The Rule of Threes, Marcy Campbell [short novels to read .TXT] 📗

phone. “It’s Grandma, but she doesn’t know who I am,” I whispered. I looked at the clock. It was well past 8 p.m. I shouldn’t have called. Mom had warned me about calling this late.

I started back up to my room, but I could hear Mom saying, “It’s Susan, your daughter. No, Mom, that was Maggie, your granddaughter.”

I pulled out my tablet and burrowed into my beanbag. My thirty minutes of screen time was already up for the day, but my parents weren’t exactly keeping track lately. The other day, I was on Roblox for close to three hours before anyone even noticed. Now I played a cooking game, mindlessly slashing vegetables, sizzling meat, trying to think about anything except what had just happened. When Mom stepped into my room, I was surprised to see it was dark outside.

“Here’s your phone,” she said, handing it to me.

“Grandma didn’t know who I was,” I said softly. I still couldn’t believe it. Just over an hour ago, we’d been having a great time.

“I know,” Mom said, sighing. “I’m going to go back out there and check up on her this week, as soon as I can.” Mom looked like she was mentally running through the week’s calendar, and she wasn’t liking what she saw. “And I need to take her to a doctor.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I need to see what’s going on, with the memory lapses. It might be—”

“Might be what?”

Mom leaned against my wall, looked at me closely. “Have you ever heard of something called Alzheimer’s? It’s a disease that causes changes in a person’s brain—”

“I know what it is,” I said. “Olive’s grandpa had it.” I remembered Olive saying her grandpa kept telling the same stories from when he was a little boy. And sometimes, he actually thought he was a little boy. Unfortunately, pretty soon after Olive found out about his disease . . . her grandpa died.

“Why am I just hearing this now?” I asked Mom, feeling my body tense. “Alzheimer’s is serious! Why am I always the last to know anything?”

Mom put her hands on her hips. “Maggie, you don’t need to get upset with me. We don’t know anything either, not yet, anyway.”

“But . . . is Grandma going to die?” She couldn’t! Not now!

“You need to calm down and quit jumping to conclusions,” Mom said sternly, which was no help at all. My brain didn’t work that way. My brain was always going to run ahead to the next intersection and try to see if there was a semitruck coming around the corner. Mom added, “I told you not to call her so late.”

“Oh, so this is my fault?” I said. “Are you seriously blaming me?”

“You know what, I don’t want to talk about this right now,” Mom said, holding up her hands. She left my room.

I sat at my desk, flicked on the lamp, and tried to finish my science worksheet, but I just couldn’t concentrate. How could Grandma have Alzheimer’s? She was so normal, except for just once in awhile, when she couldn’t remember something, but that happened to everybody. Okay, maybe not everybody forgot they had a granddaughter, but still. She wasn’t like other old people, the ones you didn’t think had much time left in the world. I thought about her making a wish at the restaurant before she blew out her invisible candle. Did she wish to be well? Did she even realize she might not be?

It wasn’t long before Dad came in. He leaned against my doorway.

“Hey, Mags,” he said, “sorry we haven’t been hanging out much. It’s just that, well, obviously, we have a lot of crazy stuff going on right now.”

He said that like the stuff we had going on could be anything, like he had a deadline at work, at the same time as I had a math test, at the same time as Mom had two new house listings. Like regular craziness, not what it actually was, which was on a whole other crazy scale.

He rocked on his feet a bit, looking around the room at everything except me, the same way Tony did.

“How are you, Mags?” he asked.

It was an impossible question to answer. If I told him I was freaked out, he’d try to reassure me that everything was going to be just fine, but if I said I was just fine, he’d suspect I was lying. I really couldn’t win.

I shrugged.

He sat on the floor next to my desk, his back against my wall. “We’re going to get through this,” he said, “you and me, and mom, and Tony, too.”

“And Tony’s mom,” I added. “Tony’s mom will get through it, and then Tony will move back in with her.” So maybe it was selfish of me to want Tony to move out, but wasn’t it also nice to want Tony’s mom to get better?

“Yes, of course, her, too,” Dad said.

I hadn’t meant to start crying, but it was late, Grandma didn’t know who I was, and I felt like I didn’t know who my dad was anymore, and, honestly, all of that meant I wasn’t too sure about who I was either. I sniffled loudly, and Dad looked over, then got up and wrapped me in a hug, but instead of the hug making me feel better, I felt trapped.

It was my dad who had always picked me up off the playground when I’d skinned a knee, my dad who talked me through scenarios at school when I was caught up in whatever silly friend drama was going on. He’d always been so smart and wise. I’d always trusted him. But now . . . ?

I wriggled away, grabbed a tissue out of the box on my desk, and blew my nose.

“How was the phone call? With Tony’s mom?” I asked.

“She never called.” Dad drummed his fingers against his leg in an agitated way. “And Tony walked out of his counseling appointment today, even though the social worker’s case plan requires him to get counseling.”

“Dad,” I said quietly. “If Tony wasn’t here, I mean,