“Of course I did,” she said, pushing past him.
The narrow hallway hugged the right side of the aircraft. Along the wall on the left were several doors. As soon as they reached one that was open, they peeked inside. Beyond the door was a small bedroom complete with a pair of bunk beds, a dresser, and a desk. There were girls’ clothes lying on the floor and several manga books on the lower bunk. It wasn’t hard to guess this was where Fiona and Keira slept.
“Eric?” Mr. Trouble asked. “That is you out there, right?”
“We’re coming,” Eric answered.
He moved past Maggie to the next open doorway.
The layout inside was basically the same as the girls’ room, only instead of bunks there was a single bed. And where the other room had been a bit of a mess, this room was very neat and tidy. Mr. Trouble was sitting at the desk, an open file folder in front of him.
“Hi,” Eric said.
“Ah! Great. Please, please, come in.” Mr. Trouble waved them toward the bed behind the desk. Eric let Maggie sit first then took a spot a foot to her right.
“Just give me a second,” Mr. Trouble said.
They stared at his back while he shuffled through the papers on his desk. Then, without warning, he spun around in his chair and slapped his hands against his thighs. “So, Eric, it’s my understanding that you are having some troubles.”
“You could say that.”
“What’s he talking about?” Maggie asked. “What troubles?”
Eric hadn’t told Maggie what had been going on. In fact, he hadn’t told anyone. Each day he’d been trying to convince himself that he’d just been imagining things, or, at the very least, he was only having some bad luck. And everyone knew the best way to get rid of bad luck was to not talk about it.
“I’ll tell you later,” he said.
“I want you to know we’re here to solve those problems with you,” Mr. Trouble said. “Trouble Family Services has never failed a client yet.”
“Okay. I really don’t understand,” Maggie said. “Your mom said something about getting Eric out of an…abyss? What is it you guys do?”
Mr. Trouble leaned back, his eyes suddenly focused on the wall behind them. “I’m sure she…didn’t mean anything…specific by that.” He was silent for a moment then popped forward again, his face once more bright and friendly. “So, moving on. What we need to do is an assessment of your situation.”
Eric raised his hand in the air. “Like what those two uncle guys just did when they cut my finger?”
“They cut your finger?” Maggie said. She grabbed his hand. “Let me see.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t a cut. More of a scrape, really. Just needed a skin sample,” Mr. Trouble said. “Now—”
“A skin sample? Why would you need a skin sample?”
“It’s all part of the assessment. What we also need to do is get a clearer picture of what’s going on with you so we can determine how to deal with it.”
“You mean like with my mom?” Eric said.
Mr. Trouble nodded somberly, a concerned look on his face. “I know you’re worried about her. And you have a right to be. But I want to tell you that we haven’t lost a parent yet and I’m not about to start with you.”
Maggie let go of Eric’s hand. “What’s he talking about? I thought your mom’s on a business trip.”
“Well, she’s away,” he said.
“So she’s not on a business trip?”
“I don’t think we have an answer to that yet,” Mr. Trouble said before Eric could answer. “It’s possible that she is away at a convention of…” He whirled back to his desk, grabbed a piece of paper and looked at it as he turned back around. “Hair stylists, but it’s also possible she’s in mortal danger.”
“What?” Eric and Maggie said in unison.
“An extreme possibility at best,” Mr. Trouble said, shaking his empty palm in front of them. “There is no reason to think that’s really the case.”
Maggie leaned toward Eric and whispered, “This guy’s insane. We really need to leave.”
Mr. Trouble set the piece of paper back on his desk. “Now, back to that assessment. The only foolproof way to get an idea about what’s really going on with you is to observe you in your natural habitat.”
“My what?” Eric asked.
“Do you mean like with wild animals, like lions in Africa?” Maggie asked. “I’ve seen it on Animal Planet.”
“Well, similar, yes,” Mr. Trouble said. “Only Eric’s life will, of course, be more complicated than that of the common lion. And with far less killing of antelope.” He started to chuckle but no one else laughed.
“So what, exactly, am I supposed to do?” Eric asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” Mr. Trouble repeated. “Well, not actually nothing. Just go through your day like you usually do and we’ll do the rest. Don’t do anything out of the ordinary. Just pretend like it’s a typical Tuesday.”
“Tomorrow’s Friday,” Maggie said.
“Ah, right. A typical Friday, then.”
“And you’re going to…?” Eric asked.
“Observe.”
“So you’ll be standing around watching me?”
“Oh, it’s not quite as simple as that. Just leave the details to us. We’ve done this countless times. This first day is usually very easy. You won’t even know we’re there. Most of our clients say they actually experience fewer problems on the day we observe them than they’d been having for a while. So there’s that to look forward to.”
“What about school?” Eric asked. “How are you going to watch me there?”
“Again, details. Trust that we will take care of everything.”
“Are you seriously thinking about going along with this?” Maggie asked.
Eric sighed. That was a good question. Was he really going to—
His gaze fell onto the clock sitting on the dresser across the room. It was 8:45.
He jumped up. “We need to go now.”
“What’s your hurry?” Mr. Trouble asked.
“Nine o’clock?” Eric said, looking at him. “You promised to get us home? No way we’re going to make it in time.”
Mr. Trouble glanced at Eric, then at the clock, then at Eric again. “Oh. Oh. Oh. Your parents.”
“Yes, our parents,” Eric said. Well, one of his, anyway.
“Then I guess we should hurry things along.”
“Definitely.” Eric grabbed Maggie’s arm and pulled her up. “Let’s go.”
“Wait. One more thing,” Mr. Trouble said.
Eric stepped toward the door. “You can tell us in the car.”
“I have to do it here. The package I gave you this afternoon?”
“What about it?”
“Inside you will find a useful general-information pamphlet. I suggest you read it.”
“Sure, sure. Now can we go?”
“You will also find three small metal discs like this.” Mr. Trouble opened a drawer on his desk and pulled out a thin black disk no larger than a quarter. He showed it to Eric. “These will help us keep track of you. Place one in your bag, one in your pocket, and leave one at home as a spare.”
Eric hesitated. “Really? Tracking?” Now that was cool. “I promise I’ll check it out as soon as I get home.”
“And one last thing,” Mr. Trouble said, still not getting up.
Eric threw his arms in the air. “I thought we already did the one last thing.”
“You’ll also find a necklace in the box.”
He paused. “A necklace?”
Mr. Trouble sighed. “We also have key chains, but someone forgot to pack them, so you’re stuck with the necklace. If you’re in real trouble, rub the charm at least three times. It’ll activate an emergency beacon and we’ll immediately come to wherever you are.”
Eric narrowed his eyes, suspicious. “What kind of charm?”
Mr. Trouble forced a smi
le. “A…uh…unicorn.”
“A what?”
Maggie started laughing.
“There’s one more thing you need to know,” Mr. Trouble said.
“Seriously. You can’t keep saying ‘one more thing.’”
“When the time comes, it’ll all be up to you.”
“What’s that supposed to—”
Mr. Trouble jumped up from his chair. “All right. Who’s up for a ride home?”
As they climbed down the ladder to the ground outside, they found Uncle Colin and Uncle Carl standing nervously at the bottom, waiting.
“Hello, my boy, hello,” Uncle Colin said. His smile was a bit more nervous than before and his eyes kept darting to Mr. Trouble. “Ronan, a moment of your time?”
“Not now, Uncle Colin,” Mr. Trouble said. “We’re running a little behind schedule.”
He, Eric, and Maggie headed toward the sedan. A second later, Uncle Colin and Uncle Carl caught up to them.
“I think you’ll want to hear this,” Uncle Colin said, breathing heavily. “We have preliminary results on the data.”
“Okay. So?” Mr. Trouble said.
Uncle Colin hesitated. “First, it’s confirmed. He is a candidate.”
“Okay, but we already expected that.”
“Yes, we did.” Uncle Colin paused. “We also did a surface level scan.”
“And?”
“Uh, well, so far everything points toward this being an…MA813.”
Mr. Trouble stopped in his tracks and spun around. The uncles hadn’t expected this and halted just short of running into him.
“Are you sure?” Mr. Trouble said. He switched his gaze from Uncle Colin to Uncle Carl. “Is that confirmed?”
Uncle Carl tried to speak, stopped, took a deep breath, then tried to speak again. “Trace and thermal…both…show…same…results.”
“What about hair?” Mr. Trouble asked.
“We thought the possibility was remote so we didn’t take a sample,” Uncle Colin said. He took a step toward Eric. “We could do that now.”
Eric edged backward.
Uncle Carl reached out and put a hand on his brother. “Hair analysis won’t tell us for sure, either. The only real way to know is a deep scan.”
“That’s true, that’s true,” Uncle Colin agreed, his head bobbing up and down.
“We can have him in and out in twenty minutes,” Uncle Carl said.
“No way,” Eric said. “We can’t stay another twenty minutes.”
“He’s right,” Mr. Trouble agreed. “There’s not enough time now. Run your tests again to double-check your numbers. We’ll set up a scan for later.”
“Of course, of course,” Uncle Colin said. He tried to smile. “Eric, friend of Eric, it was a pleasure to meet you.”
Maggie said, “My name is—”
“Let’s go!” Mr. Trouble announced, cutting her off.
He grabbed Eric and Maggie by the arms and ushered them quickly to the sedan.
Much to Eric’s surprise, they pulled up in front of his house by 9:01.
“Home as promised,” Mr. Trouble said.
“Thanks.” Eric reached for the door but hesitated opening it. “You don’t think those other guys are still around, do you?”
“Who?”
“You know, the ones we ran from in front of Maggie’s house.”
“First of all, we didn’t run from anyone. It was just easier to have a conversation somewhere they were not. And no, they won’t still be around. That would be very, very unusual.”
Eric felt there was something Mr. Trouble wasn’t telling him. Well, there were probably a ton of things Mr. Trouble wasn’t telling him, but his mind was so full of everything that had happened that evening that he didn’t even know what to ask. He opened his door.
“I’ll walk from here,” Maggie said, also opening her door.
As Eric started to climb out, Mr. Trouble touched him on the arm.
“Quick question,” Mr. Trouble said in a whisper. “The phone-book incident? Do you still have the page you tore out?”
It took Eric a second to figure out what he meant, then he nodded. “Yeah. It’s in my bag.”
“Could I possibly get that from you?”
“Right now?”
“Now would be good. We may forget later.”
Eric pulled the page out of his bag and handed it to Mr. Trouble.
“Thank you. Thank you so much.” Mr. Trouble folded it and put it in his shirt pocket. “Now, I don’t want you worrying about anything. Soon your Maker problems will be all gone.”
Eric stopped as he was about to shut his door. “Maker problems? What do you mean?”
“What?”
“You said Maker problems?”
“I’m sure I didn’t.”
“I’m sure you did. What’s a Maker?”
Mr. Trouble shrugged his shoulders. “That’s an excellent question. Okay, you have a nice—”
“You did say it.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“Did what?” Mr. Trouble asked.
“Say it.”
Mr. Trouble laughed. “Oh, you are a funny one, Eric. Have a good night.” He leaned over, pulled the door closed and took off.
“What was that all about?” Maggie asked.
“I have no idea.” They stood there silently for another few seconds, then Eric said, “Thanks for coming with me.”
“Somebody has to watch out for you. Now, I suggest you forget about everything that happened tonight. Whoever these people are, they’re crazy. I don’t trust them.”
He nodded but said nothing.
“I’m completely serious,” she told him.
“I know you are.” He paused. “You want me to walk you home? Peter might still be around.”
She rolled her eyes. “Peter has never bothered me. I’ll be fine.” She took a few steps then turned back. “And don’t worry. I’ll finish our report before I go to sleep.”
“Oh, Maggie. The report. I’m sorry. I’ll—”
“Don’t say anything. It’s fine.”
As she walked off, he knew it wasn’t really fine but what was he going to do?
And what she had said about the Trouble family? He knew she was just trying to be a good friend. But if they could help him find his mom and make all the other weirdness go away, he had to trust them.
He took a deep breath and headed up the pathway to his front door. As he reached the porch, that odd thing Mr. Trouble said right before he drove away played through his mind. Your Maker problems will be all gone.
He paused. It hadn’t been his imagination. He’d definitely heard it.
Your Maker problems…
So, what, exactly, was a Maker?
TROUBLE FAMILY SERVICES
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Trouble Family Services! We understand you might be a little confused and perhaps even upset. This is perfectly natural. If you’re reading this, then your life has recently been turned upside down and has yet to return to normal.
By now, even the strongest, most levelheaded person would be questioning why all this was happening to them. Again, it’s only natural. So is wondering: will this ever end?
The good news is that it will!
Because you have taken the big step that will make sure it does—calling Trouble Family Services. However you came across our number (we realize the ways this can happen are also unusual), we are glad you called. We have been serving people in situations just like yours for generations, and we take our company motto very seriously:
You gotta problem. We gotta help.
We know you have many questions. Hopefully this booklet will answer most if not all of them. So take a few minutes, relax, and enjoy the read.
And thanks again for calling!
Sincerely,
Ronan Trouble/Mr. Trouble
CEO
Trouble Family Services
TROUB
LE FAMILY SERVICES
TFS HISTORY
Here Comes Mr. Trouble Page 6