Marcia's Madness (11 page)

"Annie, I love you," Daddy's voice said.

As we sat there in shock and awe, we heard Mommy's and Daddy's voices say the same thing to each of us in turn, except Marcia.

"Where is that coming from?" Zinnia asked.

"If those turn out to be ghosts, I will be scared," Petal said. Then she smiled. "But it is nice, being told that I am loved."

"Marcia Huit!" Annie bellowed. "Get in here!"

A moment later, Marcia was with us, red-faced.

"You finally got your invention to work, didn't you?" Annie asked severely.

"Yes," Marcia said nervously. "I thought everyone would like it, but maybe I miscalculated?"

"Like it?" Annie thundered. Then a huge smile broke across her face. "Are you kidding me? I don't like it. I
love
it."

"It was practically the best present ever," Zinnia said.

"I have to admit," Rebecca said, rubbing her eyes with her sleeve impatiently, "even I got a tear in my eye."

"Oh!" Marcia looked relieved. "I'm so glad!" Then she got more serious. "Annie, I've been meaning to tell you..."

"Yes?" Annie said.

Marcia took a deep breath. "I hereby formally return the leadership of the family to you."

Rebecca snorted. "That's a laugh! I'm pretty sure we all knew that
that
had already happened."

Apparently, Rebecca had already recovered from feeling sentimental.

"Thank you," Annie said to Marcia without sarcasm, as though Marcia had had some choice in the matter. "But I'm curious. Why the need to make a formal transfer of power now?"

"Because I thought about it," Marcia said, "and I realized I don't deserve to be in charge. It was too much for me. I guess I just realized that I don't have an original idea in my head, not when it comes to leadership. I'm only good at following the blueprints of others."

"Are you kidding me?" Georgia said, sounding genuinely surprised. "But you thought up that amazing device from which we can hear Mommy's and Daddy's voices!"

"But it didn't work when we needed it most," Marcia said.

"So what?" Even Rebecca had to admit it worked just dandy now.

"And it is lovely," Durinda said, "hearing them again."

"Yes," Marcia said. "But it was Annie who saved the day. It's not even her month, and yet she came up with the brilliant plan of calling in the Petes."

"Who cares who came up with what or whose power was used?" Zinnia said.

"Exactly," Petal said. "I'm just glad we were saved."

"But it was Annie's power saving us again," Marcia said. "As for my power—
ha!
A fine power it turned out to be! All it did was nearly get me expelled."

"Are you kidding me?" Annie said. "It was your power that enabled you to see the Wicket writing that letter to Social Services. It was your power that enabled you to see Bill Collector arriving at our house so early. Honestly, Marcia, if it weren't for you and your power, we'd never have known of the coming danger in the first place. If it weren't for you, nothing I did could have saved us."

A slow smile spread across Marcia's face. "I really did do all that, didn't I?"

"Yes, yes." Rebecca yawned without bothering to cover her mouth.

"Shall we have lunch?" Durinda suggested.

***

After lunch, we decided to spend some time outdoors working in our garden.

"I'm parched," Durinda said, wiping her wrist across her forehead after we'd been digging in the dirt for a few hours.

"No one our age says
parched,
" Rebecca said.

"I don't care what anyone else says," Durinda said. "Would anyone like some lemonade?"

Whether any of us would ever use the word
parched
no matter how old we got, lemonade did sound good right around then.

We followed Durinda into the house and even helped cut up the lemons. But when we went to the dining room to drink it, we saw that something had been draped over the back of Marcia's chair.

"That must be your gift!" Zinnia cried.

Marcia lifted it carefully from the chair's back and held it up for all to see.

"Ooh, I see your favorite color must be purple too!" Durinda said.

"It's a cloak," Georgia said, adding, "I think."

"What's a cloak?" Petal asked.

"It's a loose outer garment," Jackie said, "so it's neither a coat nor a cape but something sort of in between."

"It looks like it would be great for concealing things," Rebecca said. As Marcia tried it on, she added, "If it were only dark and plaid, you'd look just like Sherlock Holmes. Maybe we need to get you a funny hat."

"Now you see?" Annie said to Marcia. "We're not the only ones who think you and your power helped us out a lot this month. Obviously, whoever leaves these items for us thinks you're worthy of a gift too."

"Thanks." Marcia beamed at Annie.

And we could see that, at least in that moment, Marcia was pleased with her station in life, perfectly content to be who she was.

"Ooh!" Zinnia cried. "If Marcia got her gift, there must be a new note!"

When we raced into the drawing room, we saw that Zinnia was right. Since it was Marcia's month, it was her privilege to remove the stone and read aloud the note that had been left for her there.

Dear Marcia,

Ten down, six to go—splendid! And as you can tell, I still have those stellar math skills you always comment on! let's see, though. If the first five of you have knocked the first ten items off the list, which of you will have to knock off the eleventh and twelfth?

And that was it. As always, the note was unsigned.

But we did think long and hard about that last line of the note, and then seven heads slowly swiveled in Petal's direction.

Oh no.

Petal was next.

TWELVE

The next day we were back in school again, still pleased with our new teacher. And that afternoon, we were back home again, pleased with just about everything.

We were mostly pleased that the end of May was now in sight.

"I'm just glad that the madness of this month is nearly over with," Georgia said.

"Yes," Rebecca said darkly, "but I fear next month will be even worse."

"I hope June never comes!" Petal said.

Was there ever an Eight who wanted her power less, even though it meant getting a gift too?

Still, we were all glad to have May nearly over with, glad we'd avoided possible disaster with Social Services.

True, we still had many questions hanging over our heads. We could almost picture them up there, millions of tiny question marks, twinkling like stars in the night.

Okay, maybe not millions, but enough.

And so many of those questions didn't even have hints of answers yet, wouldn't have until August.

But for now, it was enough that we had one another, that we were still together, and that we were back to the state of what passed for normal in our world.

"Okay." Annie clapped her hands together. "The end of the school year may be in just a few weeks, but we all still have to do homework until then. Petal, you shut off the TV. Zinnia, you feed the cats. Durinda, you make us a snack. Jackie, Marcia, Rebecca, you get the homework sheets out of the backpacks. And, Georgia, you go get the mail. We haven't had any since Saturday, what with the holiday weekend, and there should be some bills in there. I do
not
want to be late paying the bills."

"That would be awful." Petal shuddered. "I wouldn't like to have Bill Collector come back, even if he did seem awfully nice for someone with the power to split us all up."

We didn't bother correcting Petal and telling her that Bill Collector came from Social Services while bill collectors would come from somewhere else. There were only so many times we could repeat ourselves.

Georgia returned with an unusually large stack of mail, which she happily dropped in front of Annie. From the beginning of our troubles, Georgia had always seemed happy to drop a lot of mail in front of Annie.

"Bills, bills, and more bills," Annie grumbled, but there was something false to that grumble and we had the feeling that after Marcia's grab for power, Annie was rather pleased to see bills if it meant she was the only one who could pay them.

"Hello! What's this?" Annie said, holding up an envelope.

"Looks like a cream-colored envelope to me," Marcia observed.

"Have bill collectors started getting fancy?" Rebecca wondered, not sounding terribly interested in the whole thing.

"It looks like some sort of invitation," Durinda said.

"Ooh!" Zinnia said. "I hope we've been invited to a party!" Then her face fell. "But whose party could we possibly be invited to?"

"That's right," Georgia said. "Will's birthday party was in January and Mandy's won't be until December."

"We haven't sent ourselves an invitation to our own birthday party in August," Petal said with a puzzled frown, "have we?"

We ignored Petal. We knew that soon enough—all too soon!—we'd be required to pay lots of attention to her.

"It definitely is an invitation to something," Jackie said. "See the pretty slanted handwriting? That's called calligraphy."

"And look," Annie said. "It's addressed to 'Robert and Lucy Huit and the Eights.'"

"Open it!" seven Eights cried at Annie. "Read what it says!"

And Annie did.

You are cordially invited
to
the wedding of
Martha Huit
&
George Smith
on Saturday, the 21st of June, 2008,
in France.

Hold on a second here.

We were being invited to a
wedding?
In
France?

And who, by the way, were Martha Huit and George Smith?