Zinnia's Zaniness (5 page)

The man studied Zinnia with new interest. "Could you talk to my cat?" the man asked. "Orange hasn't been eating lately and I'm worried she might be sick."

Orange. Seven of us laughed. What a silly name for a cat.

"I can try," Zinnia said, ignoring us. "But you mustn't expect too much. If Orange is just meeting me, she might be shy about confessing her deepest, darkest secrets."

The man brought out Orange, who was black, which we agreed made absolutely no sense at all, and set her on the registration desk.

"Can you give me a boost up, Mr. Pete?" Zinnia asked.

Sometimes we forgot how small Zinnia was. In addition to each of us being born a minute apart, with Annie the oldest, each of us was an inch shorter than the previous sister, with Annie the tallest. This meant that Zinnia was a full seven inches shorter than Annie, making Zinnia very short indeed.

Pete did the boosting, and Zinnia and Orange commenced their Eight-to-cat conversation. There was a lot of Zinnia whispering in Orange's furry ear and then Orange doing something that looked like whispering in Zinnia's nonfurry ear.

Occasionally, like now, we were impressed with Zinnia. What a show she was capable of putting on! A person might almost believe she
could
talk with cats!

Of course, Rebecca would have us change that:
a crazy
person might almost believe that.

Zinnia wrapped up her end of the whispering and told Pete he could stop boosting her. Then she looked up at the man.

"Orange says she is sick," Zinnia said, hurrying to add, "but only in that she is sick of the brand of kibble you've been feeding her. Orange says she wishes you would buy Kitten Kaboodle, the brand with the picture of happy cats on the bag that they're always advertising during the late-late-late movie on channel three-twelve. Orange says the other cats on the boardwalk say it's the best, much better than that cheap Kibble Kan't you've been feeding her."

The man looked embarrassed. "I wasn't meaning to be cheap," he said. "I always thought the cats on the Kibble Kan't bags looked happy enough."

"Not as happy as the Kitten Kaboodle cats," Zinnia insisted. She turned to Jackie. "Jackie, could you run to the car and get the bag of kibble we brought to feed the cats?"

Jackie got the keys from Pete and took off running.

"Jackie's the fastest among us," Durinda explained to the man.

And Jackie proved it, returning very rapidly with the large bag of kibble.

"Do you see now?" Zinnia said to the man as she pointed to the cats on the bag.

The man saw. We all saw.

Zinnia was right: those were some
insanely
happy cats.

"Do you have Orange's kibble bowl handy?" Zinnia asked the man.

"Since she's so fast," the man said, "can I send—what was her name? Jackie?—to go fetch it?"

We just stared at him. How would Jackie know where he kept his cat's kibble bowl?

"I was kidding," he finally said. "Back in a tick."

It was more like a tick
and
a tock—he was no Jackie, after all—but soon he was back with the requested bowl into which Zinnia poured a large serving of Kitten Kaboodle.

Our eight cats plus Old Felix looked at Zinnia like she was crazy to give so much of the good stuff away.

"Don't worry," Zinnia assured them. "There's plenty for everybody."

Orange devoured the Kitten Kaboodle so fast, she was licking her chops in no time.

"As you can see," Zinnia told the man, "Orange is
not
sick."

"She just didn't like the lousy cheap food you were giving her," Georgia added.

"Now that Zinnia has solved your cat problem," Mrs. Pete said, "do you think you might be able to find rooms for us?"

We laughed at the idea of Zinnia solving the man's cat problem. Of course Zinnia hadn't had a conversation with Orange. That whole thing with Kitten Kaboodle was just a lucky guess!

Some of us were getting tired, however. So if Zinnia's lucky guess could get us a room, or three, or four...

But the man just laughed in our faces again.

How offensive! And after what Zinnia had done for him. Still, as we watched Rebecca, who'd grown bored and was now playing one-person catch in the tiny lobby using Petal as a human ball, we couldn't say that we blamed him. We were a lot to handle.

But something in our expressions as we turned away from the desk must have caused him to take pity on us.

"Wait," he said. "You still can't stay here, and I can't think of any self-respecting establishment that would have you. But there's a house you might be able to rent for the week."

"A house, you say?" Pete's expression was happy again as we turned to face the man.

"We don't want a house," Georgia said. "We already live in one of those. This is vacation. We want to stay somewhere special."

Oh, Georgia.

"That's fine, that's fine," the man said hurriedly. "It's more of a cottage anyway, but there should be room for all of you. It's all the way at the end of the beach. Goes by the name of the Last-Ditch Cottage. I'm sure no one's using it this week. Almost no one ever does."

"Is it haunted?" Petal asked fearfully.

We ignored Petal, but the man didn't.

"No," he said. Then he shrugged. "Last-Ditch just isn't what most people usually have in mind when they go on vacation."

"It sounds perfect for us, then," Pete said.

Poor Pete. He was finally getting the picture. We weren't "most people."

"Who do I talk to about renting it?" Pete asked.

"You mean right now?" the man asked.

"No, he means next year," Rebecca said. She tossed Petal again before adding in exasperation, "Of course he means now."

Rebecca was being rude, we thought, but she did have a point.

"Oh, it's much too late right now," the man said. "I know a man who knows the man who rents it. Come back in the morning and I'll have the key and the paperwork for you."

"And where do you suggest we sleep until morning?" Mrs. Pete wanted to know.

"I don't know." The man shrugged. "Maybe on the beach?"

***

Okay, so there were no rooms for us at the inns and maybe we were roughing it more than we were accustomed to, but it was rather cozy on the beach at night, nestled into the sand dunes, with what seemed like a million stars twinkling overhead.

"I hope it doesn't rain," Petal said.

"There's not a cloud in the sky," Pete said.

"I hope we don't get hit by a tidal wave," Petal said.

"I'm sure they don't have those here," Mrs. Pete said.

"Oh, look!" Jackie said. "A shooting star!"

We all looked. How dazzling!

"Quick, make wishes, girls," Mrs. Pete said. "That's what you do when you see a shooting star."

We were grateful she was there to tell us that. We'd never seen a shooting star before and so we didn't know what to do with one, other than be dazzled by it.

"I wish we had that box with us now," Annie said. "Too bad we left it in the car."

"I wish for real French potatoes so that someday I can make real French fries," Durinda said.

"I wish for a bed," Georgia said, "because this sand is lumpy."

"I wish for Georgia to stop complaining," Jackie said, "and to just be happy with wherever she is at the moment, for her sake, not ours."

"I wish for even greater math skills than I already possess," Marcia said.

"I wish to not be scared of everything," Petal said, "and not to die."

"I wish I had a can of pink frosting," Rebecca said.

"I wish it were September already," Zinnia said, "because even though that would mean that my month was over with, my moment in the spotlight history, maybe somehow Mommy and Daddy would be back with us again."

We were all silent for a minute, thinking how much better Zinnia's wish was than any of ours.

Then:

"Oh no! Not a shooting star!" Petal shrieked. "You mean the sky is shooting at us?"

Then she buried her head in the sand.

"Maybe we should just do our Waltons routine and then go to sleep?" Annie suggested with a weary sigh.

Our Waltons routine was something we got from an old TV show. At the end of each episode, the members of the large family each randomly called out good nights to one another.

So that's what we did. We spent a half-hour saying our good nights and then we went to sleep.

FIVE

The next morning found us up bright and early. We grabbed a quick breakfast on the boardwalk before heading back to the Little Hotel.

"Just sign this paperwork," the man told Pete, "and then I can give you the key."

So Pete did, and the man did, and then we were back in the Hummer, driving all the way to the very end of the beach, where we saw...

"I see why it's called the Last-Ditch," Pete said.

"It looks more like a shack than a cottage," Georgia said.

"It's so dingy and gray," Marcia observed.

"It looks like a stiff wind could blow it over," Durinda said.

"Do you think that roof is safe?" Petal worried out loud.

For once we didn't feel that Petal was off base in being worried. That roof looked like someone had put it on with a cheap stapler.

"I'm sure this will be fine," Pete said as we approached the door, which was at an angle on its hinges.

"Huh," he said as we stepped onto the creaky porch. "It looks like there's a folded piece of paper taped to the door."

"I don't know why there should be a piece of paper there," Annie said. "Didn't you already sign all the paperwork on this place back at the Little Hotel?"

Pete didn't answer. Instead, he untaped the piece of paper and unfolded it.

"Huh," he said again, then he handed the paper to Zinnia. "It's for you."

Zinnia read the note out loud.

Dear Zinnia,

Have I said it yet today? Congratulations on your doozy of a power!

"I can't believe this," Jackie said. "No matter where we are—at home, on a plane over the ocean, here—somehow the note leaver finds us!"

"What I can't believe," Marcia said, grabbing the note from Zinnia's hand and crumpling it into a ball, "is how unreliable the note leaver has become. First the note leaver had no knowledge of Rebecca's superhuman strength, and now the note leaver keeps talking about Zinnia's power when clearly she has none. It's just too much."

"Hey!" Zinnia yelled. "That note was my property!"

All of a sudden, something flew over our heads.

"Hey!" Durinda said. "A carrier pigeon!"

Carrier pigeons often delivered notes to us when we were at home, but it had been quite some time since we'd seen one and we'd certainly never seen one when we
weren't
at home.

Usually when carrier pigeons visited us at home, they went straight to Durinda. Well, perhaps it was because she was almost always the one to open the window and let them inside. But not this time. This time, the carrier pigeon went to Zinnia, landing on her shoulder.

Zinnia turned her head a bit so that she and the carrier pigeon were eye to eye.

"Hello," Zinnia said out loud.

This was odd; usually when Zinnia pretended she could talk to one of our cats, she did so in a whisper.

The carrier pigeon made some sort of noise.

"That's funny," Marcia said. "I didn't think carrier pigeons could talk."

"That's because they can't," Georgia said.

"Better watch it," Rebecca warned Marcia, "or Georgia will start calling you 'you little idiot' too."

"Do you have a name?" Zinnia asked the pigeon.

The pigeon made another sound.

"Did it say Caw?" Annie asked.

"Or was that Kaw?" Jackie suggested.

"Call," Zinnia said. "I see. C'mon, Call, let's go in the cottage."

"Are you going to let her keep that?" Rebecca asked Pete.

"I don't see why not." Pete shrugged. "Besides, we have bigger things to worry about right now, like unpacking all our gear from the car and then getting settled in our new surroundings."

"
New
surroundings," Georgia scoffed softly as we followed Zinnia over the threshold. "More like
old and shabby
surroundings."