Mab kicks over a stack of checkout cards, and I know she did not mean to, but she should be more careful because the checkout cards go everywhere, and that is a whole afternoon of work wasted. If you think it is ridiculous that I am using cards and pencils to track library books in this day and age, you are correct. If you think I am too stupid to know how to use a computer instead, you are incorrect. When Mrs. Watson gave me the books, she did not give me the scanner you use to catalog, lend, and track the books. I asked, but she said it got sold. Leave it to humanity to think the book scanner is more valuable than the books.
Mab says she is sorry about my cards, but she does not look sorry about my cards.
“Come downstairs,” she says.
“What is downstairs?”
“Mirabel.”
“Mirabel is always downstairs.”
“Exactly. We need to talk. All of us.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Three heads are better than one.”
“Like Cerberus?” There are two books about Greek mythology inside the microwave.
“Yes,” Mab says. “Exactly like Cerberus.” But she is being sarcastic enough that even I can tell.
Downstairs, she is all red and talking with a lot of extra breath. “I did it.”
Mirabel high-fives her.
“What did you do?” I ask.
“What you wanted me to.”
“You picked up all my checkout cards and put them back in the right order and placed them neatly in a neat pile with something heavy on top so they will not go everywhere if someone kicks them accidentally?” That is what I wanted her to do, but I do not see when she could have done it since it just happened.
“The other thing,” she says.
But I cannot think of another thing.
So she rolls her eyes and says she talked to River, and she talked to the Kyles, and she told the Kyles to stop and to spread the word and tell everyone else to stop too.
“Thank you,” Mirabel’s Voice says, and her eyes might have tears in them, and her face might show happy or it might show relieved.
“Why do you look red and panty then?” I wonder to Mab.
“We need a plan,” Mab says, “and a sister pact.”
“I vow to always eat your creamed spinach,” I say immediately. Neither of my sisters likes creamed spinach. “As long as it is raining.”
“Not that kind, Monday,” Mirabel’s Voice says at once so she must have it saved, but I do not know why she would. Then she adds, “Thank you,” which is polite. Then she adds, “Stop.”
“Stop what?” I say.
But Mab says, “Exactly. You’re right.”
“Right about what?” I say.
“We have to stop them. Don’t say who, Monday, I’m getting to that. We have to stop Belsum.”
I wait, but neither of them says anything else, so I ask, “Stop them from what?”
“Opening the plant,” says Mab. “Reopening the plant.”
“How can we?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” says Mab.
“We do not have a lawyer,” I inform them. “We do not have any money. We are just kids no one listens to.”
“So we won’t sue them, buy them, or convince them,” says Mab. “We’ll do it a different way.”
“What way?”
“Our way.”
“Oh. What is our way?”
“I don’t know,” Mab says again.
“If Mama cannot,” I say, “we cannot too.”
I put my hands over my ears, but I can still hear Mirabel tapping at her screen. Then her Voice says, “She is one. We are three.”
“And plus, we have River,” says Mab.
“We do?”
“Now that we’ve saved him, he owes us,” she says. “Mama and Russell and the lawsuit have never had that.”
“Had what?”
“A man on the inside.”
“River is not a man,” I inform her.
“You know what I mean.”
“Lie.”
“I’m saying River might have access to all sorts of things Mama and Russell don’t even know to look for.”
“He could sabotage his father from inside the house!” This is an exciting good idea, but Mab and Mirabel both laugh like I am making a joke. So I explain, “He could hide all his father’s shoes so he could not go to his meetings, or if he did go to his meetings he would be barefoot so no one would listen to him. He could hide the giant scissor because his father cannot reopen the plant without a ceremony and he cannot have a reopening ceremony without a giant scissor. If his grandfather comes to visit, River could hide a minor poison in his food so Duke Templeton could see how he likes it, and he would not like it and change his mind.”
“I was thinking more like next time River listened in on a conversation he could record it on his phone,” Mab says.
“My ideas are better.” It is not polite to brag, but it is objectively true that my ideas are better.
“Fine,” Mab says which means the opposite. “Let’s just say we need to consider all the ways we can use River and what we want him to do for us.”
“Why?” I am always asking why.
Mirabel types. “It’s our turn.”
I open my mouth to ask our turn to what, but Mab has guessed this already. “Our turn to fight, Monday. Look, Duke Templeton said they should be worried we’ll find it, and they have to do whatever they have to do before anyone realizes it.”
“But we do not know what ‘it’ it is,” I say.
“Lie,” Mirabel’s Voice says.
“We do know what ‘it’ it is,” Mab explains. “It is what Mama and Russell and all the people signed on to the suit have been looking for all these years. Proof. A smoking gun.”
“How do you know?” I ask.
“Because otherwise why is Duke Templeton so desperate to keep it out of our hands?”
“I do not know,” I say because I do not. “How will we get it?”
“We don’t know,” Mab says, “but we know it exists. That’s the important thing. Now all we have to do is find it.”
“That sounds hard,” I say.
“Truth,” says my sister’s Voice.
“Truth,” says my other sister’s voice. “Hard but not impossible.”