Durinda's Dangers Read online

  Unfortunately, Zinnia and Petal said these last two things within Carl's hearing, and he launched into a fresh river of tears.

  "If this keeps up," Georgia said, leaping to avoid a new puddle, "we'll have to build an ark to get around our own home."

  When we arrived at school, the McG had a notice written on the board: Just 9 more shopping days left until Valentine's Day—don't forget to get all your cards!

  It was odd. This Valentine's Day stuff seemed so important to her. Was she going to keep this up—8 more shopping days, 7 more shopping days, 6 more ...—until Valentine's Day was here?

  Jackie pointed out, "Shouldn't we have celebrated Groundhog Day first?"

  "A late celebration would be nice." Zinnia perked up. "You know: equal time for equal holidays and all of that."

  The McG glared at us.

  "Do you think," she said sternly, "that you can put a holiday where a rodent sees his shadow, or not, on an equal footing with one symbolized by Cupid and an arrow through the heart?"

  Well, when she put it like that...

  When we got home, we were determined to continue our competition to see who could make the best Valentine's Day card for Will. Annie had said that perhaps we each should work in a separate room so that no one could steal anyone else's ideas. Some of us thought this was taking paranoia over internal espionage too far, while others of us thought her idea was just peachy.

  But before we could get down to making valentines, a new emergency arose.

  "The cats are saying that Dandruff has been freezing them on and off all day," Zinnia said.

  We had eight gray and white puffballs that were our cats, one for each sister. Their names were Anthrax, Dandruff, Greatorex, Jaguar, Minx, Precious, Rambunctious, and Zither. Dandruff was Durinda's cat.

  Zinnia always acted as though the cats talked to her, but we all knew that was a crazy idea.

  So we ignored Zinnia and went to get our valentine supplies.

  But five minutes into our card making, there was a shout heard round the house.

  "Come quick!" Zinnia shouted. "There's something awful going on in Fall!"

  We had four seasonal rooms in our home, which Mommy had created so we could go to the season we most wanted to be in when we grew tired of the one we were living in. The rooms were Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Fall had orange and brown and red and yellow leaves painted all over the walls because Mommy said you couldn't manufacture leaves that crinkled properly in a lab.

  We raced toward the sound of Zinnia's voice.

  And what did we see?

  Dandruff, in action.

  Rambunctious and Greatorex were already frozen in position as we skidded into the room, but we were there to witness it when Precious, winded from running for what we guessed to be a long period of time, slowed down to gasp for breath. That's when we saw Dandruff lift her front right paw, tap it rapidly against her hind leg three times, and then point it at Precious as though it were a loaded gun.

  Precious froze where she stood.

  Then we watched—some of us in horror, some of us amused—as Dandruff tracked down and froze Anthrax, Jaguar, and Minx. For some reason, Dandruff couldn't freeze Zither. But Zither was so frightened after what she'd seen Dandruff do to the others, she raced from the room and was not seen again for hours.

  It made a very odd picture, all those frozen cats. It was as though six of our cats had decided to dress up as lawn jockeys for Halloween.

  Then we watched as Dandruff casually sauntered out of the room, like a sheriff in a Western who has killed all the bad guys. We swear we heard her whistle a tune under her breath. Later, Marcia would tell us that tune was called "Rawhide."

  Some of us may have been horrified, but we were also all curious, so we followed Dandruff out of the room to see what she would do next.

  Dandruff made for the cat room. The cat room was like our drawing room, only for cats. It was where the cats all gathered when they wanted to be who they were or when they had something important to discuss. It was also where their eight kibble bowls were lined up, each bowl with the name of a different cat printed on it in pretty lettering. The names on the bowls had been Daddy's idea when he was still among us. Daddy was a great model—and by that we don't mean "an example," but rather "someone who looks great in designer clothes on the runways of Paris and Milan"—and he had a terrific artistic touch.

  We watched as Dandruff moved through the bowls systematically, eating all the kibble in bowls marked Anthrax through Zither. She didn't stop until the last brown nugget of kibble was gone and her chops had been licked. Then she started grooming herself, cleaning her fur with her tongue as though she hadn't just done anything wrong or unusual.

  "She's freezing the other cats," Durinda said of her own cat, "so she can eat what is rightfully theirs."

  "She's a thief!" said Petal.

  "She's a glutton!" said Marcia.

  "She's brilliant," said Georgia, real admiration in her eyes.

  "And how," agreed Rebecca.

  But before we could continue our debate on whether Durinda's cat was a crook or a genius, Zinnia inched over to Dandruff, lay down on her stomach, and whispered in Dandruff's ear.

  Dandruff ceased her licking and cocked an ear as Zinnia whispered whatever she whispered. We could almost see the gears spinning in Dandruff's great cat brain.

  Then Dandruff shook her head.

  So Zinnia whispered something else, more urgently:

  Dandruff cocked the other ear, looked as though she were thinking, then shook her head again.

  So Zinnia whispered a third time, the most urgent whispering of all.

  This time, Dandruff seemed to listen very closely, then nodded sharply and exited the room.

  "What did you say to her?" Jackie asked.

  "First," Zinnia said, "I told her that if she kept eating like that, she'd grow to be so fat people would take her for a tiger. But that didn't bother her very much. In fact, she rather seemed to like the idea."

  "So what did you say next?" Marcia wanted to know.

  "I told her that her sisters would starve if she kept eating all their food," Zinnia said, "but that didn't seem to have any effect on her either."

  "So what did you say the last time?" Annie pressed.

  "I said," Zinnia said, "that only wretched dogs ate everything in sight like she was doing, and she'd better stop it before we all started calling her Dog instead of Dandruff. That did the trick."

  We could well imagine that if you were a cat, being called Dog would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to you. Unless of course you were to get eaten by one; a dog, that is.

  "And that really did it?" Durinda asked.

  "Oh, yes," Zinnia said solemnly. "Dandruff assures me she'll only freeze the other cats now if they're about to do something dangerous and she needs to save their lives."

  Of course, none of us believed all that stuff about the conversation between Zinnia and Dandruff. Oh, we did believe that Zinnia had said what she'd said she'd said. But we certainly didn't believe that any of the cats understood the things Zinnia said or that the cats actually talked back to her. A kid being able to communicate with cats? Get real.

  But it was nice that once the other cats became unfrozen, Dandruff didn't try to freeze them again.

  ***

  After serving us a dinner of PBJs, Durinda was upset.

  Not about the PBJs. Durinda had already given up feeling any guilt that she couldn't feed us proper hot meals because Carl was depressed over love. No, Durinda was upset about her power.

  "Do you think it's possible," she wondered, "to reject a power? I'm not sure I want to keep mine."

  "Why ever not?" Rebecca wanted to know. "It seems to me like it'd be a great power to have. If you want the last slice of pizza? Just freeze everyone else and then go for it. Why, when I get my power, I hope it's as nifty as the one you wound up with."

  "You would think that, wouldn't you?" Durinda said. Then she t
urned to the rest of us. "But it's scary. Look what just happened with Dandruff and the other cats. They could have starved! It's too much power for one person, or cat, to have. What if I use it for evil?"

  "Get a paper and pencil," Annie ordered Marcia with a snap of her fingers.

  "What's the paper and pencil for?" Jackie wanted to know.

  "It's for making a pro-and-con list," Annie said.

  "What's a pro-and-con list?" Zinnia asked as Marcia returned.

  "On one side of the sheet," Annie said, "we'll list the pros: all the good things about Durinda's power. On the other side, we'll list the cons: all the bad stuff."

  Georgia insisted we start with the con side first.

  CONS

  - Too much power for one of us to have (Rebecca)

  - It will go to her head (Georgia)

  - It will go to her head, she will freeze us all so she can save all the best food for herself, and they will find our skinny bodies in the gutter! (Petal)

  PROS

  - If some selfish person is buying up all the good cat food at the supermarket, you can freeze them before they take the last bag (Marcia)

  - It would be great fun to try it on the McG, even if there's no good reason to freeze her (Jackie)

  - It's too good a power to pass up (Zinnia)

  "I think it's pretty obvious," Annie concluded, "as Zinnia points out, it's too good a power for you to give up. And I'm sure there must be other great uses for it. We just haven't thought of them yet."

  You may think it astonishing that we didn't list the one thing that Durinda's power would be perfect for. Or, if you're not thinking that now, you will think it when we finally do realize the perfect use for Durinda's power. What can we say in our defense? There were 9 more shopping days, 8 more shopping days, 7 more...

  And we had talking refrigerators that would no longer do their jobs properly and the subject of Love, with a capital L, too much on the mind.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  All of the horrible things that had happened to us—and having our parents disappear, or die, certainly numbered among them—felt like nothing compared to what we did to another human being on Valentine's Day.

  It was at last February 14, and we had all entered the third-grade classroom at the Whistle Stop with great excitement in our bellies. Today was the day we were going to give Will all the lovely cards we'd prepared! Today we would finally learn which of us he loved best!

  Naturally the McG, being the McG, waited until the last hour of the school day to hold our celebration.

  "We always do things alphabetically," the McG said, "meaning that the Eights always get to go first. But why should things remain so? Today, we'll go in reverse alphabetical order. Mandy Stenko will give her cards out, followed by Will Simms, and then I have a little something for everyone. Only after we have gone will the Eights go."

  So that's what happened.

  Mandy looked so proud of herself as she moved from desk to desk depositing what were obviously handmade valentines, each one taken from a beautiful, shiny red bag. She even had one for the McG.

  We looked at ours. Each valentine had one of our names on it—she even gave the right valentine to each Eight—and all the names were in glittery script. She must have drawn our names in glue first and then poured glitter over the glue and shook off the excess. Under each of our names, she'd written the same exact thing on all of our cards: Thank you for being my friend.

  It was then we knew that we had done something wrong. Very wrong. But perhaps we weren't the only ones?

  Then it was Will's turn.

  The ones he gave us were very nice. They were decorated with stickers that looked like hockey pucks, the many pucks placed close together to form big hearts. And he'd used stickers that looked like hockey sticks to spell out the letters in our names. He too got our names right. Well, of course he did. He was Will Simms, after all. And he too had a card for the only other non-Eight student in our class, plus one for the teacher.

  Oh, this was bad. Very bad.

  Then it was the McG's turn.

  She gave cards to Will and Mandy first. Will's had a picture of a hockey rink on it. Apparently, the McG had finally gotten the memo that Will hated soccer. As for the card she gave Mandy, after Mandy opened it, she blushed and put it in her desk. It wasn't until later that it occurred to us that she was trying to spare our feelings. But before she could finish putting it away, we saw what the McG had written: To Mandy Stenko, my very best student.

  Then the McG gave out much smaller cards to each of us. Instead of our names, she had merely written Eight on each in boring black marker, and the cards were nothing special, but still...

  Oh, this was very bad. This was so bad, it could not have been worse.

  "Well, Zinnia?" the McG prompted. "Why haven't you started handing out your cards yet? I'm surprised. You Eights are always so quick to be first at anything."

  Zinnia could avoid it no longer. We could avoid it no longer.

  She rose from her seat and, lickety-split, raced to Will's desk and deposited the valentine she'd so lovingly made, then raced back to her own chair.

  Then Rebecca did the same.

  Then Petal.

  Then Marcia.

  Then Jackie.

  Then Georgia.

  Then Durinda.

  For once, Annie was the last to go.

  We had put so much time into these—all that red and pink paper, all that glitter, all those feathers and sequins—but now all we felt was awful and ashamed.

  "Aren't you forgetting someone, Eights?" the McG asked expectantly. "Or someones?"

  Eight heads shook from side to side. Eight heads hung in shame.

  "What is wrong with you children?" the McG practically shrieked. "Never mind that you left out one of your own classmates—how could you leave out me?"

  We stole a glance over at Mandy. She was sitting in her seat, quietly crying. It was as though the lovely valentines she'd received from Will and the McG didn't matter.

  She looked up at us, tears staining her cheeks. "Why do you all hate me so?" she asked simply.

  We could have lived with the McG's shrieking—she'd never once been kind to us—but we couldn't live with the look of sadness on Mandy's face, nor could we live with the way we saw Will looking at us now. We'd hurt another child. It was too much.

  Before the rest of us knew what was happening, before Will and Mandy and the McG could realize what was happening to them, Durinda rapidly tapped three times against her leg and sharply pointed her finger, doing the whole thing three times in one great blur of motion until she'd frozen our classmates and teacher.

  "So what do we do now?" Marcia asked.

  "I don't know," Durinda said. "I just couldn't bear it any longer, having them look at us like that."

  It felt odd, having just us Eights talking in a classroom where our teacher and classmates normally talked too. It was like being home alone, except not.

  "I don't know that we can do anything," Annie said. "Sure, Durinda froze them, but they won't stay frozen forever. And we can't erase their memories. They'll all remember what we've done."

  "Even I feel bad," Rebecca said.

  And so we waited, the clock on the wall loudly ticking away all the while, for our teacher and classmates to come back to us.

  Luckily, they came back at exactly the same time. Unluckily, the McG continued right where she'd left off.

  "Don't you know," she said, "that it's awful to leave out any child on Valentine's Day? When I was a child, I was often left out. And let me tell you, that hurt!"

  We might have guessed that the McG's obsession with Valentine's Day stemmed from some sadness in her childhood.

  "We're sorry," we said to the McG.

  Then we turned to Mandy, speaking the exact same words at the exact same time because we were each feeling the exact same thing: "We're sorry. We didn't mean to hurt you. We'll make it up to you somehow."

  But knowing that the Mc
G was upset over her own childhood didn't help us now, for the McG was shrieking at us again. "This is the last straw! I'm marching you down to Principal Freud's office and we're calling your parents! Mandy, take over the classroom!"

  ***

  Principal Freud was very bald. He was so bald, we'd often thought that if a single hair tried to grow on his head, it would die of loneliness.

  But Principal Freud's hair, or lack of it, didn't matter right now since Principal Freud was disappointed in us.

  It's not great when an adult is angry at you, like the McG was with us. But it's far worse when an adult is disappointed in you, particularly when it's an adult you respect.

  "I'm afraid," Principal Freud informed us, "that I'm going to have to side with Mrs. McGillicuddy on this one. Your parents will have to come in."

  This was badder than bad.

  It would be one thing if Principal Freud sent a note home; Annie could always forge a reply. It would be one thing if he insisted one of our parents call him; Annie could fake Daddy's voice. But none of us could pretend to be Daddy in person. We were all too short. Besides, they'd seen him before.

  "Mommy is at home with a terrible tummy virus," Annie said. "You wouldn't want to catch it. It's nasty. And our father is modeling in France."

  These were our standard lies to tell whenever we were called upon to produce our parents.

  "I'm sorry," Principal Freud said, "but that simply will not do. I insist on speaking with some family member—"

  Annie opened her mouth.

  "—who also happens to be an adult," Principal Freud finished, shutting Annie's mouth.

  Hmm ... a family member who was also an adult?

  Aunt Martha? Uncle George?

  Nah and nah.

  They'd never liked kids. Besides, we were pretty sure they lived too far away.

  "Can I use your phone?" Annie asked Principal Freud as the McG glared. "I need to call our uncle."

  Seven heads swiveled toward Annie. What was she talking about?

  "Of course," Principal Freud said, moving the phone toward her.