All the Answers (9 page)

No kidding
, Ava thought. She put it on the shelf, grabbed her backpack, and waved to Mrs. Galvin. “See you next week!”

The second that school ended, Ava and Sophie hurried home and up to Ava's bedroom. “Here you go.” Ava handed Sophie the pencil. Sophie scribbled:
When are the boots I like at the mall going on sale?
and waited. Then she sighed.

“What?” Ava asked. “They're not going on sale”

“It's not answering. Maybe the pencil doesn't like shopping.” Sophie let out a huff and tossed the pencil over her shoulder. It landed on the hardwood floor and rolled under Ava's bed.

“Hey, be careful!” Ava hurried over, pulled the pencil out from under the bed, and blew off a dust bunny. “You broke the tip.”

“Sorry,” Sophie said. “You have a sharpener, right?”

Ava nodded and took the pencil over to the sharpener on
her bookshelf. She stuck it in and started sharpening. She could feel the pencil vibrating, getting shorter as the blades chewed away at the wood. Getting shorter …

Ava gasped and stopped sharpening. “Sophie, we have to stop asking so many questions. Even the good, helpful ones.” She pulled it out and blew wood shavings off the sharpened tip. “Every time we sharpen it, it shrinks, and when it's gone …”

Sophie's eyes got big. “Ohmygosh, I totally didn't think of that. I figured once we knew it wasn't a genie-with-three-wishes thing, we were good.” She stared at the pencil. “How long do you think it'll last if we ask it, like, ten questions a day?”

“I'm not sure.” Marcus would probably have some math formula or algorithm to figure that out, but she could only take a wild guess. “How long does a regular pencil last?”

“Ask the pencil that.” Sophie pointed to it.

Ava hesitated. “Couldn't we find that out somewhere else?”

“Good point. New rule: never use the pencil for a question unless Google doesn't know the answer.”

They went downstairs, where Google told them the average pencil can write about forty-five thousand words. “But those words could go by fast.” Ava did some quick math on a napkin someone left by the phone. “We've had the pencil less than a week, and we've already asked it more than thirty questions. Plus it wasn't new when I got it—it'd been used a bunch already. What if we go with three questions a day for now?”

“Perfect,” Sophie said, reaching for her purse. “Do you think
we could use one more question today? Please?” Sophie batted her eyelashes, which made Ava laugh.

“Fine.”

Sophie grinned. “I think this particular question may work best if we're at the mall. Think your dad or Gram would give us a ride?”

Erdman's Shoe Shop was Sophie's favorite place in the universe. She practically danced down the aisle to the boots she'd been stalking. “Okay, ready?”

Ava sat down on the shoe-trying bench and flipped to a clean yellow page of her legal pad, pencil poised. “Yep. Go ahead.”

Sophie read the boot brand, size, and color from the side of the box. Ava got it all down. “Double-check it before I add the question mark so we don't waste this one.” Ava held up the legal pad.

When will the size 7 Tony Lama Mosto brown boots with the fringe go on sale at Erdman's Shoe Shop at the Lakeview Mall

Sophie nodded. “That should work.”

Ava started to add the question mark, but Sophie grabbed her hand. “Hold on!”

“What?”

“Can you ask how much of a discount it'll be in the same question?”

Ava hesitated. “What if it gets mad that we're trying to sneak two questions into one?”

Sophie looked at the pencil. “I don't think it'll care. It's a matter of saving the lead. We're being responsible. Like when my mom runs two or three errands in one trip to save gas.”

That sounded like the sort of thing the pencil would approve of, so Ava added the part about the discount, scribbled a question mark, and waited.

“Good news,” she told Sophie. “They'll be fifty percent off on Sunday.”

“Perfect! I'll have Dad bring me this weekend.” She put the boots back on the shelf, then wandered down the aisle, picking up ballet flats and bright-colored sneakers. “Ava!” Her face lit up. “We should open a business! We can be personal shoppers and advise people on what to wear and when to buy the stuff, and they'll save tons of money. It'll be the coolest thing ever!” Sophie's voice kept getting louder, and customers were starting to stare, but she didn't seem to notice. “Everybody's going to want to hire us! We can advertise … I don't know … somewhere … and maybe they'll even do a story about us in
Teen Vogue
and—”

“Shh!” Ava put a hand on Sophie's arm. “Soph, take a deep breath.”

Sophie stopped talking and was quiet for a few seconds.
She sighed. “I guess that's not entirely realistic. But this is so much
fun
.”

“Maybe we can help people, even if we're not going into business. Look.” Ava pointed to another woman who was trying on the boots Sophie liked.

The woman got one boot on before her toddler took off, and she had to run limping along after him. She led him back to the bench and caught Ava's eye. “Remind me not to go boot shopping with Timothy again.” She pulled on the second boot and looked in the mirror. “What do you think?” she asked Ava and Sophie. “Can I pull these off?”

“They look great,” Ava said, then added in a quieter voice, “but if you're going to buy them, you might want to wait until Sunday. They're going to be fifty percent off.”

The woman's face lit up. “How did you find out? They're so tight-lipped about sales here.”

“We know somebody,” Ava said. It was close enough to the truth.

Ava and Sophie decided the fun of saving strangers money was worth breaking their three-questions-a-day rule. They skulked around the store like spies, watching to see who was serious about a purchase before scribbling questions and then approaching with the good news.

“All those sneakers are going to be half price next week,” Ava whispered to a woman shopping for her sons.

“If you come back on Monday,” Sophie told another lady, “those red flats will be twenty percent off.”

“Thank you.” The woman tipped her head. “Do you two work here?”

“No.” Sophie smiled mysteriously. “We just know things.”

Ava had never loved shopping like Sophie did, but today, she could have stayed for hours. She couldn't stop smiling as they ate their frozen yogurt, waiting for Gram to pick them up. “That was the best mall day ever.”

“I know, right?” Sophie licked her spoon.

“I wish everybody in the world could be as happy as that lady was when she found out the sneakers weren't going to cost eighty dollars.” Ava thought about all the tired faces at Cedar Bay, faces like Grandpa's that could use some happiness. She pulled the pencil from her pocket. “Sophie, I know what we can do next.”

“Let me guess. Lottery numbers? No … it'll say the dumb lottery ball lady has free will when she reaches into that spinny thing. Maybe …”

“Better than that,” Ava said. “Let's take the pencil to visit my grandpa's nursing home after school on Monday!”

“I should have told my parents we were coming,” Ava said. But Mom and Dad had been busy working on Saturday, and Sunday was Halloween, so the doorbell kept ringing every time Ava started to bring it up. It felt weird to be walking to Cedar Bay instead of riding in the van.

“It's not like they'd say no. You're visiting your grandfather.” Sophie pulled the door open and they headed down the hall. “Besides, it's easier to be forgiven than it is to get permission. That's like the number-one life rule.”

Ava laughed. “Maybe for you.” Ava's number-one rule was more like “Always check on everything to make sure you never get in trouble because that would be the worst thing ever.” But if Mom knew about this visit, she probably would have come, too, and then Ava and Sophie wouldn't have been able to carry out their secret pencil wish-granting mission.

“Come on in, girls!” Betty, one of the nurses, waved them into the community room. “Sneaking in an extra visit this week?” She parked Mrs. Yu's wheelchair next to Mrs. Raymond.

“We brought Ava's grandpa some music,” Sophie said. They'd loaded Sophie's iPod with pretty much everything they could find—Sophie and Ava's popular rock, Marcus's moody classical stuff, Mr. Anderson's country songs, Mrs. Anderson's modern jazz, and a song by a Moroccan band that Sophie's dad liked. It reminded Ava of the belly dancers she'd seen at the county fair once.

“Good luck with that. He's in a mood today.” Betty looked down the hallway. Thomas, one of the assistants, was wheeling a scowling Grandpa toward dinner.

“Hi, Grandpa!” Ava said.

Grandpa grunted. Ava leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek once his wheelchair was parked. Dad always told her that even on bad days, the old Grandpa was still in there somewhere, under all the wrinkles and sourness, and he might appreciate a kiss even if Grump-Grandpa didn't.

“We brought you some music.” Sophie held up her iPod. Then she turned to Ava and whispered, “Ask the pencil what we should play.”

Ava pulled the pencil and her legal pad from her backpack and wrote:

What song should we play for Grandpa?

“It didn't answer,” Ava told Sophie.

“Ask it why not.”

Ava did, and the pencil-voice replied, “Because it is not my job to give advice on playing DJ for a grumpy old man.”

“Wow.” Ava put the pencil down and repeated what it said to Sophie. “I don't think the pencil likes Grandpa.”

“It only does facts, remember? Ask it …” Sophie thought for a second. “What is Grandpa's favorite kind of music?”

Ava did that, and the pencil-voice said, “Jazz.”

“Jazz,” Ava repeated.

“Perfect!” Sophie searched until she found one of Mrs. Anderson's jazz songs. “I think you'll like this one.” She eased the buds into Grandpa's ears and pressed Play.