Molly McGinty Has a Really Good Day (2 page)

Molly had a schedule for housecleaning, too, in her lost notebook, immediately before the grocery list, the pager number of the emergency plumber and the list of her and Irene's doctor and dentist appointments for the next year.

Molly reluctantly dragged her thoughts from her lost data and watched Irene fluff her hair.

“Irene, did I already ask you if you'd seen my notebook?”

“Notebook? Hmmm … no, I haven't seen it today. But if you had a good bag, pet, a really smart purse, you'd never misplace anything. See … I can keep everything I need in my shoulder bag and, being basic black, it goes with everything I own!”

Irene triumphantly dragged her purse to the middle of the room. It was the approximate weight and size of a Marine Corps duffel bag. She hadn't been able to actually lift the purse for weeks now— ever since she'd ordered the miniature chess set from the Shopping Channel, the one-of-a-kind set with the pieces carved to represent the two teams who played in the 1991 World Series.

“You never know, angel,” Irene had cooed when the chess set arrived in the mail. “This stuff could be worth a fortune someday to serious baseball memorabilia collectors. That series marked the start of the Atlanta Braves’ emergence in the nineties.”

Just as Molly began to worry that she would
be saddled with her grandmother's bag all day, she heard the kitchen door open downstairs.

She took a deep breath and braced herself for the invasion of the Marys.

Mary Margaret Blake, Mary Pat Montgomery and Mary Bridget Sheehan burst through Molly's bedroom door in a blur of navy blue plaid school uniforms.

“Hi, Molly.”

“Hi, Molly.”

“Hi, Molly.”

“Mary Margaret. Mary Pat. Mary Bridget. Have any of you seen my notebook?”

Molly and the Marys had spent their school days together since kindergarten and rode on the same bus because they lived in four houses in a row on their street. At least one of the Marys was in every one of Molly's classes.

“Good morning, Mary Margaret—” Irene started.

“Mary Pat.”

“Whatever.”

“Excuse me, but we were trying to figure out if anyone had seen my notebook,” Molly reminded everyone.

“Sweetie, you're going to have to learn how to go with the flow. It's the secret of life,” Irene said.

“I thought you said the secret of life was having the right shoe for every occasion.” Mary Bridget gazed doubtfully at her own scuffed loafers.

“No, the secret of life is going with the flow,” Irene said firmly. “But you can never have enough shoes—that's true. I think you mixed up what I said, Mary Pat.”

“Mary Bridget.”

“Whatever.”

“About my notebook …”

The oven timer rang at that moment and Irene dashed downstairs to the kitchen, calling, “Breakfast is ready.”

Molly took another deep breath. Before the day was over, she was sure she'd have to hyperventilate just to get enough air to stay calm.

“Mary Margaret. Mary Pat. Mary Bridget. As you know, my notebook disappeared yesterday and I
still
can't find it.” Molly paused, waiting for the full impact of her words to sink in.

Mary Pat turned pale, Mary Bridget let out a
small squeak of horror and Mary Margaret sat down hard on the bed.

“Oh, Mol… that's, well… that's just about the worst thing I ever heard. I was just sure the notebook would have turned up before school this morning.” Mary Bridget looked as if she might actually burst into tears.

Mary Pat said carefully, “You had it yesterday in science. I know because I asked if I could look at that laminated periodic table of elements you have. But,” she quickly added, “I gave it back to you. I did. I know I did.” She looked frantically at the other Marys for support. They nodded vigorously.

“I've retraced my steps,” Molly said as she began to pace. The Marys sat silently, barely breathing, only their eyes moving as they watched Molly walk back and forth.

“And I know that I brought my notebook home. I clearly remember setting it down by the back door when I got home from school yesterday. It was a Thursday, so that means I had to bring the empty garbage cans back to the garage.”

The Marys nodded solemnly. Being neighbors, they had trash collection on the same day.

“But”—Molly wheeled around to face them— “when I returned to the house, before I could check off ‘return cans to garage’ on my Thursday to-do list, I got distracted. You know Irene fixes Mrs. Fritz's hair in our kitchen every Thursday before bingo.”

“How's she doing?” Mary Margaret interrupted. “My great-uncle Charlie told me Mrs. Fritz has the most bingo wins at the weekly sixty-and-over game in the church basement. Great-uncle Charlie says that everyone swears that her good luck is because your grandmother does her hair every week. Maybe”—she looked thoughtful—“we should ask her to do
our
hair before big tests and things. Maybe Mrs. Flynn has the lucky touch.”

Molly crossed her arms in front of her chest and tapped her foot impatiently. “That's not the point, Mary Margaret. The fact that my notebook has been missing for”—she checked her watch—“sixteen hours, seventeen minutes and four, no, five seconds now is the point.”

Before the Marys could respond, Irene swept into

Molly's room, balancing a couple of plates on a tray.

Molly sniffed suspiciously. “What are you eating, Irene?”

“Orange roughy.”

“I thought we agreed that you wouldn't eat fish for breakfast anymore.”

“But tootsie, fish is brain food. And I need all the brainpower I can get today, considering I'm a schoolgirl again. Besides, it's not like that time we tried sardines and cereal—this is much more conventional. Have some fish, girls. I made enough for everyone. Here, try a bite, Mary Bridget.”

“Mary Margaret.”

“Whatever.”

The Marys and Irene sat together on Molly's bed, oohing and aahhing over the perceived benefits of unadulterated protein to start the day. Molly's notebook crisis was forgotten. Molly shuddered at the idea of fish fillets at 7:35 in the morning and remembered with a jolt why she had suppressed the memory of the sardines and Frosted Flakes her grandmother had served as an experiment. The experiment was based on eating things solely
for their nutritional value, and Irene swore that together, Frosted Flakes and sardines in vegetable oil contained everything necessary to support life.

“Okay, people. We need to concentrate, to focus on the important task at hand,” Molly began, hoping that by sounding determined, she might rally her easily distracted forces and find her notebook before her entire day was ruined due to a lack of preparation and widespread fundamental uncertainty.

“That notebook is the single most important thing I own, and I depend on the information in it for every aspect of my life. I can't focus without it. My timing, for instance, is completely off. Timing… wait, there's something we're forgetting, something…”

Molly frowned in concentration, then opened her eyes wide.

“Nooooh!”
She lunged toward the window but tripped over Irene's purse and crashed to the floor, smacking the side of her face on a corner of her desk as she fell.

“The b …” Molly raised herself only as far as her knees, one hand covering her right eye, her feet
hopelessly tangled in the straps of Irene's bag. She flopped back down on the floor and crawled frantically to the window on her belly, propelling herself forward with one elbow and her knees.

“The bu …” Molly pulled herself up to the windowsill and peeked out over the street below, her one visible eye blazing with panic.

“The bus is at the corner!”
she shrieked.

“We'd better hurry, girls, if we're going to get to school on time,” Irene said, and headed for the door, seemingly unaware of the fact that Molly was now lying flat on her back, her legs kicking wildly, the bag binding her feet more tightly together with every move.

“Come on, princess, we'll grab an ice pack for that eye on the way to the bus stop,” Irene called back to Molly. “Be a love, will you, and bring my purse.”

Irene and the Marys hurried downstairs in a cheerful group as Molly struggled to jerk her feet from Irene's bag.

“I knew,” Molly said grimly to the empty room, “that I was doomed without my notebook.”

“I don't know why you're so bent out of shape, Molly,” Mary Margaret told her as they stood in front of their lockers before homeroom. Irene had deserted them immediately upon arrival at school, heading to the principal's office with a determined glint in her eye.

“I think Mrs. Flynn was right—it
was
a good idea for everyone on the bus to introduce themselves and share their special talent. I mean, my goodness, we've been going to school together forever and yet I never knew that Tommy Sullivan could sing.
Mrs. Flynn was smart to remember that getting-to-know-you exercise from her group tour to Vegas.”

The other Marys nodded and Mary Pat turned to Mary Bridget.

“And I wouldn't have guessed that you could play your cello on a moving bus, Bridge. I'll be sure to tell your mom how good your arpeggios sounded this morning. YouVe been practicing.”

Mary Bridget beamed and patted her cello case gently.

“Would you really, Pats? She's been furious with me since I left my cello on the bus again last week. She made me take a blood oath that I wouldn't set it down in public again. Which reminds me, Mol … after my orchestra practice this afternoon, could you take my cello home with you? I'll pick it up after dance class tonight.”

Molly was on her hands and knees in front of her locker, squinting at a pile of textbooks. Her black eye had swollen shut and she had to twist her head to the left to focus on anything. It gave her a leering look.

“Sure, Mary Bridget. I've only got my grandmother and her big black bag to deal with today.
What's a cello? But you owe me. So don't encourage Irene today. You three just egg her on. Remember my birthday party at the skating rink? You convinced her that she could flip and land that triple-jump thingie, never mind that she'd never skated before. And what happened? A broken elbow and six months of skating lessons, that's what.”

“But it wasn't a compound fracture and you regained full range of motion in that arm, Mol. And your grandma only took the lessons because she felt so bad for crashing into you that way,” Mary Margaret reminded her.

“Plus, I really enjoyed watching her compete that year. And I agree wholeheartedly with Mrs. Flynn: the judges
were
prejudiced against her because of her age. They should have let her advance to the regional finals because, after all, it wasn't her fault that her competitors were all only twelve years old.”

The warning bell for homeroom rang before Molly could reply, and they joined the rush to be seated before the tardy bell rang two minutes later.

Because she could only see out of one eye and was handicapped by Irene's bag, which she pulled
along the floor behind her, Molly careened into one person after another.

“Sorry… oops, excuse me … I apologize … my fault… I beg your pardon.”

She finally arrived, breathless and a little bruised, in homeroom and collapsed gratefully at her desk.

She felt a surge of optimism. The worst, she thought, was probably over. She'd made it to school in, more or less, one piece. Granted, she didn't have her notebook, she
did
have Irene, and she now had a black eye and a heavy bag and, later in the day, a cello, too, but things were certain to quiet down.

“Attention!”
The morning announcements began to boom through the school's public-address system. “Good morning, students of Our Lady of Mercy.”

Molly sat attentively, listening to Monsignor Murphy, the principal.

“I'm delighted to share the news with you that we have a new student joining us today.”

The hair on the back of Molly's neck slowly rose. She glanced around nervously and tried to shake the creepy feeling off.

“Our new student, as she prefers to be called”— Molly offered up a quick prayer to St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes—“and the sole guest of this year's Our Lady of Mercy Middle School Senior Citizens’ Day, is Mrs. Irene Flynn, grandmother to our own Molly McGinty of the sixth grade.”