The twins fought boredom every waking moment. Trapped in the classroom eight hours, endlessly “taught” subjects they already knew, they had to invent ways to quietly keep themselves amused, or run the risk of going insane. It was odd but exhilarating to suddenly be overwhelmed by dozens of projects.
For the first time in Louise’s life, she found herself needing a to-do list. She opened a document on her home desktop and started one as she painted backgrounds for the Lost Boys music video.
She still needed to find a Pittsburgh phone directory. If they were really going to contact Alexander for help with the babies, she wanted to hear her older sister’s voice. Besides, it was much the same problem they were having with Nigel; how could they be sure that the person they reached was Alexander if they stuck to letters? Since Shutdown was several days away, though, they had plenty of time to track down Alexander’s phone number.
They needed to save money to buy an adaptor for Esme’s mystery flash drive. With their allowance, it might take weeks, and it meant they would have to delay replacing their broken camera. They still had to identify the people in Esme’s photographs, but that was low priority since the pictures were over eighteen years old. Some of the people might be dead.
They were going to miss their deadline on posting their newest Lemon-Lime video. The raw footage was done. Editing on the music video for school, though, took precedence if they wanted to outmaneuver Elle. It might be good, though, to post a filler video. Louise made a note to do something quick and simple. Maybe just a fake title page that erupted into flames and then Queen Soulful Ember announcing, “Blast it all! That was too silly! Try again!”
Giggling, Louise made notes and moved to the next project. She wanted to do more research on the gossamer call, just in case it turned out to be really Nigel Reid posting on the Pittsburgh forum. She marked the date he was supposed to appear on the Today Show. She added “Rockefeller Center, 5:30” in the hope that they could figure a way around their mother’s edict. What they needed was an adult that they could bully into taking them into the city.
“Do you think we could do a Girl Scout field trip to the Today Show?” she asked.
Jillian shook her head, not looking up from the animating that she was doing on her tablet. “It’s after the vote on the play. If things go the way we want, I don’t think Mrs. Pondwater will be willing to take us anywhere.”
“If it’s already all set up, she might not be able to back out gracefully.”
“We can try.”
Louise added it to her list. And on that note, she added that they needed to deliver cookies to April and her doorman. She considered the possibility of talking April into taking them to the Today Show and then realized they’d have to explain to their parents how they knew the woman. Nope, that wouldn’t work.
The most important thing on her to-do list was the one thing she couldn’t move forward on: saving the babies. They had searched out the trust that had paid for the storage over the last eighteen years. Esme had set up the account, but the funds had run out last year. To take over the payments would require thousands of dollars.
The most maddening thing was that they technically had the money in their college fund. Their parents had been saving the money since the twins were born. It was doubtful that the twins would ever need it; between their parents’ low income and their placement tests, they were guaranteed full scholarships. They couldn’t touch the money until they were eighteen.
“If we could just use our college fund,” she growled.
“Never happen.” Jillian blew out her breath in disgust. “Stupid waste of money.” Their parents saw Jillian’s fascination in movies as a phase that she’d outgrow. Louise doubted it; Jillian had planned from the age of four on being the youngest movie director ever to win an Oscar. “They want us to be lawyers or bankers or something stupid and boring like that. The only way they’ll let us use our college fund for anything other than school is if we were already out of college and making buckets of money.”
It kept coming back to the fact that they had no way of making money as nine-year-olds. It wasn’t that they couldn’t figure out a way to earn money. Every scheme they’d come up with, though, required a bank account to collect their earnings. Without their parents’ consent, and more importantly, their Social Security numbers, the twins couldn’t legally apply for one. Louise was sure that if they were normal kids, their parents would have been happy that their kids were taking responsibility and learning how to manage money. Their mother knew them too well; she saw a bank account as a too easily exploitable venture.
“With the money they’re making now, Mom and Dad couldn’t take on four more kids.” Louise had checked into the costs involved in a standard pregnancy. “I had no idea how much time and money goes into having a baby born. You have to go to the doctors constantly. There’s blood tests, urine tests, sonograms, ultrasounds. And that’s not even what it costs for the delivery. It’s a massive amount of time and money if everything goes right. It’s a whole other ballgame if things go wrong.
“Then there’s food and clothing, and where would the babies sleep? We couldn’t have six of us in this bedroom.”
“This would be so much easier if we were almost eighteen like Alexander.”
Louise nodded in agreement. “What we need most is time.”
“We need to be old enough that we can have good jobs. We have to be able to pay for a surrogate mother like April, a place we all can live comfortably, and still be able to buy them stuff like socks and boots and winter coats.”
Jillian obviously was thinking of the homeless men they saw on the street sometimes, nearly freezing in the snow.
“And they need their own college fund.” Jillian continued. “So if one of them wants to be a lawyer or a doctor, they can.”
“We need time and money,” Louise said.
“With time, we can get money. It’s just time we need.”