CHAPTER 3 - THE HANDY GIRLS GET TO WORK
Upon returning from Sunset Beach to the hotel staff house in the Whalebus, Lo and Fin got help from the Kahuna in unloading their widescreen TV and satellite receivers and bringing them inside before Kahuna left to go about other business on his schedule. The girls got the new TV out of its cardboard box and had no problem setting it up, but when they took out the satellite dish and its twin receivers from their box, Lo and Fin realized there would be more of a problem with the satellite setup.
"You know, we'd get one of the guys to help us install the dish outside," Fin said, "but Reef, Broseph, Johnny and Ripper are all off surfing at the Office, Ty's out of town with your dad and the Kahuna's busy elsewhere."
"As for the girls," Lo added, "Emma's with the guys at the Office and Kelly's gone to Campbell River for the day, so they can't help us either. With no one else here to help us, you know what this means?"
"No, and I'm almost afraid to ask," Fin said with a cockeyed look directed at Lo, who heard the laugh track once again as she also heard more 1950s sitcom background music begin playing in her dream. "What does it mean?"
"It means we'll have to install the dish ourselves," Lo answered. "What could go wrong with the two of us doing it?"
"That depends," said a still-wary Fin. "Where do you want to install the dish?"
"I was thinking up on the roof," Lo suggested. "If we attach it to the chimney at the back of the house, the dish will have a good sight line to pick up all the channels we want to get clearly."
"Whoa, wait a minute," Fin said. "Up on the roof? Are you nuts? One, the roof has a bit of a slope to it in places, and two, it's probably still slippery from the rain earlier, and I'd rather not slip and fall and either get killed or break bones or dislocate a joint or two anywhere in my body, okay? I'd like to still be in one piece in time to compete in Gromfest down the road."
"Not a problem if we use ropes to tie to the spires on top of the roof gables, or to the chimney," Lo said, "and use them to hoist up the dish and the tool box. Besides, if the roof's dry by now and we're careful up there, we can get the dish installed and hooked up in no time and we'll be able to watch TV by tonight." Lo then clasped her hands together and put a twinkle in her eyes as she pleaded with Fin to help her. "C'mon, Fin, please? Pretty pretty please?"
Fin rolled her eyes upward as she shrugged her shoulders. "Fine, I'll do it," she said resignedly. As a delighted Lo went off to get some rope, Fin said to herself while following her friend to get an extending ladder, "I have a feeling I'm going to live to regret this."
Once Lo went up on the roof covering the second-floor outside walkway of the staff house after the ladder was propped against its edge, Fin, preferring not to carry the heavy tool box up the ladder with her, tied one end of a rope to the tool box handle and got Lo to pull the box up to the top of the ladder, helping her friend by guiding the box up. Halfway up the ladder, Fin had to stop to scratch an itch on her right arm, but Lo kept pulling on the rope, not noticing that Fin had stopped, before the tool box snagged on a ladder rung close to the top.
As Fin was about to resume climbing and noticed that the tool box was gone, she looked up and saw Lo still pulling on the rope with the box still stuck on the rung. "Lo, stop pulling! You're stuck!" Fin yelled to her.
"What?" Lo, who did not clearly hear Fin the first time, called back.
"I said you're stuck on the..." Fin began, but she did not get to finish her sentence before she saw the tool box fly upward as Lo, using all the strength she could, gave the rope a big pull. Seeing the tool box coming at her, Lo gasped and ducked on instinct as the box sailed over her head. Lo, who was shielding her head with her arms, then heard the sound of glass breaking a second later.
"Okay, what did I just hit?" said Lo, afraid to look as Fin reached the top of the ladder to check on her.
"Hmm," Fin mused, studying the damage done as she looked. "Looks to me like the window to Reef's room," she added with a smirk and a slight giggle. Hearing the sound of children's laughter in the distance behind her, then turning to see the bratty brothers Todd and Mark Marvin running around playing tag some distance away, Fin then turned back to Lo. "If Reef asks, we'll just say it was the Marvin boys," Fin said, pointing her thumb back toward the two. "Those two rugrats are always running around causing damage anyway, so why not?" After she and Lo shared a laugh, Fin then retrieved the tool box and untied the rope before climbing back down to get the satellite dish, which she took back up with her before she and Lo started walking on the walkway roof with the equipment.
"Now this is one of the parts I'm not too sure about," Fin said to Lo as she looked down at the boards covering the walkway roof. "How come your dad doesn't look into having the staff house fixed up, starting with these boards we're walking on? Some of them look rotten to me."
Lo took a look down to check for herself. "The boards look okay to me," she said, shrugging her shoulders as she continued to carry the satellite dish and the rope. As she took a step on one board, however, Lo's left foot went through it and she gasped audibly as she stumbled, barely hanging on to the dish. Reacting on instinct as soon as she saw what happened, Fin dropped the tool box and went to grab Lo to keep her from falling down and getting hurt.
"So, what was it you said again about those boards being okay?" Fin said wryly to Lo, who then heard some canned laughter in response to Fin's quip.
"Okay, I'll talk to Daddy about the staff house next time I see him," Lo responded as she pulled her foot out of the hole now left from her putting it through the rotten board while Fin helped her back up. After Fin tied one end of the rope into a lasso, Lo then twirled the lasso over her head and sent it toward the chimney, successfully roping it before using the rope to climb up the roof to the chimney. Fin then tied the other end of the rope around her waist and, picking up the tool box and the satellite dish to carry with her, got Lo to pull the rope to help her get up the roof.
After marking spots on the north side of the chimney where the screws that would hold the dish in place were to go, then drilling into the marks with a cordless drill, Fin got Lo, who was leaning against the chimney's west side facing toward the top of the roof, to hold the dish in place while she got out a screw and set it into one of the holes to drill into the chimney with the drill, now outfitted with a screwdriver bit. "You sure you've done this before, Lo?" Fin asked the rich girl, who looked slightly hesitant.
"Of course I have," Lo replied. Fin, detecting the bravado in her friend's voice, simply raised an eyebrow at her. "Well...sort of," Lo added, followed by the laugh track. "When Daddy got a new dish for the penthouse a few years ago, he got me to pass him some screws to drill in while Ty held the dish in place."
"Hmm, good to know," Fin said sardonically with a smirk. "Just make sure you keep the dish steady while I put the screw in, okay?" Lo nodded in agreement, but as Fin prepared to put the first screw into the chimney, a yellow jacket flew close to Lo's face and attempted to land there, causing her to freak out and let go of her grip on the dish with her left hand to swat at the wasp.
"Eeek, get away from me!" Lo said as she kept swinging at the yellow jacket, now with both hands.
"Lo, be careful!" Fin said abruptly as Lo lost her grip on the dish. Fin barely managed to get the dish as it fell, but as she did so, she lost her grip on the cordless drill, which tumbled down the main roof toward the walkway roof, took a couple of bounces and then went off and landed with a thud a couple of seconds afterward. Turning to Lo with a glare, Fin asked as she outstretched her arms, "What was that?"
"I'm sorry, Fin," Lo said apologetically, "but that wasp was flying right in my face and I didn't want to get stung. At least the dish got saved, anyway."
"Yeah, but now I've lost the drill and I have to go back down and get it," Fin replied. "I just hope it didn't get broken when it landed." Lo then got up to help Fin get back down the roof with the rope, but as they got on their feet at the top of the roof, the girls' troubles were just beginning as they heard the sound of familiar laughter, followed by the ladder tipping over and landing with a clatter on the ground. "The ladder!" Fin said with a panicked tone. "What the..."
A moment later, Lo and Fin found out who was behind the laughter and the ladder getting tipped over when they each felt several stinging impacts on their bodies. Looking down, the girls noticed yellow and pink paint splatters on their clothing, then looked toward the source and saw they were being shot at with paintballs by the Marvin brothers. "Haha, take that!" said Todd as he and Mark gleefully continued firing their paintballs at Lo and Fin. Several more shots directed at Lo caused her to stumble backward, but she managed to grab the rope around Fin's waist as Fin ducked on the opposite side of the roof to keep the rich girl on her feet. Lo, however, tripped over the top of the roof with her heels and fell backward into the chimney opening. Fortunately for Lo, the chimney opening was narrow, keeping her from falling in completely as her head, arms and lower legs stuck out from the opening.
As soon as Lo got stuck in the chimney opening, raucous laughter from the laugh track erupted, annoying her to no end this time. "Okay, CUT THE LAUGH TRACK ALREADY!" Lo yelled as she pounded her fists on the rim of the chimney, causing the cannned laughter in her dream to stop abruptly with the sound of a record player needle scratching across a record. Meanwhile, Fin was trying her best to stay up on the roof while dodging flying paintballs whizzing past her, courtesy of the Marvin boys...
And here come those nasty Marvin boys again! Even in Lo's dream, it seems like our heroes can't catch a break most of the time when those two brats show up to wreak havoc (at least not on the show, anyway, except for that time in "Waves of Cheese" when Johnny put them and their parents in their place, or in "Grand Theft Whale Bus" when Rosie threatened to drop elbows on one of the kids if he continued dropping dinner buns on the floor of the Pirate Ship). Wait to see what happens next chapter though, when Lo and Fin have to figure out a way to get themselves out of the jam the Marvin brats put them in.