Zinnia's Zaniness (4 page)

"Oof!" Pete said, lifting the box off the ground. "This box is heavy. What have you got in here, old books?"

"Never mind that now," Annie said as Pete crammed that one last item into the Hummer. "We need to go say goodbye to Carl the talking refrigerator and robot Betty."

***

Clink, clink, clink.

The ice-cube dispenser was making rapid clinking noises, which in our house could mean only one thing: the talking refrigerator was crying.

"Stop crying, Carl," Durinda said. "We'll come back."

"Don't forget to eat proper meals while you're away from me," Carl the talking refrigerator said morosely.

Clink, clink.

"We won't," Durinda assured him, spreading her arms wide to give him a hug.

"Just because it's summer," Carl said, "doesn't mean you can eat ice cream all day long."

"We know that, Carl," Durinda said.

"But I
will
keep the ice cream at home perfectly chilled for your return," Carl said.

Clink.

"We know that too, Carl," Durinda said. "You always take such good care of us."

"Durinda," Rebecca said, "do you think you could stop hugging the talking refrigerator already so we could leave on our vacation?"

"Oops, sorry," Durinda said with a blush as she forced herself away from Carl. "I hadn't realized I was still doing that."

"Goodbye, Carl!" we all shouted as we headed for the door.

"Goodbye, Betty!" we all shouted as we passed her on our way out the door. "Take good care of Carl for us!"

The robot slammed the door behind us.

It was anyone's guess what the robot would do with us gone.

But at that moment, all we were thinking was
Yippee! Vacation time!

***

"One hundred boxes of juice on the wall, one hundred boxes of juice! You take one down, pass it around, ninety-nine boxes of juice on the wall!"

Big breath.

"Ninety-nine boxes of juice on the wall, ninety-nine bo—"

"Excuse me," Pete said, interrupting our singing, which we'd decided to take random turns at so that no one's voice gave out before the end of the song, "but why do you say 'boxes of juice'?"

"What else would we say?" Jackie asked.

"Well," Marcia said, "I believe in the original song, it's 'bottles of beer.'"

"We can't sing about bottles of beer," Petal said. "We're kids. We could get arrested for that."

"That's not what I meant," Pete said.

"Then why don't you say what you meant so that we'll all know?" Rebecca said.

Oh, Rebecca.

Near the end of July we'd grown hopeful about Rebecca. She'd seemed so much more mature, nicer even. But that hadn't lasted. That had been our experience with most people: they changed very little or, if they did change a lot, they soon went back to the way they'd been before the changing. Now Rebecca was pretty much back to being Rebecca, which meant awful. Oh, well. At least she wasn't using her superhuman strength to do any of us grievous bodily harm. We figured we would take what we could get.

"It's just that I happen to know that your favorite flavor of juice is mango," Pete said.

"I prefer just plain glasses of pulp," Rebecca said.

We ignored her.

"So I guess what I was wondering was," Pete said, "why don't you sing 'One hundred boxes of mango juice on the wall, one hundred,' and so on and so forth?"

"Who was doing the singing when we got interrupted?" Georgia said.

"I was," Durinda said. "I was doing ninety-nine."

"Please sing Mr. Pete's version," Annie said, "so he can see."

"Perhaps I'd better start at the beginning," Durinda said. "I seem to have forgotten where I left off."

"Just do it!" Rebecca shouted.

Do you see what we mean about Rebecca?

"Ninety-nine boxes of mango juice on the wall, ninety-nine boxes of mango juice! You take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight boxes of mango juice on the wall!"

"Do you see now, Mr. Pete?" Jackie asked gently.

"No," Pete said. "I see nothing except for the road in front of me. Oops! Train crossing!"

Whoa, that was close.

"Don't even bother, girls," Mrs. Pete said as the train finished crossing our path and we were safe to drive over the railroad tracks. "He's always been like this."

"I've always been like what?" Pete said, sounding offended.

"I hate to say it," Mrs. Pete said, "but you don't really have any rhythm."

"I'm afraid she's right, Mr. Pete," Marcia said. "The two syllables that the word
mango
adds throw off the entire rhythm of the song."

Pete hummed quietly to himself for a time before bursting out with "I do believe you're right—I've got no rhythm!"

***

"Fifty-three boxes of juice on the wall, fifty-three boxes of juice! You take one down, pass it around, fifty-two boxes of juice on the wall!"

"Nice singing, Zinnia," Annie said. "Who wants to go next?"

"How long have we been driving?" Petal asked.

Judging from the changes in the sky, at least a few hours had passed since we'd left home, but we didn't say that because Petal might worry we'd been driving so long our car would fall off the edge of the Earth.

We hate to admit it, but we were fairly certain there were moments Petal believed the Earth was flat.

"How long until we get there?" Petal asked.

We ignored this question too because we didn't know the answer. Who knew how long it would take us to get where we were going? We certainly hoped we didn't run out of song first.

"Fine," Petal said, and we realized that the realization that we were going to go on ignoring her questions must have sunk in. "I'll do fifty-two. I'm only glad those are boxes of juice and not bottles. With all of them practically falling off the wall like that, what if one fell on my head? I could get crushed! Although I suppose that one hundred boxes of juice, were they all to fall on my head at once, could kill me just as neatly as one well-placed bottle."

"The song isn't about falling objects!" Georgia said, exasperated. "It's just about taking drinkable items off the wall!"

"Well, but they could fall," Petal said, "and if they did, they could be deadly, so—"

"Never mind," Jackie said, cutting Petal off with a gentle pat on the arm. "I'll take fifty-two."

***

"Twenty-seven boxes of juice on the wall—"

"Oh, this drive is going by so quickly," Zinnia said with breathless wonder as the pretty world zipped past our window. "Whoever invented this song is a genius!"

***

"One box—"

"We're here!" Pete announced joyfully, pulling up at the Seaside.

"Hey!" Rebecca was outraged. "That was my turn you just cut off!"

We ignored her.

While ignoring Rebecca, we all piled out of the car to stretch our legs after the long trip. We'd left sometime in the morning and now it was nearly dark out: royal purple, midnight blue, and just a single sliver of gold streaking the sky.

How long had we been on the road?

How long had we been singing that song?

"I'll tell you one thing," Mrs. Pete said, "Zinnia's right. Whoever invented that song is a genius. Why, it kept us happily busy the whole trip!"

"Fine for you to say," Pete said. "You've got rhythm."

"Don't worry, Mr. Pete," Jackie said. "You've got plenty of other good qualities."

"Thanks, pet," Pete said.

"I wonder," Marcia said, "if that song is expandable."

We were too tired after all that time in the car to even ask her what she was talking about, and some of us were even too tired to mock her, so we simply stood there, waiting for her to get on with it.

"It took us right up to the last box of juice in the song to arrive at our destination," Marcia said. "But what if our trip had lasted twice as long? What if it had been half as short? Would that one song last us exactly the entire trip, no matter how long or short the trip might be?"

Even Pete, who was usually polite about Marcia's peculiar displays of her peculiar brand of intelligence, saw fit to ignore that.

"I'll just go see," Pete said, eyeing the long array of hotels, motels, and other touristy-looking places that lined the Seaside, "about getting lodging for us all for the night."

One place that would take all of us? He'd said something about this earlier. We hadn't commented at the time, and we certainly weren't about to comment now, except perhaps to say to ourselves, very quietly: "Oh, Mr. Pete. What can you possibly be thinking?"

One place fitting all? As if.

As if!

FOUR

"We'll leave all our things in the car while we go find a room," Pete said, "and then we'll come back for them."

Ah, a man with a plan.

"Don't you mean three rooms, Mr. Pete?" Marcia asked him.

"A fourth room for the cats would be nice," Zinnia added. "We don't mind being split up into four and four, but the cats rather prefer to stay all together."

All of us ignored Marcia and Zinnia, including Pete, who probably hadn't planned on springing for an extra room for the week just for the cats.

We set off walking along the boardwalk, looking for a place where we might like to stay. Other people were walking along the boardwalk too, whole families looking happy together. The night air was filled with the sounds of laughter and the smell of cotton candy, and it was all very exciting.

"'The Big Hotel.'" Pete read the large neon sign at the place where we'd stopped. "This looks promising, since we're such a big group."

We strolled into the lobby, which was very big indeed, and then strolled all the way up to the registration desk.

"Welcome to the Big Hotel," the man behind the desk said. "How may I help you?"

"Do you have any rooms available?" Pete asked.

"We do indeed," the man said. "How many will you need?"

"Three," Pete said.

"Four," Zinnia corrected him. "I thought we agreed about the cats."

"I really do think three will be sufficient," Pete said.

"Back up a minute," the man said. "Did you say
cats?
"

Before we could answer, the man stretched across the desk and looked down. He caught sight of eight girls and nine cats, and shock filled his eyes. How had he not noticed us before? we wondered. The man straightened up again.

"I'm sorry, sir," the man said abruptly to Pete, "but there's been a mistake. There are no rooms available here. Please try another hotel."

Pete looked surprised at this sudden turn of events. We suspected he was the only one who was. Not only did Mrs. Pete have all the rhythm, she also had more than her share of common sense.

"I see," Pete said to the man, even though, clearly, he didn't. "Where do you suggest I try?"

The man pointed his finger toward the door that would take us back out to the boardwalk and then hooked his finger to the left. "Try thataway," he said.

"Who says
thataway?
" Rebecca muttered as we headed toward the door. "Where does he think he is, in the middle of a Western?"

Back outside into the boardwalk-strolling throngs, we headed thataway, trying each hotel we came to, all with the same result.

"How about this?" Pete suggested. "The Medium Hotel."

"I wonder if the name refers to the hotel's size," Jackie said, "or that it specifically caters to people who think they can talk to the dead."

"I don't think I want to stay here," Petal said. "It sounds too scary."

We ignored Petal.

And the lady behind the registration desk ignored us when she saw how big a group we were.

"Huh," Pete said, confused as we exited yet another hotel. "I guess people around here don't need our business. You'd think any hotel would be happy to have us."

No, Mr. Pete,
we thought,
only
you
would think that.

The thing was, when our parents were still with us, we'd stayed at hotels from time to time, and we already knew what Pete was only just discovering: no one was ever
happy
to have us.

Back on the boardwalk, Pete looked left and right dejectedly. "Which way now?" he asked.

"How about thataway?" Rebecca said.

So we went thataway and we kept on going thataway until we came to...

"The Little Hotel," Pete said. "Look at this puny place, all rundown. Surely it could use our business."

Surely it could not.

The man behind the little registration desk didn't even wait for Pete to ask if there were any rooms available. He simply laughed in our faces.

"I take it the answer is no?" Pete said to the man, who just kept on laughing. "Is it because of the cats?" Pete persisted.

"That too," the man said, looking at us Eights and laughing some more.

Since when were we something to be laughed at? We must say, we were very offended.

"Maybe," Georgia said, "instead of trying places that cater to people who think they can talk to the dead or places that don't seem to want to make any money off us, we should look for a place that caters to people who think they can talk to cats. That way Zinnia could get us in."