Free Rule of Three by Megan McDonald Page A

: (Enters room.) Girls! What’s going on here?
    Joey : Tug-of-war. Over a half-eaten pancake.
    Dad : Alex. Stevie. That’s enough. You know Mom and I don’t like you wasting good food.
    Stevie : Dad, you told her she could take voice lessons? But I have to beg, borrow, and steal just to enter the cake-off?
    Joey : You stole ?
    Dad : (Hands out as if to say “Slow down.”) It’s not voice lessons. It’s one lesson. And the first one’s free. Alex found a flyer at school for the Voicemeister and —
    Stevie : And she gets voice lessons before she even gets the part? Why does everybody just assume Alex is going to get the part? I mean, what about — I thought I was the singer in this family.
    Me : Maybe you should take some acting lessons, little sister.
    Stevie : Yeah, and maybe you should take some sister lessons.
    Dad : Girls. I said, that’s enough. You know we talked about this. (Looking at kitchen clock.) Alex, we leave in ten minutes, and you’re still in your pajamas.
    Me : Yikes! (Grabs rest of fought-over pancake, flees upstairs.)

 
    As soon as Dad and Alex were off to Voice Lesson Land, I took down a clean bowl and started in on a new batch of cupcakes before Mom could stop me from making more mess.
    I was tossing and stirring, measuring and mixing, when Joey came back into the kitchen and peered at the dark batter in the bowl. “Those are way-really weird-looking pancakes.”
    “They’re not pancakes anymore. They’re cupcakes.”
    “Oh, no. Do they have a name this time?”
    “Oh, you mean like My-Sister-Is-a-Number-One-Fink-Face cupcakes? I-Want-to-Rip-Her-Hair-Out cupcakes?”
    “My-Sister-is-Bald cupcakes. That would be funny.”
    “How about My-Sister-Is-Going-to-Take-Voice-Lessons-and-Learn-How-to-Sing-Better-Than-Me-and-Ruin-My-Life cupcakes?”
    “Isn’t that kinda long?” Joey asked.
    I kept stirring.
    “Besides, it’s just one teeny lesson,” said Joey.
    “Oh, yeah? Think about it. Dad will meet this Voicemeister guy. He’s probably some struggling actor, and Dad will want to help him out. Next thing you know, Dad’ll figure out some way to pay for Alex to take voice lessons and Voice Man will come over and help her night and day and she’ll be the star of the play and suddenly I won’t be the singer in the family anymore.”
    “Yeah, then I bet Alex will fall in love with the Voice Man, the same as Meg falling in love with Laurie’s tutor in Little Women, and they’ll have a wedding and get married and everything.”
    “Great. At least Alex will be too busy sewing and learning to make jelly and doing wife stuff to be in the play.”
    “Ooh, ooh — and Alex will give her glove to the Voice Man, the way Meg gave hers to Mr. Brooke.”
    “I hate to break it to you, but Alex doesn’t even own gloves.”
    “Mittens, then,” said Joey.
    “Forget it. It’s no use. I might as well just stop thinking about singing in the play and concentrate on cupcakes,” I said, furiously knocking the wooden spoon against the rim of the mixing bowl.
    Joey reached over and stopped my hand. “You’re going to get the part.”
    “Huh? You don’t know that, Joey.”
    “Yah-huh.” She sopped up every last drop of syrup on her plate with the last pancake. “I’ll prove it. But you have to come upstairs.”
    I surrendered my spoon and followed Joey up the stairs to our room. She marched over to my bed, lifted up my mattress, and pointed. Under the mattress was a lone cat’s-eye marble, sky-blue with a cloud-white ribbon running through it.
    “See? Don’t you get it?” Joey said.
    “One marble, Joey?” I asked.
    “It’s like the princess and the pea. Alex had tons of stuff under her mattress and she slept like a log. But you — all you had was one little, teeny-tiny-weeny marble the size of a pea, and you said yourself that you couldn’t sleep at all. You know the line from the song: ‘For a princess is a delicate thing.’ See? You’re the sensitive one.”
    “Joey, just