Bring a kid sucks. There. I said it. No "Cult of the Child" Victorian bullshit here. You don't get to do all the great things that adults get to do: stay up late, eat whatever you want, drive, go shopping, pay bills, get insurance, look at stock options, cut down on your cholesterol. Kids just sit around watching television, loading up on sugar, all while your parents force you to go to school to learn new and interesting things. Wait? What was I going on about?
That's Mallory's problem: she wants to be treated more grown-up at the advanced age of eleven. She wants to be older and join the BSC because that's what you do when you're a kid: you wish you were older and you try to impress older kids, who are practically adults as far as you were concerned. You try to impress them so much you give them all your money without much coercion. That's not based on anything true or anything. It's not like the girl down the street asked me for money and I gave it all to her because she was so cool and tall and as big as a real adult and she could ride her bike with her hands off the handles and she had all these cool friends who said neat stuff like "as if" and I wanted to be just like them. That never happened . . .
SPOILERS AFTER THE COVER!!!
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Spectacles. Eyeglasses. Bifocals. Trifocals. No matter what you call them, glasses are glasses and I have to wear them.
Hello. I'm Mallory Pike. I'm eleven.
This is what we are greeted with. Synonyms for glasses. A greeting. A name. An age. Then she talks about her family: all seven younger brothers and sisters and their quirks. There are the triplets who are mean. The brother who wants to be like the mean triplets. The one who wants to be a poet and it annoying. The one who is "silly." The one who is "etc." She continues with her parents, who are fascinating.
My mom doesn't have a job. I mean, a job outside of the house, like being a doctor or an insurance salesperson or something. She says us kids are her job, and that with eight of us it's a big job.
Yeah, I imagine it would be a big job. However, if she doesn't have a job, why does she always need a babysitter? Later in the book, Kristy refers to the Pikes as "their best clients." That means they have enough money to live in suburban Connecticut, hire babysitters, have a house in Beach City, New Jersey, can actually go on vacation, have a woman who comes to clean, and raise this ten person family. How about Dad, Mal?
My dad is a lawyer, but not the kid you see on TV, making wild speeches in a crowded courtroom. He's what's called a corporate lawyer. He's the lawyer for a big company in Stamford, Connecticut. (We live in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, which isn't far away.) Mostly, he sits at a desk or attends meetings. Once in while, though, he does go to court, but I bet he doesn't make speeches. I think he just stands up a lot and say, "Objection!" and things like that.
She doesn't go into detail but a company that can pay a lawyer enough to maintain this level of lifestyle is one of two things: a corrupt company that provides an essential service but is destroying the world, akin to Amazon or BP, or, more likely, a front for the mob. Mallory Pike's dad works for the mob. Say it with claps between each word. Louder for those in the back. MALLORY PIKE'S DAD WORKS FOR THE MOB.
