Chapter 4: Weekend Rules

Hattie arrived at six on Friday with her unicorn bag, her tablet, and a list of rules she had written herself.

Rule one said no vegetables on weekends.

Rule two said Lacey had to be the one to tuck her in, not Dad's girlfriend, not anyone.

Rule three said she could keep the lights on if she wanted.

"Dad's girlfriend isn't going to tuck you in here," I said, reading it over. "She isn't coming."

"I know. I just wanted it written down."

I put the list on the fridge with a ladybug magnet and stood there a minute longer than I needed to.

Grandma's apartment had one bedroom, and I had been sleeping on the couch since Sunday so that the bed stayed Grandma's.

That night, it turned out we had a problem.

Hattie looked at the couch, looked at the bed, and said she wasn't sleeping in a dead person's bed.

"It's not a dead person's bed. It's Grandma's."

"That's what I said."

A knock came at the door, three and then one.

Crispin stood in the hall in a gray T-shirt with his sleeves shoved up.

He held a folded camping cot under one arm and a bundle of bedsheets under the other.

"Ma said there was a bunk situation."

"There is no bunk situation," I said.

"There's a six-foot bunk situation." He looked past me at Hattie. "Can I build something?"

"What kind of something?"

"A fort."

Hattie considered this with her tablet pressed to her chest.

"Does it have a roof?"

"If I do it right."

It took him forty minutes.

He set the cot against the wall under the window and ran a clothesline from the curtain rod to the bookshelf.

Then he draped two bedsheets over it and pinned them with Grandma's clothespins.

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