She froze, aiming the chocolate cream pastry gun directly into her open mouth through the bars on the cage of her hockey helmet.

“But I’m hungry.”

“We don’t eat what we’re selling while we’re selling it. How many times have we said it?”

“Many?” She pulled off her helmet and hung her head.

“Maybe you just need to eat. Why don’t you go ask Mom for something?”

She was almost to the door when I realized she still had the pastry gun.

“Nice try.”

She made like she was putting it on a table but then broke into a run, the gun hugged to her chest. Josh cut her off, but instead of handing it over, she just hugged the gun tighter.

“Put it down,” I said.

“It’s almost empty. Can’t I have this last little bit?”

“Zo, it’s half full.”

It’s always seemed wrong to use tickling as a weapon, but sometimes Zoe leaves you no choice. In this case, it was just the threat of the tickle that got her to give up the gun.

After she left, a couple more customers came in, then it got quiet again. Fair Day had been way less busy than we’d all hoped.

“Are you nervous, you know, about the show?” Josh asked. “I mean, I know you’re nervous, but good nervous, right? Like, excited?”

“Yeah, sure, excited nervous.” Up-all-night-in-a-cold-sweat excited nervous.

There was a loud crash in the ticket office. A second later, Jeanine threw open the door.

“Why can’t you just do it the way I tell you?” She was shouting and shaking her clipboard like she was about to throw it at us. “If we need something, you don’t put it on the to-do list! You go into the Google Doc I created especially for orders and mark it in the appropriate square!”

“What’s wrong with her?” Josh whispered.

“Jim said no to her living history museum idea. You know, the whole Colonial theme thing.”

“That man has zero imagination,” Jeanine snapped. “But this has nothing to do that! This is about me trying to do my job! And you making that impossible! Do you want me to quit? Do you?”

Josh looked at me. “Uh, no?” He’d spent enough time with my family to have seen plenty of Jeanine freak-outs, but they’d never been directed at him before.

“Okay then. Do you think you can manage and just! Fill! Out! The! Google! Doc!” Her face was purple.

“Sorry, Jeanine,” Josh said.

“Sorry? Sorry doesn’t help! Sorry never helps!”

“It’s true,” I whispered to Josh. “I’ve learned from experience, ‘sorry’ never makes the freak-outs less freaky.”

“So what do you do when she get like this?”

“Take cover. Wait until it passes.”

“Like a hurricane.”

“Exactly. Hurricane Jeanine.”

“You think this is funny? How funny will it be when you run out of flour!” She marched back into the ticket office and yanked the door closed with a loud crack. Then she opened it and yanked it closed again, making an even louder crack. There were two more cracks, and then silence.