Gabby Duran and the Unsittables

Copyright © 2015 by Elise Allen and Daryle Conners
Cover design by Marci Senders
Cover art © Vault 49

All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney •
Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

ISBN 978-1-4847-1942-8

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1. Title Page
   
2. Copyright
   
3. Dedication
   
4. First Dossier
   
5. Warning
   
6. Chapter One
   
7. Chapter Two
   
8. Chapter Three
   
9. Chapter Four
   
10. Chapter Five
    
11. Chapter Six
    
12. Chapter Seven
    
13. Chapter Eight
    
14. Chapter Nine
    
15. Chapter Ten
    
16. Chapter Eleven
    
17. Chapter Twelve
    
18. Chapter Thirteen
    
19. Acknowledgments
    
20. About the Authors
    

FROM ELISE TO MADDIE
,
MY
POOH
-
BEAR
,
WHO IS MY INSPIRATION
IN ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING
.

FROM DARYLE TO LUNA X
.
MILLER
,
THE MOON CHILD
,
WHOSE SENSE OF
FUN INSPIRED GABBY FROM
THE BEGINNING
.

WELCOME, TRUSTED FRIEND,
TO THE FIRST DOSSIER OF
ASSOCIATE 4118-25125A,
A.K.A. GABBY DURAN,
SITTER TO THE UNSITTABLES.

T
he day that changed Gabby’s life started out just like any other…with a small pitcher of water poured on her head.

“Okay, okay, I’m up!” Gabby spluttered as she bolted upright, though there wasn’t anyone to splutter
to
. Gabby was alone. The offending water pitcher had been
rigged by her best friend, Zee. It was Zee’s solution to Gabby’s request for help waking up in the mornings. Zee’s first idea was to use her robotics skills to rig Gabby’s
bed, so at the sound of the alarm it would spring up and catapult Gabby directly onto a beanbag chair across the room. It sounded great…until they used a mannequin-Gabby to try Zee’s
prototype.

The mannequin smashed a giant, Gabby-shaped dent in the back wall.

Zee was sure she could make adjustments and fix the issue, but Gabby opted for Zee’s alternate idea instead: the water pitcher. Whenever Gabby pressed the snooze button a third time in a
row—
splash!

It drove Zee apoplectic that after several months of this, Gabby still hit the snooze button that third time. Pavlov’s Law demanded that Gabby change her behavior and get out of bed after
button-push number two.

Gabby had no answer for this, except to say her love of sleep apparently outweighed the laws of science.

Once she was awake, though, she was unstoppable. She threw off her sopping covers, bundled them up with her equally drenched nightshirt, then stretched her legs over her wild mess of a floor to
find the few spots of bare carpet between her bed and her closet. There she dropped her covers long enough to rummage through the tangle of hangers and clothes layering the floor until she found
her most comfortable weekend jeans and T-shirt, got dressed, slung her ever-present purple knapsack over her left shoulder, hoisted the giant crumple of bedclothes back into her arms, and picked
out a path to her door.

Gabby galloped down her town house’s two flights of stairs, deposited her bundle in the dryer and turned it on, then trotted back up to the kitchen, where her mom was juggling a million
different pots and pans, all bubbling and steaming and sizzling and giving off such a wild array of smells that Gabby couldn’t begin to name a single one.

Okay, her mom wasn’t
actually
juggling a million different pots and pans. While the million different pots and pans did their bubbling/steaming/sizzling thing, Alice Duran was
actually
juggling three tomatoes, a feat which she apparently thought would impress Gabby’s little sister, Carmen.

“Look, Car! I’m doing it! See? Oh, hi, Gabby!”

The second Alice looked up to say hi to her oldest daughter, all three tomatoes fell unceremoniously to the floor.

Splat! Splat! Splat!

Without looking up from the old-fashioned accounting book on the kitchen table, Carmen said, “Three organic heirloom tomatoes weighing one point five pounds, priced at three dollars and
ninety-nine cents per pound, equals 5.985 dollars in the trash.”

“Relax, Car,” said Gabby. “I think we can eat the six dollars.”

“Actually, we can’t,” Carmen said. “Not anymore. That’s the point.”

Though only ten, Carmen was as no-nonsense as her long, flat brown hair with the too-short bangs cut straight across her forehead. “And if you didn’t toss your sheets in the dryer
every day,” she continued to Gabby, “we’d save two hundred sixty-one dollars’ worth of electricity.”

“Yes, but you’d
lose
two hundred sixty-one dollars’ worth of the joy you take in torturing me about it.”

“Enough,” Alice said as she wrapped her hand in several layers of paper towels (“One quarter Kirkland paper towel roll, at ninety-eight cents a roll, 24.5 cents in the
trash,” Carmen noted), sopped up the tomato goo, then held it away from her body, so she could pull Gabby into a strong, one-armed embrace.

“Good morning, baby,” she said. She gave Gabby a huge kiss right on top of her head, then perked up like a prairie dog. “Do you hear that?” she asked. “It’s
my baklava calling.”

She retreated to her baking corner, which was piled high with a giant stack of phyllo dough. With her Einstein-wild hair and her face and apron smeared with a myriad of splattered colors and
textures, Alice looked like a mad scientist as she huddled among her gurgling pots and pans, painting filling onto her pastry. She actually
was
a scientist, or had been before she took up
cooking. She’d been a chemist, cooking up concoctions meant to cure the world of all kinds of diseases. But when Gabby and Carmen’s dad, an army major, was declared missing in action
and presumed dead while Alice was pregnant with Carmen, Alice knew she had to find a way to make money while keeping stay-at-home-mom-ish hours. In no time, cooking cures turned to cooking meals
for her catering business, It’s All Relativity, a name that played off her look.

Gabby peered into every pot on the stove. She twirled the contents around and inhaled deeply. “Marinara sauce…tikka masala…and peanut brittle?”

“Pralines,” Alice said. “At least they will be. Big Sunday brunch today—a Greek-Italian-Cajun themed Diwali.”

Gabby mulled over all the options, then dug into the pantry and grabbed a Pop-Tart, which she slid into the toaster.

“Nutritional content of your choice: zero,” Carmen noted.

“You used to worship me, you know,” Gabby retorted. “I have video proof.”

“It’s true,” Alice agreed. “When I brought you home from the hospital, only Gabby could make you stop crying.”

“It was a psychological experiment,” Carmen deadpanned. “I thought you’d be nicer to me if I made you feel important.”

“It worked too well,” Gabby said. “I feel
so
important that I believe I’m impervious to the evils of Pop-Tartery.” She pulled her beautifully browned
processed yumminess from the toaster and bounced it between her hands until it cooled enough to hold. “Now what’s the scoop?”

“It’s what Mom uses to measure out the coffee,” Carmen replied as she went back to scribbling in her accounting book.

Gabby never quite knew if Carmen was being exceptionally literal just to mess with her, or because that was how she saw the world. Probably a little of each.

“Got it,” Gabby said. “Thanks. And um…what’s my schedule today?”

Carmen pushed aside the large volume in which she kept track of the family’s finances, and replaced it with one of two black binders stacked on the table next to her. The binders looked
identical, but Carmen knew one from the other at a glance. One held their mom’s schedule, press clippings, and testimonials; the other housed the same information for Gabby.

“Sunday, October eighteenth. Ali, Lia, and Ila. Triplets, age five. Limo to pick you up at—”

A horn sounded from outside the house. Carmen looked at her watch and nodded, pleased by the punctuality.

“—eight
A
.
M
. sharp,” she finished. “You’ll be in the air on the private jet by nine, on set in Florida by eleven,
and back home by seven
P
.
M
.”

“In time to practice my French horn for Friday afternoon’s concert!” Gabby said, springing up and heading to the door.

“Where you’ll play solo!” Alice cheered.

“Or not,” Carmen said. “Maestro Jenkins won’t tell her until”—she flipped forward a few pages in the binder dedicated to Gabby—“approximately
three fifty-five Friday afternoon.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Car,” Gabby said.