Rivals

Chapter 11

In the morning Weathers was waiting for them when they came downstairs.
Brent and Maggie were already dressed, already had their backpacks on. Maggie had been working her Sidekick hard all morning, texting with one thumb while she brushed her teeth - making contact with her friends whom she hadn't seen since before Dad died, figuring out who she would eat lunch with at school. Brent had already started worrying about how far behind he was going to be in Algebra, having missed more than a week of classes. Both of them were in a hurry to get to school.
School was just going to have to wait.
Grandma had made a pot of tea, and set out a simple breakfast. Toast and jelly and a platter of scrambled eggs. Weathers was sitting at their kitchen table dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a napkin.
"You two have fun last night?" he asked, as they came into the kitchen.
Maggie took off her backpack and set it by the door. She knew what that tone of voice meant. Dad had never been much of a disciplinarian but he was a parent and he could always let you know when you were in trouble with a single look or a few softly-spoken words. This felt exactly the same as that.
"Oh, come on!" she said. "We were just getting some exercise. There was a whole presentation at school last year about how the President wants us to get more exercise outdoors. Don't you work for the President?"
Even Brent couldn't help but smirk at that. He quickly pulled himself together, though.
"There are damaged roofs all over town. One house lost its chimney last night," Weathers said. "The owner said it sounded like a bomb hit his house. The owner of the Gilbert Brothers Junkyard tells me he doesn't know what happened, but it's going to cost him good money to repair all the damage."
"What?" Brent said. "That's not fair! That was all broken down junk we were playing with. We couldn't possibly have damaged it any more than it was already."
"So you admit you were there last night? I wasn't sure, I was just hoping you might have some information," Weathers said.
Maggie's heart sank in her chest. Smooth move, bro.
"We don't admit to anything," she said, before Brent could get them in any more trouble. "If you have any questions for us, we want a lawyer here before we say anything else."
Weathers sighed and took another bite of eggs. He chewed very slowly and then took a newspaper out of the inside pocket of his jacket. He unrolled it and threw it on the table where they could both see it. The front page was taken up almost entirely by a grainy black and white picture of Maggie holding a broken-down car over her head while Brent raced backwards to catch it. The headline read simply WHO ARE THEY?
"The picture was taken with a cell phone camera in poor lighting conditions. There's not enough detail for the local police to identify either of you," he said, reaching for a tea cup. "I kept your names out of it. But that's just delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later - probably in the next twenty-four hours - someone is going to come forward and say they recognize the clothes you're wearing in that shot. Or maybe somebody else saw you two last night jumping around like monkeys. I won't be able to stop them all. And then the world is going to want to talk to you, all at once. You'll have no privacy after that. The media will hound you constantly. And that's just the start of it."
"I don't suppose the FBI runs a Secret Identity program," Maggie tried.
"No, we do not. We do, on the other hand, enforce the law. The owner of that junkyard - or that chimney - may press charges and then I'll have to arrest you. I don't want that. I think there are other things we can do with you two."
"What, like dissect us in a lab somewhere?" Maggie asked.
"Margaret Reynolds Gill!" Grandma said. "You will not take that tone in the presence of company."
Company, Maggie thought. Yesterday at the hospital you told him to get out. Now he's your best friend. As usual Grandma's behavior made no sense to her.
Weathers finished his breakfast and left. Grandma wrote Brent a note so he could get into school late and then sent him off. Before Maggie could go, however, she had one more thing to say.
"You made a mess of things, young lady, and there's consequences for that. When you get home from school today your hi-fi will be gone from your room."
"My... hi-fi?" Maggie asked. "What's a hi-fi?"
"That overly loud music system you were listening to yesterday! I don't know where you hide the record player," she said, and Maggie's eyes went wide - apparently Grandma had never heard of iTunes, "but I'll find it and confiscate that, too. No music as long as you continue to act like this!"
"Don't you dare," Maggie said. The music was the one thing that could calm her down. Without it she thought she would go crazy. "And what are you going to do to punish Brent?"
"Nothing. I know that last night's rumpus was your idea," she said to Maggie. "You leave your brother alone. It may be too late to save you, but he's a good boy and I won't have him corrupted."
"That's not fair!" Maggie whined. "Always when Dad punished us he punished us both equally. He made sure we both knew what we did wrong."
"I am not your father," Grandma said.
Which was just painfully obvious. Maggie grabbed her backpack and stormed out of the house, not even waiting to get her note. If the vice principal at the school gave her trouble about coming in tardy, she would - well - there were lots of things she could do.