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‘Three little maids from school are we—’”
Text message: OMG SHE IS SINGING SEND HELP NOW
“‘Pert as a schoolgirl well can be—’”
Fortunately Grandmère broke off at that point in a coughing fit. “Oh dear! Yes. I was quite the sensation that year, let me tell you.”
Text message: THIS IS WORSE THAN WHAT AC WILL DO 2 ME WHEN SHE FINDS OUT ABOUT THE $
“Amelia, what are you doing with that mobile phone?”
“Nothing,” I said, quickly pressing SEND.
Grandmère’s face still had a dewy look from her stroll down memory lane.
“Amelia. I have an idea.”
Oh no.
See, there are two people in my acquaintance from whom you never want to hear the words “I have an idea.”
Lilly is one.
Grandmère is the other.
“Would you look at that?” I pointed at the clock. “Six o’clock already. Well, I better get going, I’m sure you have dinner plans with some shah or something. Isn’t it your birthday tomorrow? You must have some pre-birthday reflection to do….”
“Sit back down, Amelia,” Grandmère said in her scariest voice.
I sat.
“I think,” Grandmère said, “that you should put on a show.”
At least, that’s what I could have sworn she said.
But that couldn’t be correct. Because no one in her right mind would say something like that.
Wait. Did I just write “in her right mind”?
“A show?” I knew Grandmère had recently cut back on her smoking. She hadn’t quit or anything. But her doctor told her if she didn’t cut back, she’d be on an oxygen tank by the time she’s seventy.
So Grandmère had started limiting her cigarettes to after meals only. This is on account of her not being able to find an oxygen tank that goes with any of her designer outfits.
I decided that maybe the nicotine patch she was wearing had backfired or something, sending pure, unadulterated carbon monoxide into her bloodstream.
Because that was the only explanation I could think of for why she might possibly consider it a good idea for Albert Einstein High School to put on a show.
“Grandmère,” I said. “Maybe you should peel off your patch. Slowly. And I’ll just call your doctor—”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Amelia,” she said, sniffing at the suggestion that she might be suffering from any sort of brain aneurysm or stroke, either of which, at her age, are highly likely, according to Yahoo! Health. “It is a perfectly reasonable idea for a fund-raiser. People have been putting on benefits and amateur entertainments for centuries to generate donations for their causes.”
“But, Grandmère,” I said. “The Drama Club is already putting on a show this spring, the musical Hair. They’ve started rehearsals and everything.”
“So? A little competition might make things more interesting for them,” Grandmère said.
“Uh,” I said. How was I going to break it to Grandmère that her idea was totally subpar? Like, almost as bad as selling candles? Or starting a literary magazine and calling it Fat Louie’s Pink Butthole?
“Grandmère,” I said. “I appreciate your concern for my economic blunder. But I do not need your help. Okay? Really, it’s going to be all right. I will find a way to raise the cash myself. Lilly and I are already on it, and we—”
