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

crisply, but then looked sorry she’d said it. She rubbed Tony’s back. “You just love and support her,” she said, “but remember, recovery is up to your mom. That’s out of your hands.”

She looked at me, then back at Tony. “People get better all the time. I’ve seen it,” she said, then added, “Your mom is lucky, you know. If it wasn’t for your sister here . . .” She pointed at me, and I didn’t even correct her. I just put the blanket back over Tony’s shoulder.

“How’d you get it?” Tony asked. We were buckled into the back seat of Officer Sharon’s police car. She had called our dad. We were going home.

“I used my last five bucks to pay a kid at school to make a scene in the hallway. He pretended to be sick, the nurse ran out, and I slipped in. That was that. Easy-peasy.” I couldn’t believe how I was talking, like this was just a normal day for me. “Did you really think I went in for my social studies notes?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, laughing. “I honestly did.” We smiled at each other, and Officer Sharon looked at us in her rearview mirror and smiled, too. Her radio crackled with a woman’s voice calling out mysterious numbers.

“What’s a ten sixty-two?” I asked.

“Breaking and entering,” Officer Sharon replied. She turned the radio down a bit.

I started playing with the straps of my backpack until Tony said, “Are you worried you’re going to get in trouble?”

I didn’t answer. The truth was, yeah, I was worried. I’d stolen something, broken into a house, and given medical help, which I had no business giving, to someone who was minutes away, I knew, from being . . . dead. Not to mention I’d taken a bus across town without even telling my parents.

“Maggie,” he said, “you saved somebody’s life. Not just somebody’s. My mom’s. If anybody tries to mess with you over that, I won’t let them.”

“We’re going to have a talk,” Dad said. “Tomorrow.”

He was crying, and Mom was crying, and me and Tony were crying, and Mittens was yowling because we’d all forgotten about her and her food bowl was empty. Mom fed her, then put out some leftovers for the humans, and we microwaved plates and after that, Dad said we should all just “decompress and get some rest.”

“Tomorrow is another day,” he said. He was fond of saying that whenever something went wrong, and usually I’d answer, “Well, duh,” but I didn’t tonight. Tomorrow was another day, hopefully a better one.

Later, as I sat in my room checking my phone, I saw that Olive and Rakell had left a bunch of messages, and so had my mom, who had come home to get Grandma’s forgotten glasses and found the house empty. Even Mildred at the Shoppe, who knew nothing about any of this, had sent a group text to the BFFs to tell us she’d gotten in a box of lava lamps that were “the grooviest things she’d ever seen.” I sat there reading through all the messages, feeling warm and safe and loved, more than ever before.

I played with the items on my desk. I liked to swap things every month or so, rotating other objects into the mix from my prop box. It was good practice. Right now, my items included a little glass bowl filled with flower petals from my mom’s yellow chrysanthemums, a wooden clock, and the bronze winged pig. Always three items, the perfect number.

But now as I looked at it . . . the display was almost too perfect. I decided to keep the clock and remove the bowl, but when I lifted it, I accidentally knocked over the pig. Lying on his side like that, the little guy looked quite comfortable, like he was napping.

I decided to leave him that way, thinking he could probably use a rest. After all, he’d been doing a lot of flying. So many impossible things had happened.

Welcome to the Family

The talk came as promised, after breakfast, after the social worker called and Dad spent a half hour on his phone with her in the living room. He was talking quietly, so I couldn’t really hear what he was saying, but that was okay. I didn’t need a recap of yesterday’s events. I’d lived them.

Tony passed me the box of Lucky Charms, and I poured a big bowl. Maybe sugary cereal was our new normal. I wasn’t complaining about that part, at least. We were sitting at the island in our usual spots, one empty yellow stool between us. My mom was at the sink, cleaning up the dishes from yesterday.

“We should order another one of these stools,” I said.

Mom looked up from her dishes. “Where are we going to put it?” she asked. The three stools fit perfectly, with just enough space between them.

“We can put it on the end,” I said, “and tuck it under when we’re not using it. We just need to rearrange a bit.”

I looked at Tony, and he nodded, his mouth full of pastel marshmallows. He had a bandage on both his arm and his hand from where he’d gotten cut coming through his living room window. I had a bandage on my stomach from where I scraped it sliding into his apartment through the coal door. But other than that, there was nothing different about us—not that anyone could see.

Dad walked in and set his phone on the counter, and Mom turned around and locked eyes with him. Oh boy, I thought, here it comes. They had probably waited because they were too shocked to deal with us last night, too worried and frazzled by what had happened. It was like, when you jumped off a swing and cut your leg, your mom would spring into action and cradle you gently and clean up the cut. But as soon as you stopped crying? As soon as everything seemed back to normal? She’d scream at you for jumping off the swing.

Mom started in