Zinnia's Zaniness (7 page)

"Don't you see the urgency of the situation?" Annie said, appealing to Pete.

Apparently Annie thought she could drag an adult along for the ride in her madness. But Pete refused to be dragged.

"Sorry, pet," Pete said, "but I'm afraid I have to side with the revolters."

"But—" Annie started to protest, but Pete held up a hand, cutting her off. Some of us thought she was about to say that
revolters
wasn't a real word. It was, though. Some of us were very good with the vocabulary sections each summer.

"No buts," Pete said. "We came here to have a proper vacation, and a proper vacation we shall have. Now then." He clapped his hands. "All of you into your bathing suits."

Annie hung her head. Even Annie knew that you could appeal to an adult but you couldn't overrule one, not if the adult was Pete.

"Oh, don't look so glum, Annie," Pete said. "I promise, after we have a day of fun at the beach and a nice dinner and then perhaps some more fun, if you want to make your sisters do sixteen point seven six six and so on pages of
Summer Workbook
before retiring for the night, you just go for it."

SEVEN

We were all ready for the beach. We were standing on the deck and we had our bathing suits on, some of us in one-piece suits, some in bikinis. Well, Pete wasn't wearing a one-piece or a bikini. But he did have an inner tube in the shape of a sea serpent wrapped around his waist.

"I'm not much on swimming as such," Pete said when we looked pointedly at his serpent. "I prefer to just bob in the water."

We decided not to comment on the fact that Pete was wearing his work boots.

In addition to our bathing suits, we wore sunscreen, and we were carrying our towels. We also carried five beach umbrellas: Annie and Durinda had one, Georgia and Rebecca another, Jackie and Marcia a third, the Petes a fourth, and Zinnia struggled with one on her own, which was not easy to do with Call on one shoulder.

Poor Zinnia was struggling because one of us had yet to show up.

"Petal," Pete called into the house, "I'd hate to do anything to upset you, and I certainly wouldn't want to do anything to cause you to faint right now, but just what is taking you so long?"

We waited. And waited. And waited.

At last, at
long
last, Petal appeared.

Well, we assumed it was Petal inside and under all of that, but it was just an assumption.

"Petal?" Pete asked. "Is that you in there? And if so, what
are
you wearing?"

"I have on SPF one hundred plus zinc oxide on my nose," Petal said. "I have a floppy hat on my head, but I've also put sunscreen on the part in my hair and all around my ears, just in case. I am wearing a bathing suit from the early part of the nineteen hundreds, for modesty's sake; a towel wrapped around that; and a full-length terry-cloth robe over that. On my feet I have flip-flops, but I put my bunny slippers over those because the flip-flops don't give enough coverage. Oh, and I have on big dark sunglasses with the strongest UVF protection available."

"I have only one question," Pete said. "Why?"

"Because I don't want to burn, do I," Petal said. "You're not going to catch me exposing an inch of skin to the Seaside sun—not one inch! The Seaside sun, as everyone knows, is a very dangerous thing."

"You look like a mummy," Georgia said. "And your cat—poor Precious. Can Precious really breathe all wrapped up like that?"

"I knew it," Rebecca said. "I knew it!" She groaned. "This is going to be yet another of those vacations where everyone who sees us thinks we're all out of our tiny little minds, isn't it?"

***

We settled ourselves on towels under our respective beach umbrellas, all except for Zinnia, who sat up and talked to Call.

Well, of course she did.

"Are there really eight Other Eights," Zinnia asked Call, "and where are they from?"

We had no idea why Zinnia would assume that Call knew a thing about the Other Eights. More crazy talk as far as we were concerned.

"Are they from Pittsburgh?" Zinnia persisted. "Vietnam? Spain? I'm almost certain they can't be from France. If they were, they'd have been at the wedding of Aunt Martha and Uncle George."

"Ask Call if they're from England, like Annie's faux-Daddy accent," Rebecca suggested.

"Ha! Ha!" Georgia said.

"You shouldn't mock Zinnia like that," Jackie said. "She can't help being the way she is. It's just too much for one person: all of the stress of being the only Eight to have to get her power and gift in the same month we all have our eighth birthday and after which we're supposed to discover how Mommy and Daddy disappeared."

"Or died," Rebecca put in.

"It's just too much stress for one Eight," Jackie stressed again, ignoring Rebecca. "No wonder Zinnia feels the need to acquire pigeon pets and pretend she can talk to those same pigeon pets."

"I heard that, Jackie," Zinnia said. Shockingly, her voice lacked a tone of offense as she added, "And it's not a pigeon pet. I keep telling you, it's a pigeon friend."

"I'm sorry," Jackie said.

"That's okay," Zinnia said.

"Why be sorry?" Georgia said. "And why is it okay? All any of this is is more crazy talk!"

"Has anyone else noticed," Jackie said, "that whenever we're all together, which is pretty much every minute of our waking lives, all we do is make fun of one another?"

"Oh, come on, Jackie," Durinda said. "We do support each other sometimes. It's not that bad."

Jackie thought about this for a moment.

"Yes," she finally said. "I really do think it is that bad." Then she grew excited. "I know!" she said. "I propose we spend a half an hour—no, a full hour—during which all we say is kind things about one another. Anyone else game?"

We didn't know if we were game, not exactly. But those waves in the ocean looked very choppy. So, sure. We were willing to play along.

"Okay," Jackie said excitedly, "who's ready to go first?"

Well, when she put it like
that
...

"Fine," Jackie said when it was clear no one was going to volunteer, "I'll go first. And I'll say that ... let's see ... that Georgia's naturally curly hair is most attractive on her. And further, when Georgia puts her mind to it, she can be quite sweet."

"Thanks, Jackie," Georgia said, "although it did sound as though you had to reach for that last part. Looks as though we're playing upward, meaning we're supposed to say something nice about the Eight in birth order ahead of us. That should be easy. Durinda makes a mean chocolate chip pancake. Phew, I'm glad that's over. It's not so easy being nice for an extended period of time."

"I may not always agree with Annie's tactics," Durinda contributed, "but I respect the fact that since New Year's Eve she's run this family pretty much as well as any adult could."

"Zinnia is sweet," Annie said, "probably the sweetest Eight we've got, but I do worry about this thinking-she-can-talk-to-cats-and-birds thing. That can't be healthy."

Zinnia was kind enough to ignore that last part, merely saying, "Rebecca is not nearly as nasty as she pretends to be."

Whenever one of us was called upon to say something nice about Rebecca, this not-nearly-as-nasty-as-she-pretends-to-be thing was pretty much all we could come up with. We didn't say it because we knew it was true; it was more because we hoped it might be.

"Great," Rebecca said. "That's just great. How am I supposed to follow that high praise?" She turned to Petal in her mummy costume. "I'm sorry!" Rebecca cried at last. "But I just can't do it! How can you expect me to say something positive about
that?
"

We looked where she was looking, at Petal. We kind of did understand what Rebecca meant.

"Fine," Petal said, rising to her feet as best she could in her mummy costume. "If no one can think of anything nice to say about me, I'll take myself off for a bit. I'll ... I'll ... I'll go for a walk."

And off Petal walked, as best she could.

"Well, that's just great," Jackie said, looking dejected as Petal trudged away in her bunny slippers through the sand. "We couldn't get through one whole round of the family being nice to one another without one of us saying something insulting, never mind lasting a whole hour. How long did we last, a whole five minutes?"

"Maybe it was six," Zinnia said optimistically.

"Actually, I'm fairly certain it was five minutes and twenty-seven seconds," Marcia said, apparently consulting some internal clock that was extremely precise. Then she frowned. "Or was that twenty-eight seconds?"

"We're sorry, Jackie," Durinda said. "And here, no one even got the chance to say anything nice about you."

"Or me," Marcia added.

"I don't care," Jackie said, and we could tell she didn't. Jackie was just like that. "But look at Petal."

We looked. There went Petal, trudging farther and farther away from us in her bunny slippers. Why, she was so far away, she practically looked like a normal person.

"Back home," Jackie went on, "Petal sometimes asks for an escort just to go to the bathroom—and it's our bathroom in our house! And now here she is going off by herself without any family protection. Where
can
she be going?"

***

A half-hour later, or what seemed like a half-hour, Petal trudged back, breathless.

"Petal," Jackie said, "what's wrong?"

"Someone was following me," Petal said, still trying to catch her breath.

"Following you?" seven Eights plus the Petes cried in concern. "But who? Why?"

"If I knew that," Petal said, "I would tell you. All I know is, every time I took a step, the shadow behind me took a step too." Petal paused and then burst out with "I have a stalker!"

Oh, Petal.

"Oh, Petal," even Jackie felt forced to say. "Of course you don't have a stalker. You must be seeing your own shadow. Why, look how low the sun is in the sky."

Petal looked, stopped, wondered.

"There's the positive thing I have to say about Petal," Rebecca said. "Petal's so scared of everything, she's scared of her own shadow. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think it's kind of
cute!
"

And so ended the first full day of our vacation, August 3. Well, we did have a bonfire on the beach, over which we cooked fish dogs and toasted marshmallows—Pete found a Seaside store where he could do a Big Shop—and Petal worried that the bonfire would kill us all, and then we went back to our rooms and did 16.766 pages of various parts of the workbook, just to please Annie and because we liked to skip around in
Summer Workbook,
and then we went to sleep.

But really, we would think later, the day might just as well have ended when Rebecca insulted Petal by assuming that Petal was merely scared of her own shadow.

EIGHT

It was the next morning, August 4.

"I'm hungry!" Annie announced.

"I'm hungry!" Georgia announced.

"I'm hungry!" Jackie announced.

"I'm hungry!" Marcia announced.

"I'm hungry!" Petal announced.

"I'm hungry!" Rebecca announced.

"I'm hungry!" Zinnia announced.