“These are adorable,” said Abby. “I bet she’d love Samson. And look, crimped edges; she must have scissors like yours, Mags.” She nudged me. “You’re kindred spirits!”
“Hah,” I said.
“I bet she comes in here to pretend she’s not in the hospital. It must get really old being sick.” Abby flicked a crayon across the floor, then her head snapped up. “Hey! Hey, hey, hey!” She batted me on the shoulder. “We should fix it up for her!”
“What?”
“The fort!” said Abby. “We can give it a makeover, bring her things to make it better, make it fun. It can be a total magical surprise.”
“Okay,” I said, “but— Ow! Stop it! Why do you always hit people when you have an idea? And please stop calling the forts magical. We’re not third graders here.”
“What is this thing you have against third graders?” said Abby. “But whatever, this is such a good idea. She’ll love it, plus it’s the perfect good deed. Win-win!”
I didn’t answer. I scowled down at the linoleum.
“Hey,” Abby said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I just— Don’t you think we’ve done enough good deeds for one night? I’m seriously tired here.”
“Come on,” said Abby. “It’ll be fun. And even forgetting the good deed, this is a nice thing to do. Don’t you want to make a sick little kid happy?”
I knew the only answer to that was yes, but I couldn’t say it. It wasn’t like this Kelly person didn’t have time to make her fort better herself. All she had to do was lie around all day while my mom took care of her.
Okay, fine, that wasn’t fair. But my stomach still felt hot and spiky, and I definitely wasn’t in the mood to stay up late for the second night in a row, doing a favor for someone I didn’t even know.
Abby was watching me, a line between her eyebrows getting deeper and deeper the longer I stayed quiet. I looked away, chewing the inside of my cheek. I wasn’t going to win this one.
“Whatever,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Sweet! Come on, tired Maggie!” Abby shook out her wrists and cracked her neck. “So, what do we need? Or, more important, I guess, what can we get?”
What we got turned out to be a hodgepodge of odds and ends scavenged from our bedrooms and houses. Between us we found: colorful fake flowers to jam between all the pillows; a squashy blue bathmat to spread over the cold floor; a string of paper butterflies; a round mirror with a broken frame; a useful stack of extra construction paper; an old wicker basket to hold Kelly’s mess of art supplies; and a miniature tea-party table that we decorated with a lime-green dish towel, a pair of battery-operated candles, a chipped teacup, and a tiny owl wearing a hat.
It was hard work crawling back and forth with our hands full, especially since we were trying to be quiet, and by the time we finished even Abby was grumbling. Still, as we sat back to survey the final result, I couldn’t help feeling a rush of pride at what we’d done. We’d transformed Kelly’s boring, everyday fort into a cozy palace, pretty and twinkling in the electric candlelight.
“Go us!” said Abby, wiping her forehead. “This is awesome. Kelly’s going to be over the moon.”
“Along with her cats,” I said, nodding up at the drawings.
“Ha!” said Abby. “There’s my girl back.”
I flashed her a grin, then dropped it as a new worry suddenly occurred to me. What if Kelly wasn’t over the moon? What if she got scared instead? What if we came back to visit and found her fort surrounded by police tape, with all those knickknacks covered in our fingerprints sealed up in plastic bags as evidence? If Kelly took the makeover the wrong way, we could be in serious, serious trouble.
“Calm down,” said Abby when I pointed out the problem. “It’s okay. We can leave her a note. That way she’ll know someone nice was behind everything.”
After carefully discussing how much to say, we wrote out the note.
Dear Kelly,
Surprise! We hope you like your fort makeover. We can’t tell you who we are, but we have forts too, so we’re kindred spirits.
Your space cat pictures are awesome! Will you draw us one of a big black-and-white cat? We know a cat like that. His name is Samson. He hasn’t been to outer space, but he likes to explore and go back and forth between our forts. We are so sorry you have to be in the hospital and hope you get well very, very soon.
From . . .
“What should we put?” asked Abby, tapping the pen on her leg. “‘A & M’?”
“‘Your Forty Godmothers’?” I suggested.
“How about ‘Your Next-Fort Neighbors’?” said Abby.
“That works.”
Abby folded up the letter and tucked it under a candle on the little table.
“Okay, that’s that,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Guess all we can do now is wait to see if she likes it. But hey”—she bopped me on the knee—“at least now we can be absolutely, for sure certain we’re in NAFAFA. If thoughtful greens, ankle fixing, housecleaning, and heroic fort fancying don’t get us in, nothing will.”
She yawned. Then I yawned. Then both of us yawned, and we made our last trip home for the night.
Abby went back to her place, but I decided I needed a change after the long day and crawled up onto my old sofa bunk in Fort McForterson. It was glorious getting to stretch out in my own space again, and I realized being on my own didn’t bother me at all now that my best friend was right on the other side of the pillow.
Besides, I thought as I finally drifted off to sleep, Abby was right: there was no way we weren’t in NAFAFA now. All the hard work was behind us, and from here on out, things could only get easier.
