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

“That could work,” I said, tilting my head and squinting at it. “But then we’re kind of committing to purple as our primary accent color. How do we feel about that?” I knew how I felt about it, and it wasn’t good.

“Purple’s nice!” Mildred called from an aisle over.

“I don’t know,” Olive said. “I feel like it’s going to make the room seem too cold, with all the blue and green. I think we need a brighter accent. Yellow, maybe.”

“I agree,” I said. Olive put the rug back on the shelf, and I breathed a sigh of relief. That purple would have been a seriously bad choice.

We walked up and down the aisles, trying on dopey sunglasses, picking up super-old electronics and wondering what they were used for.

We found an old phone on a cluttered shelf and moved it to a table so we could play around with it.

“There aren’t any buttons,” Olive said. “How do you dial the numbers?”

I looked at the plastic thing around the numbers. “I think you move this plastic thing around? But do we pick up the receiver thingy first?”

We started laughing, holding the receiver up to each others’ ears, until Mildred came over and gave us a demonstration.

“Like this,” Mildred said, and stuck a finger into the plastic thing over the number three and moved it around until it hit a metal thing. Then she repeated it nine more times with nine more numbers. “I just called my number.”

“Are you kidding me? That took forever!” I said.

Mildred held up her hands. “Well, that’s the way it was, girls.” She winked. “Just think if they didn’t answer. You’d have to start all over again.”

In the next aisle, we found a funky yellow rack for sorting papers and some green and yellow baskets to match. Olive agreed with me that they’d be great on top of the existing bookshelf, which I planned to paint blue. My dad had already picked it up from school and brought it home to our garage.

Eventually, Mildred said she had to close up, and we’d better get walking home before dark. It ended up that the baskets and paper rack were the only things we bought.

“Who’s going to paint the bookshelf?” Olive asked. “You and Rakell usually do that stuff.” We were making plans as we walked, Olive writing in her mini notebook. There was a lot to do and there was . . . just the two of us. A part of me was starting to envy my competitors. They might not have the training, but at least they had more hands. I wasn’t sure how we were going to get it all done.

“Yeah, don’t remind me.” Rachel and I had a system with furniture. We’d set up in my garage, put on some music, get out my dad’s big tarp. I’d sand. Rachel would prime. We tag-teamed the next coats, one of us brushing while the other caught any drips. “Do you want to paint with me?” I asked Olive.

“You know I hate painting, unless it’s decorative stuff,” she said. “I can add a design to it when you’re all done.”

“Maybe a design to mimic whatever shape is on the rug we find.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” Olive said. She held up her hand, and I high-fived it.

We turned the last corner before my house, and I noticed a man and a boy walking a block ahead of us. I didn’t recognize them in the fading light, but then the boy started dribbling a basketball, thump thump. Guess the father-son park thing was becoming a nightly event.

“Maybe you could ask Tony,” Olive said, pointing.

I stopped walking and looked at her like she was crazy. “No way.”

With my luck, not only would Tony be a basketball whiz, but he’d probably be great at painting, too. The decorating contest was my thing. With everything else changing so fast around me, I thought—no, I knew—that this was something I could control. I knew what I was doing. I was in charge. It was going to be amazing.

Maybe Olive wasn’t so far off when she said I needed to win the contest.

Out of Sync

The following Sunday, Mom suggested I come with her to pick up Grandma and tour an assisted living facility. I wanted to see her, but I was worried. Would she call me by the wrong name? Would she even know who I was?

I dove into my disaster of a bedroom closet, tossing aside stuffed animals and hair ties and mateless socks until I found it, the birthday card Grandma had given me a year ago. It had a picture of a black-and-white kitten on the front, and Grandma had drawn an arrow pointing to it and written, “Looks like Mittens, doesn’t it?” I grabbed a decorating book and took it, and the card, out to the car where Mom was waiting for me.

“Why do you have that card?” Mom asked.

“I’m going to show it to Grandma,” I said, “in case she can’t remember me. Maybe she’ll remember Mittens, or remember sending the card, and that will help.”

“Oh, honey, she’ll remember you,” Mom said. Then she added, “I’m sure,” but that made her sound really unsure.

Mom pulled out of the driveway and started down our street. She was driving a lot more carefully, and slowly, than she had taking Tony to school the other day. Today, it seemed like she wasn’t in any hurry. She said, “The phone thing, Maggie . . . well, you have to remember that was at night when she was tired, and she didn’t have her hearing aids in. It was your voice she couldn’t place. If she could have seen your beautiful face over the phone, she would have known you.”

Mom turned and gave me a big smile, and I noticed her eyes were shiny. She sniffled a bit, then turned on the radio station that played all the music from when she was in high school. Normally, I’d groan and ask her to change it, but I didn’t.