“Hey, it’s not that bad,” Fiona protested.
The woman shook her head. “Yes, it is.”
Fiona frowned, then scooped up a spoonful of the soup and stuck it in her mouth.
The woman smiled at Eric. “There’s something special for you in the oven. Be careful you don’t burn yourself pulling it out.”
Something special? he thought. “Okay, thanks.”
He found two potholders on the counter next to the oven and opened the door. Sitting on the top rack was a Hawaiian pizza, his absolute favorite. How had they—
Oh, right. The questionnaire he’d answered on the phone.
He pulled the pan out and put a piece on a plate. He waited until it was just cool enough then took a big bite. Absolutely delicious. Perhaps even one of the best Hawaiian pizzas he’d ever had. He quickly finished the slice then took another and woofed it down, too.
“Don’t your folks ever feed you?” Fiona asked.
“Sweetie, that’s not really nice,” the woman said. She gestured toward the table. “Eric, perhaps you’d like to sit down.”
“Thanks, uh…”
The woman smiled. “My daughter seems to have forgotten to introduce us, hasn’t she? You can call me Mother Trouble.”
Eric cocked his head. “Trouble? I thought that was just a title or something the other guy called himself. It’s really your last name?”
“It’s really our last name,” Mother Trouble said.
Maggie rose from the table, her empty bowl in her hand. “Trouble? Sounds made up to me. Nobody has that as a last name.”
Fiona’s eyes narrowed defensively. “We do. I’m Fiona Trouble. And Mom’s Deirdre Trouble. You’ve already met my brother, Ronan Trouble.”
“You mean Mr. Trouble?” Maggie asked, suppressing a laugh.
Fiona glared. “Only he gets to call himself Mr. Trouble because he’s head of the house now.”
“You’re serious,” Eric said. “You’re the Trouble family?”
“I’m afraid that’s right,” Fiona’s mom said. “It is a bit unusual, I’ll admit that.” She looked at Maggie. “But that’s because you’re right, too. It is made up.”
“Has anyone seen the location report?”
Everyone turned. Mr. Trouble was sticking his head out a window near the front of the plane.
“I repeat,” he said. “Has anyone seen the location report?”
“Dear, isn’t it in the folder?” his mother asked.
“No. It is not in the folder. That, of course, is the first place I checked.” He looked around then leaned down a little, trying to look under the awning. “Keira, is that you?”
The girl at the table didn’t move.
“It’s her,” Fiona said.
“You did put the report in the folder, didn’t you?”
With a huff, the girl at the table — Keira — mumbled, “What do you think?”
“I can’t hear you,” Mr. Trouble said.
She spun around and stood up. “Yes. Yes. Yes. I put it in the folder.”
“Well, I can’t find it.”
“And that’s my fault?”
“Are you sure you put it in the right folder?”
Keira glared up at him and said very slowly, “Yes. I’m sure.”
Without waiting for him to say anything else, she stomped off under the plane and over to the field on the other side.
As she passed him, Eric noticed she was holding a book. If he wasn’t mistaken, it was from the Noriko’s Revenge series, a Japanese manga adventure. And if he really wasn’t seeing things, he would have sworn the number 11 was on the cover. But that would be impossible. Volume 11 wasn’t supposed to be released for another month, something he was well aware of because he’d been anxiously awaiting it.
Fiona shook her head. “My sister’s had a rough time since…well, since my brother took over the position of Mr. Trouble. It’s just a phase. Kids are so difficult at her age.”
Maggie frowned. “Kids? She looks about the same age as you.”
Eric had actually thought Keira might be older. Though Keira looked a lot like Fiona, only with light brown hair, she was at least two inches taller.
“Same age?” Fiona said, grimacing. “I’m fifteen. She’s only thirteen, barely even a teenager.”
“I’m thirteen,” Eric said.
“It’s different with boys.”
“I’m thirteen, too,” Maggie told her.
Fiona nodded. “Yeah. I can tell.” She looked in the direction her sister had gone. “I’d better go make her feel better.” As she jogged off, she yelled, “Keira, wait up!”
“Found it!” Mr. Trouble called out from above.
“Oh, good,” his mother said. “Where was it?”
“Well…funny thing. It seemed to be stuck to another piece of paper.”
“So it was in the folder,” Mother Trouble said.
“Uh, yeah.”
“I think you owe your sister an apology.”
Mr. Trouble frowned as he disappeared back into the plane, but only a second passed before he stuck his head back out the window. “Eric, can you come up here?”
“Into the plane?” Eric asked.
But Mr. Trouble had disappeared again.
Mother Trouble smiled. “Yes. Into the plane.”
“Can I go with him?” Maggie asked.
“I think that’s a grand idea,” Mother Trouble said. “It’ll be good for Eric to have someone he trusts know what the plan is.”
“The plan for what?” Maggie asked. “I still don’t even know why we’re here.”
“Why, the plan to keep Eric from slipping into the abyss, of course.”
6
Eric had no idea what Maggie had been expecting to find inside the plane, but he’d been prepared to see rows of seats with overhead storage compartments.
He was wrong.
Just inside and to the right was a door he figured led to the cockpit. That wasn’t unusual. It was a plane, after all. A little less ordinary was the logo painted on the wall beside it, the same logo that was on the outside of the plane. It was simple, really, a big yellow circle surrounding the letters TFS. Just below the bottom of the circle were two lines:
Troubleshooters
• You Gotta Problem, We Gotta Help •
Still, a logo on a wall wasn’t that unusual. The big surprise was to the left.
Instead of rows of seats and overhead bins, there was a living room.
A couch, a love seat, three recliners, a coffee table, and a TV and stereo mounted against the wall. If he ignored the fact he was in an airplane with a curved ceiling and tiny windows, the living room could have easily been in a house somewhere. Well, except for the fact that all the chairs had seat belts.
“Back here,” Mr. Trouble called out from somewhere down the hallway on the other side of the living room.
Eric and Maggie exchanged looks.
“If this thing takes off with us on it, I am so going to kill you,” she whispered.
“You didn’t have to come.”
“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.
<
br /> “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 smile. “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 Col
in 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.
Here Comes Mr. Trouble tfc-1 Page 5