Zinnia's Zaniness Read online

  "It's just that I happen to know that your favorite flavor of juice is mango," Pete said.

  "I prefer just plain glasses of pulp," Rebecca said.

  We ignored her.

  "So I guess what I was wondering was," Pete said, "why don't you sing 'One hundred boxes of mango juice on the wall, one hundred,' and so on and so forth?"

  "Who was doing the singing when we got interrupted?" Georgia said.

  "I was," Durinda said. "I was doing ninety-nine."

  "Please sing Mr. Pete's version," Annie said, "so he can see."

  "Perhaps I'd better start at the beginning," Durinda said. "I seem to have forgotten where I left off."

  "Just do it!" Rebecca shouted.

  Do you see what we mean about Rebecca?

  "Ninety-nine boxes of mango juice on the wall, ninety-nine boxes of mango juice! You take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight boxes of mango juice on the wall!"

  "Do you see now, Mr. Pete?" Jackie asked gently.

  "No," Pete said. "I see nothing except for the road in front of me. Oops! Train crossing!"

  Whoa, that was close.

  "Don't even bother, girls," Mrs. Pete said as the train finished crossing our path and we were safe to drive over the railroad tracks. "He's always been like this."

  "I've always been like what?" Pete said, sounding offended.

  "I hate to say it," Mrs. Pete said, "but you don't really have any rhythm."

  "I'm afraid she's right, Mr. Pete," Marcia said. "The two syllables that the word mango adds throw off the entire rhythm of the song."

  Pete hummed quietly to himself for a time before bursting out with "I do believe you're right—I've got no rhythm!"

  ***

  "Fifty-three boxes of juice on the wall, fifty-three boxes of juice! You take one down, pass it around, fifty-two boxes of juice on the wall!"

  "Nice singing, Zinnia," Annie said. "Who wants to go next?"

  "How long have we been driving?" Petal asked.

  Judging from the changes in the sky, at least a few hours had passed since we'd left home, but we didn't say that because Petal might worry we'd been driving so long our car would fall off the edge of the Earth.

  We hate to admit it, but we were fairly certain there were moments Petal believed the Earth was flat.

  "How long until we get there?" Petal asked.

  We ignored this question too because we didn't know the answer. Who knew how long it would take us to get where we were going? We certainly hoped we didn't run out of song first.

  "Fine," Petal said, and we realized that the realization that we were going to go on ignoring her questions must have sunk in. "I'll do fifty-two. I'm only glad those are boxes of juice and not bottles. With all of them practically falling off the wall like that, what if one fell on my head? I could get crushed! Although I suppose that one hundred boxes of juice, were they all to fall on my head at once, could kill me just as neatly as one well-placed bottle."

  "The song isn't about falling objects!" Georgia said, exasperated. "It's just about taking drinkable items off the wall!"

  "Well, but they could fall," Petal said, "and if they did, they could be deadly, so—"

  "Never mind," Jackie said, cutting Petal off with a gentle pat on the arm. "I'll take fifty-two."

  ***

  "Twenty-seven boxes of juice on the wall—"

  "Oh, this drive is going by so quickly," Zinnia said with breathless wonder as the pretty world zipped past our window. "Whoever invented this song is a genius!"

  ***

  "One box—"

  "We're here!" Pete announced joyfully, pulling up at the Seaside.

  "Hey!" Rebecca was outraged. "That was my turn you just cut off!"

  We ignored her.

  While ignoring Rebecca, we all piled out of the car to stretch our legs after the long trip. We'd left sometime in the morning and now it was nearly dark out: royal purple, midnight blue, and just a single sliver of gold streaking the sky.

  How long had we been on the road?

  How long had we been singing that song?

  "I'll tell you one thing," Mrs. Pete said, "Zinnia's right. Whoever invented that song is a genius. Why, it kept us happily busy the whole trip!"

  "Fine for you to say," Pete said. "You've got rhythm."

  "Don't worry, Mr. Pete," Jackie said. "You've got plenty of other good qualities."

  "Thanks, pet," Pete said.

  "I wonder," Marcia said, "if that song is expandable."

  We were too tired after all that time in the car to even ask her what she was talking about, and some of us were even too tired to mock her, so we simply stood there, waiting for her to get on with it.

  "It took us right up to the last box of juice in the song to arrive at our destination," Marcia said. "But what if our trip had lasted twice as long? What if it had been half as short? Would that one song last us exactly the entire trip, no matter how long or short the trip might be?"

  Even Pete, who was usually polite about Marcia's peculiar displays of her peculiar brand of intelligence, saw fit to ignore that.

  "I'll just go see," Pete said, eyeing the long array of hotels, motels, and other touristy-looking places that lined the Seaside, "about getting lodging for us all for the night."

  One place that would take all of us? He'd said something about this earlier. We hadn't commented at the time, and we certainly weren't about to comment now, except perhaps to say to ourselves, very quietly: "Oh, Mr. Pete. What can you possibly be thinking?"

  One place fitting all? As if.

  As if!

  FOUR

  "We'll leave all our things in the car while we go find a room," Pete said, "and then we'll come back for them."

  Ah, a man with a plan.

  "Don't you mean three rooms, Mr. Pete?" Marcia asked him.

  "A fourth room for the cats would be nice," Zinnia added. "We don't mind being split up into four and four, but the cats rather prefer to stay all together."

  All of us ignored Marcia and Zinnia, including Pete, who probably hadn't planned on springing for an extra room for the week just for the cats.

  We set off walking along the boardwalk, looking for a place where we might like to stay. Other people were walking along the boardwalk too, whole families looking happy together. The night air was filled with the sounds of laughter and the smell of cotton candy, and it was all very exciting.

  "'The Big Hotel.'" Pete read the large neon sign at the place where we'd stopped. "This looks promising, since we're such a big group."

  We strolled into the lobby, which was very big indeed, and then strolled all the way up to the registration desk.

  "Welcome to the Big Hotel," the man behind the desk said. "How may I help you?"

  "Do you have any rooms available?" Pete asked.

  "We do indeed," the man said. "How many will you need?"

  "Three," Pete said.

  "Four," Zinnia corrected him. "I thought we agreed about the cats."

  "I really do think three will be sufficient," Pete said.

  "Back up a minute," the man said. "Did you say cats?"

  Before we could answer, the man stretched across the desk and looked down. He caught sight of eight girls and nine cats, and shock filled his eyes. How had he not noticed us before? we wondered. The man straightened up again.

  "I'm sorry, sir," the man said abruptly to Pete, "but there's been a mistake. There are no rooms available here. Please try another hotel."

  Pete looked surprised at this sudden turn of events. We suspected he was the only one who was. Not only did Mrs. Pete have all the rhythm, she also had more than her share of common sense.

  "I see," Pete said to the man, even though, clearly, he didn't. "Where do you suggest I try?"

  The man pointed his finger toward the door that would take us back out to the boardwalk and then hooked his finger to the left. "Try thataway," he said.

  "Who says thataway?" Rebecca muttered as we headed toward the door.
"Where does he think he is, in the middle of a Western?"

  Back outside into the boardwalk-strolling throngs, we headed thataway, trying each hotel we came to, all with the same result.

  "How about this?" Pete suggested. "The Medium Hotel."

  "I wonder if the name refers to the hotel's size," Jackie said, "or that it specifically caters to people who think they can talk to the dead."

  "I don't think I want to stay here," Petal said. "It sounds too scary."

  We ignored Petal.

  And the lady behind the registration desk ignored us when she saw how big a group we were.

  "Huh," Pete said, confused as we exited yet another hotel. "I guess people around here don't need our business. You'd think any hotel would be happy to have us."

  No, Mr. Pete, we thought, only you would think that.

  The thing was, when our parents were still with us, we'd stayed at hotels from time to time, and we already knew what Pete was only just discovering: no one was ever happy to have us.

  Back on the boardwalk, Pete looked left and right dejectedly. "Which way now?" he asked.

  "How about thataway?" Rebecca said.

  So we went thataway and we kept on going thataway until we came to...

  "The Little Hotel," Pete said. "Look at this puny place, all rundown. Surely it could use our business."

  Surely it could not.

  The man behind the little registration desk didn't even wait for Pete to ask if there were any rooms available. He simply laughed in our faces.

  "I take it the answer is no?" Pete said to the man, who just kept on laughing. "Is it because of the cats?" Pete persisted.

  "That too," the man said, looking at us Eights and laughing some more.

  Since when were we something to be laughed at? We must say, we were very offended.

  "Maybe," Georgia said, "instead of trying places that cater to people who think they can talk to the dead or places that don't seem to want to make any money off us, we should look for a place that caters to people who think they can talk to cats. That way Zinnia could get us in."

  The man studied Zinnia with new interest. "Could you talk to my cat?" the man asked. "Orange hasn't been eating lately and I'm worried she might be sick."

  Orange. Seven of us laughed. What a silly name for a cat.

  "I can try," Zinnia said, ignoring us. "But you mustn't expect too much. If Orange is just meeting me, she might be shy about confessing her deepest, darkest secrets."

  The man brought out Orange, who was black, which we agreed made absolutely no sense at all, and set her on the registration desk.

  "Can you give me a boost up, Mr. Pete?" Zinnia asked.

  Sometimes we forgot how small Zinnia was. In addition to each of us being born a minute apart, with Annie the oldest, each of us was an inch shorter than the previous sister, with Annie the tallest. This meant that Zinnia was a full seven inches shorter than Annie, making Zinnia very short indeed.

  Pete did the boosting, and Zinnia and Orange commenced their Eight-to-cat conversation. There was a lot of Zinnia whispering in Orange's furry ear and then Orange doing something that looked like whispering in Zinnia's nonfurry ear.

  Occasionally, like now, we were impressed with Zinnia. What a show she was capable of putting on! A person might almost believe she could talk with cats!

  Of course, Rebecca would have us change that: a crazy person might almost believe that.

  Zinnia wrapped up her end of the whispering and told Pete he could stop boosting her. Then she looked up at the man.

  "Orange says she is sick," Zinnia said, hurrying to add, "but only in that she is sick of the brand of kibble you've been feeding her. Orange says she wishes you would buy Kitten Kaboodle, the brand with the picture of happy cats on the bag that they're always advertising during the late-late-late movie on channel three-twelve. Orange says the other cats on the boardwalk say it's the best, much better than that cheap Kibble Kan't you've been feeding her."

  The man looked embarrassed. "I wasn't meaning to be cheap," he said. "I always thought the cats on the Kibble Kan't bags looked happy enough."

  "Not as happy as the Kitten Kaboodle cats," Zinnia insisted. She turned to Jackie. "Jackie, could you run to the car and get the bag of kibble we brought to feed the cats?"

  Jackie got the keys from Pete and took off running.

  "Jackie's the fastest among us," Durinda explained to the man.

  And Jackie proved it, returning very rapidly with the large bag of kibble.

  "Do you see now?" Zinnia said to the man as she pointed to the cats on the bag.

  The man saw. We all saw.

  Zinnia was right: those were some insanely happy cats.

  "Do you have Orange's kibble bowl handy?" Zinnia asked the man.

  "Since she's so fast," the man said, "can I send—what was her name? Jackie?—to go fetch it?"

  We just stared at him. How would Jackie know where he kept his cat's kibble bowl?

  "I was kidding," he finally said. "Back in a tick."

  It was more like a tick and a tock—he was no Jackie, after all—but soon he was back with the requested bowl into which Zinnia poured a large serving of Kitten Kaboodle.

  Our eight cats plus Old Felix looked at Zinnia like she was crazy to give so much of the good stuff away.

  "Don't worry," Zinnia assured them. "There's plenty for everybody."

  Orange devoured the Kitten Kaboodle so fast, she was licking her chops in no time.

  "As you can see," Zinnia told the man, "Orange is not sick."

  "She just didn't like the lousy cheap food you were giving her," Georgia added.

  "Now that Zinnia has solved your cat problem," Mrs. Pete said, "do you think you might be able to find rooms for us?"

  We laughed at the idea of Zinnia solving the man's cat problem. Of course Zinnia hadn't had a conversation with Orange. That whole thing with Kitten Kaboodle was just a lucky guess!

  Some of us were getting tired, however. So if Zinnia's lucky guess could get us a room, or three, or four...

  But the man just laughed in our faces again.

  How offensive! And after what Zinnia had done for him. Still, as we watched Rebecca, who'd grown bored and was now playing one-person catch in the tiny lobby using Petal as a human ball, we couldn't say that we blamed him. We were a lot to handle.

  But something in our expressions as we turned away from the desk must have caused him to take pity on us.

  "Wait," he said. "You still can't stay here, and I can't think of any self-respecting establishment that would have you. But there's a house you might be able to rent for the week."

  "A house, you say?" Pete's expression was happy again as we turned to face the man.

  "We don't want a house," Georgia said. "We already live in one of those. This is vacation. We want to stay somewhere special."

  Oh, Georgia.

  "That's fine, that's fine," the man said hurriedly. "It's more of a cottage anyway, but there should be room for all of you. It's all the way at the end of the beach. Goes by the name of the Last-Ditch Cottage. I'm sure no one's using it this week. Almost no one ever does."

  "Is it haunted?" Petal asked fearfully.

  We ignored Petal, but the man didn't.

  "No," he said. Then he shrugged. "Last-Ditch just isn't what most people usually have in mind when they go on vacation."

  "It sounds perfect for us, then," Pete said.

  Poor Pete. He was finally getting the picture. We weren't "most people."

  "Who do I talk to about renting it?" Pete asked.

  "You mean right now?" the man asked.

  "No, he means next year," Rebecca said. She tossed Petal again before adding in exasperation, "Of course he means now."

  Rebecca was being rude, we thought, but she did have a point.

  "Oh, it's much too late right now," the man said. "I know a man who knows the man who rents it. Come back in the morning and I'll have the key and the paperwork for you."

/>   "And where do you suggest we sleep until morning?" Mrs. Pete wanted to know.

  "I don't know." The man shrugged. "Maybe on the beach?"

  ***

  Okay, so there were no rooms for us at the inns and maybe we were roughing it more than we were accustomed to, but it was rather cozy on the beach at night, nestled into the sand dunes, with what seemed like a million stars twinkling overhead.

  "I hope it doesn't rain," Petal said.

  "There's not a cloud in the sky," Pete said.

  "I hope we don't get hit by a tidal wave," Petal said.

  "I'm sure they don't have those here," Mrs. Pete said.

  "Oh, look!" Jackie said. "A shooting star!"

  We all looked. How dazzling!

  "Quick, make wishes, girls," Mrs. Pete said. "That's what you do when you see a shooting star."

  We were grateful she was there to tell us that. We'd never seen a shooting star before and so we didn't know what to do with one, other than be dazzled by it.

  "I wish we had that box with us now," Annie said. "Too bad we left it in the car."

  "I wish for real French potatoes so that someday I can make real French fries," Durinda said.

  "I wish for a bed," Georgia said, "because this sand is lumpy."

  "I wish for Georgia to stop complaining," Jackie said, "and to just be happy with wherever she is at the moment, for her sake, not ours."

  "I wish for even greater math skills than I already possess," Marcia said.

  "I wish to not be scared of everything," Petal said, "and not to die."

  "I wish I had a can of pink frosting," Rebecca said.

  "I wish it were September already," Zinnia said, "because even though that would mean that my month was over with, my moment in the spotlight history, maybe somehow Mommy and Daddy would be back with us again."

  We were all silent for a minute, thinking how much better Zinnia's wish was than any of ours.

  Then:

  "Oh no! Not a shooting star!" Petal shrieked. "You mean the sky is shooting at us?"

  Then she buried her head in the sand.

  "Maybe we should just do our Waltons routine and then go to sleep?" Annie suggested with a weary sigh.