Finally Read online

  We say good-bye and I hand the phone over to Mom. One more day. Just one more day till Annabelle won’t need to call me on my parents’ phone. Soon I won’t feel like I’m competing for Annabelle’s attention all the time because I’ll be able to text, too. I nearly skip back upstairs to my room. I’m relieved to see that Dad is no longer staring sadly at my empty shelves. I close the door behind me and move the chart over to my desk. I have one last goal to add on the Big Things side.

  12. Meet Jake Harrison.

  I’m so delirious with anticipation of the near future that it takes me a few minutes to notice the pamphlet from the class trip on my pillow. That’s strange. I don’t remember picking it up from the floor. Dad must have found it and put it there. But instead of the drawing of a water tunnel leading into a glistening reservoir that I expect to see, a photograph of a cell phone adorns the cover. “Yay!!” I scream, grabbing it. “It’s finally happening!” I do a little dance around my room, then calm down enough to look at the pamphlet more closely. Is that … why is there … huh? The photograph shows what looks like a normal phone, but there are only two buttons on it. Just two. How is that possible? I flip open the brochure. WELCOME TO YOUR CHILD’S FIRST PHONE. THE ONLY TWO NUMBERS HE OR SHE WILL EVER NEED!

  My hands start to shake as I read on. GIVE YOUR CHILD THE SECURITY OF KNOWING HE OR SHE CAN ALWAYS REACH YOU OR EMERGENCY SERVICES. SIMPLY PROGRAM YOUR HOME OR OFFICE PHONE NUMBER INTO BUTTON NUMBER 1 AND 911 INTO THE OTHER.

  I sink down onto the bed as I read the last line. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! OUR BUILT-IN GPS TRACKER WILL ALWAYS ALERT YOU IF YOUR CHILD LEAVES THE DESIGNATED AREA. YOU’LL KNOW WHERE HE OR SHE IS AT EVERY MOMENT. NOW THAT’S PEACE OF MIND WORTH PAYING FOR!

  I stare at the words. Two buttons. No texting. No megapixels. No MP3. Just Mom and the police. Oh, and a GPS tracking my every move.

  My parents must really, REALLY hate me!

  Chapter Three

  I find Mom in Sawyer’s room, tucking him into bed. I hold up the cell phone pamphlet. “Very funny. You really had me going there for a minute.”

  “Shh,” Mom whispers. “He’s almost asleep.”

  I look down at Sawyer, who is running a plastic yellow race car up the side of his face and making vroom vroom noises. “No, he’s not.”

  “Well, he’s never going to fall asleep with you yakking.”

  I take a deep breath and exhale. “Mom, can we please talk about this?”

  “About what?” she asks, purposely not meeting my eyes.

  I groan and go off in search of Dad, who will hopefully be more forthcoming. I find him at the dining room table, bent over a huge poster of a mountain range. He draws a quick zigzag shape on it, then stands back to look. Even though he has a full-time puzzle designer on staff, he likes to come up with his own patterns, too, and can often be found working on them late into the night. He never brings his tools home, though. Not after that unfortunate incident in third grade. I instinctively run my hand over the scar on my elbow.

  I wait until he erases his line — as he always does — before interrupting. As soon as he’s blown away the last bit of eraser dust, but before he can draw another pattern, I lay the brochure down in front of him. “Is this for real, Dad?”

  He picks it up with a grin. “Isn’t it great? Don’t you love it?”

  There are so many ways to respond to that question. I pause and choose my words carefully. “It only has two buttons.”

  “And a built-in GPS tracker!” he says as proudly as if he’d built the phone himself.

  “Dad, I’m begging you. I need a phone with more than two buttons.”

  He tilts his head at me. “Are you sure?”

  I nod vehemently.

  He sighs. “Your mom thought you might feel that way.” He leaves the room and returns a minute later with a big cardboard box.

  Relief floods through me. “You got me a real phone after all!”

  “Not exactly,” he says.

  I squint up at him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

  He pushes the box into my arms. “We picked up brochures for twenty different phones and service plans. Your job, if you choose to accept it, is to go over the material, choose the one you think makes the most sense for your needs and is the most economical for the family, and then explain to us why. If we agree with your assessment, you can get the phone.”

  Stricken, I look down at the contents of the box. Sure enough, it’s full of exactly what he said.

  “A chart with graphics might be nice,” he adds, turning back to his puzzle.

  I don’t move. How can this end well? Even if I manage to sort through everything and make sense of it, how am I going to convince them to let me get the one I want?

  He glances up. “You’re still here? I thought you’d be halfway through the box by now.”

  I shift my weight so the box doesn’t slip. “How am I supposed to figure this out? Service plans and all that?”

  “You’re good with math,” he says. “You’ll do fine.”

  When I don’t answer, he adds, “Or you can just take the one with the two buttons.”

  “And built-in GPS tracker,” I mutter, hurrying from the room.

  “Have fun!” he calls after me.

  As I pass Sawyer’s room, Mom glances up from her perch on the side of his bed. She sees the box and smiles. I smile back, as breezily as I can muster. I can’t let them see me sweat.

  By the time I finish comparing and contrasting the pros and cons of each of the twenty phones and various calling/texting/photo/video/Internet/GPS options, it is almost midnight. The only time I’m allowed to stay up this late is on New Year’s Eve, and even then I’m usually asleep on the couch well before the clock strikes twelve. Mom and Dad have come in five times to try to get me to finish this tomorrow, but even though I’m delirious with exhaustion, I’m not going to quit. I’ve narrowed it down to the three they’re most likely to agree to, even though they are SO far away from my original vision.

  My legs creak from sitting so long and my head feels like it’s under water. How am I going to stay awake to practice my presentation? For a second I debate making a cup of coffee (#3 on the Small Things list) to help keep me awake, but figure since it also requires #8, Use the Stove, Oven, and Electrical Appliances Without Permission or Supervision, I decide to just wash my face with cold water instead. But somehow, before I can make it into the bathroom, I wind up sprawled across my bed. The last thing I remember is trying to decide if rollover minutes are a better deal than unlimited calling to in-network customers.

  I wake up with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. I’m twelve! Look out, world, here comes Rory Swenson! I leap off the bed, slide halfway across the floor on top of the phone brochures, and slam into the door. Shaking it off, I tear downstairs at top speed. Usually on my birthday a big plate of chocolate chip pancakes is waiting for me, the kitchen table aglow with birthday candles for me to wish on. But when I reach the kitchen this morning, the only things waiting for me on the table are a note and a bowl of Corn Flakes. My spirits sink. Couldn’t Mom at least have made it a bowl of Cap’n Crunch? According to the note, Mom took Sawyer to his Yoga for Toddlers class, Dad is out mowing the lawn, and I shouldn’t forget to put the milk away when I’m finished with it. I have to squint to see HAPPY BIRTHDAY scrawled at the bottom.

  I’m about to resign myself to eating the cereal, alone, when it dawns on me that I can have anything I want. I can fry an egg. I can flip pancakes. I can boil oatmeal. Sure, I don’t actually know how to do any of those things, but how hard could it be? I turn my back on the cold cereal and hurry over to the pantry. My stomach growls in anticipation. I pull out the bag of chocolate chips and the pancake mix. I read the side of the box. To make 6–7 pancakes: Mix 2½ cups pancake mixture, 2 eggs, 3¼ cups water, ½ cup oil; stir until smooth; pour into greased frying pan at medium heat.

  WAY too hard. I’ll just eat the chocolate chips instead. As I close the pantry,