The Merchant of Menace

from the grocery store. My father has special milk delivered.“
    “Soy or something, I guess,“ Jane said. “You know what? I have lemonade and also extra toothbrushes that haven’t even been unwrapped. You can have a cookie and a toothbrush,“ Jane said, wondering how a real live child could be this proper and noble. She needed to be tickled or something. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Jeffry.”
    Her eating was as prissy as her speech. She munched the cookie in little rabbity nibbles, holding a napkin at chest level to catch any crumbs. Jane knew Pet was in seventh grade with Todd, but she was one of the late bloomers. Gangly, flat-chested, and looking like she had a larger person’s teeth filling her mouth, she was still a knobby-kneed little girl. Jane could remember some of Katie’s friends at the same age looking like twenty-five-year-old models. Or at least giving it a good try. But Pet, with her bottle-bottom glasses and tightly braided hair, had a long way to go and didn’t appear to be in any hurry.
    “It must take your mother ages to braid your hair every morning,“ Jane said as she poured Pet a glass of lemonade.
    “I don’t have a mother. She died in a car wreck.“
    “Oh, Pet. I’m so sorry,“ Jane exclaimed. “I had no idea.“
    “It’s okay. I was little. I don’t remember her, not exactly. But I have lots of pictures of her. My father braids my hair.”
    Jane was saved from asking any more inadvertently awkward questions by Todd. “Oh, hi, Pet,“ he said as if he were surprised to find her there. “What’s up?“
    “My dad gave me a computer program about pyramids,“ Pet said. “I thought you might like to see it. You can build a sarcophagus with it and move treasures around inside to foil grave robbers and wrap up mummies.“
    “Do you want me to load it on my computer in the basement?“ Jane asked. She had a small office in the basement where she worked on what she’d come to think of as the Endless Novel. She estimated that it was three-quarters done and was going to really, really work on it after the holidays. She remembered thinking the same thing last Christmas. But at least she was two hundred pages farther along now than then.
    “I know how to load programs, Mrs. Jeffrey. I just hope you have enough RAM.”
    For some reason, Pet’s behavior made Jane want to be a child for her. Show her how it was done. She nearly said, “Ram, schram, bippity barn“ with a girlish laugh, but forced herself to reply only, “I don’t know, Pet. Can you tell when you turn it on?“
    “Is it an old computer?“ Pet asked.
    “No, only about two or three years old.”
    Pet allowed herself a slight smile. “That’s very old for a computer.“
    “Then you may use my laptop. It’s only a few months old. It’s downstairs, too.”
    Pet and Todd went down the basement stairs and Jane quietly closed the door behind them. “Oh, dear. Poor little thing,“ Jane said to Shelley. “At least she forgot about brushing her teeth. I guess there’s hope for her.“
    “You never know,“ Shelley said. “She could get a figure and contacts and take down her hair someday and turn into a blues singer in a slinky purple-sequined dress.”
    Jane shook her head. “No, I think she’s going to get stronger glasses and go around in a lab coat with a pocket protector.“
    “Pocket protector! Oh, I know who she is now,“ Shelley said. “There was a Sam Dwyer sitting in the hall with me waiting to see the teacher at the same time I was last week. A real, live grown-up geek of the first order. Not really too bad-looking, but the tidiest man I’ve ever met. Real short hair, glasses as thick as Pet’s, and a very narrow tie that he must have been babying along since the seventies. I tried to make conversation with him, but it was heavy going. He simply didn’t want to talk to me.“
    “Imagine!“ Jane said, grinning.
    “I was irritated,“ Shelley admitted. “I was just curious about him and he wouldn’t tell me anything about himself.“
    “Sounds like both of them need to hang out with a blues singer in a slinky purple-sequined dress.”
    Shelley took another cookie. “These things are addictive,“ she complained. “It’s a shame they’re so ugly. Now that I think about it and have met little Pet, I’m even more curious.“
    “You’re as nosy as Lance King,“ Jane said.
    Shelley drew herself up indignantly. “But my motives are pure, unlike his. I don’t want to wreck