Dear Annie, Durinda, Georgia, Jackie, Marcia, Petal, Rebecca, and Zinnia,
This may come as rather a shock to you, but it appears you each possess a power and a gift. The powers you already have—— you merely don't know you have them yet. The gifts are from your parents, and these you must also discover for yourselves. In fact, you must each discover both your power and your gift in order to reveal what happened to your parents. Have you got all that?
The note was unsigned.
"See?" said Zinnia. "It says gifts. I knew there would be presents!"
"I don't think this means those kinds of gifts," Annie said.
"What do you make of this?" Durinda asked.
"It means Mommy and Daddy really have disappeared," Georgia said.
"Or else they're dead," Rebecca put in.
One tear swam out of Petal's left eye as another ran out of Zinnia's right eye, and Jackie put her arms around both.
Then eight sets of very similar brown eyes looked at one another, wondering what we should do next.
As the grandfather clock struck midnight, marking the New Year and turning us all over into 2008, Annie turned to Georgia and spoke.
"You said you were bored. Well"—she nodded—"I suppose we've all got plenty of excitement now."
CHAPTER TWO
"So what do we do now?" Georgia demanded.
"We feed the cats and go to bed," Annie said.
"Is that all?"
"Well, the cats do need to be fed."
There were eight cats living in the house, one for each of us: Anthrax, Dandruff, Greatorex, Jaguar, Minx, Precious, Rambunctious, and Zither. Each was gray and white, and it was always hard for anyone other than us to tell them apart. The cats could, of course, tell all of us apart too.
"But aren't we going to do anything?" Georgia insisted. "You know, about Mommy and Daddy disappearing?"
"The best thing we can do right now is take care of the cats and take care of ourselves. In the light of day, we'll see things more clearly."
And we'd have been able to see things a lot more clearly even then if the lights hadn't gone out right after we finished feeding the cats in the cat room. The cat room was like our drawing room, only for cats.
"Oh no!" Zinnia cried out. "Whatever bad person took Mommy and Daddy turned out the power—something awful is about to happen!"
"Now, now," Durinda soothed. "Annie," she directed, "call the electric company and find out what's going on. It's what Daddy would do."
So Annie stumbled her way back to the drawing room, where, with the light from the fire, she could still make out the phone.
Annie phoned Information and waited to be connected to the electric company. When we heard her speak, her voice was deeper than usual.
"Hello"—she cleared her throat—"this is Robert Huit at Eight-eight-eight Middle Way, and I was wondering if you could tell me: Is it just my power that's out, or is this a citywide problem?" She paused. "Ah, yes. Jolly good. Thanks so much. You chaps do great work." And she hung up.
"Well," Georgia said, "what's going on?"
"It started snowing again"—Annie was still speaking in her faux Daddy voice and had to make herself stop—"and they say there must have been too much ice on the lines somewhere and one of them came down. They should have it fixed by morning." She forced a smile. "I don't think we'll freeze by then if we put extra blankets on."
"Thank God," Petal said, "that this is affecting everyone and not just us. I was sure it was the work of the ax murderer."
"May I ask you a question?" Rebecca said to Annie.
"Of course."
"Why didn't you say you were Lucy Huit? It would have been easier to impersonate Mommy, I should think."
"Huh," Annie said. "I dunno. I guess I never thought to impersonate anyone other than Daddy."
"And what," Rebecca pressed, "was all that stuff about jolly good' and 'you chaps'? Daddy never talks that way! You made him sound British!"
"Well, but he could be British, couldn't he? I mean, the electric company doesn't know where we come from."
Rebecca harrumphed. She did not find the answer satisfying.
But we were all tired by then.
It is strange. You would think that enormous amounts of fear, the kind we'd been through, would have been enough to keep us awake for weeks. But human beings are funny things, and we Sisters Eight are nothing if not human. We yawned as a group for, in the end, fear had worn us out.
Annie took down the twin candelabras from the mantel over the fireplace and handed one to Durinda. Then the two of them lit the three candles in each from the dwindling fire that still burned.
We made our way to bed, following behind them to our rooms on the floor above. Annie and Durinda supervised as we brushed our teeth and hair, then they did their own while we waited.
Usually, we slept in two rooms separated by a single large bathroom. In one room slept the four oldest; in the other, the youngest. But not on that night. Annie was worried that Petal and Zinnia would be too worried, Rebecca would insult their worries, and Marcia, the oldest in that room, wouldn't be able to control the situation. So she made a minor switch.
"Durinda," she said, "you sleep with the three youngest and I'll take Marcia in with us."
So that's what we did. And in a way, as Annie and Durinda made the rounds from bed to bed, tucking each of us in with a kiss by the light cast from their candelabras, this minor switch was comforting. At least someone—Annie—was taking charge.
But as you can imagine, it was all very confusing for the cats. It took some time for Dandruff and Minx to find the right beds to sleep at the bottom of, but once they did, we were all out like lights.
***
We awoke to the rumble of empty stomachs and the cats grumbling for more food. We awoke to a world filled with light.
The power had come back on.
"Rise and shine," Annie said as she bustled around the bedrooms.
We put on our robes and brushed our teeth, feeling as though we'd hardly slept at all. Then we made our way downstairs to the smell of ... nothing.
On Christmas Day and New Year's Day mornings, Mommy always made big stacks of chocolate chip pancakes for us. This year, since we were supposed to be celebrating both holidays at once, we'd all secretly been expecting a double dose of the good stuff. But there was to be none of that. Or at least, none of that made by Mommy.
"How are we going to eat?" Petal asked, puzzled.
"We're going to do it ourselves, of course," Annie said.
Petal remained puzzled, as though Annie were speaking British again.
"Okay," Annie announced, "here's what we're going to do. We'll gather whatever ingredients we think go into the pancakes and do our best."
"Actually," Durinda said timidly, "I've watched Mommy closely when she's made them. I'm pretty sure I can do it if Jackie helps me."
"I can do that," Jackie said gamely.
"Good." Annie nodded. "Georgia and Rebecca, see to the cats."
"You mean feed them?" Georgia asked.
"Feed them, of course," Annie said. She paused and then added with a meaningful sniff of the air, "Also, clean the litter boxes."
"But Mommy always does that!" Rebecca objected.
"Well," Annie said, "Mommy's not here right now, is she?"
"At least we don't have to worry about the plants," Durinda put in.
It was true.
Mommy had invented a flying watering can. It moved through the house on metal runners attached to the ceiling, stopping over each plant to give it a healthy sprinkle. Unfortunately, sometimes the flying watering can malfunctioned, sprinkling the floor—which we would then have to clean up—or even sometimes sprinkling a person.
"And what are you going to do," Georgia demanded of Annie, "while we're doing all of that?"
"I'll be planning," Annie said importantly. "Durinda, Jackie, Georgia, and Rebecca are doing breakfast and cat detail, and after we eat, Marcia, Petal, Zinn
ia, and myself will shovel the walk so the mailperson can get through tomorrow. Petal and Zinnia can even build snowpeople as we go, to take their minds off things. And I'll get more wood for the fire."
So that's what we did, at Annie's bidding. We went off to prepare breakfast, feed cats, and clean litter boxes.
As it turned out, to all of our wonder-filled surprise, Durinda was a fantastic cook. With Jackie's help, of course.
"Yummy," Zinnia pronounced, surrounding her pancakes with maple syrup as we sat down to our Christmas / New Year's morning breakfast, fresh juice filling our glasses. We were eight at a table that usually sat ten.
It was hard to ignore those two empty chairs.
At last, Georgia spoke the words we were all thinking. Well, she spoke them because we'd put her up to it. While Annie was off getting the wood, we'd had a little conference and elected Georgia our spokesperson. Okay, maybe she volunteered.
"Annie," Georgia said, "I've been wondering: why didn't you call the cops right away last night?" Her words sounded innocent enough, and yet there was something about her tone that smacked of accusation.
Annie looked surprised by the question, as well as the tone. "It was New Year's Eve," she said, "late, and there was lots of snow. We live at the top of a hill. Do you think they'd have been in a hurry to rush out here? You've seen cop stories on TV. If we phoned them, they'd tell us we need to wait at least twenty-four hours to file a missing-persons report."
"Then why not call them now?" Georgia prompted.
"Because twenty-four hours haven't passed." Annie speared another bite of pancake. "It hasn't even been twelve hours yet." She popped the pancake bite into her mouth.
But Georgia wouldn't let up. "Then what about tonight at exactly ten, when it's been twenty-four hours—will you call then?"
"No," Annie said simply.
"But why ever not?" Jackie put in. Even our peacekeeper couldn't help but be confused by Annie's behavior.
"Because," Annie said evenly, "they couldn't do anything. And whatever they might do would only make a muddle of things."
"I don't think any of us follow you," Marcia said.
"Okay, then, it's like this," Annie said, setting down her fork. "We don't know what happened to Mommy and Daddy, correct?"
Seven heads nodded.
"But we did get that note," Annie went on. "Someone left it there. It's not a ransom note. It's not a threatening note. But it does tell us what to do if we want to find out what happened to our parents: we must discover our own powers and our own gifts. And that's what I propose we do."
"But how will we do that?" Rebecca said. "And why can't the police be looking for Mommy and Daddy while we're...?" Rebecca's eyes filled with horror. "Oh no! The reason you're not calling them is that you're certain Mommy and Daddy are ... dead!"
"Don't be daft," Annie said crossly. "Here's the situation: our mother disappeared from a kitchen where she went to make eggnog, our father disappeared from a woodshed. Now, we know our parents better than anyone in the world. On the other hand, the cops know nothing of our parents. Do you really think they can do better than we can?"
It made sense to us.
"And there's another thing," Annie said.
"Which is?" Georgia prompted.
"If we tell the cops, they'll split us up. Then, not only will we not have parents, we won't even have each other anymore."
"How do you know that?" Georgia asked.
"Simple logic," Annie said. "If we call the cops, they certainly won't let us go on living here without a grownup. First they'll call our relatives."
We thought about our relatives: grandparents on different continents; Aunt Martha, who'd never had children; Uncle George, who'd never liked children. And when we saw them, all of them said we were too loud.
"None of them will take all of us," Annie went on. "They might not even take any of us. And what do you think the chances are that they'll find a foster home that will take on eight kids at once?"
It was a question with an obvious negative answer.
"Right," Annie said. "If we call the cops, we'd be split up by nightfall."
"And how long would that go on?" Petal asked, clearly worried.
"Forever," Annie said, "if they don't find Mommy and Daddy."
Jackie was thinking. "So, then, we have to pretend everything's fine here, that there are adults still living in the house, until we can figure out what happened to Mommy and Daddy?"
"Exactly," Annie said.
We could all see, even Georgia could see, that she was right.
We'd eaten all we could eat of breakfast and were still digesting the news that we'd be living without adult supervision for an indefinite time when we noticed what a mess the kitchen was. Durinda had made a wonderful breakfast with Jackie's help, as good as Mommy would have made, but there were dirty dishes and a dirty griddle, and pancake batter was splattered all over the counters, cabinets, and floor.
"Right, then," Annie said, "while Marcia, Petal, Zinnia, and I dress to tackle shoveling the walk, Georgia and Rebecca can clean up the kitchen."
"That's not fair!" Georgia said. "We cleaned the litter boxes!"
"Yes," Annie said, "but Durinda and Jackie made breakfast. It wouldn't be fair to ask them to clean up too. Besides, before you know it, we'll be needing lunch, and then dinner—Durinda will have to see to that as well."
We all thought about that, and even Georgia had to admit: it was fair.
"Before I become a scullery maid," Georgia said, "is it possible to ask a question?"
"Of course," Annie said.
"Who died and left you boss?"
"Hopefully, no one died," Annie said. "But someone does need to take charge of organizing everything around here, and I am the oldest."
"Only by a minute," Georgia objected.
It was true. We'd each been born a minute apart, meaning that Annie was older than Durinda by only a single minute and older than the youngest of us, Zinnia, by only a whopping seven minutes. If fate had been different, with just a two-minute switch, Georgia might have been the oldest, with Annie the third in the line. It was a time technicality that regularly annoyed Georgia.
"Fine, then." Annie paused, then spoke meaningfully. "Would you like the job?"
For a moment, we all thought Georgia might rise to the bait, and who knew what might happen then, or what Annie might do. But Georgia backed down with a muttered, "I still don't see why you get to tell everyone what to do. And how do you think we'll pull this off anyway?"
"We're eight!" Annie said. "We can do anything!"
"You're not eight!" Rebecca said. "None of us are!"
"Close enough," Annie said. "It is now officially 2008. On August eighth, we'll be eight. This is our eighth year on this planet. If people asked what year we were born, we'd say 2000, and they'd do the math and come up with eight. So why quibble?"
"Can I ask a question?" Zinnia's voice was timid.
"Of course," Annie said gently.
"It's just this," Zinnia said. "It's what you said before about Durinda making lunch and then dinner. There's plenty of food in the house now." This was true. Mommy had done what she always referred to as "a big shop" when we'd arrived home from Utah. We probably had enough food to last us a week or two. "But," Zinnia continued, "if this ... goes on, what will we do when we run out of supplies?"
Annie shrugged. "I suppose one of us will have to learn how to drive."
"You never said before," Georgia said testily. "How long do we have to pull this off?"
Annie shrugged again. "As long as it takes."
CHAPTER THREE
The rest of the day went uneventfully; well, as uneventfully as it could go without any parents in the house. Durinda took care of the food at every meal and Annie organized us about everything else. We still hadn't found our powers—or, if any of us had, we didn't know it—and we were certain we hadn't found any gifts. Could Durinda's ability to cook be considered a power? We didn't think so, bu
t it definitely came in handy.
But the next morning found big changes. It was time to go back to school.
"Please don't make us go in the hair-cutting room!" Petal cried.
"Of course I won't," Annie said. "It's not my job to make any of you do anything that isn't necessary for our survival."
The hair-cutting room was one of our mother's inventions, our least favorite. You sat in the chair, said what kind of hairstyle you wanted, and several sets of scissors flew around your head, wildly snipping away until the desired look was complete. It was a ritual: whenever we returned to school, we all had to get a trim. We mostly worried that when the desired look was complete, it would involve us missing our ears.
"But I could use a trim," Annie said of her own short hair.
We watched as she hopped into the cutting chair, put a smock on, and commanded the scissors, "Take a half inch off all around, please." The scissors flew around her head as Annie sat there bravely, unflinching.
"Voilà!" she said, tearing off the smock when the cutting was done.
Our mother always drove us to school, but that was impossible now. So Annie phoned the school's bus company. Imitating Daddy's voice again, she informed them that eight Huits would now be taking the bus.
The bus company must have objected to the short notice, because we heard Annie say, sounding rather regal, "What do you mean I should have called you earlier about this change? Do you have any idea how much money I pay each year to keep eight children in that school?"
The bus company must have found Annie's argument persuasive because we saw her smile. "Jolly good," she said and hung up.
Then Durinda helped us arrange our hair the way we liked it and made us all put on our uniforms, which were plaid, plaid, and more plaid, and which we hated (although we suspected one of us loved it).
Annie's Adventures Page 2
