Jackie's Jokes Read online

  "Serves you right," Rebecca said to Carl as she extracted a can of pink frosting from him when it was time for dessert. "You thought jokes were fine enough when you were pulling them on other people. Well, if you can dish it out, you'd better learn to take it."

  "Kettle, pot," Georgia muttered.

  "Excuse me?" Rebecca snapped.

  Georgia stood her ground. "I only meant that you're a fine one to talk. You're always being ... you, but if anyone acts like you toward you, you get all hot under the collar."

  Jackie approached the two Eights, placing one hand on each girl's shoulder. "Kettle, pot; pot, kettle. Discuss amongst yourselves."

  "Something is very wrong here," Marcia observed out of the blue.

  "You mean something worse," Rebecca said, "than robots who never do their jobs properly anyway and talking refrigerators and everyone in the entire world, including your own cats and your own haircutting sister, all playing tricks on you?"

  "Yes," Marcia said. "But it's not a wrong something like you're thinking."

  "Great," Georgia said. Standing so close to Rebecca for so long was making her as testy as she used to be. "Now you sound just like the McG: 'It's a holiday,' 'No, on second thought, it isn't'; 'It's wrong and worse,' 'On second thought, it's not.' I do wish people would make up their minds!"

  "It's just that there's something off." Marcia tried to explain. "I've felt that way all day long. And now, as I'm talking out loud to you about it, I'm coming to realize what that something is."

  "Do you think you could tell the rest of us, then?" Annie said, visibly starting to lose patience.

  "It's just this," Marcia said. "What hasn't happened yet today that always happens every April Fools' Day?"

  What hasn't happened...?

  That's when it hit all of us too. Mommy, who was a great scientist and who had created all the inventions in our home, always reprogrammed at least some of those inventions to do crazy things on April Fools' Day. And this year, there had been nothing.

  But before we could think any more about that—

  The flying watering can came into the room, stopped right over Rebecca's head, and then drenched her.

  "Aargh!" Rebecca screamed at the flying watering can. "What are you doing?"

  If a flying watering can could be said to smirk, we would have sworn ours was smirking at Rebecca.

  Rebecca shook her head, the excess water flying off her hair.

  "If I didn't know any better," she said, "I'd say that was another practical joke."

  "I wonder if the house has any more tricks up its sleeve," Zinnia wondered. Her eyes danced. "This is kind of fun."

  "Maybe for you," Rebecca said through gritted teeth. "I think I'll go to Summer to dry off."

  Summer was one of the four seasonal rooms our mother had invented so that we could always go to whatever season we felt like being in at any given moment.

  We followed Rebecca, hoping to calm her down, but when we got to Summer...

  ...it was snowing!

  "What is going on here?" Rebecca shouted. "Next thing you know, the sun will be shining in Winter."

  Durinda shrugged. "Perhaps we should check?"

  When we got to Winter, the sun wasn't shining but yet, somehow, there were flowers growing everywhere.

  "This is amazing," Petal said. "Who has the power to make snow fall in summer and flowers bloom in winter?"

  "Mommy," Jackie said simply. "No one in the world has that kind of power except for Mommy."

  "Do you think she's...?" Annie started to say, her voice hushed, but then she stopped. It was as though she was scared to believe what she was thinking: somehow, Mommy was there.

  "No, I don't," Jackie said. "But you know how Mommy is. Always planning ahead for things. She probably set this all up before she disappeared to wherever she disappeared to so that we wouldn't miss her playing tricks on us."

  That was Mommy all over: always thinking of us first.

  Suddenly, we missed her so very hard; we missed Daddy too. He also always put us first, even if his strength was more in looking good in clothes than in inventing things.

  Annie, fighting back tears, clapped her hands together. "Right, then," she said brightly. "Why don't we get our homework done?"

  So that's what we did. What else can you do when your parents are still missing, you have no idea where they are, and there is still work to be done?

  So we worked, after which we got ready for bed.

  We were exhausted now.

  "My, this has been one long day," Jackie said. "It's taken forever to live through it and so much has happened. But I wonder: Do you think a day will come, I don't know when, where it will be one long adventure from beginning to end, kind of like a whole book taking place in a single day?"

  Suddenly we were wondering about that too.

  And somehow, we knew Jackie was right. It wouldn't happen in April, and it might not happen in May or June or even July, for that matter, but one day, it would happen.

  We were certain of that, if nothing else.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  April 2 passed uneventfully at school, with no practical jokes played or received, but when we arrived home, the little red light on the answering machine next to the phone was blinking like crazy.

  We'd stopped answering the phone and turned off the machine shortly after Mommy and Daddy's disappearance because we didn't like always answering calls from telemarketers, but we'd since turned the machine back on because Annie had said it was irresponsible not to. What if someone had an emergency and suddenly needed the help of eight little girls?

  "You'd better do something about that," Rebecca said to Annie. "That little red light looks mad."

  We still didn't like to actually answer the phone when it rang because we got tired of all the lies we had to tell people: that Daddy was in the bathroom and that Mommy was in France, or vice versa. So we just let the machine catch everything. It was Annie's job to take down the messages, but she didn't usually like doing that because she said no one we were interested in talking to ever called.

  This was true. The people we most wanted to hear from, Mommy and Daddy—well, we didn't really believe that that was how we'd first hear from them again. Although we did like to imagine...

  Hi, girls! we imagined Mommy's voice saying.Daddy busted his ankle on the runway in Milan, then we got detained in Venezuela when I tried to help the South Americans develop a better postage stamp, but we'll be home soon. Hope you've been behaving!

  It was a nice dream, but we knew it wasn't reality.

  As for the other people in our world, our two classmates never called, because we saw them every day at school, and Pete, well, we always called him rather than the other way around. This meant that Annie was right: no one we wanted to talk to would call on that phone.

  Annie tried to ignore the phone, just walked right past it.

  "I don't think you should ignore it this time," Rebecca insisted. "Look at that blinking red light—the thing looks like it's about to explode!"

  And then the phone started to ring.

  "Answer it!" Rebecca commanded. We looked at Annie, wondering if she'd hit Rebecca. Let's face it, no one ever commanded Annie to do anything.

  "No," Annie said simply, but she did turn up the machine's volume so we could all hear whoever was calling and picked up the pencil and pad that were beside the phone so she could take down the message.

  "Robert?" a man's voice said, sounding both confident and harried at the same time, sort of like if Principal Freud and the McG were rolled into a single person. "Alan Watts here. You do remember me, don't you? Your CPA?"

  "What's a CPA?" Petal asked, but Annie shushed her.

  "At any rate," this Alan Watts person continued, talking to our father, who wasn't there, "surely you've received the many e-mails I've sent you. Unless they've all disappeared into the ether, as e-mails sometimes do? Although I can't believe that happened to every single one. Still, I've given up on that, w
hich is why I've been trying to reach you by phone all day. You do realize it's Tax Day in just thirteen days, right?"

  There were those words again!

  Tax Day!

  We all mouthed the words. Tax Day. What could it be? We'd never heard of it before. Perhaps the McG had been on to something important after all, we thought.

  "You haven't hired a new CPA, have you?" Alan Watts said, sounding less sure of himself. "No, of course you haven't," he insisted. "At any rate"—we were beginning to realize that Alan Watts said at any rate an awful lot and that it was annoying coming from him—"give me a ring as soon as you get this message." He said his number, and Annie wrote it down. "We'll set up an appointment for you to come into the city. I hope you have all your papers in order. You and Lucy make so much money, and if you don't file your taxes on time—heh, heh, heh—you'll lose it all in late fees. So, at any rate—"

  But Annie turned down the volume then so that we wouldn't have to listen to Alan Watts natter on anymore.

  "I don't want any part of this ... Tax Day!"Annie cried, throwing down the pencil like it had burned her.

  "But I don't think we should ignore it," Zinnia said.

  "No," Petal said, her lip starting to quiver. "That man said we could lose all our money. Then not only will we be orphans, we'll be really poor orphans!"

  "I think we should call Pete," Jackie said decisively, and she headed off toward Mommy's private study.

  "Pete?" Marcia asked. "But why? I mean, he is very nice to us all the time, but I don't think we should be hitting him up for a loan."

  "He's our friend," Jackie said, "and he's an adult. He should be able to explain all this stuff about taxes to us.

  She picked up the phone and hit the speakerphone button so we could all hear whatever got said.

  "What's the number for Pete's Repairs and Auto Wrecking?" Jackie asked Annie.

  "Do you really think it's that easy," Annie said with an almost sneer, "to call Pete?"

  "Yes, I do," Jackie said. Then she added in a commanding voice, "Number?"

  "Jackie has gotten ... forceful"Zinnia whispered with real admiration.

  "I think it must be the hair," Georgia whispered back.

  "The number's programmed into speed-dial," Annie said grudgingly. "To call Pete, you just press one."

  So that's what Jackie did.

  The phone rang two times, then we heard the familiar voice say, "Pete's Repairs and Auto Wrecking."

  "Mr. Pete?" Jackie said. "This is Jackie Huit speaking."

  "Well, this is a first," Pete said, his voice brightening. "Usually, it's Annie calling. By the way, did I tell you how nice your hair looks?"

  "Yes. Yes, you did," Jackie said. "But that's not what I'm calling about. I was wondering, could you tell me, please: what are taxes?"

  "Taxis?" Pete sounded surprised, then continued before Jackie could correct him. "Why, taxis are vehicles that people sometimes pay to take them places."

  Rebecca rolled her eyes. Truthfully, we all did. It was so rare for Pete to let us down.

  "No," Jackie corrected, "not taxis. I said taxes, as in, um, Tax Day. Do you know what taxes and Tax Day are?"

  "Oh!" Pete said with a loud groan. We swear, we could almost hear him hitting himself in the head over his own previous stupidity. "Taxes and Tax Day! Now I get it!" He paused. "Except that I don't, not really. Although some people say taxes are one big practical joke played on adults. So, what do you want to know about taxes and Tax Day?"

  "Well, it's like this," Jackie said. "What if a person, or persons, doesn't or don't pay her or their taxes by, um, Tax Day? Is that a very bad thing?"

  "Huh," Pete said. For once, he sounded stumped. "Well, I don't know. You see, I've always paid all my taxes on time, so it's very hard for me to say."

  "Try,"Jackie said, using her new forceful tone.

  "Well," Pete said, "I suppose I have read about tax cheats. But those are usually wealthy people."

  Eight girls gulped in fear. Our parents were wealthy people!

  "And what happens to those wealthy tax cheats?" Jackie asked.

  "From what I can tell," Pete said, "they have to pay a lot of extra money in fines, or someone comes and takes away some of their stuff as payment, or, sometimes, they even wind up in jail."

  "Jail?" Petal shrieked. "But I can't wind up there! I don't want to be a poor orphan in—"

  Rebecca would have clapped her hand over Petal's mouth, but Georgia beat her to it.

  "Who's that shouting?" Pete asked.

  "Shouting?" Jackie asked with a nervous laugh. "Oh, it's just the TV set. Durinda's watching some cooking show and the, um, French chef is very loud."

  "I see," Pete said, starting to sound suspicious. It was probably because of the word French. One day, we were really going to have to come up with something other than France or the French to get us out of tight places. "But what I don't see," he went on, "is why you're suddenly interested in—"

  "What are taxes for, Mr. Pete?" Jackie cut him off. "And why do people have to pay them?"

  "Why, taxes are used for all sorts of things people need. They're used to keep all the roads paved so that there aren't big holes that could hurt people if their cars hit them."

  "Safety," Zinnia said, and Petal nodded. "Safety is important."

  "And bridges too," Pete said. "No one wants a bridge to be weak."

  "Is that it?" Jackie asked.

  "Oh no," Pete said. "There's lots of other things as well. Why, the police, the fire departments—all depend on taxes."

  "Those are important things too," Durinda said. "If you have a kitchen fire, you want someone to call who will come and help you."

  "And government," Pete said.

  "I'm not sure we care about that," Jackie said. "Anything else?"

  "Schools," Pete said.

  "But that's insane!"Marcia, who was rarely outraged by anything, was outraged. "We already pay a huge price to go to the Whistle Stop! We shouldn't have to pay for other schools too!"

  "I'll bet it's that usury thing I once told you about," Annie said knowingly, "all over again."

  "Hullo?" Pete said. "How many of you am I talking to now?"

  "All eight," Jackie admitted with a sigh. "The French cooking show ended, and we're all here now."

  "Good," Pete said, "because now maybe you lot can tell me something."

  "Yes?" Jackie said.

  "Why, Jackie? Why do you all want to know about taxes and Tax Day?"

  Instead of answering, Jackie asked, "What's a CPA?"

  "It stands for certified public accountant," Pete said immediately, restoring our faith in his brain. "A CPA is a special kind of accountant, and accountants handle filing people's taxes for them. Why do you ask?"

  Jackie took a deep breath, big enough for all of us. "Because Daddy's accountant was e-mailing him and we didn't know it and now he's left a million messages on our machine and it's all about the same thing. He says Daddy must bring him his files and, I don't know, whatever else he needs, and then Daddy needs to pay his taxes on time ... or else."

  "Oh dear," Pete said, and then he let out a low whistle. "This can't be good."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  "This is really bad then, isn't it?" Jackie asked.

  "Well, yes," Pete said. "I don't think there's a person in the world who wants the Tax Man after him or her."

  The Tax Man. That sounded even more ominous to us than the Wicket, or even the Monster with a Thousand Heads, which was usually Petal's biggest nightmare.

  "So what do we do?" Jackie asked.

  "We all need to remain calm," Pete said.

  Easy for him to say. He wasn't the one who needed to keep Petal from spinning herself off into outer space. At that moment, that was a job for Annie, Durinda, Georgia, Marcia, Rebecca, and Zinnia. Really, right then it was taking all six of them.

  "First," Pete said, "you need to locate your parents' tax info, and then you need to make an appointment to see this CPA person
and take it all to him."

  "That sounds rather involved," Jackie said. "You know, we are all just still seven years old."

  "When has that ever stopped you lot from doing anything?" Pete said with a laugh.

  That laugh did a lot to lift our spirits. So long as someone could still make jokes, we could tell ourselves that the world wasn't really as scary a place as it seemed.

  "Now then," Pete said, his voice turning all businesslike. "I know your dad pretty well. You know, I am the man who works on his cars. And I can tell you this: Robert Huit is a very organized man."

  Huh. And here we always thought that the most organized person in our house was Mommy. She was the scientist, after all.

  "I'll bet anything," Pete said, "that your dad's just like me."

  "But Daddy would never be caught dead wearing a navy blue T-shirt," Zinnia said, but she said it softly so Pete wouldn't hear. Zinnia never liked to offend anybody, except maybe Rebecca. And Georgia.

  "And if Daddy did wear a navy blue T-shirt," Georgia said, not bothering to keep her voice low, "he'd find a way to make it look stylish."

  Thankfully, if Pete had heard what some of us were saying, he either didn't care or was ignoring it.

  "What I mean," Pete said, "is that your dad no doubt has a nice, neat file somewhere, probably marked Taxes with maybe even the year on it—in this case, you'd be looking for last year's file, 2007—in which he stores all his information."

  "And where do you think I'd find such a file?" Jackie asked.

  "Two places come to mind," Pete said. "Either in a regular file cabinet or in a file stored in a computer."

  We didn't like going near the computer. One, Mommy didn't particularly like them, which we now thought for the first time was kind of odd, given her profession; and two, technology tended to scare us—there was just so much that could go wrong with it!

  "I think we'll start with the regular files first," Jackie said.