When my alarm woke me up the next morning, I was still smiling.

Yesterday when I checked out the house, I realized that it could use quite a bit of clearing up. Especially Jack, Tracy, and the Gardiner’s bedrooms, God those were a mess. It was like four teenagers shared the house, instead of two adults, one child, and one actual teenager.

I’d decided to draw up a schedule of all the cleaning and clearing I’d do, and follow the schedule. But last night I’d been too tired to draw it up.

So that morning after breakfast, I sat down and drew up a nice neat schedule of what I’d do every day at the Gardiner’s.

Little did I know the mess that would become of it later on in the month.

By the end of it all, I hadn’t even used the schedule for a week properly.

“Hey Charles!” Tracy greeted me when I walked into their house on the dot of ten.

“Hey Trace, where’s your brother?”

“He’s over at Brody’s. He went there late last night and must have slept over.”

“He left you alone in the house at night?” My eyes widened at how careless Jack could be.

A million things could’ve happened to someone as small and gullible as Tracy if you left her alone at home at night!

She just shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, I was sleeping for the most of it.”

I stared at her, trying to figure the small kid out. It was only when she cracked a small mischievous smile that I realized that Tracy was trying to joke around.

Oh well.

“Can you please make me bacon, I’m starving!” She said suddenly.

I frowned. “You can’t have bacon every day.”

“It’s just the second day today, Charles.” She rolled her eyes. “Please, tomorrow your choice of breakfast.”

“Alright then.” I mumbled, moving toward the kitchen to cook up her favorite breakfast.

While I cooked, we spoke.

“The next time your stupid brother leaves you alone at home, you just come over to mine, okay?” I told her firmly.

“I’d love to.” She grinned.

“Where did you learn to toss your fried egg so perfectly?! Jack can never do it; he always ends up splattering the yolk.” She sighed.

“I love tossing it. It’s literally an art. People should be paid for tossing eggs and pancakes perfectly.” I laughed.

“Which reminds me, have you spoken to Mum about your pay? Because we’ll need to pay you.”

I turned around cursorily to frown at her.

“Aren’t you a little too young to be thinking about paying me and all that?”

“Jack won’t remember.” She smiled.

Again, I stared at her, still trying to figure her out.

Tracy was surprising me over and over now, like her brother had yesterday.

“The bacon’s burning, Charles.” She smirked while I stared.

“Oh yeah, sorry.” I broke into a private grin and turned my attention back to the now smoking bacon.

After breakfast I helped Tracy build a Lego house for some time, which made me feel like I was eight again.

But when Tracy couldn’t figure out where the last piece went, and I, like a pro, took it and placed it perfectly on the top, I was sixteen again.

Admit it, the last piece of a Lego figure is always the hardest to place.

While Tracy stayed in her room, reading or playing about or watching TV out in the hall, I milled about cleaning things. Jack didn’t return, even when it was lunchtime, so Tracy and I ordered pizza in and ate together.

After lunch, I returned to cleaning. By the time it was evening, I was done with the whole place. Everything sparkled.

I called out to Tracy to come see how I’d cleaned up her room.

“But, you have to come blindfolded.” I smirked at her.

“Blindfolded? Why?” She frowned.

“It’ll hit you better.” I winked.

“But I don’t want my own room to hit me.” She said, taking the literal meaning.

Once I made her understand what I meant, she agreed to be blindfolded. Carefully, I blindfolded her and took her up the steps to her room.

“Ta-da!” I exclaimed, whipping off her blindfold with a flourish.

For a minute, she stood, rooted to her spot, just looking around. Then, a look of pure amazement and joy crossed her face and she ran into her room.

“Wow Charles!” She said, throwing her hands out and spinning in a circle happily. “This is so…. Clean! It’s all sparkling!” She said, running and jumping on her bed.

“Thanks, I used the extra shine your Mum had in the store room. And HEY don’t jump on your bed with your shoes on! I just made it!” I scolded her, picking her up and off her bed.

She giggled and ran off, out into the corridor.

“Have you done this to all the rooms?” She asked.

“Yeah.” I grinned.

She stopped running and slowly turned around. Her expression had changed to one of anxiousness.

“Jack’s room too?” She said, anxiousness dissolving into horror.

“Uh..yeah?” I said, unsure of why she was so scared.

“Oh he’s going to murder you.” She said, her hands covering her face. “He’s going to absolutely kill you! He hates anyone even going into his room, much less tidying it up!”

“Can’t be that bad..” I said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Last month Mum tried to tidy it up. He dyed her favorite bed sheet black to take revenge for it.”

My eyes widened. I was one of the few kids who understood Mothers and their love for household items and stuff like bed sheets and coffee tables and how they liked all those things to be perfect.

Every mother has this favorite item in the house- it could be the coffee table, or the family photo on the far end of the wall, or a grandfather clock, or the rosebushes outside the house, in my Mother’s case.

And God help you if you ruined, or in any way damaged, even slightly, that favorite artifact of importance.

Maybe the bed sheet was to Mrs. Gardiner what the hybrid rosebush was to my Mother. In that case, I could only imagine the depths of her pain.

“And guess what, to make his point very clear, he dyed only half of the bed sheet- the half of the side that Mum sleeps on.”

I could really just imagine the depths of her pain.

Jack Gardiner was positively horrid.

“So..what do we do?” I asked worriedly. I didn’t want anything of mine, or worse, anything of Mrs. Gardiner’s, wrecked.

Tracy thought for a minute, then brightened.

“I have an idea!” She said.

“What?”

“Let’s re- trash his room.” She smirked.

And that was how I ended up lying on the floor of Jack Gardiner’s room at eight in the evening on the third day of my vacation.

It really was turning out to be a vacation after all.

It was the first time I’d actually trashed something, and it actually felt good. Even though it happened to be a boy’s room, even though I’d encountered endless amounts of condoms and superhero comics and porn, and even though I knew I might get skinned alive by that very boy.

That was until the front door banged shut.

Loudly.

“He’s home! Come on, run to my room!” Tracy whispered, like we were two agents on a secret mission in a Bond movie.

And I actually responded, telling her to go onto her room, I’d check downstairs.

But when I got down, there was no Jack.

I checked all the rooms, still no Jack.

Well that’s funny.

“He’s not here!” I called out to Tracy.

“Then who banged the door?” She said, appearing at the beginning of the steps.

I shrugged.

Her eyes widened.

“Ghosts!” She whispered.

I couldn’t help it, I started laughing.

“Come on, there are no ghosts in here.” I smiled at her when my laughing bout was over. “Come on down now. You want to watch a movie?”

“I’m telling you, it was a ghost.” She muttered while I went to switch on the TV.