So maybe she was hiding.
Just a little bit.
But you couldn't blame her, could you?
Izzy sat on the floor cross legged in a hallway near the back of Ben's big ranch house. She pulled a pencil from her endless tangles of hair and a calculator from her back pocket.
She never left home without either one!
The family dog, one Ben had dubbed 'Yardstick', sat beside her in that funny way three-legged animals would. It wasn't Dollface's little brown lapdog Courage, named so because of the fear of his own farts, but a much more majestic breed.
No, Yardstick was a proud Shepherd with a sleek, bay and black coat.
Izzy typed in a set of numbers, then muttered, 'Hey, that ain't right!'
She scribbled something down in her notepad, then punched more numbers in. "That's funny."
"What's funny?"
Izzy jumped, forgetting she was in a perfect stranger's house, turned, saw Ben, then grabbed the ledger to show him, "This is wrong."
He knelt down, leveling with her right beside his snuffling dog.
"Ya see, money is leavin', and not bein' replaced with each time period passed and yer subsidies haven't been registered along with..." Izzy started. "I'm makin' no sense, am I?"
"I'm bad at math." Ben said, maybe trying to help. Yardstick snorted in his sleep. Ben patted his dog, not sure what to do with his hands.
"Missy makes me do her homework a lot, and since she got into a bunch o'programs at school, I ended up learnin' finances."
"You're kind of a pushover." When Ben said it, the words felt like a punch in the gut, and Izzy tried to hide it.
Didn't work, he read her expression anyway.
"Sorry." He said.
He moved over to the other side of the dog so he could pet Yardstick and comfortably talk to Izzy, eye-to-eye.
"Yeah, I guess so." Izzy said, feeling droopy.
"You have chickens, right?" He asked.
"Yeah, little Banties. We don't have much space so-" He raised a hand and Izzy's eagerness to talk about anything but how much of a pushover she could be was shot down, left for dead in the water.
"If you let 'em do whatever, what would happen?"
"They'd get really sick an' run away?" Izzy asked, suddenly confused as to where this conversation was going.
"Yep. T'put it blunt, they'd die." Ben said, looking less like a seventeen year old than usual. "If I let m'cows boss me around, I'd be dead in th'dirt."
Izzy looked at all the numbers marching across the ledger. They were like a symphony in her head. An out of tune one, but one that could be improved and straightened out with every correction until it became a coherant melody. "Hey, hey, look at me."
Not hard in the slightest. "It's nice t'be nice, but standin' up more could even save a life."
The temptation to just reach out and just grab his light green shirt was strong now, but she stuffed it down deep inside, deciding to keep it that way; a fleeting and ultimately useless want.
"If Mom didn't throw Sally in th'pond with th'herd whenever she went too far, we'd be in a world o'hurt."
Izzy had to let out a giggle.
Sally, Ben's little sister in pink was cute, but bratty. The thought of Missy or Sally being tossed in a pond to the bewilderment of a dairy cow was funny in a dark sort of way.
"What I'm trying t'say though, is that you keep doing you, I'll keep doin' me, and Missy is her own problem." Ben concluded.
They smiled at each other, Izzy as red as Dolli Mae's coat.
"She went after m'other friends too. Threatened one by saying she'd tell the entire school 'bout... Nah, not gonna finish that sentence, but now everyone thinks Missy's th'next Tesla." Izzy said. "So m'friend started purposely puttin' in wrong answers last year just so she could get her history assignments done."
"See, yer friend knows what she's doin'." Ben said. Yardstick snuffled in his sleep again, "'Sides, your Tesla, Missy's just an Edison."
"Actually, doin' these numbers, I think th'Custers have been embezzlin' y'all." Izzy said, tapping the pencil across her palm.
"Ya think so?"
"Yeah, I think they have been fer years now. Explains Missy's new BMW- she doesn't even have a permit and won't go near a tractor!" Izzy exclaimed. The more she thought about it, the more of the conspiracy seemed to unfold. "And th'cruise they took last summer to th'Bahamas she wouldn't shut up 'bout fer months."
"Ya know what Izzy?" The boyishness in his face returned like crystal cool water in a dried up creek bed, "I think ya did somethin' better than sabotage her grades."
They grinned at eachother, realizing that they had been handed a way to eascape Missy and get her family to face the music.
In her escasy, Izzy grabbed Ben's collar for a quick kiss before she had to get up and leave. Pulling back, she gasped and awkwardly scampered out, him smiling and breathless, having been given a pleaseant surprise.