Petal's Problems (5 page)

"Laze in a hammock," the Mr. McG suggested. "Drink lemonade. Lie on your back in a field and stare up at the puffy clouds, trying to see animal shapes in them."

"Or go to France," Jackie said.

The Mr. McG blinked but recovered quickly. "Or"—and here he waved his hand—"you could go to France."

"Then we don't need to study at all over the summer?" Marcia wondered.

"It would be nice not to," Georgia said.

"It would practically be like getting a present," Zinnia said.

"Don't be ridiculous," the Mr. McG said testily. "Of course you need to study over the summer, at least a bit, mostly math, so you don't lose everything I've taught you." Then his expression softened. "But other than that, your assignment is simply to be young. Be kids."

If he kept this up, we'd get all misty-eyed.

"Can we eat the junk food we brought for the pa
rrrrr
ty yet?" Rebecca asked.

Okay, so maybe one of us was in no danger of getting misty-eyed.

"Yes, Rebecca," the Mr. McG said. "It's party time. But you do realize, don't you, that you only need to roll your
r
's when you speak Spanish, and that you're not speaking Spanish right now?"

Rebecca rolled her eyes before responding, "
Rrrrr
idiculous."

***

For school parties, moms, and sometimes dads, sent in baked goods or, if they're really extreme, healthy snacks. But we Eights didn't have any parents around at the moment to do that for us. So while Will Simms's mom had sent in a special cooler so we could make snow cones and Mandy Stenko's father had sent in a tray of raw vegetables, we'd had to prepare something ourselves. What we brought was a case of mango juice boxes; brownies that Durinda had made, with Jackie's help; and two cans of pink frosting, one for the rest of us to put on our brownies and one for Rebecca.

"I'm going to really miss you guys over the summer," Mandy said to us, chomping on a celery stalk as we hung around the playground.

The sun felt good on our faces.

"Yeah, us too," we did our best to agree.

"I don't know what I'll do all summer without you," Will Simms said. "Maybe we could get together occasionally and find ways to get into trouble?"

Good old Will. How could we refuse?

By the time it got close to eleven thirty, and with the bouncy little yellow bus soon to arrive to transport us for the last time as third-graders, the McG, our old teacher who was now our principal, showed up with her long nose.

"So. Eights." She paused.

We waited.

"Next year. Fourth grade." She paused again.

We waited again.

"Nice job this year."

We smiled.

"But I'll be keeping my eye on you next year. Both eyes. Both eyes, a microscope, and a magnifying glass."

We frowned.

But then...

Beep-beep!

The bus.

Yippee! Time for summer vacation!

***

That night, when seven of us crawled into bed and Petal crawled back under it, we were both shocked and pleased that we'd survived Friday the thirteenth with nothing terrible happening to us.

Petal was particularly pleased that there had been no visits from the ax murderer.

"It doesn't really mean anything," Rebecca shouted loudly enough from her bed that both bedrooms of Eights could hear her.

We waited for her to make her point.

"On New Year's Eve," she went on, "when the rest of the world was celebrating and blowing party horns and wearing funny hats, our parents disappeared. Or died. Then on Friday the thirteenth, what do we get? Something awful or a visit from Petal's ax murderer? No, we get cans of pink frosting." She yawned. "Probably on our birthday, instead of us having a cake, the world will come to an end."

Oh, thanks,
Rrrrr
ebecca. Thanks a lot!

FIVE

But the next day, Saturday, we didn't have time to think about dire things like the world coming to an end.

It was summer vacation and we were too busy getting ready for our trip—to France!

"We need to pack," Annie announced.

"But the Mr. McG said we were supposed to laze in a hammock," Georgia objected, her face falling. She'd just dragged the hammock out.

"Too bad," Annie said. "You and Rebecca, get the suitcases out of the attic. Durinda and Jackie, dust the suitcases. Marcia and Zinnia, pack suitable clothes for all of us; we'll need fancy dresses for the wedding and something comfortable for the plane ... and don't forget the underwear! Petal, enjoy your morning under the bed."

Georgia crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at Annie. "And what will
you
be doing while we're doing all the work?"

"I'll be driving over to Pete's Repairs and Auto Wrecking," she said with a toss of the head. "I need to see if he's got those passports yet."

***

"We look like ... criminals," Durinda said, puzzled, when Annie returned an hour later with our brand-new fake passports.

Annie shrugged. "Pete says they always come out like that, even the legal ones."

"I look like I could
rrrrr
ob a bank," Rebecca said, pleased. "Maybe when I'm in F
rrrrr
ance, I'll
rrrrr
ob the
Rrrrr
ight Bank."

Rebecca had been reading up on France, but apparently she'd missed a page.

"Right Bank refers to a side of the river," Marcia pointed out. "So you can't get money there unless you
rrrrr
ob actual people." Then she realized what she'd just said. "Oh, blast! Now you've got me doing it!"

"Oh, look!" Zinnia said. "Pete's man who knows a man who knows a man, or whatever, also put little stamps in our passports so it looks as though we've traveled all over the world. I like the idea of being a world traveler!"

"I don't like my picture," Petal, who'd come out from under the bed long enough to see her passport, said. "I'm getting scared just looking at me."

"What about Pete's and Mrs. Pete's passports?" Jackie asked Annie. "Do they look like criminals in theirs too?"

"I don't know." Annie shrugged. "I didn't see theirs. Maybe they already had theirs and didn't need fake ones?"

***

But one thing Annie did decide we all needed before our trip was haircuts.

"Oh no!" Georgia cried. "You're not getting
me
in that...
insane
room!"

That insane room she was referring to was the Haircutting Room. It was one of Mommy's inventions. It used to be, before a new semester started at school, we'd all go to the Haircutting Room to get our hair trimmed in our favored styles. In the Haircutting Room, scissors flew around a person's head like crazy, snipping so fast and furiously that there was always the fear that one would lose an ear or get stabbed in the eye. Since our parents' disappearance, the only one brave enough to go in there regularly had been Annie, with the exception of Jackie, who'd gone as an April Fool's joke.

We missed our parents terribly, but one nice thing about their disappearance was that none of us had to go into that shudder-making room anymore unless she really wanted to.

But now...

"Just look at yourselves!" Annie shouted.

"What's wrong with the way we look?" seven Eights shouted back at her.

"Go look in the mirror," Annie said with a darkness worthy of Rebecca, "and you'll see what I mean."

We went. We looked. We saw.

"Yikes!" seven Eights shouted at our reflections. "How did
that
happen?"

Somehow, miraculously, even without benefit of the services of the Haircutting Room, we'd all managed to look exactly the same since New Year's Eve, except for Jackie, who'd changed her look voluntarily.

But now?

It was as though our hair had made up for lost time overnight. Each of us had hair that was five inches longer than it had been, except for Jackie, whose hair had only grown two and a half inches since April 1, and Annie, who had hers trimmed every month. Georgia's intensely wavy hair no longer grazed her shoulders but instead cascaded almost to the middle of her back,

while Zinnia's hair was so long it trailed behind her on the floor, like a weird bridal veil.

We looked so different. We looked nothing like ourselves.

"See what I mean?" Annie said. "It's as though overnight you've all turned into those dolls whose hair keeps coming out of their fake little heads when you tug on it."

"I don't like not looking like me." Petal's lower lip began to tremble. "It's as bad as seeing myself looking evil in that passport photo."

"I have to confess, I don't like it either," Marcia said. "My bangs are down to my chin. It's like looking at the world through a hair curtain."

"What do we do about this fresh horror?" Georgia said.

Almost immediately, she regretted her question. We all did. For, instead of answering, Annie simply jerked her thumb hard to the left.

Toward the Haircutting Room.

***

"Ouch!"

"Watch it!"

"Be ca
rrrrr
eful with those!"

"Cut hers next!"

"Cut me last!"

"Not me—remember, I was already in here once this month?"

"Ooh, I like that!"

"
I don't like thisssssssss!
"

And then it was done, another hurdle gotten over before our trip, and we were back to looking like ourselves again.

***

But there were yet more hurdles.

Sunday morning, Zinnia came up with a problem. A big problem.

A
feline
problem.

"We're leaving tomorrow, June sixteenth," she said to Annie, "the wedding is on the twenty-first, and the tickets you ordered say we're due to fly back on June twenty-third, so we'll be gone for seven days. What are we going to do with our eight furry friends while we're gone?"

"We left them here by themselves when we went on vacation with Mommy and Daddy last Christmas," Annie said. "That worked out okay."

"You call it okay," Durinda asked, "coming home to find kibble in every room and half the furniture knocked over?"

"They did trash the place," Marcia said.

"No," Rebecca corrected her, eyes gleaming. "They had a party."

"Whatever you want to call it," Zinnia said, "they do it because they get lonely without us. Also because they get offended that we would leave them for so long."

"So what do you want me to do about it?" Annie sighed.

"You could call Pete and ask him what to do," Jackie said helpfully.

"You like calling Pete, Annie," Georgia said. "It makes you feel important."

"And he likes being called," Petal said.

We trooped after Annie as she went to use the phone in Mommy's private study, the only one in the house with speakerphone.

"Pete's Repairs and Auto Wrecking," we heard Pete's happy voice say a minute later. "Pete speaking."

"Annie Huit," Annie said, adding our last name as though he might not know which Annie it was otherwise. "We don't know what to do about the cats."

"Can't you leave them with a relative?" he asked, then answered himself before anyone else had the chance to. "No, of course not. All your relatives are either missing or crazy or in France. How about leaving them home alone then?" Again he answered himself. "No, that won't work. I can do that with Old Felix because he's, well, old. But what works with my one old cat would never work with your eight powerful ones. They'd trash the place."

As well we knew.

"An animal hotel, then?" he suggested.

"I really and truly don't mean to be rude, Mr. Pete," Zinnia said, "but bite your tongue. Do you not realize how abandoned that would make them feel? It would be awful for them."

"Yes, yes, what was I thinking?" Pete sounded as though he felt terrible about what he'd said. Then he laughed. "Well, clearly I
wasn't
thinking." And now he sounded excited. "I know! Why don't we just take them on the plane?"

Cats on a plane?

Could our mechanic really be serious?

"But wouldn't we need special permission for that?" Annie said aloud what all of us were thinking. "Surely the airline must have rules..."