Petal's Problems Read online

  The Sisters 8

  Book 6

  Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  * * *

  PETAL'S PROBLEMS

  * * *

  With Greg Logsted & Jackie Logsted

  * * *

  Illustrated by Lisa K. Weber

  * * *

  Sandpiper

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT

  BOSTON • NEW YORK • 2010

  * * *

  Text copyright © 2010 by Lauren Baratz-Logsted,

  Greg Logsted, and Jackie Logsted

  Illustrations copyright © 2010 by Lisa K. Weber

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Sandpiper, an imprint of

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  SANDPIPER and the SANDPIPER logo are trademarks of

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

  write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The text of this book is set in Youbee.

  Book design by Carol Chu.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  is on file.

  ISBN 978-0-547-33402-8 paper over board

  ISBN 978-0-547-33403-5 paperback

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  4500252473

  * * *

  For Lucille Baratz,

  a.k.a. Mom, a.k.a. Grandma

  * * *

  Annie Durinda Georgia Jackie

  Marcia Petal Rebecca Zinnia

  * * *

  PROLOGUE

  "Oh no! The sky is falling!"

  "Oh no! It is raining so hard! What if it rains for forty days and forty nights?"

  "Oh no! If the sky falls and it rains for forty days and forty nights, not only will we be orphans, we'll be drowned orphans, dead with the sky crushing our heads!"

  "Oh no—"

  Sound like anyone you know?

  Of course it does.

  And you know a lot of other things too. Really, you know all the basics at this point.

  Powers. Gifts.

  Annie: power—can think like an adult when necessary; gift—purple ring

  Durinda: power—can freeze people, except Zinnia; gift—green earrings

  Georgia: power—can become invisible; gift—gold compact

  Jackie: power—faster than a speeding train; gift—red cape

  Marcia: power-x-ray vision; gift—purple cloak

  You also know, because you've been paying good attention, that at the end of Book 4: Jackie's Jokes, a flock of carrier pigeons thundered into the home of the Eights bearing notes that said, Beware the other Eights!

  You also know, because you have a pretty decent memory, that at the end of Book 5: Marcia's Madness, an invitation arrived announcing the wedding of Martha Huit and George Smith on Saturday, June 21, 2008, and cordially requesting the presence of the Eights...

  In France.

  Honestly, you know so much, you don't need me to tell you a great deal more.

  But one thing you don't know, can't possibly know, is that a strange event has happened in the world of the Eights. You know that each sister's adventure occurs within the space of a month. Annie's was January; Durinda's, February; Georgia's, March; Jackie's, April; Marcia's, May. So it should be Petal's turn and June now, right? Only the thing you don't know is that it's not. The Eights are still stuck in May, looking at that invitation and wondering what's to be done about it.

  This state of affairs is perfectly fine with Petal. Why, as far as Petal is concerned, it could stay May forever, for all of eternity. You see, Petal doesn't want June to come.

  But it really doesn't matter what Petal wants, does it? Time can't be stopped. So even if it's not quite June yet, it must inevitably come. And when it does, it will be time for...

  Oh no! Petal power!

  To which, all I can say is...

  Ha!

  ONE

  "We've been invited to a wedding?" Durinda said.

  "In France?" Rebecca said.

  "And who, by the way," Georgia said, "are Martha Huit and George Smith?"

  "Don't you remember," Annie said, "our relatives Aunt Martha and Uncle George, who used to come visit us occasionally?"

  We supposed we'd always known about these people. We dimly remembered that Aunt Martha thought that everything made her look fat, and Uncle George liked to cook but was very bad at it, which meant we had to lie so as not to hurt his feelings. But we didn't know anything about them beyond that, plus we hadn't seen them in so long that, frankly, we'd forgotten all about them. And anyway, we'd learned to be suspicious of relatives. So, we thought as we narrowed our eyes in suspicion, who were these people really?

  "Is it just me," Marcia wondered aloud, "or does anyone else feel like it's supposed to be June already..."

  "I'm glad it's not June!" Petal cried. "I hope that wretched month never comes! Perhaps time has stopped, or even started running backward? But oh no! What if it is running backward and it keeps on running backward? Eventually, I will be a baby again and then—gulp!—after that I will cease to exist!"

  "But I don't understand." Jackie was puzzled. She was also ignoring Marcia and Petal, as were we all. "I always thought Aunt Martha and Uncle George were from the same side of the family—you know, brother and sister."

  "Oh," Zinnia said wistfully, ignoring nearly everyone and everything. "I would like to go to a wedding. I'm fairly certain they have lots of presents at those."

  "Apparently not." Annie answered Jackie, ignoring Zinnia. "The invitation specifically lists them as Martha Huit and George Smith." She shrugged. "So I guess they're not from the same side of the family, not brother and sister at all. If Aunt Martha is a Huit, she must be Daddy's sister, and if Uncle George is a Smith, he must be Mommy's brother."

  "Who knew?" Jackie looked stunned.

  "Apparently not us." Annie shrugged again. "Anyway, now it looks like Daddy's sister is marrying Mommy's brother."

  "My, we do come from an odd family," Rebecca said, a dark gleam entering her eye. Some of us found that disturbing, how rather pleased Rebecca appeared at the thought.

  "So what are we going to do about the invitation?" Durinda asked Annie.

  Since Mommy and Daddy's disappearance back on New Year's Eve, Annie had taken over as head of our household. It fell to her to make all the important decisions, like what to wear to Will's birthday party or when would be the best time to change the oil in the Hummer. But some of us thought that in this particular instance—this particular instance being what to do about an invitation to a wedding in France—it shouldn't be left up to just Annie. Some of us thought it would even be a good idea, the best idea, to put it to a vote.

  Too bad for some of us then.

  "We have to say no, of course," Annie said simply.

  "But why?" some of us shouted.

  In this instance, some of us equaled Georgia, Rebecca, and Zinnia. The first two were always up for an adventure, and the third loved the idea of going anyplace where there might be presents, even if those presents weren't for her.

  As for the rest of us...

  Annie had already made up her mind.

  Durinda was content to let Annie decide.

  Jackie wasn't the shouting type.

  Petal was too grateful it was still May to be bothered with anything else.

  And as for Marcia...

  "But it is supposed to be June, right?" she said, perplexed for once. "Honestly, am I the only one to notice that there's someth
ing wrong here?"

  "But I want to go to the wedding," Zinnia said, a tear threatening to spill over the edge of her eyelid. "Even if it's in France, I want to go."

  "Don't you see, though?" Annie said gently. "That's part of the problem. It is in France."

  "Annie's right," Petal said, finding something fresh to worry about, even though she'd just been told it was never going to happen because, according to Annie, we were not going to the wedding. "We can't go to France! We'd have to swim there! And if we tried to swim all that way—wherever France is—we would drown!"

  "Well, no," Annie said, "we won't drown."

  "Of course we'd drown!" Petal barreled on. "How could we not drown? We will—"

  "We won't drown," Annie said, beginning to lose patience, "because we won't be swimming."

  That stopped Petal in midpanic. She was stumped. "But if we don't swim, then how would we get there? I'm fairly certain France is not right next door ... is it?"

  "Of course it's not." Rebecca sneered at Petal, then turned to Annie. "Is it?"

  "Well, it could be," Annie said. "But whether it's just a country away or a continent away, we wouldn't swim to get there. We'd fly."

  "Oh no!" Petal clutched her head as she began running in circles. "This is even worse than swimming! We can't fly like birds!"

  "That's funny," Rebecca said, studying Petal as she ran faster and faster. "You're doing a pretty good job of it. Any second now, you might really take off."

  "We won't swim to France." Annie was getting more exasperated by the minute. "And we won't fly like birds either. We'll take a plane."

  "Aiyeeee!" Petal cried. "That's the worst idea you've come up with yet!"

  Zinnia crossed one arm over the other and then swept them apart, like an umpire making a call at home plate. "Can we all just ignore Petal for a moment?"

  "Gladly," Georgia said.

  "Do you have something to say, Zinnia?" Durinda asked.

  "Yes," Zinnia said, extreme if cautious happiness entering her eyes. "Did anyone else hear what I just heard?"

  "You mean Petal losing what's left of her tiny little mind?" Rebecca said.

  "But that's nothing new," Georgia said. "She loses what's left of it practically every day."

  "I didn't mean that," Zinnia said, growing more excited still. "I meant Annie. She said, and I quote, 'We'll take a plane.' She was talking in the present tense. That must mean we're going to the wedding. We're going to France!"

  We all turned to Annie, wondering. Was this true? Even Petal stopped running in circles long enough to look at her.

  "' Fraid not," Annie said, answering our questioning looks with a rare blush. "That was just a slip of the tense. I meant that's how we'd get there if we were going, which we most definitely are not."

  "Thank the universe!" Petal said, collapsing into a happy, exhausted heap.

  "But why not?" Zinnia, the most disappointed among us and the last to hold on to any shred of hope, said.

  "Because it is in France," Annie said. "Because we would have to fly there and we would need passports, which none of us have."

  We didn't?

  "Well, do you?" Annie demanded.

  Sadly, we shook our heads. It would be nice to be international travelers, people of mystery and intrigue like James Bond 007, but that wasn't us. Even Mommy and Daddy always said it was scary enough just taking us across state lines.

  "No," Annie said with a satisfied nod of the head, "I didn't think so. On top of that problem, there's the even bigger problem of what we would tell people."

  "How do you mean?" Durinda asked. She may have been willing to go along with whatever Annie dictated, but even Durinda secretly longed to go to the wedding.

  It would be so much fun. It would be different.

  We liked different. Or at least most of us did.

  "It's like this," Annie said. "Whenever we have to explain to nosy parkers why Mommy and Daddy aren't around, we always say—"

  "That Daddy is in the bathroom and Mommy is in France," Jackie cut in, beginning to see what Annie was getting at.

  "Or vice versa," Georgia added. "Sometimes we say it the other way around. It's good to have variety, mix things up a bit."

  "And that's the problem," Annie said. "How can we go to the wedding of Aunt Martha and Uncle George—Daddy's sister and Mommy's brother—without Mommy and Daddy? How could we ever explain their absence on such an occasion? Obviously, we can't say that one or both of them are in France because—"

  "Because the wedding is in France," Zinnia finished, thoroughly getting it and thoroughly glum now.

  "Exactly," Annie said gently.

  "So what do we do?" Durinda asked.

  Annie sighed. Sometimes she seemed like Atlas, trying to hold the weight of the whole world on her shoulders. Some of us thought that it could get pretty heavy, but only occasionally did Annie appear to mind. And even then, we suspected that her appearing to mind was just for show.

  She studied the invitation again.

  "They've included a reply card," she said at last. "It says to RSVP no later than June seventh." She handed the card out toward Durinda. "You'll take care of this for us?"

  "Of course," Durinda said, reaching for the card, but before she could grab hold of it, a smaller hand snatched it.

  "May I do this?" Zinnia asked timidly. "I know it's not the kind of job you'd usually entrust to the youngest—you know, the importance of RSVPing and all—but I am so sad we are not going to the wedding, I think it would make me feel just the slightest sliver better if—"

  "Say no more." Annie patted Zinnia on the shoulder as another tear threatened to overspill Zinnia's eyelid. "If it makes you feel better, of course you can be the one to RSVP no for us."

  "Really, people!" By now Marcia's hands were on her hips. "Doesn't anyone else think this is all too strange?"

  We all stared at her. What was she going on about?

  "June?" Marcia tapped her foot impatiently. "Isn't it high time for it to be June?"

  ***

  And then it was June.

  First it was June 1, a Sunday, and then it was June 2 and time to go to school.

  But one of us was nowhere to be seen.

  So we searched for Petal and found her in the first place we looked.

  Petal was under her bed.

  TWO

  June had always been a sweetbitter month for us. It was sweet because it meant the end of another school year and graduation into another grade—yay! summer vacation!—but it was also bitter because the end of another school year meant being separated from our classmates for most of the summer. We would miss those classmates. Or at least we'd miss Will Simms. And maybe we'd even miss Mandy Stenko, a little.

  This June was no different in that regard.

  But this June was different, because Petal wouldn't come out from under her bed.

  "The bus will be here any second," Durinda informed Petal gently.

  We were all crouched down, peering under the bed, trying to get Petal to come out.

  "If we miss the bus," Georgia pointed out, "we'll have to call Pete for a ride and that hardly seems fair. You know he does have to work for a living."

  "I won't come out! I won't come out!" We heard Petal's muffled shout.

  "You have to come out sometime," Marcia said, reasonably enough. "You'll need to eat."

  "Durinda can shove my meals under the bed," Petal said. "I'm never coming out! Or at least, not until July first."

  "There are only two weeks of school left," Jackie said. "If you don't go to school for two weeks, you won't graduate with our class. And then you'll have to stay behind next year, all by yourself, and have the Mr. McG again."

  "I'll take my chances," Petal said with a rare burst of bravery, however misplaced. "But I'm not coming out! I'd rather stay under here with the cobwebs. So long as I never have to get my power, I'll be happy."

  We sighed. Had there ever, in the history of the universe, been an Eight who wasn'
t eager to get her power?

  There had not.

  But there was one now.

  "But if you never get your power," Zinnia said, "you'll never get your gift, because that's the order these things usually happen in. Well, except for Georgia. Sort of. Don't you want your gift?"

  "No!" Petal shouted so loud, her voice didn't even come out muffled this time. Really, our evil toadstool of a neighbor the Wicket could probably hear her just fine next door.

  "This is getting ridiculous," Annie muttered.

  "Hmm, desperate times," Rebecca mused. Then she raised her eyebrows and looked at Annie with a hopeful expression. "Desperate measures?"

  Annie straightened to a standing position, gestured with her hand at the bed. "Be my guest."

  Rebecca grabbed hold of Petal's ankles and pulled her out from beneath the bed in one swift yank.

  Unhappy, Petal rose to her feet and brushed the cobwebs from the skirt of her yellow plaid school uniform.

  "Fine, I'll go to school," Petal said, "but it's under protest."

  "Works for me," Annie said.

  Petal gestured at the bed with her chin and glared down at Rebecca from her one-inch advantage in height. You'd think that after nearly eight years of living together, we'd be used to it by now, but it was always a shock to realize that Petal was in fact taller than Rebecca. Mostly, it seemed like Petal should be the smallest of us, even smaller than Zinnia. As for Rebecca, even though she was the seventh in terms of birth order, there was something timeless about her, and sometimes she seemed even older than Annie, older than the world.

  "I can do this every day," Petal informed Rebecca.

  Rebecca tilted her head up an inch to meet Petal's eyes, then she flexed her yanking fingers. "So can I."

  ***

  So that's how the first of the last two weeks of school passed for us, at least in the mornings.

  "I won't go! I won't go! You can't make me!" from Petal.