Lily’s Papa sat stiffly in his chair, trying not to move his back. He nodded, backing up his wife’s explanation.

  “That’s right, almost five thousand a month,” he said. “And there’s no way we can pay it, so we have to go to debtor’s prison.”

  Whoa!

  That escalated really quickly!

  “Wait!” Lily cried out. “Why do you have to go to debtor’s prison?!”

  Lily’s Papa frowned sadly. “That’s how it works in this Kingdom,” he explained. “If you take out a debt and then don’t make the payments, the government takes your assets and…”

  “Uh…” Lily said.

  She didn’t know what that word meant!

  “Er, the government takes your stuff and sells it to pay back the lender.” Lily’s Papa paused a moment to make sure Lily was following, and she nodded. “And if that’s not enough, they put the borrower in debtor’s prison.”

  “But if you’re in prison, you can’t work!”

  Lily pointed out the problem with that system immediately!

  It was so blindingly obvious even an eight year old could spot it!

  “I can’t work anyway,” Lily’s Papa said, gritting his teeth. Lily’s Mama gently held his hand, supporting him.

  “That’s why I took you to the town hall, Lily, to get you emancipated,” Lily’s Mama said. “I’ll have to go with your Papa when he goes to prison, since I can’t pay the debt either. So we put all the assets in your name, so you can get by while we’re gone…”

  That was…

  A silly plan!

  Ridiculous, even!

  And yet…

  It had worked!

  Lily had been emancipated no problem! The forms were all approved!

  The Royal Bank hadn’t bothered to check Lily’s age and opened an account for her, and transferred all the assets there!

  On paper, everything was under Lily’s name now! Even the townhouse rental had been put under her name!

  Mr. Cat shook his head slowly. “Just what are these humans doing…?” he muttered.

  “B-but… Mama… Papa… I don’t want you to go to prison… I…” Lily sniffed. “I was gonna pay for you to retire…”

  Lily’s Mama swept her into a hug. “Oh Lily, we’re so, so proud of you. You’re making so much money, now we know you’ll be able to take care of yourself…”

  Lily wriggled out of her Mama’s embrace.

  “Who cares about that?!” she yelled.

  Lily was already eight years old!

  Of course she could take care of herself!

  She wasn’t a little baby!

  She could do chores, and now she had her Lilyburgers cart.

  She even had an employee!

  Lily was mad!

  “Papa! Mama! Why do you owe so much money?! How much is it? Lily will pay it!”

  Lily’s Papa covered his face with his hand, and tears dripped down from under his fingers.

  “It’s my fault… It’s all my fault… If I hadn’t gotten injured…”

  He was so overcome by regret that he couldn’t speak!

  Lily’s Mama stepped in with the explanation.

  “Well, so you know the rent is one thousand dollars a month…”

  “Uh huh,” Lily nodded.

  She already made enough for that!

  “And we took out a loan for this month’s rent, right now, so six hundred of that is due each of the next two months…”

  “Hold on,” Rich said.

  “Wait a minute, Mama!” Lily interrupted.

  Mr. Cat leapt onto the table too.

  He had a serious expression on his kitty face!

  “Ask what the exact terms of the loan are.” Mac directed.

  “What are the exact terms of the loan,” Lily repeated.

  She didn’t know what it meant!

  Lily’s Mama and Papa’s eyes got wide.

  They didn’t know their daughter knew what loan terms were!

  (She didn’t!)

  Was their daughter a genius?!

  (Not exactly!)

  Lily’s Mama blinked, and explained how loans in this world worked.

  It was different from how it worked in other worlds!

  Mac and Rich were shocked!

  “Well, the loan for the rent was for one thousand dollars. The loan fee was two hundred dollars, and there’s a repayment deadline of two months. So we have to pay six hundred each month to pay back one thousand, two hundred dollars total.”

  “That’s outrageous!” Mac cried.

  “That’s usurious!” Rich growled.

  Lily looked up at her ghosts. “Huh?”

  “The lender charged your parents twenty percent interest for just two months! That’s a really high interest rate!”

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  “Ask your parents why they couldn’t get a better interest rate!”

  But Lily…

  Her eyes glazed over!

  Oh no!

  Interest rates are boring!

  They’re soooooo boring!

  “That doesn’t matter,” Mr. Cat declared, nipping that in the bud!

  Lily fed him a bit of chicken out of gratitude.

  Mr. Cat gulped it down, then turned to Lily’s Mama. “Okay, what other loans are there?” he asked.

  “There are other loans?!” Lily cried.

  Lily’s Mama nodded sadly. “Yes, mainly for your father’s medical treatment. We were able to get an unlimited length loan, so all we have to pay is the monthly fee until we pay it off, but it’s so much…”

  “Mrow!”

  “Okay!” Lily’s Mama jumped a little at Mr. Cat’s scolding. “The total amount of Papa’s hospital stay and medical care was sixty thousand dollars, and the monthly fee is three thousand, and we have to start paying in three weeks, at the start of next month…”

  The WcDonald brothers’ ghosts fainted!

  They started floating in the air!

  It was the spookiest they’d ever looked, two older guys passed out and floating in the air!

  “Plus there’s our regular expenses…” Lily’s Papa added. “So it’s one thousand, plus six hundred, plus three thousand; that’s four thousand six hundred, and then a bit more, so almost five thousand…”

  Almost five thousand dollars a month!

  For basically nothing!

  Sure, a thousand of that was for their townhouse.

  Lily liked the townhouse!

  The alternative was not having a house at all, so Lily could accept that thousand dollars was worth it!

  But she could already afford that!

  She could even afford the loan her Mama had taken out for this month’s rent!

  She made enough for that!

  “Three thousand…” she said, stunned.

  That was so much money!

  That was almost two Lilyburger carts worth of money!

  Lily’s Mama nodded. “Right, it is. I thought maybe we could come up with something, and your Papa was hurt, so we needed the money… But we’ll never be able to pay it off. Your Papa still needs time to heal, and he only makes one thousand, two hundred dollars a month at his job, and I make half that much… It doesn’t even come close.”

  The ghosts floating in the air returned to the earth.

  They recovered!

  On the other hand, Lily…

  Was doing math on a piece of paper!

  Lily was good at math!

  She lined up the numbers!

  1200

  0600

  1900

  --------

  3700

  “Three thousand, seven hundred dollars…” she muttered.

  Lily’s Mama looked over her shoulder, and nodded.

  “That’s right, even with all the money you make, and if your Papa could work, it still wouldn’t be enough…”

  Lily banged her little fist on the table.

  She wasn’t giving up!

  Because, just yesterday, she had learned a neat business trick!

  You could make more money by hiring employees and serving more customers!

  “Mama! Papa! I’m not giving up!” she shouted.

  Her parents looked at her, stunned.

  “I’m not giving up!” she repeated. “I’m going to make more money, and I’m going to pay the debts, and I’m going to pay for your retirement, and that’s that!”

  Lily…

  Was throwing a tantrum!

  A full blown tantrum!

  She pushed her chair away from the table and ran to her room!

  She closed her door gently because slamming doors was bad, and Mr. Cat slipped in behind her, and then she threw herself down next to her bed.

  She was praying!

  It had worked before!

  She prayed to the Gods and Goddesses and they helped her!

  Even if it took a while, last time!

  “Mister Gods and Misses Goddesses,” Lily prayed. “Please help me! I need to make even more money than I thought!”

  She prayed and prayed, but the Gods and Goddesses… were silent.

  They hadn’t directly answered her prayers before now, either.

  That was how the Gods and Goddesses were.

  But…

  The WcDonald brother ghosts floated through Lily’s closed door.

  They didn’t often do that, but they were still ghosts!

  “Lily…” Mac said.

  Lily and Mr. Cat looked at the ghosts. Lily had tears in her eyes.

  “Lily, we didn’t want to do this, but…” Rich said. “We know a guy.”

  “Huh?”

  Lily tilted her head.

  Who would a ghost know? Another ghost?

  Mac nodded. “Right, he’s a ghost now too. Back when we were alive, we invented WcDonalds.”

  “And basically all fast food,” Rich added.

  Mr. Cat coughed, but he let the comment pass.

  Now wasn’t the time to argue about that!

  Wait, why would Mr. Cat…

  Now’s not the time!

  Mac continued, “Right, we invented WcDonalds, but we didn’t get to billions served by ourselves.”

  “Right. Billions is just too many for two guys and some employees to do.”

  “We had to expand. Not just one fast food restaurant, but a chain of restaurants.”

  “Copies!”

  “A WcDonalds in every city and town, sometimes more than one!”

  Lily’s eyes widened. “So I can have more than one Lilyburgers…?” she asked.

  Mac and Rich nodded.

  “Yes! It’s a little different to leave all the work to your employees, but then you just have to manage things.”

  “And that guy was the best in the world at managing and expanding…”

  Lily, seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, started praying again!

  “Please, Mr. God of Death, send me help so I can expand Lilyburgers! I don’t want my Mama and Papa to go to prison!”

  And so Lily went to bed physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted.

  She kicked the covers off, and her tummy was exposed.

  Mr. Cat watched silently, his eyes glowing in the dark, and he leapt over, silent as the grave…

  And pulled the cover back over the sleeping Lily.

  Then he returned to his perch on her dresser, and stared at the ghosts.

  The ghosts didn’t sleep.

  Sleep was a blessing for the living, a respite from the struggles of life.

  A time to rest, and recover.

  Cats knew all about the blessing of sleep. Some cats slept up to eighteen hours a day!

  Cats, by nature, balanced long periods of rest with intense bursts of activity. Whether that was hunting, or racing around rooms in the middle of the night for no apparent reason…

  The ghosts, now that the person they were haunting was asleep, had frozen.

  A quantum phenomena that only took place when observation was possible…

  Cats knew all about quantum mechanics, too!

  Cats were really smart!

  So, accidentally trapped in Lily’s room for the night—he definitely wasn’t her pet or anything!—he thought about Lily’s problems…

  In the morning, Lily woke up with the dawn out of habit, even though the mine, and therefore Lilyburgers, was closed for the day.

  Today was the day of rest, at least, for the miners and other hardworking Papas of her village.

  Some places were still open.

  But, that wasn’t important right now!

  Because when she awoke, there was a new ghost in her room!

  It was a man wearing an alligator skin jacket, and sunglasses even though he was inside, and he and the WcDonald brothers were glaring at each other intensely!