Annie's Adventures (7 page)

"Oh." Pete turned away. "I guess I'd better come back another day."

"Oh, no. No, no, no," Annie said with a nervous laugh, reaching out to stop him. "Why waste another trip"—and here she picked up the check and waved it invitingly—"when Daddy left you a blank check right here?"

Pete had been made to see reason.

"Fine, then, Eights," he said. "Lead me to the beast that doesn't roar."

"What's he talking about?" Rebecca muttered.

"He means the car that won't start," Annie hissed at her.

We led Pete out to the cold garage and Mommy's purple Hummer.

"Ooh, here are the keys." Annie produced them. "Do you need them?"

"Usually," Pete said, accepting Annie's offering. "Thanks."

As Pete climbed into the driver's seat, Annie climbed into the passenger's side, indicating that the rest of us should climb in the back.

"Come on, um,
Eights
," she said. "If we all watch what Mr. Pete does, then later we can tell Daddy all about how brilliantly he fixed it."

As Pete proceeded to do something with the key, Annie proceeded to narrate for us. Loudly.

"Now Mr. Pete is putting the key in the starter thingy and turning it. At the same time, he's pressing his right foot down on the far right pedal."

The engine roared into life.

"Huh," Pete said. "It started right up. Nothing wrong with the ignition."

"No?" Annie said nervously. "I know. Why don't you ride it around the block a few times to make sure there's nothing else wrong. I'm sure Daddy never would have called you if there wasn't something wrong."

Before Pete could object to her line of reasoning, Annie pressed the garage-door opener.

"Drive," Annie commanded.

And drive Pete did.

"Mr. Pete is putting it in something called
R
," Annie narrated, "when he wants to go backward ... Now he's putting it in
D
and turning it around ... He's still in
D
as he starts to go faster ... He does a lot of spinning of the wheel and looking in various mirrors ... When Mr. Pete needs to stop, he hits the left pedal..."

After going once around the block, we arrived back in our driveway.

"Well, that all seems easy enough," Annie let out without meaning to.

Pete put the car back in the garage and turned the key again.

"To stop the car completely," Annie said, "Mr. Pete is putting it in
P,
then turning the starter off and taking the key—"

"Just what exactly is going on here?" Pete asked.

"How do you mean?" Annie asked, her eyes the picture of innocence.

"This car. There's nothing wrong with it." He may have had a poor fashion sense and smelled like rubbing lotion, but Pete wasn't stupid.

"Our father called you, didn't he?" Annie laughed brightly, nervously.

"Give him the check," Georgia muttered.

"Right," Annie said, still brightly, "the check. How much?"

"Nothing," Pete said.

"How is that possible?" Annie wondered.

"I can't charge you when I didn't do anything," Pete said simply.

"But you did something," Annie said. "You drove around the block!"

"Right," Pete said slowly. "But anyone could have done that. Your mother or father could have done that."

"Except," Rebecca said, "that our father is in the bathroom, very sick."

"Right, right," Pete said. "And your mother is in France." Pause. Then: "Can I speak with your father for a few minutes before I go?"

"Jackie," Annie directed, "go see if Daddy's free yet."

Jackie raised her eyebrows at Annie questioningly.

"
Now
," Annie ordered.

So Jackie scurried off. A moment later we heard the sound of a toilet flushing. Several times. And then Jackie was back with us. Alone.

"Sorry," she said to Pete, "but Daddy says he's in no condition to see you right now." Again the toilet flushed. How had Jackie done that? Had she rigged the toilet? Or got one of the cats to help? "He's still, er,
busy.
"

"It could be contagious," Petal added seriously. "We wouldn't want anything to happen to you, Mr. Pete."

He looked at all of us closely. It was like he knew something was up ... but had no idea what.

"If that's the way it's going to be," he finally said. Then he reached into his tattered jeans and fished out a wrinkled business card. It said
Pete's Repairs and Auto Wrecking
and had a phone number on it.

"Look," he said, handing the card to Annie, "if you ever need any help with anything—if, you know, your dad doesn't come back from the toilet or your mom never comes back from, um,
France—
give me a call, okay?"

"Oh ... sure," Annie said. "But that won't happen. Everything's just fine here. Well ... thanks!"

***

A few minutes later, we watched as Pete's van backed out of the driveway, and we all gave a collective sigh of relief.

"That was close," Durinda said. "He definitely suspected something."

"True," Marcia said. "We've discovered a chink in our armor. When we're out in the world, we can fake things okay enough, but if someone comes here—well, we don't do so hot. We act too nervous."

"I can't argue with that," Annie said, "but even though Pete suspects something's not quite perfect here, he doesn't really
know
anything. And besides..." Her voice trailed off.

"Yes?" Rebecca prompted.

"Something very valuable came out of the day," Annie said.

"And that is?" Rebecca prompted again.

Annie smiled. "Now we know how to drive a car." She paused and thought about it." "Well, sort of."

CHAPTER SIX

Annie stuck Pete's card to the fridge with a magnet, and it was as though it acted like a good angel, watching over our home. This peaceful state lasted all too briefly.

We awoke on Sunday to Annie ripping off our bedcovers and announcing, "Today we will go shopping!"

This caused a flurry of excitement. For the first time in more than two weeks we would be leaving our home to go somewhere other than school, and we would get there using something other than a bus or our feet.

"Where are we going to go?" we repeatedly asked while hurriedly brushing our teeth, putting on clothes, gulping our breakfast.

But Annie, drinking a cup of coffee—a new habit she had started that day and one that caused her to make funny faces—wouldn't say at first.

"The mall?" Rebecca guessed.

"Too common," Annie said.

"The great big drugstore where they also sell toys?" Zinnia guessed.

Annie looked down her nose so sharply, she might have been the McG. "Would
you
like to get your birthday present from a place where they sell toothbrushes and bad-tummy medicine?"

She made a good point.

"Where, then?" Jackie asked. "We could make Will something..."

"Don't be ridiculous," Annie said. "You know we'd never be able to agree on what to make. Petal would want to make him something like paper flowers, while Georgia would want to make him a miniature guillotine."

"But that could work," Marcia said, pouring Annie a second cup of joe. "Will would wind up with two presents instead of just one. And anyway, he could always dead-head the paper flowers with the guillotine."

"Perhaps," Annie conceded. "But I have something grander in mind."

We leaned forward breathlessly. "What?"

"The Grand Emporium of Children's Delights," Annie said.

We each let out a gasp.

The Grand Emporium of Children's Delights was one of the biggest toy stores in the world, rumored to have everything any child could want.

"We've never been there before!" Rebecca said.

"I've always wanted to go!" Zinnia squealed.

"Mommy always said that that sort of excess is bad for children," Marcia observed. Which was true, and which was why we had never been there.

"Well"—Annie winced at a gulp of coffee, then winked—"we're going now."

But first she said we had to help her get ready.

"If I'm to be the driver," Annie said, and none of us argued with her that she
shouldn't,
"then I'll need a disguise. We certainly don't want people all over town calling the police to inform them there's an eight-year-old driving a Hummer."

We didn't bother to correct her and say that she wasn't eight yet, none of us were, and the day we would be eight was still nearly seven months away. We were too excited for quibbles.

"Do you want me to go get your spear?" Rebecca asked.

"I don't think," Annie said, "that my riding around with a medieval weapon in my hand would do anything to deflect nosy people's suspicions. No, I was thinking along the lines of something subtle..."

Which was how we all found ourselves in the tower room, which in happier times was our playroom, going through our old costume trunk.

Annie rejected princess costumes and a witch's costume, which disappointed Georgia, who had had her heart set on Annie being a witch.

Georgia was still grumpy over that when we reached the bottom of the trunk and Annie pulled out something that made her shout, "Perfect!"

The white shirt, skinny black tie, and black jacket were all one piece, and there was separate dark trousers. Annie wore it whenever we played wedding.

"I still look too much like me," she said to the mirror. "I'll need a hat."

Before any of us could go off to fetch her one, however, Anthrax strolled in with one of Daddy's hats on her head, the hat being much larger than the cat. Daddy had a huge collection of old-fashioned hats and we'd heard him refer to this one as a fedora.

"Thank you, Anthrax," Annie said, removing the hat from the cat.

"Have you noticed," Marcia observed, "that Anthrax is smarter than she used to be? It was as though she just
anticipated
what Annie needed was one of Daddy's hats, and she found the perfect hat at that."

"The other cats have told me," Zinnia said, "that lately Anthrax is bossier than she used to be."

We wondered if the cats really talked to the Zinnia.

"Do you think," Georgia asked Annie, "your power is rubbing off on your cat?"

"I honestly couldn't say," Annie said, distracted, "but this disguise definitely still needs something..."

That was when Anthrax leaped into the trunk, made lots of rattling noises as though she were chasing her own tail or fighting with another creature, then emerged with something hairy clasped in her jaws.

"What's she got?" Rebecca reeled back. "Is that a rat?"

"No, it's not a rat," Annie said with a smile, bending down to take the hairy something from Anthrax's jaws. She patted Anthrax, then took the hairy something and attached it to her upper lip. It was a fake mustache, we saw, as she studied herself one last time. "It's perfection."

And it was.

"Prepare the car," Annie instructed Durinda. "It's time to roll."

But preparing the car was easier said than done.

It was simple enough for Durinda to start the Hummer, per Annie's instructions, but a lot less simple for Annie to drive it.

"I cant see over the dashboard," Annie said.

So we all trundled back inside, looking for boosters. At last, we settled on Mommy's
Oxford English Dictionary
as being just the ticket, but it was so heavy Zinnia, Petal, and Jackie had to carry it out in separate volumes.

But once Annie could see over the dashboard, she could no longer reach the pedals.

"We'll just have to rig up some sort of device," Durinda suggested.

Annie was in no mood for reason.

"This is taking too long!" she said. "If I wait for you to rig up some sort of ...
device
, it'll be dark. And I can't drive in the dark, not my first time!"

Her lip actually quivered at that last, as though she were on the verge of tears, which scared us very much.

"Fine," Durinda said soothingly. "I'll just get down here on the floor beneath your legs, like so, and you tell me when you want me to hit the gas to go and hit the brakes to stop. Will that work?"

We can't say it worked like a charm, and the ride was hair-raising—we had to rely on Durinda blindly following instructions to "Give it more gas!" and "Hit the brakes!"—but at least it got us there.

"It's ...
grand
," Zinnia said with awestruck eyes, gazing upward.

"It's the most
amazingly
grand place I've ever seen!" Petal amended.

"Let's go inside," Annie said.

"Aren't you going to change first?" Rebecca said to Annie. "Didn't you bring any normal clothes to go shopping in?"

"No," Annie said.

"But you look ridiculous," Rebecca pointed out.

"Maybe." Annie smiled. "But there is method to my ridiculousness."

Once inside, we couldn't settle down to shopping for Will right away. There was too much to look at, too much to touch and no parent there to say, "Don't touch," too much to play with.

There was the jungle area, with oversize stuffed animals and a gorilla that was a story tall. There was the dollhouse area, fully equipped with child-size houses and dolls. There was the magic area, with everything you could want for turning a toad into a prince or an enemy into a toad.