Sophie Flakes Out Read online

  “How are the grades, Soph?” he asked when she came down to the study to type her English homework. “You’re not involved in too many activities, are you, Baby Girl?” he asked when she was still up at 9:30, writing up her science lab. And when she went downstairs to pick up her laundry, he said, “How are you holding up? Can you handle all this?”

  Sophie sagged against the dryer, laundry basket on her hip.

  It was tempting to tell him she felt like she was dragging a ball and chain, especially when his eyes actually got soft and he took the basket from her.

  “I know it’s tough,” he said. “You and Lacie are being champs about it. Mama and I appreciate it, but you have to let me know if it gets to be too much.”

  Sophie wanted to leap up for a hang-around-the-neck-legs-dangling Daddy hug—just to feel carefree again for a minute.

  But then Daddy said, “After all, you’re still a little girl.” He passed through the laundry room door with her basket of folded clothes. “By the way, how’s that twenties gangster film coming together?”

  Sophie got in front of him and pulled the basket out of his hands.

  “Fine,” she said. She headed for the stairs so she wouldn’t add, No thanks to you.

  “I can take that up for you,” he called after her. “I’ve got it,” she said.

  Glasses off and face down in her pink pillow a few minutes later, her thoughts screamed.

  Let me get this straight—I have to run the whole house with Lacie and practically give up Film Club so I can raise my baby brother—but I’m still a little girl who can’t handle a kidnapping scene where nobody even gets hurt.

  I don’t get it. I don’t get it!

  She tried to imagine Jesus, but she wasn’t sure just now that she wanted him telling her what to do either. She pawed fitfully at her Bible, but she couldn’t remember where the story was that they’d been studying with Dr. Peter.

  Dr. Peter.

  Sophie felt a spring of hope that bounced her up, but she plopped back down again. Forget Bible study. She had to watch Zeke tomorrow.

  And watch life as she knew it disappear.

  There was a tap on the door, which Sophie answered with a pillow-muffled grunt.

  “Mama wants you to come in and say good night,” Daddy said.

  Sophie climbed off the bed and hoped she could work up a smile before she got to her parents’ room.

  Mama held out her arms to Sophie when she arrived and ran her hand down the back of Sophie’s head.

  “I miss our time together, Dream Girl,” she said. “But I know you’re busy helping.” “It’s okay,” Sophie lied.

  Mama pushed her back so she could look at her. “Are you sure?”

  What am I supposed to say? Sophie thought. She didn’t know whether she was expected to be a grown-up or a little girl right now.

  Mama was still searching her face with her tired Sophiebrown eyes. “Anything you want to talk about?” she said.

  Sophie just shook her head. There was another long look and a pause.

  “I’m right here,” Mama said. She gave a wispy smile. “More than I want to be. You can still talk to me.”

  Can I? Sophie thought. She could feel her throat getting thick.

  “Just promise me something,” Mama said. “Promise that if you can’t talk to me or Daddy, you’ll at least talk to Dr. Peter.”

  “I won’t even get to see Dr. Peter,” Sophie blurted out. “I can’t go to Bible study because I have to watch Zeke.”

  She wanted to chomp her tongue off as Mama’s mouth dropped at the corners.

  “But it’s okay,” Sophie said. Her voice squeaked. “It’s fine.” “Time for bed, Baby Girl,” Daddy said from the doorway. Sophie escaped to her bedroom, where she cried herself to sleep, because she didn’t know what the rules were anymore.

  As Sophie boarded the bus the next morning, she spotted Victoria and Ginger, minus their cell phones, sitting in sullen silence on the eighth-grade side. Their eyes looked right through her as if she weren’t even there.

  It’s tough being a law enforcement officer, Goodsy Malone thought as she took her usual watchful position by the window. Not everybody is going to like you, especially those thugs that can’t obey the law.

  But she didn’t have time to think about that right now. She had an invalid girl in a wheelchair to rescue from the lousy Capone men that had nabbed her right out of her house. So far, they hadn’t hurt her. At least that was what Goodsy could gather from listening in on the phone calls they let her make to her rich father, mob family leader Shawn O’Banyon. Goodsy had also gathered that the sick girl—Bitsy O’Banyon—was with at least two women. She’d heard their voices in the background during phone calls.

  It pays to have a trained ear, is what I say, thought Goodsy. Even now she could detect words she knew she wasn’t supposed to hear—

  “I don’t see why we should keep hanging out with her now,” one voice said. “She can’t have parties. We can’t use her cell phone—”

  “And she doesn’t have any control over that Stephi girl at all,” the other one said. “So what’s the point?”

  Sophie pressed herself closer to the window. Goodsy didn’t have time for eavesdropping. She had mobsters to deal with.

  Which she did all day. Goodsy hid behind a literature book during a stakeout—and Sophie nearly blew a quiz on the short story she was supposed to read.

  Goodsy put on a disguise so she could spy on Capone—and Sophie got docked points for wearing sunglasses in the gym.

  Goodsy checked the addition and subtraction on Al Capone’s records, ate lunch in Capone’s favorite Italian restaurant, and experimented with bomb-making so she wouldn’t be caught by surprise when Capone’s men tossed their next one.

  By sixth-period Life Skills, Fiona was hoarse from coughing Sophie back on track. Fiona hadn’t had to use her comeback-to-the-real-world signal in a long time.

  “Are you even here at all today?” she wrote to Sophie in a note while Coach Yates was showing a film.

  I don’t know, Sophie thought.

  Because no matter how deeply she escaped into Goodsy Malone’s world, her own world was still the same chained-up, knotted-together mess when she returned to it.

  Willoughby still wasn’t speaking to the Corn Flakes, or even looking at them.

  Their film still wasn’t done, and there was no time for Sophie to work on it.

  Mama was still in bed so Baby Girl LaCroix wouldn’t make a too-early entrance into the world.

  Daddy was still treating her like a little girl, unless he needed her to be Zeke’s mom or run the dishwasher.

  The rules that had once made her life so easy to live were all over in a corner of her mind, arguing with each other.

  And the people who used to be there to untie the knots were now out of reach, especially Dr. Peter.

  “It’s Boppa’s turn to drive us to Bible study today,” Fiona said when she and Sophie and Maggie and Darbie were at their lockers after school. “I hope he doesn’t play that elevator music the whole way.”

  “It’s better than Aunt Emily’s ‘oldies,’ “ Darbie said. “I’d like to hear some ‘newies’ once in a while, but she thinks it’s all evil or something—”

  “I’m not going,” Sophie said. “No way,” Maggie said.

  “Yes, way. I have to watch Zeke.”

  “Bushwa!” Fiona said. She linked her arm through Sophie’s as the four of them headed for the front of the school.

  “Who else is going to do it?” Sophie said. “Boppa,” Maggie said.

  “What?”

  “Boppa,” Maggie said again. Sophie followed her pointing finger to the Expedition parked at the curb. Boppa was behind the wheel, and Zeke was in the second seat, yakking away.

  “All aboard,” Boppa said through the rolled-down window. “First stop, church. Next stop, Bunting’s Day Care.”

  “You’re keeping Zeke?” Sophie said.

  “So you can go to
Bible study,” Boppa said. He wiggled his caterpillar eyebrows. “Matter of fact, I have him for the rest of the week.”

  “Coolio!” Zeke crowed.

  “He might not be so happy after he spends an afternoon with Miss Odetta,” Fiona muttered to Sophie as they climbed into the third seat. She squeezed Sophie’s hand. “But I am.”

  Ten

  Sophie didn’t have time to wonder how it had all come about, because the minute she walked into the Bible study room, Dr. Peter gave them red carnations to pin on, and fake cigars and black felt fedora hats. Sophie squealed as she dipped hers over one eye.

  “This is swell!” she said.

  “What’s the deal?” Gill said. She put the fedora on top of her ball cap.

  “The deal is, we’re doing this Bible study twenties-style, see?” Dr. Peter said. He parked a phony cigar between his molars and talked out the other side of his mouth. “You dolls sit down and shut yer yaps. I’m the boss here, see, and you dames do what I say or else.”

  Kitty giggled and stuck the carnation behind her ear.

  “So yer a tough guy, huh?” Sophie said in her best Goodsy Malone voice. “Yeah.”

  “Says you.” Sophie chewed on the cigar and gave him a Goodsy glare.

  “Yeah, says me. Yer all a buncha lousy disciples, dirty rats in my book, ’cause ya been nabbed for stuffin’ yer cake holes with grain on a Sunday.” Dr. Peter glowered at all of them from under the brim of his hat. “And the Boss don’t like that. It’s against the rules, see?” Kitty giggled again.

  “Is he for real?” Maggie said to Darbie.

  “That bulge in his jacket ain’t his wallet,” Darbie said. “He’s packin’ heat.”

  “So, what now?” Fiona said.

  “What do you have to say for yourselves?” Dr. Peter said. Sophie smothered a grin. “Get outta town,” she said. “That ain’t what the law means. I got a buncha hungry dolls here, see? What am I supposed to do, let ’em starve?”

  “Who are you, their mommy?” Dr. Peter said. He stuck his hand inside his jacket. Fiona gave a shrill flapper-girl scream and rolled onto the floor, dragging Darbie with her.

  “Huh?” Maggie said.

  “Don’t get your knickers in a knot, girls,” Sophie said. “He’s all talk. He ain’t gonna shoot us over a coupla lousy grains a wheat.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing!” Dr. Peter said.

  “We can’t eat your lousy principle,” Sophie said. “See, that’s the difference between you and me, Mr. Stinky Cigar.”

  “Oh yeah? How’s that?”

  “You’d let your own grandmother go hungry over a lousy rule ’cause you ain’t got no heart. Me—us—we got heart. When somebody needs somethin’, we do it for ’em; don’t matter what day it is.”

  Dr. Peter’s hand went farther into his jacket.

  “I’m telling you, he’s got a rod in there,” Fiona said. “He’ll pump us fulla bullets!” Darbie cried.

  “They’re kidding,” Maggie said to Kitty.

  “So lemme ask you this,” Dr. Peter said, narrowing his twinkly eyes. “You just gonna forget about Sunday altogether? Treat it like any other lousy day?”

  “Says you!” Sophie said. “It’s the Sabbath, and we’re keepin’ it holy. If we gotta do a little work to help somebody, that’s still holy, see?”

  “Yeah?” Dr. Peter said.

  “Well, yeah,” Sophie said. “I mean—” Her Goodsy voice faded into a Sophie squeak. “I get it.”

  Dr. Peter nodded. “Y’know,” he said, “I like a smart doll like you.”

  Then he pulled his “weapon” out of his pocket and sprayed them all with Silly String.

  Later, while they were pulling it out of their hair and eating Baby Ruth bars (Dr. Peter said they were invented in the twenties), Sophie was still thinking about the story.

  “So the only time you can break a rule is when it would really help somebody to break it,” she said. “Right?”

  “Tell me some more,” Dr. Peter said.

  Sophie picked her words carefully. “Like if we had a rule with our friends that we would always help each other when we were in trouble—but one friend wanted somebody to lie to help her, only that really wouldn’t help her—we should break the rule.”

  “Right,” Dr. Peter said. “Only you wouldn’t really be breaking it, because love and compassion and truth are never against the law.”

  Sophie could almost see that soaking into everyone’s brains.

  “Another important part of that,” Dr. Peter said, “is that the original rule, to be loyal and help each other, still stands. Just like we should always try not to work on Sunday, unless we have to so we can feed somebody who’s hungry in some way.” Sophie nodded. It felt like one small knot was starting to come undone.

  “You were talking about Willoughby, weren’t you?” Fiona said when they were all—except Kitty—in the car with Boppa and Zeke.

  “Yeah,” Sophie said. “And I think I know what to do to get her back in the Corn Flakes.”

  “Then tell,” Darbie said. “I’ve been wretched all day missing her.”

  “And how,” Fiona said.

  Sophie tried to sit taller. “Even though she thinks we broke the rule, we still have to help her.”

  “How are we going to help her see that those eighth graders are bad for her?” Fiona said. “She’s, like, obsessed.”

  “We do what Dr. Peter said. We feed her.” Sophie shrugged. “You know, like take her a party.”

  “Right now?” Maggie said.

  Fiona snorted. “Like that’s going to happen.”

  There was a cough from the driver’s seat. “Why not?” Boppa said. “There’s never a better time for a party than right now.” He picked up his cell phone and punched a number.

  “What’s he doing?” Maggie whispered. Fiona rolled her eyes. “You got me.”

  Sophie listened, wide-eyed, as Boppa talked to her mother. When they got to Sophie’s, Mama was on the couch, ready to act as Take-Willoughby-a-Party coordinator.

  She sent Boppa and Zeke to the store for sodas and chips, while Sophie and Maggie foraged in the kitchen for other snacks, with Lacie pulling stuff off the shelves for them so they wouldn’t mess up her pantry. Mama sent Fiona and Darbie to Daddy’s computer to print up signs that read “We love you, Willoughby” and “We want you back!” At the last minute, before the girls piled back into the Expedition, Sophie grabbed a box of Corn Flakes from the pantry.

  When Boppa pulled into Willoughby’s driveway, he turned to the girls and said, “You take as long as you want, ladies. I’ll wait out here.”

  “I have to admit that was swell of Boppa,” Fiona said as they hauled their party-in-bags up to the front door.

  Sophie glanced back at the car where Boppa was watching them in a pool of light from the streetlamp. Later, she wanted to tell him he was no longer on the evil Parent Patrol—he or Mama.

  “Yo, Willoughby!” Fiona yelled as she hammered the doorbell. “Open up!”

  Sophie heard footsteps on the other side, and then a pause. For a moment she was afraid Willoughby wasn’t going to open the door. But then she did, and Darbie and Maggie waved the signs. Willoughby burst into tears.

  “Does that mean she wants us to go away?” Maggie said. “No!” Willoughby cried. “It means I love you!” She pulled them in, still wailing and laughing, and hugged each one of them until Sophie was sure there would be broken ribs.

  “I’m sorry—” Willoughby said.

  But Fiona stuffed a potato chip in her mouth. “We know,” she said. “Now hush up and let’s party.”

  “I brought you a present,” Sophie said. She held up the cereal box.

  “Am I still a Corn Flake?” Willoughby said as she hugged it against her.

  “Is Al Capone Italian?” Darbie said. Willoughby sobered. “I don’t know—is he?”

  “You have missed way too many rehearsals,” Fiona said. Willoughby let out a poodle-shriek, which brought an
ear-to-ear smile to Sophie’s face. It also brought Willoughby’s father down the stairs.

  “What’s going on, Willoughby?” he said. Sophie could tell the growl wasn’t far away.

  “The girls came to see me—”

  “When you’re grounded?” Mr. Wiley’s voice rose to dogfight level. “What are you thinking—you can’t have friends in here when you’re grounded. What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m sorry,” Willoughby said. “Sorry doesn’t cut it.”

  “But I—”

  It was as if Willoughby’s father had forgotten there were four other girls standing there, staring at their toes, rigid as poles. Sophie’s stomach was tying itself into a noose when Fiona poked her to say something.

  “We should go,” Sophie said. Her voice came out small. Maggie got the door open, and they all shot out of it. “Bye, y’all,” Willoughby said in a quivery voice.

  “Get to your room!” her father said.

  The door slammed, shutting away the sight of Willoughby, hugging her Corn Flakes box and cringing. The girls skittered down the steps, but not before Sophie heard a thud and a cry like a wounded poodle.

  One look at the other Corn Flakes, and she knew they had heard it too. They stood frozen at the bottom of the steps, until Maggie said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Right,” Darbie said. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  But Sophie couldn’t move. “What about Willoughby?” she said.

  Fiona grabbed Sophie’s wrist and pulled her along. “I don’t think she gets to party tonight, Soph.”

  “But what are we going to do?”

  Darbie stopped and huddled the girls in with her arms. “I don’t think we can do anything. I mean, he’s her father.”

  “He shouldn’t hit her,” Maggie said.

  Fiona’s eyes bulged. “You want to go tell him that?”

  “I didn’t know he was a mean dad, did you?” Darbie said. Sophie could hardly swallow, and the words “I should have known” barely came out.

  “Should we tell someone?” Darbie said.

  “I thought we said we’d help with parent stuff, not get each other in more trouble,” Fiona said.