After the first bell, Louise logged quickly into their store and checked their account balances.
“Oh my god,” she whispered.
Jillian leaned over and frowned at the screen. “What is that?”
“That’s what YourStore is waiting for us to claim. They’ve been selling our stuff. Lots of our stuff.”
Jillian slapped a hand over her mouth to smother a squeal.
“We still have to figure some way to claim it,” Louise said. “We need a bank account.”
“We’ll get Mom and Dad to set up an bank account for us. With that much money involved, they’d be crazy not to let us claim it!”
Louise squinted, trying to see the future events unfolding implied by the numbers on the screen. “I don’t think they’ll let us keep it.”
“Why not?” Jillian cried. “It’s ours! We earned it! It’s not like we can give it back either.”
“I mean ‘keep it’ as ‘spend it the way we want.’ They’ll want to put it all away for our college fund and things like that. Or at least, get us another playhouse. They’re not going to let us buy an antique piece of computer equipment off some unknown vendor. Remember how they got with that special-effects software we wanted to order?”
Jillian huffed as she grudgingly acknowledged that their parents would take control of the money. “A new playhouse at least would be cool.”
“We were saying we need a lot of money to save the babies.”
“This is not a million dollars. It’s not going to be a million dollars any time soon. Besides, like Mom said, we can’t just pay for the babies to be born. They need a mom and dad and a place to live.”
Louise considered the possibility of using the money to talk their mom into having the babies. She was always snarling how she hated her boss. But she really did like her job and, knowing their mom, she’d feel as if she should quit working until the babies were in kindergarten. The money at YourStore seemed like a lot of money to them, but it didn’t equal to their mother’s salary for several years.
“Think April would help set up a bank account?” Jillian asked.
“No,” Louise said. Their mother’s work had made them aware of salaries and taxes. “If she did, this would look like taxable income for her. She would have to report it and pay taxes on it.”
Jillian frowned at the numbers. “I wish Alexander could help us. It must be great to be all grown up and have all this stupid kid stuff over with. I would love for once to be able to stay up as late as we want, to eat pizza every night for a week, and not have to clean our room all the time.”
Louise nodded. Claiming the money would be no problem for an adult.
“Oh! Oh!” Jillian cried and started to sort through data on her tablet. “We just need an adult’s social security number. Someone that doesn’t have to worry about added income. Esme is in another solar system. She doesn’t have to worry about filing taxes. We can use her number as the adult on our account.”
Louise ran the plan over in her mind, looking for dangers. They could set up a joint account, link YourStore to it, and then only use the money online. If they used it carefully, there would be little activity to draw notice to it. It seemed safe enough. “As long as we don’t buy anything big and expensive.”
“Like a pony?” Jillian said and did a little mime of trying to hide said animal. “What pony? Oh, that pony! It followed us home, can we keep it?”
Louise laughed out loud.
“Louise,” Miss Hamilton said, “keep it down.”
Louise smothered giggles.
“There,” Jillian announced. “And done.”
“Jilly!” Louise whispered fiercely. “You didn’t!”
“I did,” Jillian said without remorse. “And the flash drive adapter ordered with express shipping, no signature required. It will be here tomorrow. All we have to do is beat Mom and Dad home.”
Louise thought of Tesla sitting in their locker, waiting to escort them home. “And keep Tesla from ratting us out.”
* * *
Louise won the flip of the coin. After they got off the train the next afternoon, she ran on ahead while Jillian followed slowly with Tesla. She had felt nearly sick with worry all day and hadn’t slept well the night before. They had done things behind their parents’ back before but never to a point that involved thousands of dollars. Their baby brother and sisters, though, were completely helpless and the deadline for their disposal was just months away. The task of saving them loomed huge and impossible. The money was their only advantage.
As horrible as hiding the YourStore sales from their parents was, they had to keep the new bank account secret. The delivery of the antique equipment to deal with Esme’s weird mystery was putting everything at risk. If their parents opened the package and started to ask how they had afforded the computer part, not even Jillian could spin a lie believable enough to save them.