“What’s all the commotion in here?” my dad asks as he comes up from the basement. He has a folder in his hands. “I can barely hear myself think.” He looks over at the broken lamp. Then at me. Then at Jonah, standing with his arms crossed over his scrawny chest. He shakes his head. “Seriously?”

“Sorry,” we say simultaneously.

“Come on, guys,” my dad says, using his extra-stern voice. “Clean it up.”

“We are!” I say, using my extra-annoyed voice.

He gives me a look. “Less attitude, Abby.” My dad has been pretty stressed this week. So has my mom.

My parents are both lawyers, and when they’re working on a super-important case, they get cranky. Every little thing Jonah and I do wrong is magnified a hundred and one percent.

Unfortunately, they’ve been on our case all day.

It started with the note.

At school, Ms. Masserman snapped at me, “Abby, enough!” when she caught me whispering to my best friend Robin. I had asked to borrow Robin’s eraser since mine was a total nub.

“You’re a total nub,” Robin had teased, and I’d started laughing and she started laughing and I started laughing really hard and then I got in trouble.

Then Ms. Masserman caught me talking again. But this time it was because Penny, Robin’s other best friend, thought the nub thing was funny, and then she started calling me a nub, which I hated because when she said it, it sounded like an insult and not a joke. So I may have told her to shut it, which Ms. Masserman overheard, and then she gave me a note about “being disrespectful in class” that I had to show to my mom and dad.

My parents were not thrilled. They told me that as punishment, I couldn’t go over to my other best friend Frankie’s house that evening like I’d planned. And Frankie and I were supposed to work together on a school assignment! Okay, and also play Rummy 500, a game we had both just learned and are completely obsessed with.

Then, tonight, at dinner, my parents wouldn’t let me — or Jonah — have dessert until we finished our veggies.

I had to eat an entire stalk of asparagus. Do you know how gross asparagus is? It tastes like toothpaste. And not the bubblegum kind — the plain soapy kind. But was the asparagus enough for them? No, it wasn’t! They told me I still had to eat all the spinach on my plate. Spinach! Come on. Does anyone actually like spinach? No. No one does. So I refused.

And then they didn’t give us any fruitcake.

I know fruitcake isn’t the world’s best dessert, but it’s one step above nothing. And that’s what we ended up getting. Nothing.

And now — no screens!

No screens + no Frankie’s house + no dessert = worst night ever.

Jonah carefully picks up another shard of lamp and puts it in the garbage bag. Meanwhile, I head to the hall closet to take out the vacuum cleaner. I’m so annoyed at my parents. What am I supposed to do when I’m done? I already finished my homework. I guess I’ll just go straight to bed.