MISC: The Girl Who Saved the World Part 67

[George Phillies]

"I'm home," Trisha called. She did that every day. Hopefully they 
wouldn't complain that she was doing the same thing she always did. "I'm 
going upstairs to my room."

"Trisha, dear," her mother's voice was loud and clear, "don't you have 
chores to do?"

"Mom, today is Wednesday. That's me cleaning up my room. So I will. And 
I'll start the dishwasher after dinner so we can hear ourselves talk 
while we eat." She wondered what her mother was going to complain about 
now. There had to be something.

"That's very good, dear," Abigail said. "Call me when you're done and 
I'll inspect your work."

"Yes, mother, of course I will," Trisha said. Mother hadn't done that in 
years. Well, a good year and a half, anyhow. Now she was going to have 
to have the room absolutely perfect in every respect, or she'd never 
hear the end of it. “And you’re always so good about showing me what I 
missed.”

"Trisha, dear? Wasn't there something else you wanted to say to me?" 
Abigail asked.

"Ummh, well, no, mother. There wasn't," Trisha said. "Oh, wait, do you 
have any more chores for me on top of cleaning my room completely? And 
starting the new year’s cleaning of the kitchen?"

"Just go to your room dear," Abigail said, "I will be up to see that 
it's properly cleaned."

Trisha dashed up the stairs, using just enough of her flight gift that 
she made no sound on the stairs. Fortunately, she had all the cleaning 
supplies she needed in the closet next to her bathtub. Even more 
fortunately, she didn't have any carpets, because she couldn't use 
superspeed to accelerate the vacuum cleaner. She didn't quite understand 
why, but if she tried that she would blow the circuit breaker in the 
basement every time. It was something to do with how much power the 
vacuum cleaner was drawing.

So she would start at the top, oil the ceiling and wall maple surfaces 
in the fourth floor room, clean the windows, dust the valences and the 
chandelier, clean the desk and shelves, make sure everything in the 
drawers was very neatly arranged, make sure the books on the bookshelves 
were all at the front of the shelf the way her mother liked them not the 
back the way she liked them, dry mop the floor, repeat in her third 
floor bedroom, be sure her bed sheets and blanket passed the quarter 
test, clean under the bed, check all the places where she had clothing 
to see everything was straightened up and properly stacked, completely 
clean her bathroom including the walls and ceiling, realize she had 
better clean all the slats in all of the blinds, use flight to pick up 
the bed mattress and clean the edges of the bed, make sure her plants 
were all watered, realize she had better dust the top of her books and 
the bookshelves behind the books, stack her CDs in the compartment under 
the window seat so they completely hid where the secret compartments 
were, and double check everything. Mom and Dad had never learned about 
the secret compartments. At this point she was seriously tired. A glance 
at the wall clock said she'd needed 10 minutes to do everything. That 
translated to almost 10 hours real-time, except somehow with superspeed 
it didn't quite feel that way. She was still tired. She would take a nap 
and tighten the sheets again afterwards before she called mother to inspect.

Her mother, dutifully summoned, carefully looked over absolutely 
everything, down to picking up the mattress and looking underneath at 
the sides of the bed. She appeared to be even more annoyed than she had 
been before. She could find nothing to complain about.

"When do I come down for dinner?" Trisha asked.Perhaps Mom had forgotten 
yesterday.Perhaps she'd been mean. Trisha decided she didn’t care what 
the answer was.But she'd make Mom say 'you are going to bed without your 
supper', if that was what it was.

"6:30 sharp," her mother answered."And you still aren't going to tell me 
why else I'm doing this?"

"I think I already did, mother," Trisha said. "And you think there's 
another reason. If I ever come up with it, I could tell you." And I 
might not, she thought. You can not enjoy what I’m not enjoying. Mother 
was even better at slamming the door behind her than Dad had been. 
Twenty minutes later, after a hot shower and change to formal dinner 
clothing, she set the timer for 6:28 and sat down with her biology book.

There had been some good things today. She’d dumped music. She'd made 
the boys base ball nines team sprint until they were gasping to for 
breath just so that she wouldn't lap them. Next time she’d really 
sprint. They’d die.But they were boys. They’d get what they deserved. 
She had done just fine on the in-class exams, enough to keep her A+ 
grades in place. Editing English was going to be a pain. Most other 
teachers would let her take in-class exams and let her move beyond that 
stupid limit. The Engineering teacher, Mister Allan, was being really 
nice about letting her do her own projects so long as she was grounded. 
Mrs. Gostak was really nice, but carefully obeyed the rules as written. 
She'd have to find a solution to the lunch money problem. Dad knew 
exactly what lunch cost, and with her allowance stopped she was not 
getting another dime. Janie spent all of her allowance money on books. 
Brian made those wonderful models, brought in way more money by selling 
them than Dad seemed to have noticed, bought Janie even more books, all 
sorts of model-building tools for himself, some of her gym equipment, 
and gave her fabric to sew things like their garb. He’d always say he 
traded for things at one of the second hand tech stores, fixed things 
and traded just like Dad had taught him, and dad just smiled and nodded. 
At least, Trisha thought, she'd always saved her allowance money. That 
would keep her going for a couple of months.

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