Annie's Adventures (4 page)

"But I could use a trim," Annie said of her own short hair.

We watched as she hopped into the cutting chair, put a smock on, and commanded the scissors, "Take a half inch off all around, please." The scissors flew around her head as Annie sat there bravely, unflinching.

"Voilà!" she said, tearing off the smock when the cutting was done.

Our mother always drove us to school, but that was impossible now. So Annie phoned the school's bus company. Imitating Daddy's voice again, she informed them that eight Huits would now be taking the bus.

The bus company must have objected to the short notice, because we heard Annie say, sounding rather regal, "What do you
mean
I should have called you earlier about this change? Do you have any idea how much money I pay each year to keep
eight
children in that school?"

The bus company must have found Annie's argument persuasive because we saw her smile. "Jolly good," she said and hung up.

Then Durinda helped us arrange our hair the way we liked it and made us all put on our uniforms, which were plaid, plaid, and more plaid, and which we hated (although we suspected one of us loved it).

We'd always loved having Mommy drive us to school in her big purple vehicle, which was a Hummer that she'd doctored to make it environmentally sound, but riding the bus was a revelation.

"This is ... fun," Zinnia said as we bounced along. "Who knew taking public transportation could be so ... bouncy! It's so much more than yellow!"

Our school was called the Whistle Stop, a name we'd always agreed was stupid. But supposedly the man who had founded the school had made his fortune in railroads, and he liked the name. The lower school building, where we attended classes, was called the Station House.

The Whistle Stop ran kindergarten through twelfth grade, and it was a private school. We were in third grade there because we were incredibly smart and had skipped a year right upon entry. This was a good thing for the other students in our class; without us, there would have been just two students in that grade. Apparently, there had been a year in which few children were born in our city, or at least few children whose parents wanted to send them to a private school stupidly named the Whistle Stop.

The other two students in our grade were Will Simms, a towheaded boy we liked very much because he was always willing to get up to all manner of adventure with us, and Mandy Stenko, who we really didn't like at all but who we tried to be nice to because without us she would have had nobody. Mandy was a true redhead who tried to personalize her uniform by wearing little smiley and rainbow buttons on the lapel of her yellow plaid blazer. We had the feeling she didn't like us either.

Our teacher was Mrs. McGillicuddy, who was a tall blonde with a long nose, on the bridge of which perched horn-rimmed glasses. The McG, as we called her amongst ourselves, was also not a fan of the Sisters Eight.

"There, there, Phyllis," we'd overheard Principal Freud say to her early in the school year, the McG's bun askew. "What do you expect me to do—hire another teacher full-time so that poor person can get stuck with the eight while you have to teach only the two left? I'm sorry, but it's just not in the budget."

"But you don't understand!" the McG had cried. "They're not human!"

At the time, we could tell that even Principal Freud thought this was a bit much. It wasn't like we had done anything to our new teacher, not yet, not really. Yes, there had been that one toad incident, and we could tell it bothered the McG whenever Marcia corrected her grammar. But you couldn't blame poor Jackie for the toad thing—it's practically expected of third-graders, isn't it?—and Marcia couldn't help it if she was really good at grammar or that the McG's own grammar was, well, lousy.

But here we were, back in school on the second day of January, and things were going great. Will was there (which was not always the case since he tended to get sick a lot); Mandy had yet to say anything mean; and the McG had yet to muddle her grammar, so Marcia had yet to correct her. It was a happy time.

And then that all changed.

The McG wanted to have that talk teachers always have the first day back at school: What Did You Do on Your Vacation?

That part went innocently enough.

"I was sick the first half," Will said, "but then I got better and I got to go ice-skating. That half was really great."

"
My
family went skiing on the Matterhorn," Mandy said. Then for good measure, just in case we had somehow missed the fact that she was living a higher life than the rest of us were, she fluffed her hair.

"We got snowbound in Utah," Durinda said.

"How awful," the McG said, adding, "for your parents."

Thankfully, the idea of being snowbound by a blizzard was exciting enough to the others that we didn't have to say anything else about our vacation, like, say, how our parents had gone
poof!

There was a lengthy pause. Then the McG said, "Isn't anyone going to ask
me
how
I
spent my time off?"

"Of course, Mrs. McGillicuddy," Petal said kindly. "We care."

"I rested," our teacher said. "I had a huge headache and I rested."

A headache?
For seventeen days?
Surely, she wasn't blaming
us
...

We were forced to endure a moment of silence in honor of the pain the McG had suffered. The bad part came when she broke the silence by saying, "Now, tell me, what did all you good children get for Christmas?"

"I got a new set of hockey skates and a stick," Will said.

"I got a walkie-talkie, binoculars, and a book on how to conduct covert surveillance," Mandy said with another hair fluff, "and a doll."

"And what did you get, Eights?" the McG prompted.

"We didn't get anything for Christmas," said Durinda.

"
Nothing?
" The McG was openly shocked. "But, surely, even you Eights couldn't have been so awful as to get
nothing.
"

"We weren't awful," Jackie piped up. "We were just Jewish."

"Excuse me?" the McG said.

"We're Jewish," Jackie said simply, lying with ease. "We don't celebrate Christmas because we're Jewish."

"I'm quite certain," the McG said, "you are not. I distinctly remember your parents singing carols louder than anybody at the holiday sing-along. And I remember all of
you
talking about the gifts you wanted."

"Oh," Annie said, covering for Jackie, "we only did that to make everyone feel better. We didn't want to make everyone else feel as if they had to do something special for us, like sing 'The Dreidel Song.'"

"No, but—" the McG started to say, but Will cut her off.

"Oh, but they are," Will said. He really was a miraculous boy. "They are very Jewish. I know. I've seen it for myself. I've been to their house."

"What are you talking about, William?" demanded the McG.

He
had
been to our house, many times, but we wondered too: what
was
he talking about?

"Their house." Will gave a slight nervous cough. "There are menorahs and, like, Stars of David ... everywhere! They even have those mezuzah thingies, and they all wear yarmulkes. You can barely move in the place for all of that stuff. Honestly, the Eights are more Jewish than a rabbi!"

"Shalom," Jackie said for good measure.

"Mazel tov," Petal said.

"Gesundheit," Rebecca said with a sneer.

The McG looked at Will, stunned.

We were stunned too. Why had Will, who was always so painfully honest, lied on our behalf?

"Why, Will?" Annie asked, when we all went to recess. "Why did you lie to the McG for us?"

"I dunno." Will shrugged, as though even he wasn't sure. "Maybe I did it because you looked like you needed saving right at that moment, like it was really important to you somehow." He shrugged again. "Maybe I just did it because you're the Eights."

We all fell in love with him a little bit at that moment.

***

The rest of the school day passed without major event, and we're sorry to say, the bus ride home was not as exciting as the earlier one. Apparently, the charms of mass transportation wear off quickly, even with the bounces.

When we got home, Petal and Zinnia raided the cabinets for cookies, while Georgia and Rebecca fought over what we should watch on TV.

The Summer Room, where we watched TV, was one of four seasonal rooms at the back of the house. The front room, decorated normally, was for your average visitor. But the four seasonal rooms were for us. Mommy had created the rooms because she wanted us always to be able to go to the season we most wanted to be in when we grew tired of the one we were living. Well, we certainly didn't need the Winter Room now.

"What do you think you're doing?" Annie shouted over the roar of all of us.

"Eating cookies and watching TV, of course," Marcia said simply, popping a whole cookie into her mouth.

"But that's not what we
do
right after school," Annie said sternly. "We always do our homework first, in order to make sure it gets done."

"But those are Mommy's and Daddy's rules," Georgia said, "and they're not here anymore."

"Yes," Rebecca said. "There has to be
some
advantages."

"Well, this isn't going to be one of them." Annie snapped off the set. "Durinda, make a healthy snack for the girls—I'm thinking apple slices and glasses of milk—while the rest of you get out your schoolbooks."

"You're worse than Mommy and Daddy," Georgia said. "At least they smile when they say those things."

"Can't we play in the snow first?" Zinnia asked. "It'll be dark soon, and the bus ride was so long."

"No," Annie said. "Work first. We can always turn on the outside lights if there's time to play outdoors afterward."

"Sheesh," Georgia said. Then: "Before I start my homework," she offered sweetly, "can I go get the mail for you? We forgot to pick it up. Maybe there are holiday cards waiting out there or even another important note telling us what to do about Mommy and Daddy."

"Thank you, Georgia," Annie said. "That would be lovely. It's nice to see you finally getting into the spirit of things."

We were all busy attacking our math homework, Annie at the head of the table supervising, when Georgia returned a few minutes later. She had a huge stack of mail in her hands.

Annie looked up from helping Zinnia. "Anything interesting?"

Georgia walked right up and dropped the envelopes on the table in front of her, one at a time.

"What's all this?" Annie asked.

"Bills, I believe they're called," Georgia said, with a smile that could almost be called evil.

"And what do you expect me to do with them all?" Annie asked, looking overwhelmed.

"I expect you to find a way to pay them, of course," Georgia said. "You did want to be in charge of everything, didn't you?"

And that's when Annie started to scream.

CHAPTER FOUR

"I can't do it!" Annie ran from the room. "I can't do it!" Her voice echoed back as she raced through the house, away from us.