TROUBLEMAKER, carl gallagher

03 | maple syrup

✲

THE EARLY Saturday morning sun woke Silvia up the following day. Unlike her sister's room, the walls were a light yellow and not chipped off—her furniture was all stuff they'd found off the streets over the years, and her bed had (too many according to Carl) stuffed animals piled onto it.

She yawned, grateful Amara had let her sleep in and climbed out of bed, bare feet hitting the cold wood floor beneath her.

Distantly, she could hear talking, and she snuck out of her room to peer down the hallway. Her mother's hair was pulled into a bun that was falling out halfway down her scalp, and she was facing the direction of Amara who was sitting at the table.

"You get them waffles I asked you about?"

Amara looked ready to laugh—Silvia tried not to giggle. Margot loved to think she was in charge, though she was never home and barely paid any of the bills. Everything was basically left up to her sister, and the fact that their mom thought she could demand things was kind of funny.

"No," her sister finally said, refocusing on the journal im front of her. "We barely had enough money to pay the gas bill. I couldn't buy them." Silvia resisted the urge to shiver, now that she pointed it out, the house did seem kind of chilly. "Speaking of, shouldn't you be scamming the old folk's home right about now?"

Margot waved her off. Silvia ducked behind the wall before she was seen, and darted back up the stairs to get changed.

Her mom was gone when she returned back downstairs. She nodded at her sister in greeting. "I'm going to hang out with Debbie," she told her. "You coming?"

"Maybe later," Amara shrugged. "Be safe."

Silvia was quick to walk across her yard and into the next. She didn't bother to knock as she jogged up the steps and found Carl trying to stick his shirt to the wall. She brushed past him with an eye roll and stepped into the room she knew Debbie was in.

"What's a quick way to make money?" Silvia asked.

Debbie was busy playing with Liam, but she looked up and shrugged. "Um... I don't know. Why?"

"My moms barely contributing," Silvia told her, huffing and falling onto Debbie's bed. "It's not fair to Amara for everything to fall on her."

"I have an idea," Carl said from the doorway.

"Get out," Debbie snapped.

"I'm not in," Carl retorted, jumping around the entrance to her room and the hallway.

Silvia shared an annoyed look with Debbie. "What's your idea?"

"Street corner."

Genuinely annoyed now, Silvia climbed to her feet, offered Carl a sweet, sarcastic smile, and shut the door in his face.

Debbie giggled from the floor. "Nice one."

✲

Frank was missing—though this wasn't necessarily something out of the ordinary, it was the last Friday of the month. To Silvia, that meant nothing, but to the adults, it was something huge.

Fiona was freaking out in the kitchen as Veronica asked around if anyone had seen him recently.

Amara had disappeared off with Lip and Karen to search, and Fiona instructed the three of them to look in the normal spots. Next, she called around at any hospital to see if he'd turned up in any of them.

Carl flicked on the news, flipping through the channels for any sort of information. Fiona entered the living room with a dubious look. It'd been close to two hours and there hadn't been any sign of him.