BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!
Marc and Bree’s mom were sprawled out on the living room carpet, playing a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos with Emma and Bailey. It was part of some new kick her mom was on where everyone was supposed to play with “analog” things to spend less time staring at their phones and stuff. Last week had been puzzle week, but Olivia had eaten one of the little cardboard pieces, and that was the end of puzzle week. This week was game week.
Now there was a lot of banging and a lot of plastic marbles flying everywhere. Olivia sat nearby—safely out of reach of the marbles—shouting “HIPPO!” every twenty seconds.
“Everyone. My friends are coming over!” Bree announced.
“That’s great, Bree,” said her mom, concentrating on her hippo.
“We’re going to be discussing some very top secret things, so unfortunately I don’t think there will be much time to spend with you guys.”
“Hippo!” said Olivia. Nobody else responded.
“YES!” Marc yelled, the same way he did whenever basketball was on TV. Bree guessed his hippo did something impressive.
“Oh, you show-off,” said Mom.
“HIPPOOOOO!” screeched Olivia.
“All right, well, I guess I’ll check in with you later,” Bree said. Still, nobody replied. “Bye!” she yelled for good measure.
Then she headed to her room to wait for Malia and Dot to arrive. Bree loved her family, and she loved her cat, and she loved her room. Really, she loved everything about her life. Sometimes, though, she felt like her friends were the only people in the world who noticed she was alive. Bree really didn’t know what she’d do without them.
Malia arrived first, and before she even had a chance to say anything, Bree could tell something was wrong.
“I don’t want to talk about it until Dot gets here,” she said. “I don’t think I can bear to tell the story twice.”
Instead, Malia helped Bree carry tons of snacks up from the kitchen and spread them out all over the floor.
“Are you excited? Your birthday is coming up soon,” Malia said.
“Of course!” Bree said. Because obvi. Birthdays are the most exciting. They’re holidays just for you. “But I’m even more excited for fall break, and for the party! I don’t think it will really feel like my birthday has happened until we can all celebrate together.” It was true. This was the first year Bree was even more excited about their joint birthday than her actual day.
Dot arrived a minute later and immediately started digging into the snacks. That’s when Malia told them what had happened with Chelsea—how she and old Mrs. Abernathy had somehow become friends, and how Chelsea demanded two-thirds of the money Malia had earned for babysitting. Bree had seen Malia be angry at Chelsea before, but this was different. She seemed super sad, like her old beta fish had when it got this weird scale disease and couldn’t do anything except kind of float around slowly in its bowl, looking depressed.
“You guys, I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but—” Before Malia could finish her sentence, the door flew open and Olivia exploded through it.
“Bweeeeeeee!” Olivia toddled into the center of the room at warp speed. She threw her arms around Bree’s neck and started hugging her so hard it felt like she might want to kill Bree.
“Hi, Olivia,” Bree said.
“It’s sweet how much she loves you,” Malia said. “I’ve honestly never hugged my sister on purpose.”
“Siblings. Weird,” said Dot.
“Where cat?” Olivia asked.
“I don’t know,” Bree said, slightly hurt that it seemed she’d only come here to find the cat.
“No Puddin’?”
“No. Taylor Swift is not here,” Bree responded. “I don’t know where Taylor Swift is.”
“PUDDIN’!” Olivia yelled.
“Taylor Swift,” Bree corrected.
“PUDDIN’!” she called as she toddled off through the doorway. “PUDDIN’ PUDDIN’ PUDDIN’!”
“Well, that was interesting,” said Dot.
“It seems like your cat name rebrand is going about as well as mine is,” said Malia-who-they-kept-forgetting-to-call-Alia. “Look, what I was about to say before is that I’m tired of playing by the rules. The rules haven’t gotten me anywhere.”
“You’ve broken into your sister’s personal electronics, sent her bogus emails from made-up accounts, and recently sent her on a fake babysitting job. I think, technically, that’s not really playing by the rules,” Dot said.
“Whatever! More rules must be broken.”
“What kind of rules?” asked Dot, her eyes suddenly as wide as the king-size peanut butter cups she kept putting in her mouth.
“We’re going to take down Seaside once and for all. By proving they’re not as good as they claim they are.”
“But . . . how do we do that?” Bree asked.
“By catching them in the act, and recording it. We need photos, videos, interviews, anything we can find.”
“You mean—” Dot honestly looked more excited than Bree had ever seen her. “We’re going to spy?”
Malia just nodded.
“Like, with gear and stuff?”
“Yes. We can wear camouflage and crawl around on the ground and swing from ropes! Or maybe we can just listen to conversations through the wall using a drinking glass. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”
“Oh my goodness!” said Bree.
“We should watch some spy movies for inspiration,” said Dot.
“Where do we get camouflage?” asked Bree. “Where do we get ropes?” She clapped her hands together. Babysitting was so much weirder than she ever expected! Bree had been thrilled just to be part of a club, but this was turning out to be all kinds of fun.