“You guys are gonna get in sooooo much trouble…” drawled Maggie Stevens as she leaned against the doorway to the study den, twirling one of her pigtails between her fingers and smacking her jaws a few times as she continued chewing a stick of gum that had long ago lost its flavor and color.
“Shut up, Maggie, no we’re not!” her brother Kyle answered through gritted teeth before returning to his work of rapidly surfing the web for whatever piece of information his brother Scott told him to look for next.
“Yeah you are. And when you do, I’m gonna look you in the eye and say “told you so!” and then you’ll both realize how much smarter I am,” Maggie bragged with a girlish giggle.
“Keep telling yourself that, Maggie. But this is for all three of us. This’ll help you too, you know!” Scott Stevens said with some annoyance as he continued thumbing through the touch pad on his mother’s Portable Matter Reduction Device.
“How is you breaking into mom’s shrink machine thing gonna help me?” Maggie whined, irritated.
“Because…” Scott groaned. “Then she won’t use it on us, at least not for a while. Not until she can get it fixed, or get a new one, and that should be a nice span of time.”
“Then why don’t you just take a hammer and smash it?” Maggie asked, lowering her voice to sound as stupid as possible in order to poke fun at her brothers.
“Haven’t you ever watched a crime show, you idiot? She’d know it was us immediately, and then she’d use it on us. All of us, probably,” Scott grumbled, continuing his work. “Kyle, look up this number here that I have pulled up on the screen. See what you find.”
“Don’t you pull me into this, I have NOTHING to do with it!” Maggie squealed, sounding somewhat fearful, before crossing her arms and pouting her upper lip. “And don’t call me an idiot. I’m not an idiot.”
“Okay, then. Help us, then,” Scott offered.
“No. I don’t wanna get caught.”
“Then piss off,” Scott groused, yielding a chuckle from his younger brother Kyle, who nearly jumped with excitement when he found what he was looking for onscreen.
“Got it! Got it! What now?” Kyle asked excitedly, showing the screen to Scott.
“Okay, hold up, I gotta type that all in,” Scott said, half-mesmerized by the screen, as he began feverishly typing in data, now ignoring his sister Maggie, whose eyes had by now begun to well with tears. She wiped them away with her soft knuckle, embarrassed, and sniffled a few times to clear her sinuses, before bringing her hand back up to her silky blonde locks and twirling her fingers back through it.
“You better apologize to me,” came the quiet voice of Maggie again.
“Stop bugging us, Maggie! If you don’t wanna help, go away!” Kyle groaned.
“Apologize,” Maggie demanded, her voice firmer this time.
“Not a chance,” Scott said with a sigh. “What would you do about it, anyway? Tell on us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You know you wouldn’t,” Scott said with a frown, the intensity rising in his voice. He was sick of his sister’s constant butting into his business, and on today, the day that he might finally get a well-deserved break from the oppressive threat of the PMRD, he was in no mood to tolerate her shenanigans.
“I totally would. Unless you apologize.”
“Look, I’m not gonna let you hold that over my head. Then you’re gonna start asking for allowance money, or something.”
“Actually, allowance money would help… there’s some cute shoes I kinda wanted to pick up down at the mall, and…” Maggie said with a satisfied grin, tapping her lower lip with a pointer finger in thought.
“Okay, look, we’re done with this conversation!” Scott interrupted angrily, rising to his feet and taking a few threatening steps closer to his sister. “I’m not letting my thirteen-year-old kid sister blackmail me. You wouldn’t know the first thing about it, anyway.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, how about THIS then?” Maggie said suddenly, whipping her cell phone out from behind her back and pressing a button that caused a small bright light to flash over the room, capturing the incriminating moment photographically.
“That’s it, you’re done,” Scott shouted, moving with a purpose toward the door.
“NO! GET AWAY!” Maggie screeched in somewhat feigned terror, pocketing her phone and dashing down the hallway in the other direction.
“Scott, Mom’s gonna be home any minute, we gotta finish this!” Kyle cried out nervously from the bedroom.
“Hold on with that thought, and start looking up the next number. I gotta take care of this,” Scott called back to his brother, bounding across the living room and easily overtaking his sister. “GOTCHA!”
“That’s not fair! Get off me! Stop it! Stop grabbing me!” Maggie cried in a slew of angry jeers, trying to tug away as Scott remained hanging onto her arm and trying to grab for her pocket, where her phone was located.
“Fine, as soon as you delete the picture.”
“I want money first! Not a whole lot, but I want you to buy me the shoes!”
“You’re out of your mind, Maggie, now GIVE ME THE PHONE!” Scott growled, snatching the phone from his sister’s pocket and throwing it across the room, into the tiled kitchen.
Maggie stifled a scream by covering her mouth, then immediately lashed out at her brother with a swinging right hook that barely missed the eldest brother’s head. Grumbling loudly, she stomped across the room to retrieve her phone.
“See? Act like a bitch, that’s what happens,” Scott said with a shrug.
“YOU BROKE IT!” Maggie screamed, stomping down hard on the tile, the rubber sole of her Ugg boot sending a vibration down that very nearly toppled a small flower pot resting on the countertop. She held it up for her brother to see, pointing to the corner where a small piece had chipped off.
“It still works, don’t be such a whiner. You can glue that back on.”
Maggie began frantically pressing buttons and flipping the on/off switch back and forth. “No it doesn’t! LOOK!”
“Well, maybe you should’ve thought of that before trying to take pictures of us while we do something that’s going to help all three of us. Go buy yourself a new one if you’re gonna cry about it.”
Maggie frowned. “No. You’re getting me a new one.”
Scott threw his hands up in the air. “For the last TIME, Maggie, you can’t just order everyone around however the crap you want to. Nobody’s gonna want to hang out with you with that attitude.”
“Get me a NEW ONE!” Maggie yelled, flinging the phone across the kitchen and back into the living room. Unprepared for the assault, Scott felt the phone bank hard off his left temple, leaving a small red mark. Grunting with pain, the teen doubled over before marching across the kitchen.
“Leave me the hell ALONE!” Scott retorted, pushing his sister hard. She toppled backward and fell flat on her butt on the tile floor, unhurt but stunned and scared by the swift motion of her brother. However, studying her eyes and wondering if what he had just done was a huge mistake, Scott saw her dread and terror turn to contentment, then to peace. Almost… joy.
Inexplicable.
And then Scott heard it.
Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.
A high heel tapping impatiently against the tile, imperiously, in the general direction of the front door. The sound of shopping bags being placed on the floor.
Scott swallowed hard.
Fuck.
“Scott… Franklin… Stevens…” hissed the calmly enraged voice of their mother Judy. Scott dared not turn around to face her, but instead focused his wild eyes down on his sister, who had remained sprawled on the floor for the sake of milking the drama.
Slowly, Scott watched a smile far more demonically satisfied and gleeful than he would’ve thought possible to appear on the youthful, angelic face of his bratty little sister spread across her freshly glossed lips.
“Somebody’s in trouble,” sang Maggie in a hushed whisper, hardly able to contain her laughter.