“Do you have to remind your children six or seven times to pick up their toys—and they still don’t do it? Do you have to scold them again and again and again for the same misbehavior—and you still don’t feel like they’ve heard you? Many modern parents complain of these problems. But only New Ways offers a scientifically proven solution …’”
Brian’s eyes skimmed down the rest of the article.
“Then there’s a bunch of blah, blah, blahing about what a genius the guy who developed this plan was,” Brian said.
“What is the plan?” Sukie asked.
“It’s just what Mom and Dad have been doing to us,” Brian said. “You know. Saying the wrong things at the wrong times. They’ve even got this whole chart of what they call ‘Parentspeak Phrases’—‘No dessert until you eat your vegetables’ … yep, they say that … ‘No running with scissors’ … yep, they say that …”
Sukie didn’t want to listen to Brian saying all the things her parents already said all the time.
“But why?” Sukie said. “Why would they say the wrong things at the wrong time? Why say, ‘No dessert until you eat your vegetables’ if no one’s eating? What if the real problem is that one of us is about to poke an eye out with a stick? If they’re not saying the right thing, we might go ahead and poke the stick in our eye!”
“It’s just temporary,” Brian said. “To surprise us, because they don’t think we’ve been listening. To catch us off guard. To turn us around so we’re good all the time. Look, it says right here, ‘Within days your little monsters will be magically transformed into little angels, eager to please, and delighted to have you scold them in your old, familiar manner.’”
Sukie thought about that. It would kind of be nice now to have Mom or Dad say the right things at the right times again. In fact, that’s what she’d gone to bed longing for. But that was because she was afraid they’d been turned into aliens or robots. Now that she knew they were just trying to trick her and Brian and Reed, it made her mad. She narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw and burst out, “That’s not fair! They’re being mean!”
“Yeah!” Brian agreed. “You said it, Sukie. This is—this is cruel and unusual punishment!”
“But what can we do about it?” Reed said.
Sukie looked up at both of her brothers. She couldn’t believe their faces were blank, like they didn’t have any ideas at all inside those seven-and nine-year-old brains of theirs.
“Well, dun,” Sukie said. “We’re going to do the same thing back to them.”
CHAPTER 10
BRIAN STARED at his little sister. What made her think Reed and Brian would do something she suggested?
Still, it wasn’t a bad idea….
“But we’re not like grown-ups,” Reed was arguing. “We don’t go around saying the same boring things all the time. I don’t.”
“You do so,” Sukie said.
“Do not!”
“Do too!”
“Do—”
“There!” Brian said, grabbing a piece of paper and scribbling down four words. “That’s a good one.”
“Huh?” Reed said.
“That ‘do too, do not’ stuff. It drives grown-ups crazy. That can be one of the things we say at the wrong time, when Mom and Dad say the wrong things to us.”
“Oh,” Reed said. He frowned. “Okay, maybe that one’ll work. But that’s the only thing we say all the time. Everything else we say is … original. Full of imagination.”
Brian knew that was what Reed’s teachers always said about him. Those words—“original … full of imagination”—came home on every single one of Reed’s report cards.
“No, it isn’t,” Sukie said. “You say the same things over and over again all the time. Like if you tell me to do something, and I say, ‘Make me,’ you say, ‘I don’t have the recipe.’ Always. Every single time.”
“Then there’s that stupid ‘spell it’ trick,” Brian said. “Remember? You say, ‘What’s your name? Spell it.’”
Sukie nodded.
“And if I say, ‘S-U-K-I-E,’ you say, ‘No, stupid, “it” is I-T.’ But if I say, ‘I-T,’ you say, ‘Your name’s “it”? That’s a funny name!’” Sukie made a face at Reed.
“That game is so second grade,” Brian said scornfully.
“I am in second grade,” Reed said in a small voice. He pushed his bottom lip out glumly. The way he looked, if he’d been Sukie’s age, he would have been crying by now.
“Hey, it’s all right,” Brian said quickly. “We’re just collecting a list of things we can say to drive Mom and Dad as crazy as they’re driving us. That’s a good one. Can you guys think of any others?”
“How about, ‘But Connor’s parents let him’?” Reed said slowly.
“Great!” Brian said.
“‘I didn’t mean to,’” Sukie said.
“Huh?” Brian said.
“For the list,” Sukie said.
“Oh,” Brian said. He wrote it down. And then Reed had a good idea, and Sukie had another one, and Brian had one himself…. In a matter of minutes the page was covered, and he was grabbing for more paper. They had all sorts of ammunition to hurl back at Mom and Dad.
Brian remembered imagining himself as a general. It was like he had suddenly, magically, become one.
This was war.
CHAPTER 11
THE WAR started slowly. The next day was Monday, and they had school. But everyone overslept. As Brian and Reed and Sukie scrambled into their clothes and gobbled down their breakfast and ran for the school bus, Mom and Dad didn’t have time to say anything at all to them except, “Hurry up!”
What if the experiment was over?
Brian actually felt disappointed at that thought. It was like spending hours making a huge snow fort and dozens of snowballs for a snowball fight you were sure you were going to win, and then having the kids on the other side say, “You know what? We don’t want to play after all. We’re just going to go inside and watch TV.”
But then after school, after both Mom and Dad were home from work, Brian was lying on his stomach on the couch doing his math homework. Mom walked by and glanced at him, and Brian suddenly remembered that he still had his shoes on.
What’s more, he had his feet resting on the couch pillow that Mom always liked to lean against when she was watching TV.
And maybe his shoes were just the littlest bit muddy from recess.
Okay, they were caked with huge clumps of mud, because he’d been playing football at recess, and he’d scored a touchdown, and how was he to know there was a huge puddle in the end zone? He’d been running too fast to see it.
When Mom saw Brian with his muddy shoes on her favorite pillow, Brian could tell she was about to scream, “Brian! Get your shoes off the couch this instant! How many times do I have to tell you that? You clean that up right now! You’re grounded, buddy!” Brian could see by her face that she was struggling to bite back those words. Instead she said, almost mildly, “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Brian gulped. This was it. His first chance. He narrowed his eyes and pictured the long, long list he and Reed and Sukie had made the night before. And then he shot back, “Sukie started it!”
Mom stared at him.
Brian saw the confusion in her eyes. He forced himself to stare straight back at her. He kept his expression as innocent as possible.
And then Mom whirled on her heels and walked away.
Yes! Brian had won the first battle. Brian was so excited, he took his feet off the couch. He jumped up and did the same kind of touchdown dance he’d seen NFL players do on TV.
Oops. That left piles of dried mud everywhere.
But he was the victor, so he could afford to be a little generous. He got out the Dustbuster and vacuumed up the dried mud—even from the couch. And he took his shoes off before he ran to tell Reed and Sukie the good news.
CHAPTER 12
BY DINNERTIME anyone watching the Robinson family from outs
ide would have thought that every single one of them had been replaced by robots with scrambled voice circuits.
Reed forgot to put the silverware on when he was setting the table, and instead of simply reminding him, Dad said, “Have you brushed your teeth?”
Reed replied, “Sukie’s bugging me,” though Sukie wasn’t even in the kitchen. Sukie was in the family room telling Mom, “Nobody told me!” when Mom said, “Act your age!”
And all Sukie had done was trip and fall when she was running around the room. If you asked Reed, she was acting her age.
Brian kicked his soccer ball in the living room, and Dad told him, “This isn’t a restaurant. Get it yourself.”
And Brian answered, “I’m bored! There’s nothing to do!”
Reed left his action figures spread across the kitchen floor, but instead of telling him to pick them up, Mom said, “How would you feel if someone called you ‘stupid’?”
Reed replied, “Can I have dessert now?”
Reed loved it. Nobody made any sense at all.
This was better than pretending to be a spy. This was better than staging the Greatest Battle in the Universe between Cubeman and Batman.
Somehow Dad got the dinner on the table without much help from anyone else, because he couldn’t give any commands right. It was a strange-looking meal. The spaghetti swam in too much sauce. The garlic bread had jagged edges. The lettuce in the salad was torn wildly, as if by a madman.
Usually Dad was a great cook.
Reed thought this kind of meal was more interesting.
Everyone was quiet as the family sat down and took the first few bites. It took too much energy to think of the wrong things to say while they were eating.
And then Sukie knocked over her milk.
Reed saw Mom and Dad look at each other. Dad had panic in his eyes. Maybe he was fresh out of wrong things to say. Maybe he was scared he was going to say, “You’ve got to be more careful! Go get a towel and clean it up,” no matter how hard he tried not to.
But Mom didn’t look worried. She tossed her head, shaking the hair back from her face. And then, sounding as confident as an Olympic gold medalist, she said, “No, you can’t have a snack. We’re eating dinner in five minutes.”
Sukie’s eyes were big as she watched the pool of milk seep across the table. She seemed to be thinking hard. Reed held his breath, waiting for her comeback. Did she need help?
No—she was looking up now, staring straight into Mom’s eyes.
“Reed got more than me,” Sukie said bravely. You never would have known that milk was dripping through the crack in the table right into her lap. She flipped her hair over her shoulder, almost like a miniature version of Mom.
Dad burst out laughing.
“Ron! Stop it!” Mom hissed out of the side of her mouth. “You’re going to undermine our authority!”
Dad laughed harder.
“A-Authority?” Dad said through his chuckles. “You just told your kid she couldn’t have a snack because dinner’s in five minutes. And we’re already eating dinner. Where’s the authority in that?”
Reed liked it that Dad thought this was funny.
“Yeah!” Reed said. “That was the best pair of wrong sayings ever. They were so wrong they almost made sense. Like, if Sukie had gotten as much milk as me, she could have spilled even more. And dinner’s going to be stopped for five minutes because there’s milk on everything, and somebody’s got to clean it up. And wouldn’t it be fun if we could have a snack in the middle of dinner?”
“Reed! Don’t give away our strategy! They’re not supposed to know we’re doing this on purpose!” Brian whispered.
At the same time Mom hissed at Dad again, “Ron! The experiment!”
“The war!” Brian whispered. “We were winning—”
“They were about to cave! I know it!” Mom said.
Reed started giggling too. Mom and Brian were like two crazy generals. And he and Dad were like two fountains of laughter. Reed tilted back his chair so he could send a stream of laughter straight up into the air.
“Reed! Watch out!” Sukie yelled. “You’re going to fall leaning back like that! Keep all four chair legs on the floor!”
And then Sukie clapped her hands over her mouth.
“Oops,” she said. “I just did a parent speak.”
CHAPTER 13
EVERYONE TURNED on Sukie. Dad and Reed stopped laughing. Mom and Brian stopped glaring. Sukie shrank down in her chair. She didn’t understand. Why was everyone looking at her?
“Young lady,” Mom said slowly, “what did you just say to Reed?”
“Um, I told him not to fall,” Sukie mumbled. “I told him to keep his chair legs on the floor. Just like, um, you always tell him.”
“Aw,” Brian growled. “You just ruined everything.”
“I did not,” Sukie said. She squirmed a little in her chair, so she could dodge the milk dripping from the table. “I probably saved Reed’s life! He could have fallen over backward and broken his head.”
Sukie saw that Reed was very, very slowly easing his chair down so it sat squarely on the floor.
“He wouldn’t have fallen,” Brian said. “He tilts his chair back all the time. He never falls.”
“What if this time he did?” Sukie argued. “What if he broke every bone in his body and his brain squished out all over the floor?”
“Cool!” Reed said.
Sukie ignored him.
“And Mom and Dad weren’t going to stop him. They weren’t ever, ever, ever going to tell him to be safe,” she said. “So I had to.”
Dad wasn’t looking at Sukie anymore. He was looking at Mom.
“Sukie’s right,” Dad said grimly. “We just endangered Reed with this stupid experiment.”
“Oh, come on,” Mom said. “He was just leaning back in his chair. It wasn’t going to kill him.”
Sukie, Reed, and Brian all stared at Mom. Their jaws dropped and their eyes bugged out in amazement.
“Then why do you yell at me about it all the time?” Reed asked.
“Because it’s still rude and dangerous,” Mom said. “A rule doesn’t have to be life threatening to be important.” She stood up and got a dishcloth from the sink. Then she started wiping up Sukie’s spilled milk. Some of the milk still dripped onto Sukie’s chair. But Sukie was glad to see that Mom cared again about cleaning up messes. Maybe Mom would even clean up the glitter hidden under the rocking chair.
Oh, no, Sukie thought. What if I really do crave rules and order, like that magazine said?
Well, she didn’t ever have to admit it.
“The experiment’s over, isn’t it?” Reed asked sadly.
“Yep,” Dad said. “I think we can call this one an unqualified failure.” He stared down at the pool of spaghetti sauce on his plate.
“But it was fun,” Reed said. “I liked everyone saying the wrong thing.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be fun,” Mom said. “It was supposed to teach you a lesson.”
She wrung the dishcloth out in the sink and came back to wipe up more milk.
“Mom,” Sukie said. “We already know we’re not supposed to spill milk, or run in the house or, um, play with glitter without permission—”
“Or kick soccer balls in the kitchen,” Brian said.
“Or put handprints on the wall,” Reed said.
“Or tilt back in chairs,” Sukie said, glaring a little at Reed.
“So why don’t you do what you’re supposed to?” Dad asked.
“We just forget sometimes,” Sukie said.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” Reed said.
“How can we make sure you remember?” Mom asked. “How can we make you be careful?”
And it was strange. It was like Mom really thought Brian and Reed and Sukie could give her a good answer. Like she wanted their help.
“I know!” Reed said. “If you have to yell at us, you could stop doing it the same way all the time. Be original. Don’
t say, ‘No running with scissors.’ Say, I don’t know, maybe, ‘Walk slowly when you have pointed cutting tools in your hands.’”
He looked around triumphantly.
“And by the time I’d figured out to say that, and actually said it, you’d have already tripped and stabbed yourself and I’d need to call nine-one-one,” Dad said.
“Oh,” Reed said.
Sukie saw what was going to happen. Mom and Dad were going to go back to yelling at them all the time, the normal way, just like usual. Nothing had changed.
Except … Sukie thought about how she’d felt, yelling at Reed about his chair. She’d really been scared that Reed would fall and get hurt. Did Mom and Dad feel like that all the time?
No wonder they yelled so much.
“But every once in a while, when you’re not worried about having to call nine-one-one, couldn’t you say something different?” Reed argued. “I’d listen more if I thought there was a chance you might say something interesting.”
Dad laughed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s awfully hard for parents to be interesting.”
“You could promise to try,” Reed said hopefully.
“That’s it!” Brian said. “We need a peace treaty.”
“Huh?” Sukie said.
“A peace treaty. It’s like, when a war ends, both sides sign a treaty saying they’re not going to fight anymore,” Brian said. “And the side that loses says it’s going to give back land, or prisoners, or whatever. And both sides promise to do things so there’s not another war.”
“Oh, please,” Mom said. “This wasn’t a war. And I’m not going to negotiate. Dad and I may not be interesting, but we are in charge. We set the rules.”
She dropped the milk-soaked dishcloth into the sink with an emphatic plop.
“No, wait,” Dad said. “This could be fun. Let’s see what they come up with.”
CHAPTER 14
SO RIGHT AFTER DINNER Sukie, Reed, and Brian went to Brian’s room to make up their peace treaty offer. It took a long time. First Brian wanted to write, “We, the victors of this war …” But Reed and Sukie told him that Mom and Dad would never sign something that said the kids won.