Kid Power Strikes Back

Susan Beth Pfeffer

For the kids of Middle-town

Chapter 1

“Smile, Janie!”

“I am smiling,” I growled.

“Then smile harder,” my mother instructed me. “And don’t squint.”

“I have to squint,” I told her. “The sun’s in my eyes.”

“Then shield your eyes until I say when,” Mom replied. “We want a nice picture of you in front of your new bike.”

I sighed, shielded my eyes, smiled, and quickly removed my hand from my face when my mother told me to. She took two quick pictures of me standing by the bike, and then one of the bike without me. “For your scrapbook,” she told me when I gave her a weird look. As though I’d want a picture of my bike in my scrapbook. As though I could even remember where my scrapbook was anymore.

My mother had bought the kind of camera that develops the pictures itself, so in a minute, I was looking at three pictures of me and my bike. In one of them I was definitely squinting, but the others came out okay.

“This camera was such a great idea,” my mother said. “It’ll give that something extra to Something Extra.”

I sighed some more. My mother had taken to saying that about practically everything lately. “It’s getting cold, Mom,” I said. “Mind if I go in?”

“Not at all,” my mother said. “Just put your bike away first.”

So I moved it into the garage. It was a beautiful bike, and I wasn’t really sure why it didn’t make me happier. I’d earned half the money for it myself, by working all summer for my organization, Kid Power. I’d created Kid Power just to earn the money for the bike, and while I’d been working and saving, it had been fun to have a goal. But the time finally came when I had enough money, and a little extra to keep my savings account open. My mother really started after me then about when I was going to buy the bike, so I finally gave in, withdrew the money, and went bike shopping with her that morning. And now I had my bike, and there wasn’t any reason to even pretend Kid Power still existed.

I kicked at some leaves on the driveway as I walked back to the house. There hadn’t been much time for Kid Power anyway once school started. At its peak, in August, I had three of my friends, plus my sister Carol and me all working for it. I put all of the money I earned into my savings account, plus ten percent of what the others earned as well. We watched kids at yard sales, baby-sat, weeded gardens, walked dogs, fed cats, helped people pack and clean, and did anything else we could come up with.

And the funny thing was, even though it was work, it was a lot of fun.

But business just about died after Labor Day. That weekend we’d done four yard sales, and we hadn’t done one since then. There’d been some last-minute bulb planting in October, but that ended the gardening for the year. People came home from vacations, so there was no more need to feed cats, and lately it seemed as if even the dogs were walking themselves. That just about left babysitting, and the only one of us who worked at that regularly was my sister Carol.

Which reminded me. She’d worked the night before, and she hadn’t given me the thirty cents she owed me. Thirty cents wasn’t much, but it was the only income Kid Power would have for the week, and I wanted it.

“Carol!” I shouted, as I walked into the house.

“What?” Carol shouted back. Judging from the sound, she was in the living room. So I went there. Sure enough, she was sitting in front of the TV, watching a football game with my father.

“You owe me thirty cents,” I told her, as I plopped down on the sofa next to her.

“I do not,” she said. “Why should I owe you anything?”

“You worked last night, didn’t you?” I said. “You baby-sat for three hours at a dollar an hour, and I’m entitled to ten percent of that. Thirty cents.”

“Forget it,” Carol said. “I’m not paying you any thirty cents.”

“But you owe me,” I shrieked.

“I paid you when the jobs came in from Kid Power,” Carol replied. “But I got this job on my own, so why should I pay you anything?”

“You got the job because you were recommended by somebody you got through Kid Power,” I told her. “That’s the same thing as getting the job through Kid Power. Isn’t it, Dad?”

“Third down,” Dad said. “Wait until this play is over, and then ask me.”

So we sat quietly while the quarterback tried to pass the ball. It was incomplete, so Dad turned to us. “Now what seems to be the problem?” he asked.

“Carol owes me thirty cents, and she won’t pay,” I told him.

“Janie has this fantasy that Kid Power is still in business,” Carol said. “And she expects me to keep shelling out ten percent of my hard-earned money for no reason whatsoever.”

“Kid Power is too in business,” I said.

“Yeah?” Carol said. “Name the last job you worked on.”

Unfortunately, that took a lot of thought. If things had gone the way I wanted, I would have been checking in every day on my friend Mrs. Edwards, and that would have counted, since she paid me fifty cents a visit. But Mrs. Edwards broke her hip over the summer, and ever since she got home, she’d had a nurse’s aide coming in to help her, so she didn’t need me anymore. “I raked leaves,” I replied.

“When?” Carol asked.

“A couple of weeks ago,” I admitted. Once you’d raked all the leaves, there wasn’t that much left to do. “But that doesn’t mean Kid Power is dead.”

“Nobody said it was dead,” Dad said. “But you haven’t been doing much with it lately. Which is fine with me. Your school work is a lot more important than making a little extra money. Especially now that you have your bike.”

“But Carol is still working,” I said. “She has her paper route, and her baby-sitting, and you don’t mind that.”

“I have to have those jobs,” Carol said. “I’m saving for something really important.”

“What?” I asked. The original plan had been that Carol would use her money for a new bike, too, but she’d bought that in August.

“I’m saving to go to Paris,” she declared.

“What?” I asked. Even Dad looked surprised.

“Not this summer,” she said. “I won’t have enough money this summer. But with the money I earn for the next two years, I’ll have enough to go on a chaperoned high school trip for a month in France. I am taking French, after all. The trip will be very educational.”

“That’s very impressive, Carol,” Dad said, just the way she wanted him to. I just shuddered. If Carol was planning to save up for two whole years for something educational, I’d never see another penny out of her again. Carol had always been a tightwad, but now she’d have Dad on her side every time she refused to give me the money she owed me. Kid Power was a definite goner.

“I read about the trip in a magazine,” Carol said. “And I didn’t want to mention it to you and Mom until I was sure I could save up the money on my own. I didn’t want to be an added burden to you. Especially with Mom just starting her own business.”

Not only was Kid Power a goner; after that speech, I probably was, too. Dad and Mom would decide they could only afford one kid, and Carol was bound to be first choice. I wondered if my grandmother would be willing to take me in for the next six years.

“I’m proud of you, Carol,” Dad said. “You know what you want, and you’re willing to go after it without looking to other people for help.”

I had spent the entire summer working, and Dad never once made a speech like that to me. It was always “I don’t approve” or “You shouldn’t be doing that” or “Why don’t you quit already?” Carol only had to say she planned to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars, and Dad was ready to give her the Nobel Prize for Economics.

“What’s Carol up to?” Mom asked, walking into the living room. I liked the way she put that, so I smiled up at her.

“I’m saving up money for a chaperoned high school summer tour of France,” Carol declared. “I’m hoping to go the summer after next.”

“That sounds great,” Mom said, perching on the arm of Dad’s chair. “I’m sure your father and I will be happy to help.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Carol said. “Let me see how much I can earn on my own first, though. I know money is still a little tight around here.”

“We have more than enough for our needs,” Dad said.

“Besides,” Mom said, “Something Extra is going great. By a year from next summer, I should be a multimillionaire.”

I sighed to myself. Mom had come up with the idea of Something Extra from watching me at work with Kid Power. She had decided there were a lot of odd jobs adults could do, and a lot of housewives who would like a little extra income. So she sent out fliers, and hired about ten women who could make gourmet meals, and house-sit for people who were expecting the plumber but couldn’t take the day off from work, and do housecleaning, and help shut-ins, and organize birthday parties for kids, and buy groceries, and do all kinds of jobs. The camera she’d just bought was to take pictures at parties, so that the parents wouldn’t have to. She hadn’t made her fortune yet, but things were looking promising. And even though she always gave me credit for the idea, she refused to give me ten percent of her ten percent.

I stared at my family then, and had one of those moments where everything is completely clear. Everyone in my family had a goal. My father loved his work as a labor lawyer, and he believed in what he was doing. Mom was hard at work starting her own business; I’d never seen her so excited about anything. Even Carol was working toward something, a trip a year and a half away. And all I had were my memories of Kid Power. I was twelve years old, and already I was living in the past.

“That reminds me,” Carol said. “Would you mind taking down that stupid sign of yours?”

“Which sign?” I asked. I was too depressed to complain about her calling it stupid.

“The one in the supermarket,” Carol said.

“But you made that sign,” I said. Carol had made all my signs; her lettering was a lot better than mine.

“It was stupid when I made it,” Carol said. “Actually it was very nice-looking then. But nobody’s calling you anymore, and people have scribbled all over it. You really should take it down.”

“Sure,” I said, all the fight knocked out of me. “I’ll take it down.”

“Good,” Dad said. “Kid Power was fine as a summer project, but I’m just as happy it’s finished.”

Right then I felt as if I was finished. No signs, no jobs, no ten percent. Just a bike and a few memories.

I walked over to the window and stared out at the street.

It was the week before Thanksgiving, and already everything was gray. There were still leaves on the ground, but the trees were all bare. The days were so short they were over before they began. It was definitely winter, and Kid Power was a thing of the past. Soon it would be snowing.

“Snow,” I said.

“What?” Mom asked. Dad and Carol were engrossed in the football game again.

“It’s going to be snowing soon,” I said.

“Not too soon, I hope,” she replied. “I haven’t put the snow tires on the car yet.”

“How about if I shovel the snow for you?” I asked.

“Are you volunteering?” Mom asked.

“For pay,” I said. “How about if we agree right now that I’ll shovel the walk automatically. You won’t have to holler at me, or try to convince Carol to do it. I’ll do it every snowstorm for pay.”

“How much?” Mom asked.

I thought about it. Kid Power had charged a dollar an hour, but I didn’t think snow shoveling should be paid for on that basis. “A dollar fifty per sidewalk,” I said. “Two dollars for driveways.”

“And you absolutely promise you’ll do it automatically and not complain or run off to build a snowman or say you want to sleep late?” Mom asked.

“I absolutely promise,” I said.

“You’re on,” Mom said. “It’ll be worth it not to worry about who’s going to get it done.”

“Do you think other people would feel that way?” I asked her.

“Probably,” Mom said. “Snow is such a nuisance.”

“It is, isn’t it,” I said, suddenly happy again. “I’ll bet I could get lots of people to hire me.”

“Maybe,” Mom said. “But there’s only so much you can do. For one thing, you can only travel so far. I’m not going to drive you all over town just so you can shovel people’s walks.”

I hadn’t thought of that. For a moment I was stumped.

And then I remembered how Kid Power Agency worked. I helped other kids get jobs, and they gave me ten percent of what they earned. There was no reason why we couldn’t do the same thing with snow shoveling. My friends all lived in different parts of town. All I’d have to do was get them the jobs shoveling the walks in their neighborhoods, and I’d end up rich.

“I’ll get my friends,” I told Mom. “It’ll be just like last summer.”

“But last summer you were saving for something,” Mom pointed out. “You got your bike today. What do you want to earn money for?”

“A computer!” I shouted. “To keep track of the business.”

“What business?” Carol asked, looking up from the TV set.

“Kid Power,” I said. “Come on, Carol. I need a new sign.”

“Oh, no,” Dad groaned. “Not this again.”

I didn’t pay any attention to him. Kid Power was back in business, and so was I.

Chapter 2

The first thing I had to prove to myself and everybody else was that there really was a market for Kid Power’s new winter service.

“Don’t overbook,” my mother warned me as I set out the next morning to convince my neighbors to hire me. “You can only do so much.”

“I won’t,” I promised. My fantasy of course had been that every house on the block would hire me, but even I knew that was crazy. I only had two arms, after all, and one back. So I figured if I could get just three other households I should be satisfied. That would be six dollars for sidewalks (including my family’s), and eight dollars if they took me on for driveways, too. Fourteen dollars a snowstorm could be a big help in my savings for a computer.

It was funny. I hadn’t even known I wanted a computer until I said I did. But now I wanted one a lot. No successful business could be run without one, I pointed out to my mother, who didn’t have one for Something Extra yet.

I decided to start my sales pitch with Mrs. Edwards, since I was pretty sure she’d agree. So I knocked on her door, and I was happy when she opened it herself. That meant she was feeling better. She was still using a walker, though.

“Kid Power is back in business,” I told her. “We’ve decided to go into snow removal.”

“What a good idea,” Mrs. Edwards said. “Have you found many customers?”

“I came to you first,” I admitted. “We’ll be charging a dollar fifty for sidewalks and two dollars for driveways. The important thing is that if you agree to our terms now, you’ll never have to worry again about who’s going to shovel for you.”

“I don’t use my driveway anymore,” Mrs. Edwards said. “My nurse’s aide parks on the street, and I don’t drive anymore. But it would be a great convenience if you shoveled my walk. Can I hire you for sidewalks only?”

Of course I would have preferred it if she’d agreed to the package deal, but I could see her point. Why pay for something you don’t need? “You’re on,” I said. “I’ll shovel every single snowfall of four inches or more.”

“How about if you just shovel automatically, even if there’s less than four inches?” Mrs. Edwards suggested. “I’ll pay you the same rate, of course.”

“All right,” I said. “If there isn’t enough snow to shovel, I’ll sweep it off the sidewalk for you.”

“Thank you very much,” Mrs. Edwards said. “And I’ll be sure to recommend Kid Power to my friends. You did save my life, after all.”