A New Start

The days of winter break had been filled with gloriously not setting an alarm clock and staying up late playing video games. Now, back at school almost a month later, it was as if those days had never happened at all.

"Good morning, Dewbert! Time to wake up!" his mother chirped as she opened his curtains to the darkness outside.

Dewey moaned. Although each morning waking in the dark was its own form of unique torture, only a few hours at school and he was right back into the swing of the familiar rest of it — classes, vending machines, his friends. Everything had returned to normal except Clara was still gone. At first, Dewey enjoyed the slower pace that came with the office being closed. It had been a busy end to the fall semester, and he enjoyed carefree afternoons flying his drone and playing computer games when his homework was done.

"What's today, Mom?" he asked, yawning as he stretched.

"Monday."

"No, I mean the date?"

"Oh. The twenty-seventh."

Dewey felt his heart jump into his mouth. He sat up.

"Of January?!"

"Last time I checked," she laughed.

"That's beyond great!"

"Oh, yeah? Why?" she asked, picking up a pair of pants off the floor and folding them. "Are these clean?" She suddenly had second thoughts.

"Yeah. I think so." He didn't answer her question about feeling excited because he couldn't think of a good reason to give her.

Dewey's mom gave him a funny look.

"What'd you do, put a chocolate bar in your pants?"

"I think that's a distinct possibility," Dewey grinned.

"Ugh, Dewey." She threw the pants over her shoulder. "Okay, get up. Make your bed, would you?"

She left to go rouse Dewey's little sister, Emma.

The twenty-seventh meant Clara and Wolfie would finally be back in the office. He threw the sheets and comforter over his pillow. Good enough, he thought. Dewey could hardly wait for his school day to start so it would end.

Skijoring

When Dewey walked into the office after school, the first thing to hit him was the familiar smell of cookies in the oven. In his mind, Dewey knew that he missed Clara and Wolfie, but now he could feel it in his whole body as the sweet warm smell of cookies lifted him up like a magic carpet.

"Clara? Wolfie?"

Wolfie came running out first, followed closely behind by his ninety-four-year-old assistant Clara Cottonwood. Dewey threw his arms around Clara's shoulders as Wolfie jumped up on his leg.

"Hey, Boy!"

"Good to see you, Sir," smiled Clara warmly hugging him back. "Wolfie. Down." A timer went off in her kitchen, and she ran off to take the batch of cookies out of the oven. Dewey coaxed Wolfie back up.

"So, how was it?" Dewey plopped down at his desk and began to warm up the computer.

"Marvelous! Wolfie wanted to learn to ski, but I'm afraid he's too small. We still had a time of it romping in the snow and chasing rabbits, right?" she asked, petting Wolfie.

"What?! Dog skiing?"

"Skijoring. Cross-country skiing with a dog! You hook the dog up and they pull you. But he's only eighteen pounds, and they need to be at least thirty-five."

"Still, a barrel of fun. I'd throw a snowball and it would break. He'd go off searching high and low and come up looking like father Christmas."

"How about you, sir? What have you to report?"

"Oh, not much. Same ol'. Dad has a new class of kids, and it's his last semester student teaching. Everything else, thankfully, is pretty much the same. I'm wondering how backlogged we are," said Dewey, looking at the chats and texts.

Clara and Dewey had been in business well over a year. Dewey's reputation as a problem solver began back in elementary school, when his good friend Seraphina begged him to rescue her from her over-protective mother. One pack of powdered sugar donuts, a stakeout, and some fancy footwork later, Dewey had freed his friend Seraphina and found himself a reputation. He soon got so busy helping kids solve their parent problems that he needed help. He enlisted his long-time babysitter, Clara Cottonwood, for the job. Together, with her own able-bodied furry assistant Wolfie, they established a suitable office space for clients hidden up in the attic of Dewey's home.

"Oh, sir. All set for you. See? That spreadsheet there. By topic. Teacher problems are there and the parent ones are over here," she said pointing.

"There is one," she continued, "I thought you might want to consider just due to the sheer number of times you've been contacted in our absence."

Dewey looked up for Clara to continue.

Clara sorted the document by name. "Twenty-seven times," she nodded seriously.

"Oh. Wow. Yeah — pull that info first, would ya?" Dewey sat back and began to crunch on an iced lemon cookie.

"It's a parent problem," Clara said. "The client is Archie. Tomorrow too soon?"

"For twenty-seven requests? Better make it yesterday," Dewey laughed as he packed up his stuff to head out. "Skijoring, huh? I could use a mode of transportation around town like that. Maybe we should fatten you up, dog, and I'll get a skateboard or some roller-skates. Not a bad idea. Throw him a cookie, Clara."

New Kid

When Dewey showed up at the vending machines the next day, Seraphina was hanging out with a girl who he'd never seen before.

"Dewey, this is Elinor."

"Hey," Dewey said.

"I met Elinor over break, but I didn't know she was going to go to school here."

"Me neither," Elinor shrugged. "My parents just decided to stay."

Elinor, whose father was Japanese-American, had short dark hair; one side was cut shorter than the other, and there was one patch of pink.

Dewey tried to feed his dollar into the vending machine, but it kept spitting it back out.

"Argh!"

"Here," Elinor said handing him a crisp bill. "Try this."

"Oh, pretty!" Dewey said admiring how new it looked.

Seraphina looked up and flushed. She thought Dewey was commenting on Elinor, not the dollar bill. Elinor wore a bright four-tone vest, and her thin, bare arms hung by her side. She had a small nose with two perfectly symmetrical nostrils, should anyone care to notice such things. Seraphina thought she was pretty. Maybe Dewey had noticed that, too.

"Shame to put it in there ... but ..." He put it in and handed her his soggy wrinkled one in exchange. Out plopped a fruit leather and a quarter in change.

"Thanks. I wonder wh —" but he choked on his words as Colin approached him from behind and wrapped his arms around his throat.

As he coughed, he sputtered, "There you are!" He and Colin began to head over toward the grass.

"You coming?" he asked Seraphina and Elinor.

"No, you guys go ahead." And they headed off in the opposite direction giggling together.

"Oh, great," Dewey said.

"What?"

"Did you not just see Seraphina go off with that new girl, Elinor?" Dewey ripped a bite off of his fruit leather.

"What new girl?"

"Are you — What? Hello!?"

"How much time is left?"

"Dunno. Ten minutes?"

"Wanna go see if Mr. Peters is around? He's always good for a laugh."

"Sure, why not."

* * *

Dewey had forgotten all about his fake glasses! That afternoon as he waited for Archie to arrive, he settled them smartly on the bridge of his nose, and took a selfie, and then a couple more. Not bad, he...