Durinda's Dangers (7 page)

"Maybe," Pete said, "Carl needs to pretend he doesn't like Betty any longer, and then she'll come after him."

"How do you mean?" Annie asked.

"Well," Pete said, "do you ever hold on to one of your cats too hard, and then, before you know it, that cat is doing everything she can to get away?"

Eight heads nodded. We'd all done that: held on too hard.

"But then," Pete went on, "did you ever notice how if you don't go after the cat but instead sit quietly in one spot, eventually the cat will jump right into your lap and stay there?"

Huh. We'd never thought to try that.

"Call Betty in here," Pete suggested. Then he turned to Carl. "And you, when she comes in, you pretend you don't even notice her." Then Pete looked up at the ceiling. "I can't believe," he said, "that I'm talking to a refrigerator."

"At least," Jackie pointed out, "this refrigerator can talk back."

"Yes," Durinda agreed. "It would be awful if you were just some crazy person talking to appliances that couldn't hold down their ends of the conversation."

So Marcia and Zinnia went off to get Betty. They were gone a long time and we guessed it was because when you told Betty to go to the kitchen, she often went to the bathroom instead.

At last, Betty entered the room. She looked as though she were about to head right back out again—nope, nothing to see here—when she paused as though listening for something.

Carl remained silent. If it were possible for refrigerators to ignore things, it sure looked as though Carl were ignoring Betty.

Betty inched closer to Carl.

Carl continued to ignore. In fact, he began whistling a tune. And it wasn't a love tune, like you'd expect. Oh, no. It was the kind of tune you'd whistle if you were mountain climbing and had all the time in the world to get to the top.

Betty inched so close to Carl, she was right in front of him. Then she took her mechanical head and rubbed it against his door handle. It was kind of like when our cats rubbed against our legs.

Carl stopped whistling.

Carl started to hum.

Gently moving Betty to one side, Pete opened the refrigerator and the freezer both at once. We looked inside: everything was freezing up nicely.

"Betty loves Carl!" we cried. "We can eat real food again!"

We looked at Pete, something like awe on our faces.

Who knew that Pete, in addition to being a crackerjack mechanic, was such an expert on love?

"Now that that's settled," Pete said, "what do you say you get down to making those valentines for the classmate whose feelings you hurt and that awful McG person?"

So that's what we did.

Once again, we got out the pink and red construction paper, the scissors and paste, the glitter and the feathers and the sequins.

With Pete supervising, we were a lot less likely to get in paste fights; Rebecca didn't even try running with the scissors; and our group crafts project was soon completed.

Just as we were putting our new valentines next to the front door so we wouldn't forget to bring them to school the next morning, Zinnia, who we hadn't even noticed leave, reentered the room.

"Dandruff is doing it again," she informed us.

Oh no.

Jackie jerked her head in Pete's direction, as though trying to tell Zinnia,
Not in front of Pete!

But it was too late.

"Who's Dandruff?" Pete wanted to know. "And what's she doing again?"

We looked at one another. We really hadn't planned on telling him. But then, he knew now we had a talking refrigerator, and that the talking refrigerator was in love with our robot. So how much worse could it be?

"Dandruff is Durinda's cat," Georgia said.

"Durinda can freeze people by tapping her hand against her leg three times and pointing her finger at them as though her finger were a gun," Rebecca said.

"Except it doesn't work on me," Zinnia said.

"And now I'm thinking," Marcia observed, "if it doesn't work on Zinnia, there might be other people it doesn't work on. We just don't know who those people are yet."

"And Dandruff," Jackie said, giving in to the idea of telling Pete all about it since all the others were, "being Durinda's cat, shares Durinda's power."

Pete looked at us. "You're joking, right?"

"Oh, no." Annie shook her head. "I can assure you we are not."

So we led Pete to the cat room, where we were just in time for Pete to witness Dandruff raise her tiny right paw, tap it against her hind leg rapidly three times, and sharply point it at Anthrax, freezing her where she stood.

"Dandruff says she's just getting even with Anthrax for always being so bossy," Zinnia said quietly, but none of us were paying attention to her. Thankfully, Pete wasn't either. If he had been, he'd be right in thinking us a nutty family, what with having one of us saying she could talk with cats and all.

"If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes," Pete said, staring, "I'd have never believed it." Then he turned to Durinda. "And you can do this too?"

Shyly, Durinda nodded.

"This really is the craziest house," Pete said, looking around.

It was hard to argue with that.

Pete turned to Durinda again. "Ever try freezing yourself?" Pete wanted to know.

"God, no," Durinda said. "I'd be scared to. What if I never came back? Oh, dear," she said, as though a horrible thought had just struck her. "What if one night in my sleep, I get angry at something and accidentally tap my leg three times and then point at myself?"

"I don't think there's much chance of
that
happening," Rebecca scoffed.

"But Durinda's attitude
is
a problem," Georgia said.

"How do you mean?" Pete asked.

"I'm scared," Durinda admitted, "of using my power. What if I do something wrong with it? We did time trials and discovered the longest I can freeze any of the others is just under an hour. But what if I mess up and freeze someone I don't mean to freeze and that person stays frozen forever?"

"See what we mean about her being scared all the time?" Georgia said.

"So we made her a pro-and-con list," Marcia said.

"Why don't you get it?" Annie suggested. "Let's see what Mr. Pete thinks."

"Would you like Durinda to freeze you," Rebecca offered to Pete, "so you can see what it's like?"

Pete held up his hands. "No, thank you."

Marcia returned with the list.

When we showed it to him, Pete said, "You left one item off your list."

"We did?" Annie was offended. She'd been very proud of that list.

"Oh, yes," Pete said. "Say you have someone truly awful in your world. And say you either have to get away from that person or freeze them just long enough so you can get around them. I'll bet, in a situation such as that, Durinda's power would come in mighty handy."

And then at last it struck us: what we could do with Durinda's power, who we should get her to freeze. It amazed us that we hadn't seen it sooner, but now:

Oh.

Oh, my.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Back in January, our evil neighbor the Wicket had paid us a visit, bearing a fruitcake. Annie had told her that Mommy was working on something top secret. While we were out at Will's birthday party, the Wicket had tampered with our Hummer, ensuring we wouldn't arrive home until after she'd had the chance to toss Mommy's private study in search of the Top Secret file. When Pete fixed our Hummer and we arrived home early, she was still there, but we never saw her, nor did we catch her red-handed. Instead, all we found was the Top Secret folder.

It had been empty.

Ever since then, we'd waited for the Wicket to leave her own house so we could search it. So we could find out what she'd stolen from the Top Secret folder. So maybe we could discover a clue to the disappearance of our parents.

But she never went out anywhere.

Now Pete had given us the means, the idea of how we could get around the Wicket: we could freeze her.

But that night, after Pete left, we were too tired to set out on our dangerous mission. We'd had a long day and night already, and it seemed to us that such a thing would require keeping all of our wits about us.

Even Rebecca's.

So instead, we got a good night's sleep.

Then the next morning, we couldn't do anything right away, because first we had to go to school to deliver the valentines we'd made under Pete's supervision.

When we arrived at school, the McG was obviously still angry with us. She didn't even say hello as we took our seats, which felt odd. At the very least, we could usually get a
hello
out of her.

"Please turn to page seventy-five in your—" the McG started to say, but Annie cut her off.

"We have something for you," Annie said.

Then we trooped up to the McG's desk and deposited the eight valentines we had made for her.

The hearts we had made for her were small, we must admit, and each one said the same thing. In boring black marker, each of us had written,
Happy Valentine's Day to Mrs. McGillicuddy: You are a teacher.

"Well," she said and sniffed after reading them all, "that is at least something."

"We have one for Mandy too," Annie said.

"
Just
one?" the McG said.

"Yes," Annie said.

When we looked over at Mandy, she looked as though she might start to cry again, so Zinnia hastily added, "It's just one, but it is a doozy."

Then we went out into the hallway where we'd left our valentine so no one in the classroom would see it before we were ready. It took all eight of us to carry it in. We'd had a devil of a time getting it to school on the bus.

We presented the giant heart to Mandy.

Mandy read aloud the words we'd written:

"'For Mandy Stenko: Thank you for being our friend.'" She smiled so brightly, honestly, there are no words for how bright that smile was. Then she added, "Oh, look: you even each all signed your name to it, and you did it using glitter."

We had.

Now there were tears in Mandy's eyes again, only this time they looked to be tears of joy.

We didn't get it. We didn't understand why Mandy Stenko, who we'd always not liked very much and who we'd been sure didn't like us at all, should care if we thought of her as our friend or not.

And yet, apparently, she did.

It was a puzzle.

Still, we felt good in that moment, good that we'd made her feel better.

***

When we arrived home from school, we quickly tossed our backpacks inside the door and headed over to the Wicket's house. We didn't even change out of our yellow plaid uniforms.

The Wicket's house looked normal enough from the outside, but it was much smaller than ours. And tidy. We thought
too tidy.

Seven of us hid around the side of the house, our heads peeking around the corner, one on top of the other, as Durinda stood on the stoop and rang the doorbell.

We saw the Wicket when she answered the door. She always looked the same: like a toadstool, short enough to be a child, with coal black eyes, a fright of spiky yellow hair, a very plump body, and short legs. And she always wore the same clothes: khaki pants and a red shirt with polka dots.

Before the Wicket could even say a word, Durinda tapped her leg rapidly three times and sharp-pointed at our evil neighbor.

We had all been secretly worried that the Wicket would turn out to be one of the people Durinda couldn't freeze. And then what would we do? But such was not the case.

The Wicket froze solid in her own doorway.