“No,” Lara said firmly. Detective business required her full attention.
She was about to leave Caroline and Aviva for good when her older brother, Noah, walked in.
“Hello annoying sisters,” he said. “And not-at-all annoying cousin who makes excellent baked goods.”
Lara stuck her tongue out at him and straightened her stack of flyers.
“I helped with the cupcakes. Do you want to reconsider?”
“In that case, I take it back until I’ve got my cupcakes. At least for you, Lina-Lin.” Noah gave his cheekiest smile. His eyes fell on Lara’s stack of flyers. “Huh. What do you have there, Lara?”
Noah snatched a flyer without asking. As he read, Lara twirled a piece of hair. It’s not like she needed Noah’s permission for anything. Of course she didn’t. Still, she cared what her brother thought. A lot.
“Um. How are you an experienced detective?” Noah asked.
Lara scowled. Rude!
“I found Benny’s favorite toy car for him last week, after everyone else gave up on it,” she informed her brother. “Plus I figured out the cause of Kugel’s hairball problem. It was the kettle corn he kept sneaking in the middle of the night.”
“So you’re going from hairball investigations to solving actual mysteries?”
A snicker came from Aviva’s corner of the room. Lara forced herself to stay focused. Aviva’s opinions did not matter in the slightest.
“Absolutely,” Lara said. “The Mystery of the Hairball was very difficult to crack. And now Kugel hasn’t had a single hairball in two weeks thanks to me.”
“That is a true miracle.”
“Yes, it is,” Lara said, nobly choosing to ignore Noah’s sarcasm.
Fists clenched, Lara reminded herself that Georgia Ketteridge was graceful even when dealing with annoying people.
“Why are you calling it F-I-A-S-C-C-O?” he asked.
“Because it sounds good. Any new business needs a marketing plan.”
“Sure,” Noah said in his I’m-going-to-tell-you-what-you-want-to-hear-but-I-don’t-really-mean-it voice. Lara despised that voice. “Um, you do know what fiasco means, right?”
Lara snatched the flyer out of Noah’s hands. “Of course I do.”
“Then why did you name your detective agency after it?”
“Well, the idea is that when you have a fiasco, you go to FIASCCO. Get it?”
“Not really,” Noah muttered.
“It does not make sense to me, either,” Aviva said. As if anyone had asked her!
That was quite enough. Noah and Aviva just didn’t understand. Unfortunate, certainly, but it’s not like Lara actually needed help from them. Or anyone else. She straightened her pile of flyers and gave everyone a properly disdainful look. Well, at least she hoped it showed proper disdain.
“I am going to post these around. If anyone you know needs mystery-solving services, I’m here to help,” she said.
And she marched out of the house clutching her flyers.
It took more than an hour, but every house on the block got a FIASCCO flyer. With every paper she placed on a doorstep, hope swelled in Lara’s chest. True, she didn’t know if anyone on the street needed a detective. But surely someone out of all these people would want to hire her.
As she went from door to door, Lara allowed her mind to wander. She had heard—many, many times—that people on the autism spectrum were blessed with extraordinary abilities. But she couldn’t help but think that somehow this particular trait had passed her by.
Once, she’d said as much to Ima, who responded with a sigh. “You’re a fast reader,” her mother pointed out. “And you remember what you read perfectly.”
“Only because I read my books so many times!”
Lara loved books as though they were dear friends. In her experience, they were certainly more reliable than people-friends. But honestly, what kind of a special talent was reading? Ima didn’t get it at all.
“And you’re good at writing, too,” Ima had continued. “All of your teachers praise your essays.”
There wasn’t much point in saying that writing essays was a rather unimpressive talent. Ima would only protest. Even though it was totally and completely true.
After all, Lara reasoned, they didn’t put essays up next to the great paintings in museums. Nobody had ever written a newspaper article about a particularly skilled essay-writer. Kids at school never told her “Great essay! Can you show me how to do that?” the way people did with Caroline’s drawings.
Detective work was different. Once she succeeded with that, she would be special too.
For a moment, Lara wondered if flyers were perhaps not the preferred method for finding mysteries. In the Georgia Ketteridge books, mysteries just appeared. Georgia’s uncle once fell victim to an attempted robbery. But Lara couldn’t count on that kind of luck.
As she marched back to her house, Lara’s mind burst with thoughts of her detective agency. She felt confident—well, mostly confident—that she could find a mystery before school started up again in a few weeks. After that, maybe there would be school-related mysteries for her to solve. And then? Why, she’d practically be an established detective.
She even had her very own detective notebook. True, it was just a black-and-white composition notebook that said “FIASCCO” on the front, but still. It counted.
“What are you doing?” a voice asked.
Lara spun around to find Caroline, who was wearing her special harness and straps. It helped her lug around her tablet without tiring out her arms too much.
Caroline’s computer voice always spoke in the same flat tone. Still, Lara could swear that her sister sounded extra whiny.
“Oh, I was just delivering flyers for my new detective agency,” Lara said. Her chest swelled at the word my.
“Can I help?”
“No!” Lara said immediately. The look on Caroline’s face made her stomach squirm. “I mean, I’m almost done. So you can’t. Sorry.”
That ought to do it, she thought. Caroline couldn’t possibly stay upset for long. Right?
“Why didn’t you ask me to help?” her sister asked. After she finished typing she looked expectantly at Lara.
Lara knew she should make up some excuse about having forgotten to ask. Caroline would believe her. Probably. But when she opened her mouth to invent something that sounded believable, entirely
