In a new record, my brothers and I had less than a day of freedom between groundings. We had just finished our sentence for giving away Dewey's bike in exchange for watching Circus eat a dog food sandwich. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We never knew how Mom found us out. We had a good alibi . Dewey cried and everything. Anyway, Mom had been sick and crusty all weekend. She doesn't get sick very often, but when a germ does get through… She was so out of it that when we went to say goodbye to her Monday morning, she thought it was still Sunday. I saw an opportunity and went for it. I played along and pretended it was the weekend, so we could stay home from school. It was brilliant, until I started working it through. We had to pretend we were still grounded, what were we going to do when Dad got home?… Why don't I think of this stuff beforehand?

Things got more exciting after we learned a new trick. In her weakened state, Mom would answer all our questions truthfully. (Reese isn't adopted. Damn.) That's how we learned it was Francis who told her about the bike. We couldn't believe he would betray us like that. There was a letter arriving for Mom that day about something really bad Francis did. He had wanted us to hide it from her, but now it seemed like a useful bargaining chip. The letter must have been pretty serious because Francis sent his dumb thuggy friends over to get it from us, when we threatened to turn him in. We were only bluffing to punish him, but then Mom got her hands on the letter anyway. It was kind of our fault. And it turns out that Francis only ratted on us because he wanted to come home. We felt really bad and decided to make up for it by doing something that was so terrible, it would distract Mom from whatever Francis did. Let's just say the wreckage was spectacular. Dad coming home sick in a Porsche, just in time to receive some collateral damage was a nice touch. Too bad we were so doomed we couldn't really enjoy it.