And then Annie got to work.
First, she practiced Daddy's signature. At the end of fifteen minutes, her forgery wasn't perfect—it had too many stops and starts—but it was close enough that someone looking at it would probably only think the writer had a bad case of the sneezes that day.
Then Annie did as she'd said she would do, having Georgia hand her one bill at a time.
Every now and then, Petal would whiz through with a beep of her horn.
"This is easy," Annie said with glee, her fingers flying on the calculator. "I could do this all day."
"You're very good at it," Georgia said with real admiration, and then a light dawned in her eyes and she snap-pointed. "That's it!" she cried.
"What's it?" Annie briefly looked up from her work, then put her head down to the task once more, muttering, "I'll tell you one thing: there will be no more paying the minimum balance in this household. I refuse to give the usurers the satisfaction." She looked at Georgia, who was bouncing excitedly in her seat.
"That's it!" Georgia said again.
"What's it?" Annie said again.
"Your power!" Georgia said with glee. "Your power! This is your power!"
"The calculator?" Annie asked, confused.
"No!" Georgia said breathlessly. "Although I must admit, you are very good at it. But no, what I meant was, your power is to be smart!"
"But I've always been smart."
"Perhaps," Georgia conceded. "But not like this. Two weeks ago, you were happy enough watching cartoons on TV and dreaming up ways to short-sheet my bed. But now look at you! You're running a whole household! You're keeping us in line! You're using a calculator! You're forging signatures! You're balancing a checkbook!" She paused, as though hearing a drumroll. "You're managing household finances!"
Annie sat up a little straighter. "I suppose I am doing those things."
"You are," Georgia went on enthusiastically, "and you're doing them splendidly. This is your power: you're smarter—a lot smarter—than you once were. Why, if you weren't only seven, you'd be an adult!"
"I don't know what to say." Annie blushed. Then: "But what kind of lame-o power is that, being smarter than I once was?"
"It's a fantastic power," Georgia said. "It may not be glamorous or exotic, like seeing through walls or making people go invisible. But being as smart as an adult? That's the exact power we all need for you to have right now. It's the best power you could have."
"Well, when you put it like that. ... Say." Annie's eyes lit up. "If I have my power, and it was here all along, do you think my gift might also be lying around the house and I don't even know it?"
"Like, where were you thinking of looking?" Georgia asked with interest, although some of the glimmer had left her eyes.
"I dunno." Annie shrugged. "Maybe it's behind that loose stone in the drawing room, where we found the original note?"
"Don't be daft," Georgia scoffed. "Do you really think it's going to be that easy? Every time we move that rock— whoops!—there's a gift?"
"Well." Annie shrugged again. "It would be nice if it worked that way."
Despite her scoffing, Georgia followed Annie to the drawing room and watched as Annie removed the stone from the wall. Georgia was right in that there was nothing you could call a gift in the darkness behind the stone, but Annie was right also: there was something there.
There was another note.
Dear Annie,
Nice work discovering your power.
And since you're good at math now,
I'm sure you can follow along with
me when I say: one down, fifteen
items to go.
Again, the note was unsigned.
"What do you suppose it means?" Georgia asked.
"It means that there are eight of us and we each need to find two items: a power and a gift. Eight times two makes sixteen. I found my power, so that takes away one item, leaving fifteen items to find."
"I'm glad you're so good with math," Georgia said, "but what else does it mean? How did the note get there? Who put it there? How does that person know you found your power? Is that person here now?"
"I dunno," Annie said. "The original note that appeared on New Year's Eve—there was never any evidence that someone else was here, other than the note itself. Certainly, nothing bad happened to us that night—if you leave out Mommy and Daddy disappearing; certainly nothing like what you'd expect if, say, there were an ax murderer in the house."
"Then what does it all mean?" Georgia asked again, to which Annie shrugged one more time.
"I suppose," Annie said, "it means there's magic loose in the world."
CHAPTER FIVE
"You call it magic," Georgia said, "I call it spooky."
"Well, whatever we call it," Annie said, "it's not getting the bills paid."
Just then, Durinda called us. "Dinner! And hurry up! Do you think I slaved over a hot stove just to let the food go cold?"
"She's sounding more like a housewife every day," Georgia said.
"Can you blame her?" Annie countered.
The meal smelled great as we gathered in the kitchen. Annie told us about finding her power, and Georgia told us about finding the note. It felt like Christmas, if a person were allowed to celebrate that holiday properly ever again.
"Could you set the table?" Durinda asked robot Betty, who had wandered into the room. But instead of going for the silverware drawer, Betty picked up a dust rag and began dusting the stove.
"Never mind that," Durinda said. "Why don't you go watch some TV?"
Betty happily rolled out of the room; the robot loved to watch cartoons.
"I'll set the table," Jackie offered.
"What is this?" Annie lifted the silver dome off a serving platter and sniffed. "Turkey? How did you manage on such short notice?"
Durinda walked to the counter and held up a long box that was lying there. "It's not a turkey, not like one with legs and stuffing inside and things. It's this frozen precooked turkey loaf stuff that you reheat in the oven." She held up another box, this time a tall one. "And I found this instant stuffing in the cabinet. You just add water and heat. No shoving your hand inside a big greasy bird. Who knew Mommy was cutting culinary corners?"
"And the mashed potatoes?" Annie prompted, passing that plate.
Durinda waved a masher in the air. "Easy."
"Well," Annie said, "it all looks great."
Durinda blushed, clearly pleased with herself.
"Perhaps," Annie said, "one of us should say grace? Zinnia?"
We all bowed our heads over our clasped hands as Zinnia spoke.
"Thank you..." She paused. "Who should I thank?"
"Thank the universe," Annie advised. "Why not go for broke? At least you'll know you've covered everything."
"Thank you, Universe," Zinnia went on, "for this wonderful hot meal, and thank you for Annie finding her power. May we all find the other fifteen items." She paused again. "That's all, I think."
Dinner was very festive that night for the first time since Mommy and Daddy's disappearance. Talk flowed easily like conversation; juice boxes flowed like water—it was as though we were a real family once again, even if there weren't any adults in the house.
Durinda brought in the pumpkin pie and a can of whipped cream—"The refrigerator says we're out of whipped cream after this," she informed us, shaking the can—when for the first time Annie noticed a lone envelope beside her place setting.
"What's this?" she asked. "Another bill?"
"I don't think so," Georgia said, wiping her mouth with a linen napkin. One day soon, we would need to figure out how to use the washer and dryer in the laundry room. "I left it when you asked me to get all the bills, because I was fairly certain this one wasn't a bill. See? The address is handwritten. I'm fairly certain they don't handwrite bills these days."
"Unless of course their computer broke down," Annie grumbled.
But it wasn't a bill. It was an invitation.<
br />
"Will Simms is having his birthday party two weeks from Saturday!" Annie announced. "It's to be held at Kids' Castle!"
"This is just what we need," Petal said with a happy laugh, "something to take our mind off our troubles."
"I forgot Will's birthday was coming up," Jackie said. "How could I?"
"Never mind that," Rebecca said. "How will we get there? It's miles away and still freezing out—if we walk, by the time we get there, we'll be Popsicles!"
"Never mind that even," Georgia said. "How will we ever get to the stores to buy him a present? We can't very well arrive empty-handed. Maybe if it was Mandy Stenko we could do that, but not for Will Simms."
"If we can't walk," Zinnia said, "how will we get to either place? We can't fly, can we?" She turned to Annie. "You have your power now. It doesn't by any chance include the ability to fly us places, does it?"
Just to humor her, to humor all of us, Annie gave a few feeble waves of her arms, as though they were wings. But flap as she might, she remained rooted to her chair.
"Sorry," she said at last. '"Fraid not."
"Taxi?" Jackie suggested hopefully. "Perhaps we could call a taxi?"
"If you find a taxi that can hold all eight of us plus the driver, let me know," Annie said. "In the meantime, however, that's no solution."
"Then we can't go," Petal said, tears forming in her eyes.
"Don't be ridiculous." The gentle hug Annie gave Petal was the opposite of her stern words. "If we don't go, the only person he'll have there will be Mandy, and then what kind of party would that be for Will?"
"But how will we get there then?" Marcia asked.
"Give me time," Annie said. "You can't expect me to pay bills and solve transportation problems all in one day. But I'll think of something."
A week went by.
It was a week in which we settled into our new routine: letting Durinda do our hair in the morning, eating the breakfast she made, riding the bus to school, avoiding detection by the McG.
Every Tuesday, red folders were sent home that contained Important Papers from school. Sometimes these Important Papers required a signature or even a call to the school from a parent, which Annie handled with ease. Annie was turning into an ace forger and impersonator.
And the rest of our routine: playing, chores, homework. Sometimes we balked at the last, but Annie told us smart people had a greater chance of taking over the world than stupid ones, and we liked that idea. Plus, if we took over the world, we wouldn't have to go to school.
And so we worked, ate, played, bathed, tucked one another in, kissed one another good night, went to bed. Then we got up and did it again. Amen.
With Saturday came the sound of howling cats. They wanted to be fed. When we went to do so, we saw there was hardly any cat food left in the house.
"Almost out of cat food, we still need to get a present for Will and figure out how to get to his party next week, and soon we'll be out of human food too." Annie gave a deep sigh. "There's only one thing left for it." She gave another sigh at the sound of loud, thumping footsteps. "And would you please get down from climbing the walls, Petal."
Petal was indeed climbing the walls, and she was doing it in her wall-walkers. Wed each received a pair from our parents on our last birthday. The wall-walkers were an improvement on the bouncy boots Mommy had invented in that they could be used in any room in the house, not just the drawing room. They'd been too big for our feet when we first got them, but they fit perfectly now, the suction cups on the bottoms sticking to the walls so nicely we could even walk on the ceiling if we wanted to.
"Sorry," Petal said sheepishly, coming back down.
It was Zinnia's turn to sigh. "I wonder what we would have gotten for Christmas this year if we had gotten our presents." Another sigh. "I'll bet whatever it was, it would have really been something."
Disregarding this, Annie phoned Information; we heard her ask for the number for Pete's Repairs and Auto Wrecking.
"God," she said as she waited for her call to ring through, "I hate those automated voices they use these days."
At last, she was connected.
"Hullo, Pete?" Annie used her Daddy voice. "Robert Huit here. Listen, I've got a problem with the old Hummer, a real sticky wicket ... No, of course I'd bring it in, but the blasted thing won't even start ... No, I don't want to call a towing place. They're all usurers, you know ... Yes, yes, I know it's Saturday. But could you make a house call? I'll pay double..."
"What did he say?" Marcia asked breathlessly as Annie hung up.
"He said he'd be here in an hour." Annie was clearly pleased as punch with herself. "And he wanted to know why I call him 'old chap' now."
When the doorbell rang an hour later, Annie was ready. She'd prepared a blank check, signed it, and had it waiting on the table by the front door.
Pete was everything you would expect in a mechanic: incredibly tall, with a pepper-colored mop of hair that had some salt dusting the fringes, like snow on the sides of a paved street. He wore an old navy blue T-shirt that didn't fit properly; his large stomach played peekaboo over the top of his belt, to which were attached useful-looking tools. His boots had stains on them—Mommy would never have let him inside—and his jeans hung so low that if he turned around, we could see the top of his bottom.
"Hey, Eights," he said, nodding at the rest of us standing behind Annie. We'd never been formally introduced, but we were the only octuplets in town and everyone knew who we were, even if we didn't always know who they were. "Is your daddy around?"
Pete had a nice smile, although there were lots of silver and gold fillings in it, and his eyes were dancing blue chips. As for his breath and general aroma, what can we say? Every time he opened his mouth to speak or moved a muscle, a wave came off him like the rubbing lotion Mommy put on Zinnia's chest whenever she got a bad cold.
"Of course he's around," Annie said with all the authority she could muster. "He called you, didn't he?"
Pete couldn't deny that.
"But right afterward," Annie went on, "he was felled by a terrible virus."
"It's true." Jackie backed up Annie. "He's been in the, um, bathroom ever since he phoned you. You wouldn't want to see him right now."
"And our mother's not here," Zinnia piped up. "She's in, um, er, France."
"Oh." Pete turned away. "I guess I'd better come back another day."
"Oh, no. No, no, no," Annie said with a nervous laugh, reaching out to stop him. "Why waste another trip"—and here she picked up the check and waved it invitingly—"when Daddy left you a blank check right here?"
Pete had been made to see reason.
"Fine, then, Eights," he said. "Lead me to the beast that doesn't roar."
"What's he talking about?" Rebecca muttered.
"He means the car that won't start," Annie hissed at her.
We led Pete out to the cold garage and Mommy's purple Hummer.
"Ooh, here are the keys." Annie produced them. "Do you need them?"
"Usually," Pete said, accepting Annie's offering. "Thanks."
As Pete climbed into the driver's seat, Annie climbed into the passenger's side, indicating that the rest of us should climb in the back.
"Come on, um, Eights," she said. "If we all watch what Mr. Pete does, then later we can tell Daddy all about how brilliantly he fixed it."
As Pete proceeded to do something with the key, Annie proceeded to narrate for us. Loudly.
"Now Mr. Pete is putting the key in the starter thingy and turning it. At the same time, he's pressing his right foot down on the far right pedal."
The engine roared into life.
"Huh," Pete said. "It started right up. Nothing wrong with the ignition."
"No?" Annie said nervously. "I know. Why don't you ride it around the block a few times to make sure there's nothing else wrong. I'm sure Daddy never would have called you if there wasn't something wrong."
Before Pete could object to her line of reasoning, Annie press
ed the garage-door opener.
"Drive," Annie commanded.
And drive Pete did.
"Mr. Pete is putting it in something called R," Annie narrated, "when he wants to go backward ... Now he's putting it in D and turning it around ... He's still in D as he starts to go faster ... He does a lot of spinning of the wheel and looking in various mirrors ... When Mr. Pete needs to stop, he hits the left pedal..."
After going once around the block, we arrived back in our driveway.
"Well, that all seems easy enough," Annie let out without meaning to.
Pete put the car back in the garage and turned the key again.
"To stop the car completely," Annie said, "Mr. Pete is putting it in P, then turning the starter off and taking the key—"
"Just what exactly is going on here?" Pete asked.
"How do you mean?" Annie asked, her eyes the picture of innocence.
"This car. There's nothing wrong with it." He may have had a poor fashion sense and smelled like rubbing lotion, but Pete wasn't stupid.
"Our father called you, didn't he?" Annie laughed brightly, nervously.
"Give him the check," Georgia muttered.
"Right," Annie said, still brightly, "the check. How much?"
"Nothing," Pete said.
"How is that possible?" Annie wondered.
"I can't charge you when I didn't do anything," Pete said simply.
"But you did something," Annie said. "You drove around the block!"
"Right," Pete said slowly. "But anyone could have done that. Your mother or father could have done that."
"Except," Rebecca said, "that our father is in the bathroom, very sick."
"Right, right," Pete said. "And your mother is in France." Pause. Then: "Can I speak with your father for a few minutes before I go?"
"Jackie," Annie directed, "go see if Daddy's free yet."
Jackie raised her eyebrows at Annie questioningly.
"Now," Annie ordered.
So Jackie scurried off. A moment later we heard the sound of a toilet flushing. Several times. And then Jackie was back with us. Alone.
Annie's Adventures Page 4
