Jackie's Jokes (9 page)

"Then Principal Freud must be evil too."

CHAPTER NINE

This was new and shocking information: the idea that someone we'd known for years, someone who was the head of our school, could be evil.

"What do we do now?" Jackie asked Pete.

"Well, I would think it would be obvious," Pete replied. "Someone needs to get to the bottom of things, find out what's been going on."

We saw that he was right, of course. But how?

Two questions burned in all our minds:

What did Principal Freud know, and when did he know it?

***

Sunday passed uneventfully, or at least as uneventfully as a day could pass when the day before you'd visited your CPA and later learned there were even more forces for evil in the world than you'd previously imagined.

One thing kept our minds off some of our other problems: the cats. They were becoming a huge problem themselves, what with all the powers they'd acquired.

"I have been talking to them," Zinnia told us.

"Of course you have, dear," Durinda said. Sometimes we wondered at Durinda's endless capacity for humoring the loony among us.

"Are they really planning a kitty coup now?" Petal asked.

"Oh, brother." Rebecca rolled her eyes.

"What are they saying?" Jackie asked seriously.

"Well," Zinnia said, "it's the four youngest who are most upset: Minx, Precious, Rambunctious, and Zither."

"We do know who the four youngest are," Marcia said. We were reminded yet again that Marcia always had a chip on her shoulder because she felt that being the oldest of the four youngest should give her more power, but it didn't.

"They say," Zinnia said, "that it was bad enough when the first three got their powers: Anthrax bossing everyone around, Dandruff freezing the others where they stood so she could eat all the kibble, Greatorex making herself invisible whenever she felt like it. But now with Jaguar being so fast, they are all deeply depressed. They say there's no point in even bothering to chase after Biff when we throw it, because they will never be able to beat Jaguar to the catnip again." Zinnia paused to take a breath. It had been a long speech for her. "They blame it on Jaguar's haircut and say they never liked that haircut to begin with."

"Huh," Jackie said, looking offended at this insult to the haircut. "Well, I don't think they should blame the hair." We knew Jackie was pleased with her own haircut. And who could blame her? Everyone—Pete, Will, evil Principal Freud—kept telling her how nice it looked. "But could you do me a favor?" Jackie asked Zinnia.

"That all depends," Zinnia said, her eyes narrowing. "You're not going to ask me to give you my gift when I finally get it, are you?" Gifts were so important to Zinnia.

"Nothing like that," Jackie assured her. "Could you please tell Jaguar that I, as her mistress, ask that she let the other cats win every now and then when they chase after things?"

We watched as Zinnia whispered into Jaguar's furry ear.

"I can't believe," Rebecca muttered to Jackie, "that you humor the little loony like this."

"Have you ever wondered what would happen," Annie asked Rebecca, "if it turns out that Zinnia is right and that she
can
talk to the cats? The way you treat her, she might one day order them to eat you in your sleep."

That shut Rebecca up.

"Jaguar says," Zinnia told Jackie, "that she is sorry for causing the other cats to be upset. She says she promises to let the other cats win the catnip chases at least half the time."

"Very good," Jackie said.

"She also says," Zinnia went on, "that you should heed your own advice: you should let the rest of us humans beat you at least half the time."

Jackie didn't look quite as pleased about this, but at last she nodded her head. "Point taken."

"Great," Rebecca said. "So now that another kitty emergency has been averted, what are we going to do about Frank Freud?"

It was funny. We'd started calling our former substitute teacher Crazy Serena, rather than Ms. Harkness, after we'd realized she was evil, and it was tough now for us to talk about Frank Freud using the respectful title of Principal. We didn't like to be rude, and certainly not to adults, but what can we say? Cross us Eights once and you are off our respect list.

"We are going to act as cops," Annie said with authority. "We will make him tell us the truth."

"But how?" Georgia wanted to know. "We don't have any guns here." Then her eyes lit up. "Although we do have that spear from Daddy Sparky..." Georgia was obsessed with that spear.

"We're not going to use any kind of weapons," Annie said, "except if you consider our wits weapons."

"And we're going to do it ourselves," Jackie said, "without Pete." She nodded decisively at Annie. "It's time we stood on our own sixteen feet."

***

Since September, the beginning of the school year, we'd done a lot of things around the McG to which her response could best be described as "You could have knocked her over with a feather." We'd put a toad in her desk (Jackie); become invisible (Georgia); and turned out to have a secret life that no doubt both thrilled and terrified her (all of us). But nothing we'd done in the past prepared her for that Monday when Jackie raised her hand in the middle of math and asked:

"Could we all be excused to go to the principal's office?"

The McG didn't exactly fall over, but she did drop her chalk, and it looked like her bun bobbled a bit.

"What?" she said. "But that makes no sense. Students get
sent
to the principal's office, and most students usually try to avoid that. But no one ever
asks—
"

"Well, I'm asking," Jackie said. "May we eight go now, please? We have something to discuss with ... the man who runs this school."

"Fine." The McG turned her eyes toward the heavens and threw up her hands. "Go."

We went.

***

Eight fists knocked on Frank Freud's door. Later on it would occur to us that it must have sounded very odd to him: eight fists knocking. We felt none of the fear kids are supposed to feel when they are about to talk to a Person of Authority. On the contrary. We were excited. We were finally going to get to the bottom of ... something.

"Enter!" that familiar voice called out to us.

We didn't have to be asked twice.

"Oh!" he said, his eyebrows shooting all the way up to his absent hairline. "You! All eight of you!"

"Yes," Annie said, closing the door behind us with a satisfying
click.
"All eight of us."

"Well, what are you doing here?" He laughed nervously. "Did Mrs. McGillicuddy send you? Are you in trouble again?"

"We're not," Durinda said.

"But somebody is," Georgia said.

"What did you know, Principal Freud," Jackie asked, "and when did you know it?"

"I—" he started to say, but Marcia cut him off.

"You know the Wicket, don't you?" Marcia accused.

"The who?"

"The Wicket," Petal said.

"Short little woman," Rebecca said. "Looks like a toadstool."

"Helena Wicket," Zinnia explained.

"Well," he said, coloring, "I suppose I may have met her once..."

"And Crazy Serena," Annie said.

"Crazy who?"

"Serena Harkness," Durinda said.

"Back in March," Georgia said.

"Our substitute teacher," Marcia said.

"Our
pretend
substitute teacher," Rebecca said, stealing Petal's turn to speak. But for once we didn't mind. Rebecca made a good point. So much in our world was pretend, fake—too much, really.

"Yeah. Her." Petal and Zinnia spoke at the same time.

"You brought her here on purpose, didn't you?" Jackie said. "You must have known she was evil and yet you wanted her here. Perhaps it all has something to do with our mother?" She paused, allowing what she'd said to sink in before continuing. "So what I want to know, what we
all
want to know, is: What did you know, and when did you know it?"

Considering how often we'd surprised other people, and considering all the things that had happened to us, it was rare for someone to do something we found truly shocking. And yet that was exactly what happened.

Frank Freud, perhaps feeling like a trapped animal, rose from his chair, stumbled around it, and backed up to the window behind his desk. Then he wrenched open the window, vaulted over the ledge, rushed across the lawn to the faculty parking lot, ran to his reserved spot, which was marked Principal, got in his car, keyed the ignition, and sped away.

And then Jackie leaped out the window—thank God we were on the ground floor!—and raced after him.

CHAPTER TEN

According to the clock, which we started watching when Jackie left, it had been only a half-hour since she'd disappeared, but those thirty minutes had seemed like an eternity to us. It was the first time one of us had faced off alone against one of the evil adults in our world—with the Wicket and then Crazy Serena, we'd all been there together—and we were very worried for her. If Frank Freud had a gun, would Jackie really prove to be faster than a speeding bullet? We'd sat for a lot of tests during our years of schooling, but that was one test we didn't want to see Jackie take.

But then a yellow dot came whizzing toward the open window—"Jackie's plaid uniform!" Zinnia cried—and there was Jackie, fully in the flesh, looking exactly like herself as she climbed over the window ledge and came back into the room.

"What happened?" seven voices shouted.

"Here, sit," Durinda said, pulling out Frank Freud's chair and forcing Jackie into it. That was Durinda all over: insisting on mothering one of us even while the rest of us—including herself—were dying for news.

Jackie didn't look winded in the slightest, but we must say, she did look wonderful in Frank Freud's big leather swivel chair. It made us wonder if she might be the head of a school when she grew up. It made us wonder what each of us would do when we grew up.

"
What happened?
"Rebecca shouted. "I want to know what happened!"

"It was really all very simple," Jackie said. "Frank Freud drove to his house, but when he saw me, er,
pull up
right behind him, he grew very scared. Apparently, the idea of us Eights having special powers is terrifying to him."

As Jackie continued to speak, we felt like we were all right there in front of Frank Freud's house. It was almost as though we could
see
what happened,
smell
the fear in him...

"
I'll ask you again," Jackie demanded as Frank Freud spun around, a look of horror on his face. "What did you know, and when did you know it?
"

Frank Freud raced toward the front door of his house.

"
I'll sic Durinda on you," Jackie called after him. "You know, she has special powers too. She can
freeze people where they stand. Why, if I ask her to, you just might remain frozen forever.
"

That froze Frank Freud in his tracks.

He turned to face Jackie, his shoulders slumping.

"
Fine," he said. "I'll tell you what you want to know. I met the woman you refer to as the Wicket once, last December. She came to see me at the Whistle Stop after classes had ended but before I'd left for the day. She said she had some questions about your mother. She kept asking if I knew anything about your mother's work, kept saying something about your mother working to discover the secret of eternal life. Well, of course I assumed she was nuts and sent her away. But then, one day, Serena Harkness showed up—I could see the resemblance between her and your mother at once—and
she
was saying the same things the Wicket had said about
your mother and her work. Then she told me her plan, to kidnap Mrs. McGillicuddy and try to get more information out of you Eights. Well, it did sound a bit extreme. But then I figuredwhy not? I mean, who doesn't want to live forever...
"