Petal's Problems Read online

  "See what I mean?" Annie said. "It's as though overnight you've all turned into those dolls whose hair keeps coming out of their fake little heads when you tug on it."

  "I don't like not looking like me." Petal's lower lip began to tremble. "It's as bad as seeing myself looking evil in that passport photo."

  "I have to confess, I don't like it either," Marcia said. "My bangs are down to my chin. It's like looking at the world through a hair curtain."

  "What do we do about this fresh horror?" Georgia said.

  Almost immediately, she regretted her question. We all did. For, instead of answering, Annie simply jerked her thumb hard to the left.

  Toward the Haircutting Room.

  ***

  "Ouch!"

  "Watch it!"

  "Be carrrrreful with those!"

  "Cut hers next!"

  "Cut me last!"

  "Not me—remember, I was already in here once this month?"

  "Ooh, I like that!"

  "I don't like thisssssssss!"

  And then it was done, another hurdle gotten over before our trip, and we were back to looking like ourselves again.

  ***

  But there were yet more hurdles.

  Sunday morning, Zinnia came up with a problem. A big problem.

  A feline problem.

  "We're leaving tomorrow, June sixteenth," she said to Annie, "the wedding is on the twenty-first, and the tickets you ordered say we're due to fly back on June twenty-third, so we'll be gone for seven days. What are we going to do with our eight furry friends while we're gone?"

  "We left them here by themselves when we went on vacation with Mommy and Daddy last Christmas," Annie said. "That worked out okay."

  "You call it okay," Durinda asked, "coming home to find kibble in every room and half the furniture knocked over?"

  "They did trash the place," Marcia said.

  "No," Rebecca corrected her, eyes gleaming. "They had a party."

  "Whatever you want to call it," Zinnia said, "they do it because they get lonely without us. Also because they get offended that we would leave them for so long."

  "So what do you want me to do about it?" Annie sighed.

  "You could call Pete and ask him what to do," Jackie said helpfully.

  "You like calling Pete, Annie," Georgia said. "It makes you feel important."

  "And he likes being called," Petal said.

  We trooped after Annie as she went to use the phone in Mommy's private study, the only one in the house with speakerphone.

  "Pete's Repairs and Auto Wrecking," we heard Pete's happy voice say a minute later. "Pete speaking."

  "Annie Huit," Annie said, adding our last name as though he might not know which Annie it was otherwise. "We don't know what to do about the cats."

  "Can't you leave them with a relative?" he asked, then answered himself before anyone else had the chance to. "No, of course not. All your relatives are either missing or crazy or in France. How about leaving them home alone then?" Again he answered himself. "No, that won't work. I can do that with Old Felix because he's, well, old. But what works with my one old cat would never work with your eight powerful ones. They'd trash the place."

  As well we knew.

  "An animal hotel, then?" he suggested.

  "I really and truly don't mean to be rude, Mr. Pete," Zinnia said, "but bite your tongue. Do you not realize how abandoned that would make them feel? It would be awful for them."

  "Yes, yes, what was I thinking?" Pete sounded as though he felt terrible about what he'd said. Then he laughed. "Well, clearly I wasn't thinking." And now he sounded excited. "I know! Why don't we just take them on the plane?"

  Cats on a plane?

  Could our mechanic really be serious?

  "But wouldn't we need special permission for that?" Annie said aloud what all of us were thinking. "Surely the airline must have rules..."

  "Don't worry about it, lamb. I know a man who knows a man who..."

  And just like that, we had one less problem to worry about.

  Our eight cats were going with us—to France!

  ***

  Monday finally arrived, the day we were to depart.

  We were packed. We had our fake passports. We looked spiffy.

  There was just one final problem.

  "We need a dozen eggs."

  That was Carl the talking refrigerator, and he couldn't stop talking to us as we raced around the house grabbing last-minute items. And what he couldn't stop talking about was eggs!

  "Maybe brown eggs," Carl went on, "because, well, they last longer than white eggs. But then again, white eggs tend to be easier to break, and anyhow with eight of you, neither last that long, so I don't know. Maybe we should think about a carton of Egg Beaters—you know, the stuff you pour? Doesn't that sound easier than breaking eggs and having to worry about eggshells? But do Egg Beaters cost more? I'm not sure about that. At what point does convenience outweigh cost? I don't know. Some people think Egg Beaters are healthier than regular eggs, lower cholesterol and all that—"

  "Shut up!" Rebecca shouted at Carl.

  "Don't yell at him!" Durinda yelled at Rebecca. "You know how sensitive he is!"

  "Oh," Rebecca said, hands on hips, "like I'm not?"

  We all ignored that.

  "What's wrong, Carl?" Durinda patted him on the back.

  Carl hadn't seemed this crazy since February when he'd started melting because he'd fallen in love with robot Betty and she hadn't realized yet that she loved him back.

  "But could you make it quick, Carl?" Durinda added gently as Zinnia began rounding up all the cats. "We do have a plane to catch."

  "That's the whole problem," Carl said. "It's like the

  kids are all leaving the nest and I'm a parent being left behind. I don't know what to do with myself if I have no one to care for."

  "Aw, that's so sweet," Rebecca said. Then she snapped, "Now can we hurry this up?"

  "You're all leaving me and now Rebecca's snapping at me!" Carl yelled in anguish. Then we heard a clinking sound and saw that Carl had begun crying ice cubes.

  Poor Carl.

  "But you'll have robot Betty here with you," Durinda pointed out, patting Carl some more.

  "Yes," Carl said. "I suppose now we will be empty nesters together. Maybe we will grow closer."

  "There's the spirit!" Jackie said.

  "Maybe robot Betty will fall for me all over again," Carl said. "It will be like our love is new."

  We looked over at robot Betty. Even though Carl was the cooling machine, she always struck us as the colder of the two, and we worried their second honeymoon might not be all he dreamed.

  Still...

  "We really do have to go now, I'm afraid," Durinda said as we heard Pete beep his horn and realized the Petes had arrived to take us to the airport. Of course they'd come in to help us with our bags, but we liked it that they beeped first to let us know they were there. Beeps could be such cheering things.

  "Just don't talk to robot Betty all the time about eggs," Georgia advised, "and you should be fine."

  "We'll see you just one week from today!" we all shouted back to him as we headed for the door. We stopped to lay kisses on the foreheads of Daddy Sparky and Mommy Sally, and then we left, locking the house behind us.

  Then eight girls, eight cats, one large present, and eight suitcases piled into the vehicle with the Petes, and we were on our way.

  Pete had brought the limo this time, so we were going in style.

  SIX

  And then we were finally at the airport.

  It seemed to us that it had taken forever to get there, and by that we didn't just mean the ride in the limo. We meant first deciding not to go to France; then deciding to go; then dithering about a present, passports, packing, haircuts, sad talking refrigerators, and cats. We didn't think adults would dither so much before a trip.

  But then we cut ourselves some slack.

  Adults go on trips all the time with
no dithering. Or maybe they do dither a bit, although probably not as much as we had. But here's the thing: they are adults. Things are easier for them. And even though we had the Petes to accompany us, essentially we were still eight little girls who had planned a trip to a foreign country successfully and were now waiting with our tickets and fake passports to board a plane.

  By our lights, when we thought about it like that, dithering and all, we hadn't done half bad!

  ***

  "Oh, I hope we don't get arrested, I hope we don't get arrested, I hope we don't get arrested," Petal kept muttering to herself as we approached our turn with the ticket taker.

  "Please stop muttering like that," Annie whispered. "You're drawing more attention to us, and we're doing that well enough just fine on our own, what with Zinnia insisting we bring the cats."

  Each of us held a suitcase on one side and a cat on the other.

  We were taking turns balancing the present for Aunt Martha and Uncle George on our heads. It made us feel very exotic, like African villagers, but it was heavy.

  "I can't help it," Petal said. "I don't want to go to jail for having a fake passport. I'd scare myself in the mirror if I had to wear black-and-white stripes and a cap to match."

  "Don't worry." Rebecca sneered. "They wear orange jumpsuits instead now."

  "That's not helpful," Annie reprimanded Rebecca.

  But when it came our turn, the ticket taker simply looked over all our fake passports, the ones in which we looked like hardened criminals, without a change in her calm expression.

  What did change the calm of her expression was the sight of each of us holding a cat.

  "You can't bring those on the plane like that, I'm afraid," she said. "They each need to be placed in a separate carrier. Did you bring eight carriers?"

  Zinnia looked about to cry, but then Pete stepped up and spoke to the ticket taker in a hushed tone.

  "It's all right, luv," he said. "You see, I know a man who knows a man who—"

  And then we heard him whisper the name of one of the men.

  It was a name we'd all heard before. It was a very famous name.

  Who knew Pete the mechanic was so well connected?

  "Well, in that case..." The ticket taker blushed. "Oh! I almost forgot! Can I see your passport?"

  Pete handed his over and handed Mrs. Pete's over as well.

  Eight heads peered around the side of the ticket taker so we could see if the Petes' passport photos were as hideous as ours.

  Funny thing, that. They looked completely normal and nice in their photos, exactly like themselves. But hang on. That last name...

  "Thank you, Mr. Zero." The ticket taker smiled as she handed the Petes' passports back to them. "Mrs. Zero."

  We waited to react until we were far enough away from the ticket taker but not too close to the pilot who stood at the door of the airplane, because even we knew it would look suspicious if we were surprised about the last name of the adults we were traveling with.

  "Zero?" we whisper-shouted. "Your last name's Zero, making you Pete Zero and Jill Zero?"

  "I know," Pete said with a sorry shrug. "And now you know why I prefer to be known simply as Pete."

  ***

  Eights on a plane!

  Two years ago there had been a horror movie out in the theaters. It was called Snakes on a Plane. We wanted to see it, even though we were only five years old at the time. Well, Rebecca wanted to go, bad. And Georgia said she wanted to go too, but we suspected that was just to impress Rebecca. Zinnia worried that the snakes had been mistreated by the moviemakers, and Petal wanted no part of any of it.

  We did get to see advertisements for it on TV. It was Mommy who said we couldn't go. She said it would be too scary, and she had to keep reminding Rebecca that she was only five, so even if Rebecca did break into her own piggy bank, take all her pennies, and walk the six miles to the movie theater, they wouldn't let her in by herself. Mommy actually did sound sorry to have to disappoint Rebecca—she always hated to disappoint any of us—but she still wasn't about to say yes.

  It was Daddy, though, who said those advertisements were the most amazing thing he'd ever seen. He referred to them as "high concept."

  When we'd asked him what that meant—we didn't think to ask Jackie because she had yet to swallow a dictionary—he explained that high concept meant that you could immediately grasp the whole idea of a movie or a book just from one sentence.

  "And here they've done it all in just the title!" he'd gone on, still amazed. "They don't even have to run those full commercials with the snakes falling from the ceiling, because it's all, everything, right there in the title: Snakes on a Plane! What could be more obvious?"

  "Kind of like frosting-covered hot dogs on a stick, right, Daddy?" Rebecca had said. "You know exactly what wonderful thing you're getting just from the name."

  We'd ignored Rebecca when she'd said that—so gross. Right now we were living our own high-concept life, so let us say it again: Eights on a plane!

  We think people will get the picture.

  ***

  But just to fill in a few of the details...

  We were chaos.

  It took us forever to figure out which seats were ours, then to stow our luggage in the overhead bin, then to settle down with our cats.

  And of course there were a few other people on the plane as well, all trying to do similar things, minus the cats.

  Then the pilot's voice came over the loudspeaker and announced that we'd missed our chance to get in line to take off because we'd all taken too long to settle in, so there would be a slight delay in our departure.

  Rebecca and Georgia took this as an invitation to play catch in the aisle with Rambunctious, which horrified many people, including Zinnia, but which Petal didn't notice because she was hiding under her seat.

  Thankfully, the cat did not seem to mind being treated as a sporting good.

  But the flight attendant did mind, so he hurried them back to their seats, dragged Petal out from under hers, and offered us all complimentary beverages.

  "Coffee for me, please," Annie said.

  "I would like some juice," Marcia said.

  "Do you have any mango juice?" Jackie asked.

  We were seated in rows of two as follows, from front to back: The Petes; Annie and Durinda; Georgia and Jackie; Marcia and Petal; Rebecca and Zinnia.

  Now that we thought about it, we wondered why it had taken us so long to figure out where we were supposed to sit, and yet it had.

  "Do you think they'll show a movie?" Jackie asked.

  "I hope they show Snakes on a Plane." Rebecca's eyes gleamed.

  "Don't be nutty," Marcia said, which was a rather harsh thing to hear from her. "No reputable airline is going to show Snakes on a Plane on a plane!"

  We had our coffee and juice, then the flight attendant cleared the cups away, and the pilot announced it was finally time for takeoff.

  We were so excited by now, we really were bouncing in our seats.

  It was almost too good to believe. It felt like we were going on our greatest adventure ever!

  "Are we there yet, Mr. Pete?" Georgia called forward before we'd even left the ground.

  "Not yet," he replied patiently.

  Then we were taxiing down the runway; the sun was setting, and we could feel our bodies in the plane slowly leaving the earth, climbing higher at a steady angle.

  It was all so amazing! So aerodynamic!

  "Are we there yet, Mr. Pete?" Georgia called forward again.

  "Not for a while," he said. "At least another hour, maybe seven."

  "Perhaps you Eights should try to get some rest," Mrs. Pete suggested. "There is a time difference. You don't want to get jet lag, and a nap might help to confuse your bodies."

  Ooh! Jet lag! We hadn't thought of that.

  And we did so want to be fresh when we arrived at our destination, where we'd be seeing old relatives, perhaps meeting new ones, celebrating matrimony, an
d eating cake. Plus, we'd have to be on our best behavior and be polite the whole time, which we well knew could be exhausting work.

  So we heeded Mrs. Pete's advice.

  We pulled the little plastic shutters over our little airplane windows and turned off the little round reading lights overhead. Then we asked the flight attendant to get our little pillows from the overhead bins, and although we were tempted by the movie they were showing on the flight—which was not, we feel the need to point out, Snakes on a Plane—we shut our eyes and thought sweet thoughts until we fell asleep.

  Well, maybe Rebecca didn't think sweet thoughts—who knew with her?—but the rest of us didn't like to think too much about that.

  It seemed like our heads had only just touched the pillows (though later on we would learn that it had in fact been a few hours since we'd fallen asleep) when the scream woke us up.

  "Where are we? Where are we?" we all said, blinking around in that startled way people do when they wake in unfamiliar surroundings.

  We blinked around some more and turned on the overhead reading lights and pushed up the little plastic shutters so we could see out our little airplane windows.

  But it was all darkness, with nothing to see out there but the blinking red lights on the wings of the plane.

  Some of us suspected that the darkness meant we were flying over an ocean. We don't know why we thought this, but it made sense to us at the time.

  Then the scream came again, and we realized it was Petal screaming.

  A moment later we realized that for once she had something to scream about.

  SEVEN

  Pete the mechanic unbuckled his seat belt and was out of his chair and at Petal's side quicker than we had ever imagined a man with weight hanging over the top of his jeans could move.

  "Petal, what's wrong?" he asked.

  Then Mrs. Pete, moving quickly, was there too.

  "Did you have a bad dream?" she asked, crouching down beside Petal.

  "No!" Petal cried. "We're not going to France after all ... and I'm scared!"

  "I can't believe you woke us all up for this." Rebecca was cross. "Of course we're going to France. We're in a plane and that's where we're headed."