Fourteen
I woke the next morning to the blare of my house phone ringing in the kitchen. I crawled out of the fort and shuffled over to answer it.
“Hullo?” I said, staring blearily at the stove clock. It read 8:05 a.m.
“Maggles, it’s Abby.”
My brain gave a hiccup. That didn’t compute. Why would Abby call me on the house phone? It would have been faster to just reach through the forts and poke me.
“Who?”
“Abby, your best friend and next-door neighbor. Listen, we’ve got trouble.”
My brain hiccupped again, slowly coming online.
“Huh? What sort of trouble?”
“Well, for starters, I’m grounded.”
My brain thudded into gear.
“Grounded? What for?”
“My dad woke me up a bit ago kind of . . . very angry,” she said. There was a quaver in her voice. It took a lot to upset Abby. “He asked me to come look at something in the kitchen, and it was a total mess. Everything in the cupboards was switched around, and the mugs were under the stove, and the pots and pans were in the freezer, and there were dirty fingerprints on the walls, and all the forks and knives were hidden in the orange juice carton. It was chaos.”
“What?!”
“And Mags, he thinks we did it. He said he heard us sneaking around last night and just assumed we were playing a game, but if this is our idea of a practical joke, it’s going too far. I told him it wasn’t us, but he asked me who it was then and I couldn’t think of anything to say, and so now I’m grounded.” She let out a shaky breath. “It was NAFAFA, wasn’t it, Mags? They attacked.”
I nodded, forgetting she couldn’t see me. “It must have been—there’s no other explanation. But why?”
“I don’t know. This is all just really messed up. Is everything okay at your place?”
I looked around the kitchen and what I could see of the living room. Everything looked normal, except, wait—we’d totally straightened all those lopsided books, and where did that dirt on the floor come from? And the smears on the windows? You’d never know Abby and I had cleaned at all. I caught sight of a folded piece of paper propped on the stove, my name on the front in all caps. My stomach dropped.
“Um, maybe not. Can you hang on a second?”
I opened the note and skimmed it, my stomach sinking further and further with every line.
“Okay, more bad news,” I said, getting back on the phone. “I’m grounded too. My mom left a note saying the house was a wreck when she got home late last night. She says it looked like we did our best to un-clean everything, and if we think tying all the laundry in knots and shoving it under her bed was a funny joke, then we have some serious growing up to do.”
“They undid all our cleaning? And the laundry folding?” said Abby. “That’s horrible. And—dude, that means they were listening when we brainstormed up in Alaska! Remember I said my dad was picky about his kitchen? That must be where they got the idea. They did all this on purpose just to get us in trouble!”
“And it worked,” I said grimly. “My mom says she cleaned up most of the mess before going back to the hospital, but we’re going to have a very serious talk as soon as she gets home.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mags.”
“I’ll survive. My mom never has time to give really bad lectures.”
“Well, I feel completely awful,” said Abby. “I can’t stand my dad being mad at me! How are we going to fix this?”
“We need to come up with a plan. Say you’re going to your room and meet me in my fort.”
I hung up the phone and read through my mom’s note again. It was a NAFAFA attack for sure, but why? Why undo all our hard work, and frame us for it too, when we’d just spent an entire day doing good deeds?
I flipped over the note and found a PS on the back.
By the way, I found the good flashlight in your pillow fort. Please stop taking things from around the house and hiding them in there. The other day I spent twenty minutes trying to find a pair of scissors that should have been in the kitchen, and by the time I found them behind your postcard box, I was almost late for work. Try to be a good housemate and show a little more respect for my belongings.
Oof. By my mom’s standards that was practically yelling. But there was something else in there, something that nagged at me, apart from my mom. I read through the PS again. It seemed normal enough, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was missing something important.
There was another surprise waiting for me when I reached Fort McForterson: a shiny silver envelope with my name on the front. Abby linked over just as I was opening it. She looked miserable.
“Hey!” she said. “Is that from the Council?”
I nodded. “They must have left it while we were on the phone.”
“Let me see.” We put our heads together and read.
To: Maggie Hetzger, Vice Director, Camp Pillow Fort
From: The Council of NAFAFA
This is your official notification of censure from the Council of NAFAFA. As an applicant for membership in our organization, you were provided with certain regulations and guidelines to follow. Below is a list of the rules, regulations, and guidelines you have been found to have violated.
1) Adding new forts to your network.
(Location: Greenway Children’s Hospital. Builder Name: Kelly. Age: 8. Approved: NO.)
(Addendum: Certain Council members want to clarify that the Council is aware the link to Kelly’s was created accidentally and is therefore not technically a violation. Others, however, believe that upon discovering a new link while under consideration for membership, you should have voluntarily ignored it until membership was granted, thereby respecting the spirit of the law as well as the letter.)
2) Telling anyone not already involved about fort network/s.
(Location: Greenway Children’s Hospital. Name: Kelly. Age:
