and Marines. I am here to rescue the hostage as this is clearly a hostage situation," Julio said as he held a toy cheerleader’s megaphone close to his mouth pretending it was real. He was using one of Leena's toys.
"I was giving her a hug, Julio," Leena said in slight contempt.
Julio pointed protectively towards Alex and replied firmly in jest using his normal voice without the megaphone, "Look. She's clearly a hostage who was held against her will!" Leena rolled her eyes.
"Look how far her crutches are from her. She's defenseless!" Julio argued.
"They're all of three inches away," Alex said to Julio as she gestured in disbelief at her crutches. "And I'm confident I could save myself if her hug turned into some kind of highly unlikely infliction of a headlock," Alex said in jest.
"So are we all ready to work on the Triple-C now?" Leena asked.
"Yep!" Alex replied.
Julio decided to put the toy cheerleader megaphone on his head to wear as a hat as he asked, "What's our charity going to be that we donate to?"
"I thought the books and animals charity would be a good one to donate to," Leena said as she walked over to Julio and coolly removed her cheerleader toy from off of the top of his head. She put it back on her desk where he got it. Leena's pet cat, "Ragdoll" came in her room and jumped up by Alex on the bed. Alex began to pet it.
"What do they do?" Julio asked.
"After you help a disadvantaged kid learn how to read for an hour, you get to pet some animals they bring. They brought a cute ferret once," Leena answered. She then joined Alex in petting her cat.
"What about the American Red Cross? They save a lot of lives each year," Alex suggested.
"Let's do both," Julio said as he gently brushed away some pom-pom threads out of his eyes since he was now wearing one of Leena's pom-poms on his head.
Alex tried to ignore Julio's silly ways, but it was hard. Then she recalled how they officially met in the lunchroom and her thoughts returned to the possibility of hungry students at North Ivy during lunchtime. "Do either of you know if North Ivy scholarships include meals?" Alex asked curiously.
"They do," both Julio and Leena replied in unison.
"Why?" Leena asked. She then couldn't handle Julio's silly pom-pom look and she walked back over to him and pulled it off of his head as she smiled sarcastically. Julio didn't bother resisting.
"I was just thinking of something different. Never mind," Alex sighed. "I suppose I'm up for donating to both charities. That's a good idea, Julio. What do you think, Leena?"
"That's fine with me," Leena said as she pulled out one of Julio's hairs from her pom-pom. She gave a look of disgust as she did it.
"Good. Then it's settled," Alex declared. Since there were no kids to feed at school, Alex decided to focus her attention on the Triple-C as her sole means for an outlet for her philanthropic tendencies until she could figure out another way to help
any poor kids she might learn about.
"I think we should have a name for our team," Julio said. He was now laying with his back on the floor, one hand behind his head and one leg crossed over the other in a gentlemanly fashion.
"Did you have one in mind?" Alex asked.
"Maybe we could be the Merry Money Mutants in Muumuu’s," Julio said as he pretended to hula while laying on the floor.
"Okay. That's absurd," Leena scoffed.
"'The Success Crew,'" Alex stated.
"'The Success Crew?' Okay. I like it," Julio said agreeably as he appeared deep in thought.
"It works for me," Leena agreed.
"We are hereby officially 'The Success Crew.'" Alex proclaimed.
Julio distracted himself as he began to scoot his back across the floor. He moved with sudden bursts of speed as he launched with his feet pressed tightly against the floor for leverage. Immediately after his third launch a loud crack was heard as he accidentally bumped his head hitting it fast and hard against a leg on a chair by Leena's desk .
"Son of a grumpy muffin!" Julio mumbled as he grabbed his head and rolled over in embarrassed frustration and pain.
Both Leena and Alex started to laugh hard. As Alex laughed, she couldn't decide which was funnier––how Julio hit his head while being distracted in la-la-land, or what he said in frustration. Leena tried to catch her breath to give Julio a break. "Julio is really good at not cussing. We're not allowed to use curse words in our home without getting in trouble. He's got some pretty funny ways to curse without being offensive," Leena snickered.
Alex actually began to feel sorry for Julio's mishap, but she struggled to stop smiling. "Don't worry," Alex said, "I think cussing is one of the poorest and weakest forms of expression in any language. You won't hear me use foul language, ever."
"Are you going to be okay, Julio?" Leena giggled while she crouched down near him to check on him.
Julio had his face to the floor as he continued to hold his head. He gave a somewhat muffled reply, "Yes. I'll be fine." He occasionally winced his face in pain.
“ Well let's go over a few things that we need to have done soon and set a date to practice giving our first presentation by," Alex suggested.
Julio slowly sat up and said, "I could use something for my head."
"What do you want me to get for you, Julio?" Leena asked intently.
"A large bag of marshmallows," Julio whined.
"What?!" Leena replied in disbelief.
"It'll be soft and tender for my head," he said as he tried to hold back a smile.
Leena tossed a pillow at him. "You don't want marshmallows for a cushion. You're just going to eat them," she argued in jest. Julio smiled as he pulled the pillow off of his face and placed it in his lap.
"Can we do some work now, please?" Alex politely requested.
"Yes. Let's do some work now," Leena smiled.
"We're going to need pictures to use in our presentation. Pictures of money, big commercial buildings, a nice home, some people at work at their jobs like at their desk or teaching or providing some service. We'll also need a few pictures of large groups of people. Like hundreds of them walking to work in a large downtown city. A picture of the United States. An image of our planet earth. Some pictures of families. Basically we'll need photographs and artwork of anything relating to the subject of people and retirement," Alex fired off. Leena amazingly had her laptop ready and was typing it all down to refer to later for her own assignments in the project.
"Create anything you can and buy what images you can’t create or don’t have time to create," Alex added.
"Got it," Leena replied confidently.
"Now tell me again, why are a bunch of all-knowing adults going to listen to a group of kids about money when none of us here are experts?" Leena asked hoping not to offend Alex.
“First of all, adults are not 'all-knowing' or else why are so many of them having such trouble over an important subject of adult life: money? And secondly, we're quoting experts. We're providing proven research by well-known experts. Good research provides credibility. Credibility is what makes people listen. Which brings me to you, Julio. You’re the research man. You'll need to find articles from various well-known financial publications. Find out who are the bestselling authors who've written books about money, specific to retirement. These will ideally be books and magazine and Internet articles written in the past five years, but no older than ten years. You'll also need to get me some Census Bureau statistics..."
Alex stopped talking momentarily as Julio had gone into classroom mode as he laid on his side and had his hand raised, patiently waiting for Alex to call on him.
"Yes, Julio?" Alex sighed.
He then dropped his hand and asked, "Are you going to grow up to be one of those women who intimidates and annoys most men she meets because she knows more about money than they do?" Julio asked with a childlike innocence. But Alex wasn't buying it.
"I'll only annoy male chauvinists," Alex replied unapologetically.
Julio rolled his eyes and acted as if he knew what a male chauvinist was. Alex went back to delegating and listing everyone's duties. While Alex rambled, Julio leaned over in shy embarrassment to Leena and whispered, "What's a male chauvinist?"
Leena dropped her head and held her face in her hands. She shook her head in disbelief that he could be so clueless after Alex was so clear to give a name to the pathetic male perspective Julio had just shared.
"What?" Julio whispered. He still didn't get it. Alex looked at Leena as if Julio were the enemy.
“He really is harmless,” Leena said to Alex as if to plead his pathetic cause of honest ignorance.
Alex then looked at Julio who was now smiling cheerfully at her. “What’s a male chauvinist…” Alex mumbled in frustration repeating Julio’s ignorant question. Julio was simply too cute to be angry at for long. She then tossed a pillow in mocked anger at Julio. He barely resisted and then moved the pillow to use behind his head. Alex tried to hold back a smile as she went back to planning. Now Julio was smiling in a more charming way seeing that Alex was softening up for him. After that, both Julio and Alex knew they would get along just fine …most of the time.
Chapter 8: Mysterious Scroll
