“We can take them,” I assured Crawford.
“Can we?” Greg said with a scowl. “The kids are supposed to live in Harrogate, not here. That was the deal.”
“But they’re so sweet,” Liam cooed, reaching out to pat the head of the girl on my lap. She promptly bit him on the hand, scrambled up onto the table, and yelled, “I’m the princess!”
“No, I am!” another girl said, scrambling onto the conference table to tackle her sister.
A slightly older girl grabbed the carafe of coffee on the sideboard and began to chug it, egged on by three sisters.
“Liam, make them stop!” Greg ordered as another girl picked up a jug of water to throw it at her sister who had stolen her cookie. She missed, and Greg and his laptop were drenched.
“You ruined his stuff!” Enola yelled at her sisters, joining the fray. “Stop it, all of you! Stop it this instant!”
Her sisters ignored her, and a brawl broke out under the conference table. My brothers and I scattered. Crawford and Remy watched in amusement as Greg dripped indignantly on the carpet.
“We’re going to just leave you all to get acquainted!”
6
Tess
Plop. Plop.
The rain dripped from the ceiling into the pot I had on the floor.
I regretted not braving the rain earlier and going home to fight the incoming water.
Maeve winced as a drop of water hit her on the head. She held out an empty cup to catch the drips from the new leak.
“Do you think we can harvest the mushrooms growing in the carpet?” she wondered. “Maybe sell them as hyper-locally grown vegetables for a super high price?” Maeve snapped a few pictures of the little white mushrooms with her phone.
“At this point, I’m ready to do anything to make rent,” I said, pouring the batter for the Boston cream pie I was making into a pan and sliding it into the oven. The radiator had broken—surprise, surprise—and since we needed the oven on to heat the apartment, might as well bake a cake!
I took eggs out of the too-small fridge and cracked them, separating the egg yolks for the custard filling.
“How much is a pound of specialty mushrooms?” I asked. “Maybe I could start a YouTube channel where I show people how to farm them.”
“Apparently not a lot,” Maeve said, scrolling through her phone. “If you wanted to be a mushroom farmer, you’d need to move upstate or under a bridge.”
“At the rate I’m going, that may end up happening,” I said with a sigh.
“We will find you a job,” Maeve said, turning back to her laptop. She had a plastic bag over it to protect it from the dripping water from the ceiling.
Our upstairs neighbor’s dog started to bark, and he then began his nightly ritual of playing terrible hip-hop music for the whole neighborhood.
I let out a frustrated yell. “Why does he have to blare his music all night?”
“I’d totally bang the ceiling with a broom,” Maeve said as the pots of water vibrated in time to the music, “but I’m afraid the whole thing would collapse.”
“I need to move.”
“Maybe you won’t get a new job, and we’ll be evicted, and the problem will solve itself,” Maeve said.
“Did you find any job listings?”
“Just the usual temp agencies. There are some firms looking for an assistant, but they want someone with a master’s degree.”
“Figures,” I muttered.
