Petal's Problems (11 page)

Immediately, and to our great surprise, Crazy Serena obeyed.

But then we figured: Of course she did. Who would ever argue with a calm but firm mechanic?

"Now tell me why you did it," Pete said. "Why did you abduct Rebecca and why were you about to throw her over the side?"

"I already told you," Crazy Serena insisted. "I wasn't—"

"'Because Rebecca wouldn't stop asking me questions and she was driving me crazy, so I had to find a way to get her to stop,'" Petal piped up in a disturbingly Crazy Serena-like voice. Petal shrugged. "At least that's what was in her mind just then."

Crazy Serena studied Petal, stunned. "One of you can read people's minds now?" she said in a wondering voice. "What are you—a witch?"

"No, that would be you," Rebecca said right after Annie untied her and removed the sock from her mouth.

"Is it true?" Pete asked Crazy Serena. "Is that what you were thinking?"

Crazy Serena looked at him with pleading eyes. "It's exactly true. But surely you understand, don't you? Haven't you ever had a child pepper you with the same annoying questions over and over again so that you feel if you can't keep the kid quiet you'll go mad?"

"No," Pete said wearily. "I can't say as I've ever had that particular experience and I don't imagine I ever will."

Then he closed the space between them, grabbed her firmly by the elbow, and led her down the Eiffel Tower, the rest of us trailing behind.

When we got to the bottom, in a move we'd seen him make one time before, he gave her a slight push on the back, like he was starting a wind-up toy.

"One more time," he said. "Off you go. Get out of France. I kicked you out of one country and now I'm kicking you out of another. And if it comes to it, I'll kick you out of every country on the planet. Just stay away from my girls!"

It was an odd thing for him to say, we thought as we watched Crazy Serena hobble off, but then we realized: for however long our parents were gone, we were Pete's girls, and we were grateful for it.

"Thank you, Mr. Pete!" Rebecca hurled herself at him and gave him a big hug. "You saved me."

For the first time we realized that Rebecca, who'd never seemed to know what
fear
meant, had been scared.

"Anytime, pet," Pete said. "And I appreciate the appreciation. But you need to thank Petal for this one."

"
Petal?
" Rebecca spat out the name with her usual level of disgust.

"Yes," Pete said evenly. "Petal. She's the one who grew brave enough to use her power to read Crazy Serena's mind. If not for her, we'd never have known where to look for you. I doubt we'd have gotten here in time."

As frustrating as it was sometimes to have Rebecca for a sister, that was an awful thought.

"Petal?" Rebecca turned to Petal, confusion and wonder in her voice. "But I don't understand. I've treated you horribly since we were born. Why would you do anything to save me? You should hate me."

"You're my sister." Petal shrugged. "Who would I be if I didn't save you?"

"But weren't you scared?" Rebecca went on. "Weren't you worried that the sky would fall or that it would rain for forty days and forty nights or that the world would just generally come to an end?"

"Of course I was scared, of all those things," Petal said. "I always am. I was scared every single second, for myself. But you're my sister. You're my sister."

And then, of course, Petal fainted.

***

"Gather her up and let's get going," Mrs. Pete said cheerily. "We've got a wedding to get to."

Back at the chateau, now that Crazy Serena was gone, the wedding went off without a hitch. You could even say it was boring, although it was a nice moment when Petal bravely took the basket with its few remaining rose petals from Zinnia, and Zinnia graciously allowed her to be the one to strew the aisle with them.

But then—once Aunt Martha and Uncle George had each said "I do" and kissed and we'd all had the chance to say, "Euwww!"—at the reception in the second ballroom things got exciting again.

We had never been to a wedding reception before, so we didn't know there'd be a table set up with little cards on it, each card with the name of a guest and an assigned table number.

It relieved us greatly to see that we and the Petes would all be at the same table together: table 8.

But then we started looking at the other name cards waiting to be claimed and we saw that nearly every card there was for a person with the last name Smith.

Huh. Who would have ever guessed there were so many people named Smith in the world?

Then we shrugged. They must all be relatives of Mommy.

We began scanning the cards to see if there were any non-Smith names, just out of curiosity.

That's when we saw one still there for Serena Smith.

"Sorry," Uncle George said, reaching over us. "Someone should have removed this earlier. Sorry again." He shook his head. "Serena's always been a bad egg."

We glanced at Rebecca out of the corners of our eyes. We knew all about bad eggs, because we had one of our own. Still, we loved our bad egg.

"Oh, hello!" Uncle George cried. "What are these doing still here? They're not coming."

We saw him hurriedly gather up about ten more cards. Before he put them in his pocket, we noticed that the top one said
Ocho.
Then we heard the sound of knives clinking against glasses, and Uncle George went off to kiss Aunt Martha again.

Euwww.

"
Ocho?
" Rebecca said. "Hmm ... I remember that from the Spanish words the Mr. McG tried to teach us. It means 'eight.'"

Eight? In Spanish? But that was odd. Our name meant "eight" in French.

"Never mind that now," Annie said, struggling under the weight of the Deluxe Perfect-Every-Time Hamburger Maker/Manicure-Pedicure Machine that she was carrying on her head. "Can we go find the presents table so I can put this down before it squashes me?"

We shrugged and followed behind her.

That's another thing they have at wedding receptions. In addition to the name-card table, there's a presents table.

We had no idea when such information might come in handy again, but most of us did think it was nice to know things.

"Ooh!" Zinnia clasped her hands together at the sight of all the pretty wrapped presents.

"Oof!" Annie exhaled, relieved to finally set our present down.

"Can we look at some of these before we find our seats?" Zinnia begged. "Please?"

"Suit yourselves." Annie waved an exhausted hand. Then she grabbed a napkin from a table that wasn't ours and wiped her brow.

We proceeded to ooh and aah over the packages, even those of us who weren't as obsessed with presents as others were. It was a wedding, and it seemed like another wedding thing people did.

We also studied the names on the gift cards to see who'd brought what, but we didn't see the names of anyone we knew, save on the card with practical cash inside it from the Petes.

"Look at that one in the back!" Zinnia said. "So big! So shiny!"

"I wonder who it's from?" Jackie wondered.

"We probably shouldn't—" Annie started to say as Zinnia strained to pull the big and shiny package from the back row. "Oh, here," Annie said instead, exasperated. "Let me get that for you. I am seven inches taller, you know."

Yes. We did know.

Annie looked over each shoulder to see if anyone else was looking before she reached, grabbed. "I just hope no one notices—" Then she saw something attached to the package that brought her up short.

It brought
all
of us up short.

"Hello! What's this?" Annie said.

But we could all see what it was.

It was a gift card with the words
So sorry to miss your special day—regrets from the Ochos!

"There's that name again," Annie said, puzzled.

"The same as on those name cards Uncle George took away," Durinda said.

"Hmm," Georgia said.

"Perhaps we should ask Uncle George about it?" Petal piped up. We'd noticed that since saving Rebecca she'd grown somewhat bolder.

"Good idea," Jackie said.

So that's what we did.

"Uncle George, I am curious," Marcia said. It was natural for her to be the one to ask, since she was the curious type, that scientific mind of hers and all. "Who are the Ochos?"

Uncle George blinked at us. "You can't be serious."

"Oh, but we are," Rebecca said darkly, then added for emphasis, "
very
serious."

"Well," he said, "Queen married Joe Ocho—"

"Joe Ocho?" Zinnia laughed. "What a name!"

"I agree," Uncle George said, "but you can't really pick what you were named, just like you can't pick your relatives, so I never say anything to him about it."

"But who is Queen?" Annie asked.

There was that blinking look from Uncle George again. "Don't you know anything about your own family? Why, Queen is Lucy's identical twin sister. She's
your
mother's twin."

What?

Then someone started banging a knife against a glass, which we'd figured out was the way guests let Uncle George know they wanted to see him kiss Aunt Martha again.

Euwww.

"Uncle George!" Annie shouted after him. "Do Queen and Joe Ocho have any kids?"

"Of course!" Uncle George shouted back to us. "They have—"

But whatever number he said was drowned out by the increased volume of knife-glass clinking.

We froze where we were, then slowly swiveled our heads, looking at one another.

Our last name was Huit, meaning "eight" in French.

Queen and Joe's last name was Ocho, meaning "eight" in Spanish.

And Queen and Joe Ocho had some children, number unspecified.

Could their children be the other Eights?

TWELVE

We didn't learn anything further about the Ochos on that trip. Aunt Martha and Uncle George were too busy being just-married people to answer any more of our questions, and then they were off-on-their-honeymoon people, so they weren't even there to answer them. As for the rest of the guests, we'd done nothing to get to know them, had we? And it probably didn't help matters any that Petal had been babbling things like
uegfyaiugfwfgi
for most of the week and then had shrieked, "
Stop the wedding!
" Neither of which, we realized, was likely to endear us to new people.

But that was okay. Petal had saved Rebecca, and that was enough. We'd learn the truth, or not, when the time came.

***

We spent Sunday seeing more sights, and to an Eight we decided, "We
love
France!"

Then it was Monday, time for us to head home.

The flight back was uneventful. No one tried to fly us to a different country because he or she was missing a relative, for which we were grateful.

Conflict and tension had their places, we realized, but sometimes we needed a break.

Arriving home, we said goodbye and thank you to the Petes, kissed Daddy Sparky and Mommy Sally, and said hi to Carl the talking refrigerator.

"Eggs have gone rotten in your absence," Carl informed us, "but robot Betty still loves Carl, so all is right in Carl's world." Then we could swear the talking refrigerator smiled at us when he added, "Glad you're back."

We were glad to be back too. It had been the perfect kind of time away: a trip you are glad to go on and glad to return from. We'd even learned a new fact or two. Sort of.

Of course the cats were ecstatic to be back. They raced one another to go play in Summer. We knew they'd missed the seasonal rooms a lot, as did we, and we only hoped they didn't try to use the sand in there as one big litter box.

We did notice Precious giving Rambunctious funny looks, and we wondered what evil things Rambunctious was thinking.

Then we shrugged. A little over a week from now both Petal's and Precious's powers would go to sleep, at least sort of, which would probably make the both of them a lot happier.

We were on our way to the staircase to go upstairs and unpack right away—Annie's orders—when Precious came in with a shiny silver object. She dropped it in Petal's hand and then disappeared back into Summer.