The Rule of Threes

By Marcy Campbell

Part family drama, part contemporary thriller, Rule of Threes is a middle grade story about what happens when "perfect" is out of your control.

An interior design enthusiast, twelve-year-old Maggie Owens is accustomed to living her life according to her own precise plans. But when she learns about Tony, a mysterious half-brother her own age who needs a place to stay, any semblance of a plan is shattered. Tony's mom struggles with an addiction to opioids, and now she's called upon Maggie's dad—who is also Tony's dad—to take him in. On top of everything, Maggie must also come to terms with the Alzheimer's afflicting her beloved grandmother.

While Maggie can strive for—and even succeed in—a picture perfect design, when it comes to family, there is no such thing as perfection. To work through the sudden struggles rocking her world, Maggie must learn the importance of having an open heart.

• A heart-wrenching, authentic, and darkly funny coming-of-age story
• Addresses hard-hitting topics—such as divorce and substance abuse—with care and honesty
• From Marcy Campbell, author of Adrian Simcox Does NOT Have a Horse

Merci Suárez Changes Gears meets The Thing About Jellyfish in this compulsively readable novel.

• Perfect for ages 10 and up
• Appeals to those interested in stories about friendship and non-traditional families
• Great for readers who love a bold and self-aware protagonist

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chronicle Books Digital
• Release date: May 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781797204536

Marcy Campbell

Marcy Campbell lives in Ohio with her family and menagerie of rescued pets. Her writing for adults has been published widely in journals and magazines, including Salon. She is the author of Adrian Simcox Does Not Have a Horse. This is her first novel.

Book preview

One Big Thing

In between forkfuls of spaghetti, my dad said it was time to play our new family dinner game, One Big Thing.

Let’s hear something important that happened to everybody today, Dad said.

I still didn’t see the point of this game. It seemed like a game other families needed to play, families who barely ever saw each other. We ate dinner together almost every night, unless Dad had a late meeting or Mom had to show a house. I honestly wondered if Mom and Dad had secretly been reading parenting blogs together. How to talk to your tween! Keep your middle schooler engaged at dinnertime!

Do we have to keep playing this? I asked.

Mom said, We told you, Maggie, we just want to make sure we talk, really talk, like always—

—Even though you’re in middle school now and might think you’re too cool for your old parents, Dad finished. He leaned forward. So, Mags, he said, tell me something good.

I sighed, my brain scrolling through the snapshots of my day. There were some good things. My choir teacher had me sing a solo verse of this Lion King song we’re working on and said I sounded great. And I’d gotten matched with a lab partner who seemed like he probably wouldn’t throw dead worms, or anything else, on me. That was kind of neutral, I guess. Oh, but Rachel . . . she seemed really distant at lunch, and also wants us to call her Ra-kell this year for some reason.

I knew Rachel’s family wasn’t playing any dinner games. They didn’t even eat in the same room, preferring to spread out to the different TVs around the house with their plates balanced on their knees. And at my other BFF Olive’s house, her baby brother was usually crying or flinging sweet potatoes against the wall. I was lucky. As an only child, I didn’t have any trouble getting my parents’ attention.

Does it always have to be a good thing, I asked, or just a big, important thing?

It doesn’t necessarily have to be something good, Dad said. I mean, like, you remember last week when Mom had that house deal fall through, which was pretty bad, but still important.

Did something bad happen at school today, Maggie? Mom cut in, her eyes going wide.

No, geez, I’m just trying to figure out what to say. They looked disappointed, like I was ruining their game again, and I knew right then that if I did have something bad to report, I’d have to do it in a kind of good news–bad news sandwich, like Mom did at her open houses. I’d been to plenty of them, so I’d seen her in action, witnessed her camouflaging the not-so-nice qualities of a fixer-upper. She might point out the gorgeous natural light, then quietly mention that the appliances could use some updating, and then she’d end by gushing loudly about the solid oak floors! It was a compliment sandwich. Good-bad-good.

Three was the best number of details. You didn’t want to overload a person’s brain with too many.

Well? Mom said, tapping her fingers against her glass.

You go first. I’m still thinking, I said.

She wiggled her eyebrows. I listed a new house, on Briarcliff!

Bravo! Dad raised his glass in the air, and Mom and I clinked ours against it.

That’s awesome, Mom! I said. Briarcliff was a street by the golf course with a bunch of McMansions, which typically sold for a lot of money. That meant more commission for my mom, even though often, the houses weren’t so great on the inside. Mom always said you didn’t have to have a lot of money to have style, and sometimes people with the most money didn’t have any of it.

What’s it look like? I asked cautiously, and Mom made a pukey face. I pictured crazy-patterned curtains puddling on all the super-cold marble floors, endangered animal heads hanging on the walls.

Maybe you can help me stage it before it shows, Maggie, Mom said.

Sure! I replied, but I wasn’t going to touch any dead animals.

One more thing, Mom added. I got an offer on that little bungalow around the corner, for just under the asking price, so, fingers crossed.

New mansion listing—but it’s yucky—and an offer on the bungalow. Good-bad-good.

Well, I went to work today, and had a perfectly normal, no-surprises day, Dad said, and raised his glass again, though Mom and I didn’t clink it this time.

I cocked my head at him. "Is that supposed to be something big?"

What’s bigger than having a perfectly normal day? I consider that a big success. Dad winked at me, and Mom shook her head, laughing.

Oh! I just remembered! I said, my arms goose-bumping with excitement. There was this announcement about a contest at school where we compete to decorate the hallways or something. Mr. Villanueva is supposed to give the details at an assembly this week.

Well, that sounds right up your alley, Mom said.

It sure was. Mom and Dad had prepped me all summer about how important it was to get involved, as soon as possible, at my new school, because it would make me feel more comfortable there, more like I belonged in middle school rather than back in elementary school. What better way to get involved than by doing design, something I already knew and loved? Plus, it was the perfect next job for the BFFs. This was big, all right.

You should call Grandma and tell her about it, Mom said.

Just what I was thinking. I’ll call her right after dinner. I popped the last buttery hunk of garlic bread into my mouth, washed it down with some milk.

Help me with these dishes first? Dad asked.

Mom and I cleared the table while Dad filled the sink with water, then Mom went to check her phone for texts. People always liked to bother her about house listings during dinnertime.

Wash or dry? Dad asked.

Wash, I said. I always said wash. Dad knew not to make the water so hot that I couldn’t put my hands in it. I dipped my fingers into the suds. Ahhhh . . . just right.

I started washing the spaghetti bowl while Dad loaded the dishwasher with the plates and cups and silverware.

So, this contest sounds pretty cool, he said.

It is! It’s going to be awesome. I’m just hoping we get a good location to decorate. And that Olive and Rachel are as excited as I am.

Why wouldn’t they be? Dad asked. He pulled a yellow checked towel from the drawer.

Well, Rachel is acting, I don’t know, just kind of different. I scrubbed at some dried sauce on the edge of the bowl. She’s just . . . acting like she wants to do different things and have new friends and stuff since we got to middle school.

That happens, Dad said.

It happened to you?

Sure. I made different friends as I moved through school, depending on what kinds of sports or clubs I was involved in. But I kept some of those old friends, too. I still talk to a friend I met in kindergarten, in fact. That might be the way it goes for you, too.

Yeah, but I like the friends I have.

Of course you do. No one is saying you need to go out looking for new friends, but if you meet some people you hit it off with, sometimes new friendships just happen naturally, and sometimes old friendships might move a bit into the background.

I handed him the bowl, and he dried it off. I didn’t want my friendship with Rachel, or Olive, to move into the background.

Dad must have noticed I looked worried. Everything looks worse at night, he said. You’ll feel better in the morning. All you have to do is just keep being the great girl you are, and the right friends will be attracted to that.

If he was Mom, he’d be grabbing his laptop right now to email the school counselor, or texting Rachel’s mom to discuss the situation, or getting me to make a ten-step plan for dealing with changing friendships. But that wasn’t Dad’s style.

We finished the dishes while he hummed a song I recognized from a Beatles movie we saw recently, about a marketplace and life going on.

I better call Grandma, I said. Mom says not to count on her being very alert after seven p.m.

"You shouldn’t count on me being alert after seven p.m. either, Dad said, swatting me with the dishtowel. Or before seven p.m., for that matter."

I grabbed his towel and swatted him back before running upstairs to my room.

It took Grandma five rings to pick up.

Hello?

Hi, Grandma, it’s Maggie.

There was a pause, and I glanced at the clock. It wasn’t seven yet, only 6:45.

Oh! How are you, sweetie? she asked, her smile coming right through the phone.

I’m fine. How are you?

My grandma wasn’t like my friends’ grandmas who constantly complained about all their aches and pains and how things cost too much and how kids didn’t act like they were supposed to anymore. In fact, Mom said she sometimes wished Grandma would complain more, just so she’d have a heads-up when something was wrong with her, especially now that Grandpa had died.

Oh, I’m doing very well, Grandma said, just looking through some seed catalogs, thinking about putting some Cardinal flowers along that shady part of the fence next spring.

Grandma, it’s not even fall! I laughed.

No harm comes from proper planning, she said breezily. It was something she said a lot, something I’d taken to heart. I always put lots of planning into my room designs. Grandma had taught me I should measure the rooms and sketch out just where everything should go, so there wouldn’t be any surprises.

Grandma, guess what? The school is going to have a contest where we get to decorate hallways and stuff!

Hallways? What about the . . . the metal . . . containers . . . where you put your bags . . .

The lockers? I asked.

Yes, lockers. How are you going to design around those?

Ummm, I said. I didn’t have any idea, not yet. I didn’t even know any details about the contest. There might be some classrooms, too, not just hallways, I said.

Grandma wasn’t saying anything, and I felt my excitement droop like the philodendron on my bookshelf I was always forgetting to water. It’s going to be great! I said, but my heart wasn’t quite in it anymore.

Of course it will, sweetie, she said, then paused again. It’s probably bedtime, isn’t it? she asked.

I wasn’t sure if she meant her bedtime or mine, but I said, Yeah, I should probably go. Do you want to talk to Mom?

No, that’s okay. It was nice to chat with you, honey, and I’ll talk to you soon, okay? Bye, Margie.

I hung up, not sure if I’d heard her right. Did she just call me Margie?

Little Red Car

I might not have noticed the little red car pull up outside our house the next day if its brakes hadn’t screeched so horribly, pulling me, Rachel, and Olive away from our meeting and over to my bedroom window. The car skidded to a stop just past our place, then backed up, then jerkily drove forward again, very slowly turning into our driveway, the woman behind the wheel squinting at the house numbers painted in white on our mailbox.

Who’s that? Rachel asked.

The driver was a gray-haired woman wearing large glasses. She stopped the car, pulled a purse onto her lap, and started digging through it. I saw her turn and speak to a kid sitting in the back. I couldn’t see his face very well.

Probably somebody with the wrong address, I said. Or somebody selling something.

That last part, though, wasn’t very likely. No one came to our house selling anything, except during Girl Scout cookie season, but that wasn’t until spring. It was barely September. Honestly, no one came to the house unexpectedly at all, except the BFFs and sometimes my dad’s basketball friends.

I looked again at the car, noticed a dent in the front left fender. I’d never seen the car before, or the woman, who, although she looked like she could have been somebody’s grandma, definitely wasn’t mine. She opened her door and while she struggled a bit to get out of the car, her striped top rode up, giving a clear view of her elastic-waist pants, which didn’t match the top. Definitely nothing like my grandma, who always dressed very stylishly, even if she was just going to the grocery store. Grandma really loved colorful scarves and had four special hangers for them in her closet.

The boy turned his head then, glancing toward the house. He looked about the same age as me. He was wearing a blue hoodie, and a mop of black hair covered one eye, making him look both goofy and dangerous.

He’s cute, Rachel said, and I gave her a little punch to the arm, but not enough to really hurt. It’s just that I was sick of Rachel’s newfound interest in boys. She’d never even noticed them in fifth grade. In any case, he actually wasn’t cute, not really, but still, there was something about him that made me stare, something that seemed oddly familiar.

I felt that little buzz in my brain that I got whenever something was off. You could call it intuition, I guess, but that seemed too fancy and important. It was just a feeling, the same feeling I got when I realized a design project I’d been working on wasn’t quite there yet.

He looked up toward my window and saw me looking back at him. I quickly turned around. Break’s over, I said to my friends. Let’s get back to our tablescape.

I was so thankful to have our little trio, our design team, together that I didn’t want to waste another minute. Rachel had joined the swim team this year, and Olive had to help out a lot with her baby brother, so it was getting harder to meet. When we started the BFFs, in fourth grade, we didn’t have as much going on, and there wasn’t any pressure. We were just messing around then, redecorating each other’s bedrooms. But word got out. Soon, we were helping some friends with their rooms. Then we helped some friends’ moms, who actually paid us.

I started adding to my savings account, so that someday I could help pay for college, where I’d study interior design and do this for real. Grandma had told me once, if she’d had it to do over, she would have done just that. But she got too busy raising my mom, and meant to have more kids (though that never happened), and anyway, she said, things were different back then.

Olive, could you move the vase a little to the right? I asked.

Olive did.

A little more, I said.

Olive moved the vase too far.

Now back, just a little, just a little. There. Perfect, I said. What do you think, Rachel?

Hmm? She was sitting behind me, playing with my hair like she’d done ever since we’d shared a carpet square in kindergarten.

The tablescape, what do you think of it?

Oh, yeah, it looks good, she said.

Are you actually looking? I asked. She was trying to coax my curly black hair into a bun, and it hurt.

"I’m looking, Maggie, I’m looking, and it looks fine. And also, it’s Ra-kell now, remember? She kept her grip on my hair, but leaned forward, looking at my face. By the way, she said, I have some new blush you can borrow."

No, thanks, I replied. I pushed her hands away from my head, let my hair fall.

Rachel laughed and said, "I would kill for your cheekbones. I mean, hello, they’re one of your best features, and you’re not even highlighting them. What happened to ‘Using Your Assets’? she said. Isn’t that rule number, I don’t know, five-hundred-and-something?"

Olive giggled, and I shot her a look. They could make fun of my rules if they wanted to, but those rules worked.

Well, I think it looks fantabulous, Olive said. Everything was fantabulous to Olive. If I’d told her once, I’d told her a million times, it’s either fabulous or fantastic, not both.

But she was right; it did look awfully nice. The tall yellow vase Olive had just moved was flanked by a little bronze pig, wings sprouting from its back, and on the other side, a silver picture frame. Grandma had taught me how to group things with her thriller-filler-spiller method. The rule was actually meant for plants that you’d arrange in a pot. The thriller was the tall, eye-catching plant. The filler was a plant that was pretty and lush, taking up space, and the spiller was something that spilled out over the edge.

I wasn’t into gardening as much as Grandma was, but the concept still worked. I had my tall thriller—the vase—and a chunky photo frame—the filler. The pig? Well, he didn’t actually spill out anywhere, but his wings were spread, and I thought it had a similar effect.

I’d bought all three items at the dollar store, adding them to my overflowing prop box. I was the keeper of the box and the unofficial leader of the team, which meant I always hosted the meetings of our design company, the BFFs, which stood for Best Foot Forward, along with the obvious, Best Friends Forever. Of course Dad liked to joke about whether this meant we were the Best Foot Forwards, or the Best Feet Forward. I also set the meeting agendas. Today: How to Create a Tablescape.

Remember, I told them. The rule of threes works because our eyes are more attracted to odd-numbered groupings. It forces our eye to move around, looking for patterns, which makes for a more stimulating visual experience.

So, we could use fives or sevens, if we wanted? Olive asked.

Sure, if we had a big enough table.

Olive was scribbling with her favorite pink pen in her notebook. She was the official notetaker. And Rachel (or Rakell now, I guess? I just couldn’t make the name stick in my head) was the one who added the wow factor to my designs. The three of us made a great team, perfect complements. Like a trio of knick-knacks on an end table.

Rachel would be the thriller. I would probably be the filler, keeping everything else in place, and that left Olive as the spiller. She was often more emotional than me or Rachel, and I imagined her moods—whether good or bad—filling up the planter, and then cascading right over.

"I love the little piggie," Olive said.

Me too, I agreed, and Rachel added, Bronze animals are very on trend right now.

Yes, they are, I said, surprised Rachel knew that. Maybe she actually had read that article from House Beautiful I’d copied for her and Olive last week.

The tablescape would be nothing without that pig. Take out the pig, or the picture frame, and your brain would say you’re missing something, even if you didn’t consciously realize it. Add one more item, and your brain would say too much.

Three is perfect. Look at us—three BFFs. And there were three members of my immediate family, just me and my mom and dad. They always talked about us being a team, and I knew we were a lot closer than families with a ton of kids. There’s one family in our town with twelve kids, and I wondered how the parents could even remember all their names. Some people talk about a third wheel like it’s a bad thing, which I don’t get. I mean, think of a stool, a tricycle, my family. Think of our tablescape! Three is balance.

I heard a car door slam, then my dad’s heavy footsteps downstairs, crossing the living room floor. The doorbell rang, and Mittens, my cat, came shooting into my bedroom.

Oh, sweet kitty! Olive said and scooped her up. You are such a sweetums, she said, nuzzling her. Such a sweet little wittle . . .

Shhh, I said. I was back at the window. The old woman was standing on our front stoop now, looking the house over with a critical eye, like she was thinking about buying it or something, even though it wasn’t for sale. The boy was still in the car.

Olive was being so noisy with the cat that I didn’t hear Mom come upstairs. She stood in my doorway, resting her hand on the frame as though she was trying to steady herself. All the blood had drained right out of her face.

Mom? I said.

She looked around my room. Are you almost done? she asked, kind of breathless, like she’d just run a race instead of running up the stairs.

Um, well, not quite, I said. I looked at Olive, who shrugged. Rachel had retreated to my loft.

Hey, Mrs. O, Rachel called down.

Yes, hi, Rachel, Mom said.

Actually, Mrs. O? It’s Rakell now. R-A-K-E-L-L.

Uh, okay, sure, Mom answered, not looking at her. She hadn’t taken her