Rebecca's Rashness

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  "That's not such a bad idea." Rebecca's eyes gleamed. "I could be the Strong Lady."

  "You'd be the Strong Girl, actually," Marcia corrected.

  "More like the Strong Idiot," Georgia muttered, but she muttered it very quietly. No doubt, knowing Rebecca's strength, Georgia didn't want to make her angry. Because then who knew what Rebecca might do?

  "But I don't think I'm ready for the circus just yet." Rebecca shrugged off the idea. "There's too much I need to do around here first."

  "Like what?" Jackie asked.

  "Like, I don't know..." Rebecca paused, casting her eyes on Petal. Then, with no effort at all, Rebecca picked Petal up in one hand. Petal, who could be something like one of those cute little pill bugs when scared, immediately tucked her knees in and curled herself into a tight ball. That's when Rebecca balanced the curled-up Petal on the very tip of one finger and used her other hand to spin Petal around until she was spinning at an alarming speed.

  "Look at me!" Rebecca said. "It's like Petal's a spinning basketball. Maybe I'll join the Harlem Globetrotters!"

  "Wait a second," Marcia said. "If this really is Rebecca's power, whether the note leaver knows it or not, then Rambunctious should have her power too."

  "That's right, isn't it?" Pete said. "Your cats always get your powers when you do."

  Seven Eights plus Pete plus the spinning Petal headed to the cat room, which was like our drawing room, only for cats.

  "Phew!" Marcia said when we got there. "It looks like all they're doing is drinking from their water dishes."

  Poor Marcia. The way she was worrying about the note leaver, it was almost as bad as Petal worrying about just about anything.

  But then one cat—that would be Rambunctious—stopped lapping up water and looked at us. And when Rambunctious saw what Rebecca was doing, she made straight for Precious. A moment later, Precious was curled up and poised on the tip of one of Rambunc-

  tious's paws while Rambunctious used a second paw to spin Precious like a basketball.

  "Oh no," Marcia said. "Rebecca's cat now has superhuman strength too."

  "Actually, that would be superkitty strength," Jackie pointed out.

  "What can it all mean?" Marcia said.

  "I think we should have a party," Zinnia said. "No matter whether Rebecca has found her power or not, no matter what it all means, I think we should have a party—you know, to celebrate Rebecca saving Mr. Pete's life and to celebrate Mr. Pete still being alive."

  Fourteen eyes plus Pete's turned to stare at Zinnia.

  "What an excellent idea," Annie said. "Why didn't you suggest this sooner?

  SIX

  "So when should we have this party?" Annie asked.

  "I suppose it should be on the Fourth of July," Durinda said. "The only problem is, that's so close. I'd need to plan a menu and get special food for the barbecue, particularly since Zinnia says we shouldn't eat meat anymore. I wonder if they sell fillet-of-sole dogs at the supermarket..."

  "I think having it on the Fourth of July is a lousy idea," Georgia said. "I mean, do we even celebrate the Fourth of July?"

  "Isn't that an American holiday?" Petal said. "I always get so confused. Are we in America or are we in Britain?"

  We would have liked to laugh in Petal's face over that one. Only problem was, we sometimes got confused ourselves, what with the way we spoke, not to mention the added confusion of the faux British accent Annie used whenever she wanted to impersonate our model father, Robert Huit.

  Hmm ... we mulled it over.

  Well, we supposed, if we did live in the United States, we would feel one way about having a celebration on the Fourth of July. But if we were in England, we were quite certain we would feel an entirely different way about it.

  We had studied some history.

  "Never mind that," Rebecca said, cutting short our mulling. "Since this is to be a celebration of my accomplishment"—we did notice how she'd cut Pete right out of the celebration picture—"then I think I should get to pick out the day I'm to be celebrated on."

  "I hope you're not going to say today," Durinda said, looking horrified. "So much has already happened today. I think it's a bit much to expect me to plan a party and prepare the food all on the same day."

  "Plus," Petal said, "I don't much care for going back to do another Really Big Shop right now. Too many scary people tend to gather at the grocery store."

  "I think you'll all be pleased with the date I selected," Rebecca said, "and it will give you plenty of time to prepare, much more than if we were to do it on the Fourth."

  After a long pause, during which it appeared that Rebecca was waiting for a drumroll, Jackie prompted, "Are you going to share this information right now or should we go put the groceries away first?"

  "We're not going to give you an actual drumroll," Georgia added, "so you might as well get on with it."

  But she'd spoken too soon. Because just then, Zinnia picked up a handy pencil and tapped it on the table several times before rapping it smartly on Daddy Sparky as though Daddy Sparky were a giant cymbal.

  "That was fun," Zinnia said cheerily. "Would you like me to do it again, Rebecca?"

  "That won't be necessary," Rebecca said. "I'm ready to tell you now. The absolute perfect, best ever, fan-tabuloso day for my celebration is ... Bastille Day!"

  "Bas... what?" even Marcia felt prompted to say.

  "Bastille Day," Rebecca said impatiently. "Weren't any of the rest of you paying attention when we were in France for Uncle George and Aunt Martha's wedding?"

  France. Uncle George. Aunt Martha.

  We sighed. If only Uncle George and Aunt Martha hadn't left for a three-month-long round-the-world cruise right after their wedding and therefore couldn't be reached, we might have asked Uncle George more about our mother's identical twin and her children. Uncle George did appear to know more about other relatives than our average family member. Too bad he was at sea.

  "Why would Bastille Day be the perfect day?" Annie wanted to know. "And when is it anyway?"

  "It's celebrated on July fourteenth every year," Rebecca said. "And it's perfect because it's French and we're French. Our last name's Huit, you know, not Ocho or Smith."

  "It's all coming back to me now," Marcia said. "Bastille Day ... Bastille Day ... doesn't that have something to do with the seventeen hundreds, the French Revolution, the storming of a perfectly horrific prison, and all manner of other awful things?"

  "Yes," Rebecca said, "which is why it's also the perfect day to celebrate me."

  "Because you're all manner of other awful things?" Petal looked worried. Then she added with a hopeful smile, "Or do you mean you wish you lived in the seventeen hundreds?"

  "You had it the first time," Rebecca said. "It's perfect because I am fearsome."

  "She means," Jackie whispered to Petal, "that she causes fear, like a fearsome monster. You know, that she's intense and extreme."

  "Oh dear," Petal said, and then she fainted.

  By the time we revived Petal, we'd decided that we'd had quite enough excitement for one day. We still had thirteen days to plan Rebecca's celebration, so we contented ourselves with doing mundane things like putting the groceries away, seeing Pete off, eating, making great big piles of leaves in Fall and then leaping into them, and going to bed.

  As we shut off the lights we did feel as though the day had been incredibly long with so much happening in it. We wondered if there would ever come a day that would feel even longer, maybe even twice as long.

  ***

  We awoke the next day determined to begin planning Rebecca's celebration. And we might have even made some progress were it not for...

  "Oh, look," Georgia said, bringing in the morning newspaper and depositing it on Rebecca's plate, "you got your picture on the front page of the newspaper."

  Even though the newspaper still got delivered to our house every day, like it did when Mommy and Daddy were here, we almost never bothered to read anything in it. From w
hat we could see, it was mostly filled with world affairs or news about local events, neither of which affected us very much. We couldn't do a thing about the former and had no time for the latter. After all, we had our own set of problems, didn't we?

  But on this day, we couldn't ignore the newspaper because...

  "Little Local Girl Finds Strength of Ten Men!"

  That's what the headline above the picture of Rebecca screamed.

  The article began, "A little local girl saved a favorite town mechanic yesterday when..."

  "I'm not sure I like being referred to as 'a little local girl,'" Rebecca said with a sniff.

  "At least they didn't call you 'a little loco girl,'" Marcia pointed out.

  "I suppose," Rebecca said, "but I was referring to the use of little. Anyway, other than that, this is a smashing piece on me. I think it—"

  "Smashing?" Annie cut her off. "How can you possibly think this is smashing, unless you mean smash in a bad way, as in 'destroy'? Why, this is the worst thing to happen to us since Mommy and Daddy disappeared!"

  "Or died," Georgia added for Rebecca, who was too busy admiring her picture in the newspaper to say it.

  "How can you possibly say that?" Rebecca demanded of Annie. "Look at me: I'm famous."

  "Which is exactly my—" Annie started to say, but she couldn't finish because it was then that the phone began to ring.

  It was then that people began knocking at our door, and some of them began pounding.

  After six months and one day of trying to fly under the radar, of trying to keep the outside world from realizing that eight little girls were living home alone, the world had found its way to our doorstep.

  And it was all Rebecca's fault.

  Or the fault of her power.

  Her power that the note leaver seemed unaware of.

  ***

  Of the two—the perpetually ringing phone and the eternally pounding door—the phone was the easier to ignore. We rarely ever bothered answering the phone during normal times, or what passed for normal in our world, because a ringing phone hardly ever meant anything good or useful for us. We preferred to let the machine take our calls, so really all this meant was more ringing to ignore, and we quickly solved that problem by turning off the ringer.

  But people pounding on our door was a different matter. After all, we did need to go outside to send and get the mail, so that we could pay the bills on time and see if we'd received any more invitations; we could count on the carrier pigeons that visited us occasionally to bring irregular mail but never regular mail. Plus, we did just plain need to go outside. How would we find our parents if we could never leave the house again? We were fairly certain we'd never find them in the house. And, too, we needed the normalcy of lying in a hammock and staring at clouds.

  But we couldn't do any of that with a passel of reporters parked outside our door. We couldn't do any of that if each time we opened the door, photographers snapped pictures, videographers ran video cameras, and reporters kept trying to shove their microphones into the gap, always asking the same questions: "Can we speak to the little local girl about her extraordinary feat of strength?" "Can we speak to the little local girl's parents about what it feels like to raise such a temporarily strong daughter?" "Has the little local girl's strength gone back to normal yet or can she still lift a Hummer?"

  "It's not my fault, it's not my fault," Rebecca asserted for the fiftieth time when one of us said for the fiftieth time that Rebecca was to blame for our newfound lack of privacy.

  "No one said you were to blame," Annie said.

  Rebecca crossed her arms and harrumphed. "No one except Georgia and Petal, and occasionally you." Rebecca added another harrumph.

  "People just resent all the attention and the loss of privacy," Jackie pointed out. "But no one really blames you."

  "Could have fooled me," Rebecca said. "What would you all have had me do? Not use my strength and instead let Pete get pancaked?"

  We shuddered at that. None of us would have wanted Pete gone from the world. The world was too scary by half as it was.

  "It's July second," Marcia said, "just one day after Rebecca got her power. Maybe the note leaver simply had to go away for a day or take the day off for some reason. Maybe it's there now. I think I'll go check."

  "I'll come too," Zinnia said. "I always like checking for the notes."

  But a moment later they came running back, sadly noteless, as we all tried to discover the source of the greatest pounding yet. Most people run from danger, but the circumstances of our lives often caused us to run toward it.

  At last we located the source of the pounding: the kitchen window.

  "Mr. Pete," Durinda said, throwing open the window, "what are you doing out there pounding on our window?"

  Pete vaulted over the sill and into the house, or he vaulted as well as a man of his size could vault. Then he reached back out and down and pulled in Mrs. Pete. And then he pulled in two suitcases after him. Then, finally, he pulled in his cat, Old Felix.

  "What are you doing?" Durinda asked again.

  Not that any of us minded their coming for what looked like a longer-than-usual visit, but we were curious.

  "I saw the article in the paper," Pete said, "and figured right away that reporters would start hounding you and that with all the extra attention focused on your house, it would be no time before some nosy parker realized there were no adults living here and then the jig would be up."

  "So we decided to come and pretend to be your uncle and aunt again," Mrs. Pete said, "so that the world would believe you're being supervised adultly."

  "I don't think adultly is an actual word," Marcia felt compelled to point out.

  We ignored her.

  "How long do you plan to stay?" Rebecca asked.

  "For the duration," Pete said, "or for as long as you need us."

  SEVEN

  Pete took care of those pesky nosy-parker reporters in no time.

  Opening the front door bravely and standing firm there more bravely still, he announced, "This is private property. If you don't get off it this instant, I shall call the police and have you all taken to the hoosegow."

  "So?" one particularly pesky reporter said. "Then we'll just go stand in the street and shout our questions and snap our pictures from there."

  Oh no. Would we never enjoy the luxury of being private citizens again? What had Rebecca gotten us into?

  "Yes," Pete said, "I suppose you can do that for about an hour or two, but I'll just build a fence so high, you'll never be able to climb over it."

  "Well, then we could—" the particularly pesky reporter started to say, but Pete cut him off.

  "I know, I know," Pete said with a weary sigh, "you'll get a helicopter and a telephoto lens and fly overhead. Well, just try it. I am very good with a slingshot, plus I think you'll find if you check with public records that this house is under a no-fly zone."

  All of the reporters, the regularly pesky and the particularly pesky, dispersed with grumbles.

  "Is that true, Mr. Pete," Petal asked, "that our house is under that thing you said? I rather like to think of us living beneath one giant protective bubble."

  "Of course it's not true," Georgia said meanly to Petal. Then she turned to Pete. "Is it?"

  "'Fraid not," Pete admitted. "At least, not yet. But I know a man who knows a man who works in public records, so I'll tell the man I know to tell the man he knows to put a note in your file to that effect."

  Pete always seemed to know a man who knew a man who. He was very handy that way.

  "Now I'll just go get that impenetrable fence built," Pete said. "Shouldn't take more than an hour or six. Oh, and Rebecca?"

  "Yes?"

  "Don't feel bad about all this mess with the reporters and such. It's not really your fault."

  "Of course I don't feel bad," Rebecca said. "I saved your life, didn't I?"

  "Yes, you did. Why is it that I think you'll constantly be reminding me of that f
act?"

  ***

  One or six hours later, when Pete had finished erecting our impenetrable fence, we got down to more important business.

  "If we're going to have a party in just twelve days," Durinda said, "we really do need to start making a guest list."

  "I'll get a piece of paper and a pen," Jackie offered, and she did.

  "So who shall we put on the list?" Annie said, pen poised as she sat at the dining-room table, the Petes and the rest of us gathered around.

  "Well, I think we should invite all of us," Petal said, "meaning us Eights."

  Most of us chose to ignore that, except for:

  Marcia, who said, "I don't think Annie needs to write all our names down. I should think we'd remember us."

  And Georgia, who said, "Can't we leave Rebecca's name off?"

  And Rebecca, who said, "It's my celebration and I resent that remark, even if I do sort of resemble it."

  "I don't know what that means," Petal said.

  "That's okay," Jackie said. "I don't think any of us is supposed to."

  "We should put the Petes down," Petal said, "Mr. and Mrs."

  "That hardly seems necessary," Annie pointed out, "since they're already here. I think we'll be able to remember them too."

  "Then what's the point in even making a list?" Zinnia said, looking crestfallen. "Why make a list if everyone who is going to be invited and who is therefore likely to come is already here?"

  "I don't know." Durinda shrugged. "I only know that it's the thing to do. You know, from watching Mommy do it. You want to have a party," Durinda said with another shrug, "you have to make lists."

  "I was thinking maybe we should invite a few other people to my celebration," Rebecca said, "maybe liven things up."

  "But who else is there to invite?" Marcia said. "All of the most important people, except for Mommy and Daddy, are already on the list. Or they would be if Annie would only write their names down."

  "What about Will Simms?" Zinnia suggested. "We could invite Will Simms. We all like Will Simms."