Zinnia's Zaniness (10 page)

But we needn't have bothered.

"Thirty-three point five three two," Marcia answered promptly. Then she turned to us with an apologetic shrug. "Sorry," she said. "I just can't help myself."

Annie ignored the last part of what Marcia said, responding only to the part that mattered to her.

"That's right," Annie said. "So if we're going to get thirty-three point five three two pages done today, we really do need to—"

"Excuse me," Jackie said, cutting Annie off, which was a brave thing to do. Almost no one cut off Annie. "I don't mean to offend you, Annie, but we've all been wondering: Why are you the way you are?"

It was true. We had been wondering. Not only had we been wondering, but just that morning we'd been discussing it among ourselves while Annie was in the bathroom. At the end of the discussion, we'd nominated Jackie to talk to Annie about it. Okay, we begged Jackie to, because the rest of us were too scared to take Annie on about anything in general and this in particular.

"Excuse me?" Annie said now, sternly.

"It's just that," Jackie said gently, "we do remember what you were like before Mommy and Daddy disappeared. True, you've always been the oldest. And, being the oldest, you did tend to be bossy when compared to, say, Petal. But not like this. Not this constant need to be in charge of every little thing. Not this constant need to control everything we do and make sure everyone does your bidding. I hate to say it, but at times it makes it difficult to like you. We always love you, but this morning you are making liking you very hard. We just want to have a good vacation. Don't you want to have a good vacation too?"

As Jackie spoke, we watched Annie's face change from stern to confused and finally to sad. Even the least observant of us marked these changes. And then that made us sad, not just for Annie but also for Jackie, who we knew never liked to be the cause of sadness in anyone else.

Oh no. Was that a tear in Annie's eye?

"Do you have any idea," Annie said, her voice quavering, "how hard these past seven months and five days have been on me? I knew
someone
had to take charge of leading the family in Mommy's and Daddy's absence, or we'd all get split up. We'd lose each other. I did it because I felt I had to, so our lives wouldn't turn to chaos and ruin. But do you honestly think I enjoy being thought of as the bossy Eight?"

"Yes," Rebecca said, "I do think that."

"That's not helpful," Jackie told Rebecca as she put her arm around Annie.

"You're right," Rebecca said. "I don't honestly think she enjoys being thought of as the bossy Eight. But I do think she enjoys being bossy. A lot."

"That's not helpful either," Jackie said.

"No, no," Annie said, sounding so very sad. "Rebecca's right. Perhaps I have enjoyed it too much, you know, being bossy."

Oh, we hated seeing Annie like this. Seeing Annie looking sad and broken was far worse than having her order us around. We were almost certain that, despite the nasty things she said, even Rebecca felt this way.

After Annie's tears and all that she'd said, we felt we understood her a little better. True, there was some choice in her behavior toward us, but mostly it just had to do with her being her. Why, Annie couldn't stop herself from acting as though she were in charge of everything any more than Marcia could stop herself from blurting out the answer to 2 times 16.766. It was just her nature.

Suddenly, we felt we
had
to do something to make Annie feel good.

"You know, Annie," Zinnia said, "I really do feel like doing
Summer Workbook
."

"If you dry your tears," Petal promised, "I'll get out my
Summer Workbook
right now."'

"I know we only just had breakfast a short time ago," Durinda offered, "but I could make us all a snack for extra brainpower while we work."

"I'll go get the pencils," Georgia offered.

"This is great," Marcia said when we all had our pencils and workbooks in front of us. "I
love
doing
Summer Workbook!
"

"There's no need to lay it on quite that thick, Marcia," Rebecca said.

"What are you talking about?" Marcia said. "I
do
love doing
Summer Workbook.
." Marcia gave a happy sigh. "I just love learning things."'

"Could someone look at my forehead?" Petal said. "I feel as though my brain is expanding already and I am worried it might be beginning to bulge."'

Oh, Petal.

Jackie studied the proffered forehead kindly. "No worries," Jackie said. "It looks like your brain is probably still the same size."

Annie cleared her throat. "You do know," she said, "that I do love all of you and that's partly why I am the way I am, right?"

Yeah. We did know that.

Just then there came a rumble of thunder followed by a downpour of rain, sheets of it.

"That roof never did look sound," Pete said. "I'll go find some buckets to catch the water that's leaking through the ceiling."

While Pete did that, Petal grabbed one of Pete's work boots and placed it under the biggest leak. "Stinky but effective," she pronounced.

It was a good thing, we thought as lightning crackled through the sky, that we hadn't left for the beach.

And it was a good thing, we thought as it continued to rain throughout the day, that we had something with which to keep ourselves occupied inside.

***

It is funny how summer can affect a person's brain. You go through the school year, learning all sorts of things, and then summer comes and you think:
Well, that's enough of that for now. Yippee!

But doing
Summer Workbook
that day as a summer storm raged outside reminded us of all we'd been missing, the excitement of learning about new things a person hadn't even dreamed existed.

By the time Zinnia lifted her head up, we'd long passed the combined quota for that day and the day before, and none of us had complained about all the work we were doing, not once, not even Rebecca. Perhaps we hadn't complained because we were too busy having fun seeing how much we did know and how much we could know.

"What's this?" Zinnia asked, her finger marking a spot on the page.

We all gathered round Zinnia and saw that she was working in the Mathematics section.

"It's an infinity symbol," Annie said.

"Yes, I know that," Zinnia said. "I can read the caption under the diagram as well as you can, but I still don't understand what it means or what it does."

"Sorry, I haven't gotten to that page in Mathematics yet," Annie said. "I've been working mostly in other sections. Marcia?"

But it turned out Marcia hadn't gotten to that page in Mathematics yet because she'd been too busy focusing on getting through Language Arts all in one go. None of the rest of us had gotten to that page either.

So we did the sensible thing.

We read what the page had to say about infinity, some of us reading more quickly than others. We waited for those others to finish.

"If I understand correctly," Jackie said, "
infinity
is a word meaning an unlimited extent of time, space, or quantity. So that symbol in relation to numbers is like saying that the number in question is endless. If you could live forever and count forever during that forever life, the number would still be going on."

"Huh," Zinnia said. "It's still a bit confusing, but somewhat less so than before."

Zinnia tilted her head to one side, studying the symbol on the page from a new angle. "Huh," she said again. "When you look at it this way, the infinity symbol looks a bit like an eight lying down."

Seven more heads tilted, plus the heads of the Petes, who'd come in just then to check on us.

We saw that Zinnia was right. An infinity symbol did look like an eight lying down.

"I wonder," Zinnia said, "if we could make our own infinity symbol."

"Could you show us what you have in mind, Zinnia?" Annie said somewhat formally.

How odd for Annie to speak to one of us like that, we thought. And then we realized what Annie was doing: she was trying to let one of us be in charge of something for a change.

"Let's clear a big space in the middle of the floor," Zinnia suggested.

We did that.

"Now let's arrange ourselves," Zinnia said, "like we're one big eight."

"Do you want us to be an infinity symbol or one big eight?" Jackie asked.

Zinnia shrugged. "Both," she said.

"I'm not seeing this," Rebecca said.

We ignored Rebecca although we couldn't see it yet either.

"Annie," Zinnia directed, "lie down on your side and curve your body a little to form one curved end of the eight. Durinda, you hold on to Annie's ankles and curve your hands just slightly. Georgia, you hold on to Durinda's ankles so you can be the line in the center. Jackie, you hold on to Georgia's ankles to continue the line, but curve your legs a bit. Marcia, you grab on to Jackie's curved legs and curve your whole body like Annie's doing to form the other curved end of the eight. Petal, you grab on to Marcia's curved ankles and curve your hands slightly. Rebecca, you hold on to Petal's ankles so you can be the other line in the center, crossing Georgia's line. And now I'll hold on to Rebecca's ankles, and then Annie can grab on to mine when I curve them slightly, like so. There!"

Well, now that we were all in position...

"Do you see now?" Zinnia asked excitedly.

"How can I see anything," Rebecca said, "other than Petal's stinky feet. Petal, did you wash these today?"

"Well..." Petal said.

The Petes came over and studied the shape we were in on the floor.

"You know," Pete said after a long moment, "I can see it. The eight of you have joined together to form a single eight."

"But if I look at you this way," Mrs. Pete said, tilting her head, "you look like an eight lying down, or an infinity symbol."

"
That's
what I was getting at!" Zinnia said triumphantly.

"Since a few people finally get it," Georgia said, "can we stop doing this now?"

Not waiting for Zinnia's answer, we pulled apart from one another.

"I'm not being critical," Annie said, "but I am curious, Zinnia: what was that about?"

"I don't know." Zinnia shrugged. "Impulse?" she asked as much as answered. "I just suddenly felt as though we should do it, see if we
could
do it. In our world, you never know what might come in handy one day."

ELEVEN

Being able to turn our eight bodies into one infinity symbol may have felt like a potentially handy thing to know on August 5, but nothing could save us the next day, not when we woke up and realized...

It was August 6! Our eighth birthday was just
two days away,
and none of us had done a bit of shopping yet!

"Oh no!" Annie said, being the one to say "Oh no!" for once. Then she proceeded to explain the situation to the Petes.

"With our parents being ... not around," she concluded after a fair bit of talking, "we'll have no presents for our birthday in two days."

"Of course you'll have presents, pet," Pete said gently.

"We will?" Annie said, shocked.

"Of course you will," Mrs. Pete said. "We have presents for you."

Oh, the Petes were good people.

But...

"That truly is wonderful," Annie said, "and we are not ungrateful, but we usually get things for each other as well."

"I don't see why you can't still do that," Pete said. "How do you propose we go about it?"

"Well," Annie said, "the way it usually works is Durinda, Georgia, Jackie, Marcia, Petal, Rebecca, and I go shopping for Zinnia. We go with Mommy while Zinnia stays home with Daddy. Then when we're done with that, Georgia, Jackie, Marcia—"

"I think I see the pattern already," Pete said. "What you're saying is that you go on eight separate shopping trips to get eight separate presents for each other, seven of you going off with your mother while that particular present recipient stays at home with your father."

We were grateful for Pete's quick grasp of the situation, for his immediate understanding of how we did things in our family. If he hadn't understood so fast, we would have waited while Annie listed the eight different casts of characters for the eight separate shopping trips.

We were also grateful, for once, for Annie's ability to take charge of a situation and explain what was required.

"Sure, we can do that," Pete said. "The seven shoppers on each trip will go with Mrs. Pete while I stay here with the particular present recipient."

We did find it odd that he referred to his own wife as Mrs. Pete, but in the face of his generosity we let it go.

"It does sound," Pete added, "as though such an involved shopping process could take all day."

***

As it turned out, Pete was right.

It
did
take all day, going on eight separate shopping excursions, selecting the perfect present for each particular present recipient, and then getting each present wrapped before returning with it to the cottage.