Annie's Adventures (2 page)

"I could be wrong," said Annie, "but I think it's a littie early to file a missing-persons report."

"But they should have been back at least fifteen minutes ago!" Zinnia said, clearly starting to panic. "More, if you consider the time we've spent talking since we realized it was twenty minutes since they disappeared!"

"Well," Annie corrected, "that's not technically true. We noticed—"

"
I
noticed," Marcia briefly cut in.

"—at the twenty-minute mark," Annie went on. "But that doesn't mean that's when they disappeared. It merely means that's when we noticed—"

"
I
noticed."

"—they weren't exactly here anymore."

"This is no time for petty squabbles about time," said Jackie. "What do you think we should
do?
"

"We should look for them, of course," Annie said. "There's no doubt some simple explanation, and when we find it, Georgia can go back to being bored and Zinnia can go back to worrying about presents."

"Okay," said Durinda. "Where should we start?"

"The kitchen?" Annie asked as much as answered.

This seemed sensible to us, mostly because going to look in the kitchen was a lot less scary than going out into the dark night to look for Daddy in the woodshed.

So we rose as one. Even though it seemed a safe thing to do—go to the kitchen to look for our parents—we walked with caution, as if we might find an ax murderer there. In fact, before leaving the drawing room entirely, Annie grabbed the silver spear from the suit of armor's grasp.

"Insurance," she whispered.

"Mommy!" we all called softly as we tiptoed. "Daddy!" we called, in case he'd snuck in the back door.

In the kitchen, where we all ate breakfast together in the mornings before school, there was the usual boring kitchen stuff. There were the sharp knives, all still thankfully in their blocks; we checked. There was the tile floor that was so much fun to skate across, and the big picture window that looked out over the hill. There was even the talking refrigerator Mommy had invented. But there was no Mommy, no Daddy.

Immediately, Annie crossed to the fridge. She opened the door slowly.

"Fully stocked larder," the talking refrigerator said. "No need to shop." The refrigerator was always saying things that didn't matter to us, since we didn't have to do the shopping. It was always encouraging us to eat more too. The refrigerator thought we were too skinny.

We ignored the talking refrigerator as Annie pulled out a half-gallon carton and held it up for all to see. In big, cheery red and green letters, the carton read
Eggnog
on the front.

"It hasn't even been opened," Annie said.

"Then where did Mommy go before?" Rebecca asked. "And where's Daddy? And what do we do now?" Fear had replaced her testiness.

"We search the rest of the house, of course," Annie said.

And so we did.

We moved through the house: the bedrooms, six bathrooms, closets, the tower room, the seasonal rooms—we won't talk about the seasonal rooms right now, but we did go through them. We even checked the basement, although Petal didn't want to on account of the spiders.

Still no parents.

Last, we checked Mommy's study, but only briefly poking our heads in. It was a room we were normally forbidden to enter.

"What now, Sherlock?" Georgia addressed Annie.

"We check out the woodshed, of course," Annie said.

And, suddenly, fear was back for everybody.

It is one thing to look for your parents inside a house when you fully expect to find them somewhere, but it is quite another to venture outside when you are pretty sure both your parents have mysteriously disappeared.

Still, what else were we to do?

"I'll get everyone's coats," Durinda offered, "boots too."

"I'll get the knives," Jackie said, "for everyone."

"But aren't you supposed to be our pacifist?" Marcia observed.

"I've got my spear," Annie said, ignoring Marcia.

Outside, it was easy enough to follow in Daddy's footsteps; we were guided between the trees by the light from the moon. The footsteps went in one direction—toward the shed—with no return.

Carefully, we placed our booted steps in the holes he'd left in the snow.

"I'll go in first," Annie announced as we neared the woodshed. This was a very brave thing to do—also good timing, since none of the rest of us were feeling that brave right then. And, you know, she had the spear.

Annie threw the door open hard, like a cop on a TV program who's about to make a bust. It was such a bold move. We were proud of her.

Bravery, boldness—all for nothing. Daddy wasn't in the woodshed any more than Mommy had been in the kitchen. Wherever our parents were, wherever they had disappeared to at approximately ten o'clock in the night on New Year's Eve, they weren't in the woodshed.

Back to the house we trudged, through our father's steps, cold and dejected now. Worried too.

We removed our coats and boots and laid down our weapons. Except for Annie. She was enjoying holding that silver spear an awful lot.

"What do we do now?" Petal asked, rather petulantly we thought. "What's happened to Mommy and Daddy?"

"They've disappeared, obviously," Georgia said.

"Or else they're dead," Rebecca put in.

"Stop frightening Petal and Zinnia," Jackie said evenly.

"Well, aren't
you
frightened?" Georgia demanded.

Jackie tilted her head to one side and considered this. "Yes and no," she finally said. "I think we should have some eggnog and think."

"You get the eggnog," Annie instructed Durinda and Jackie, "while I stoke the fire." At that last, she removed a log shed hidden in her coat while we were all out at the woodshed. She'd taken it without us noticing—we were that worried about Mommy and Daddy—although we had noticed she looked rather larger. And we were thankful of course that she'd thought to bring the log. The fire was nearly dead.

Once we were all gathered back in the drawing room, the fire nicely stoked, our eggnogs finally in hand, it was time to worry again.

"What do you think happened to them?" Petal asked.

"Maybe it's all a surprise," Zinnia said excitedly. "Maybe all this time they've been getting our presents, arranging them on a flying sleigh or something, and any moment now they're going to land on the roof, and—"

"I think they've just disappeared," Georgia said flatly.

"Or else they're dead," Rebecca put in.

"I wish you would all stop—" Jackie started to say, but she never got a chance to finish because right then Marcia screamed.

"That stone on the wall!"

"What?" Durinda asked, concerned, acting just like Mommy would.

Marcia pointed. "That stone in the wall! It wasn't like that when we were in the room before! It's never been like that! It's sticking out!"

We all thought that Marcia had gone crazy from all the stress. But Durinda, still acting like Mommy, followed the direction of Marcia's finger to the offending stone. Where Durinda looked, we all looked, and that's when we saw: one of the stones
had
been disturbed!

Annie made her cautious way over to it, spear in hand. We all followed close behind her. We may have been scared but we were curious too.

Annie pried the stone the rest of the way out, revealing a secret hiding spot none of us had known about before. And in the hiding spot was the note that would change our lives. You may have seen this note already—in fact, we're sure you have—but it was a pretty important event in our lives and we hope you won't mind if we reprint it here and now:

Dear Annie, Durinda, Georgia, Jackie, Marcia, Petal, Rebecca, and Zinnia,

This may come as rather a shock to you, but it appears you each possess a power and a gift. The powers you already have—— you merely don't know you have them yet. The gifts are from your parents, and these you must also discover for yourselves. In fact, you must each discover both your power and your gift in order to reveal what happened to your parents. Have you got all that?

The note was unsigned.

"See?" said Zinnia. "It says
gifts
. I
knew
there would be presents!"

"I don't think this means those kinds of gifts," Annie said.

"What do you make of this?" Durinda asked.

"It means Mommy and Daddy really have disappeared," Georgia said.

"Or else they're dead," Rebecca put in.

One tear swam out of Petal's left eye as another ran out of Zinnia's right eye, and Jackie put her arms around both.

Then eight sets of very similar brown eyes looked at one another, wondering what we should do next.

As the grandfather clock struck midnight, marking the New Year and turning us all over into 2008, Annie turned to Georgia and spoke.

"You said you were bored. Well"—she nodded—"I suppose we've all got plenty of excitement now."

CHAPTER TWO

"So what do we do now?" Georgia demanded.

"We feed the cats and go to bed," Annie said.

"Is that
all?
"

"Well, the cats do need to be fed."

There were eight cats living in the house, one for each of us: Anthrax, Dandruff, Greatorex, Jaguar, Minx, Precious, Rambunctious, and Zither. Each was gray and white, and it was always hard for anyone other than us to tell them apart. The cats could, of course, tell all of us apart too.

"But aren't we going to
do
anything?" Georgia insisted. "You know, about Mommy and Daddy disappearing?"

"The best thing we can do right now is take care of the cats and take care of ourselves. In the light of day, we'll see things more clearly."

And we'd have been able to see things a lot more clearly even then if the lights hadn't gone out right after we finished feeding the cats in the cat room. The cat room was like our drawing room, only for cats.

"Oh no!" Zinnia cried out. "Whatever bad person took Mommy and Daddy turned out the power—something awful is about to happen!"

"Now, now," Durinda soothed. "Annie," she directed, "call the electric company and find out what's going on. It's what Daddy would do."

So Annie stumbled her way back to the drawing room, where, with the light from the fire, she could still make out the phone.

Annie phoned Information and waited to be connected to the electric company. When we heard her speak, her voice was deeper than usual.

"Hello"—she cleared her throat—"this is Robert Huit at Eight-eight-eight Middle Way, and I was wondering if you could tell me: Is it just my power that's out, or is this a citywide problem?" She paused. "Ah, yes. Jolly good. Thanks so much. You chaps do great work." And she hung up.

"Well," Georgia said, "what's going on?"

"It started snowing again"—Annie was still speaking in her faux Daddy voice and had to make herself stop—"and they say there must have been too much ice on the lines somewhere and one of them came down. They should have it fixed by morning." She forced a smile. "I don't think we'll freeze by then if we put extra blankets on."

"Thank
God
," Petal said, "that this is affecting everyone and not just us. I was sure it was the work of the ax murderer."

"May I ask you a question?" Rebecca said to Annie.

"Of course."

"Why didn't you say you were Lucy Huit? It would have been easier to impersonate Mommy, I should think."

"Huh," Annie said. "I dunno. I guess I never thought to impersonate anyone other than Daddy."

"And what," Rebecca pressed, "was all that stuff about jolly good' and 'you chaps'? Daddy never talks that way! You made him sound
British!
"

"Well, but he could be British, couldn't he? I mean, the electric company doesn't know where we come from."

Rebecca harrumphed. She did not find the answer satisfying.

But we were all tired by then.

It is strange. You would think that enormous amounts of fear, the kind we'd been through, would have been enough to keep us awake for weeks. But human beings are funny things, and we Sisters Eight are nothing if not human. We yawned as a group for, in the end, fear had worn us out.