Petal's Problems (3 page)

"Come on!" she encouraged us. "Whistle while you work!"

"Whistle while we work?" Rebecca, covered from head to toe with soot from cleaning out all the chimneys, a job for which she'd eagerly volunteered, raised a withering eyebrow at Annie. "Surely you must be joking."

But it was no joke doing all that cleaning.

Did we mention that we dusted and polished and swept and scrubbed and cleaned and scoured?

We worked so hard that day. Even Petal kind of worked. And none of us tried to shirk her duties except when Zinnia asked for a five-minute break in midafternoon.

"Where do you need to go for five minutes?" Annie asked mildly.

Really, it was just a casual question, like asking people how they are that day or what the weather's like where they are or what they had for lunch. Even Rebecca couldn't find any fault with that mild question.

But Zinnia did, reacting oddly.

"Why do you want to know?" she demanded. "Who are you, the Grand Inquisitor? I have to go to France! Or maybe I have to go to the bathroom! Is that okay with you? And what are you, anyway, some sort of slave driver? Sheesh!"

And then Zinnia disappeared for exactly five minutes.

It really did seem odd to us, her behavior, but when she returned, she looked so much happier than when she'd left, we all thought it best not to say anything.

By the time the late spring sun had started to set, we'd put in a full day, and our home was cleaner than it had been since Mommy's disappearance. Not that Mommy had ever done much cleaning. She was an important scientist, too busy with her inventions to bother with such things herself, but she did know whom to phone to come do the cleaning for her.

And it sure wasn't robot Betty, the robot Mommy had invented to make our lives easier but who never did.

As we surveyed our newly clean home, we sighed. Our day would have been so much easier if before Mommy had disappeared to wherever she'd disappeared to with Daddy, she'd thought to leave us the number of whoever it was who did all the cleaning for her.

Just then the doorbell rang.

"Can someone get that?" Annie shouted when no one did. "I am still busy here."

Annie was standing on a small stepladder polishing the facemask of Daddy Sparky, the suit of armor we used to convince nosy parkers that our real daddy was still at home. Annie had already fully dusted Mommy Sally, the dressmaker's dummy we used to fool people into thinking our real mommy was still at home.

"It's Mr. Pete," Zinnia announced cheerily, holding on to Pete's hand as she tugged him inside.

Pete was our favorite mechanic in the whole world.

He gave a low whistle now as he surveyed the room. "This place looks fantastic!"

We blushed.

"But what are you doing here?" Annie said, coming down off her stepladder and wiping her hands on a rag as we all gathered around. "I don't mean to be rude, but I didn't call you for help with anything ... did I?"

"Of course you didn't call him." Zinnia laughed nervously. "But isn't it great that he's just popped in like this, unexpected? Why, we can just tell him what we've been up to lately, fill him in on every little thing and—"

"What are you talking about?" Pete the mechanic looked down at Zinnia, a confused expression on his face. "I'm not unexpected. You called me this afternoon and invited me over."

"So
that's
where you were!" Annie pointed an accusing rag at Zinnia. "You joked that you had to go to France. Or at least I thought it was a joke. You said you had to go to the bathroom."

"Oh, come on." Rebecca rolled her eyes. "When is any member of our family actually in France or the bathroom when we say we are?"

"But see," Pete said, "that's why I'm here."

"Huh?" all of us except Zinnia said.

"What's this nonsense I hear?" Pete said. "You lot have been invited to a wedding in France—
France!—and
according to Zinnia, you're not planning on going?"

THREE

Annie paused just long enough to shoot a sharp glare Zinnia's way before launching into an explanation of why we couldn't go to France.

When she was finished, Pete was silent for a long minute, stroking his chin.

We waited, some of us patiently, some of us breathlessly.

"Let's see if I've got this straight," Pete finally said. "The way I see it, you've got two reasons not to go. One, you've no passports. Two, you have no reason to give for your parents' not being there, since you can't say they're in France when you are, in fact, in France. Have I got that right?"

"Pretty much," Annie admitted.

"So if we could solve those two problems," Pete said, "you'd go?"

"Well, yes," Annie said, but then she started to hedge. "But then other problems might present themselves too, so who knows?"

"Well, let's tackle these two first before we invent any new ones," Pete said, "shall we?"

"I don't want to go to France," Petal said. "It's my month, and I don't want to go. Why, I don't even want to get out from under the bed in the mornings!"

Pete blinked. "Did she just say out from
under
the bed?"

Seven heads nodded.

Pete blinked again. "You don't all sleep under your beds, do you?"

Seven heads shook, vehemently.

"Well, that's a relief then," Pete said. "I was getting worried that maybe you'd all gone crazy."

"No," Rebecca said. "Just Petal."

"Yes, well," Pete said, "we can deal with that later. Now, getting back to your first problem: passports. But see, that's not a very big problem at all."

"Of course it is," Annie said. "We probably need an adult to go with us to get them. I mean, the passport office doesn't usually just hand out passports to kids on their own, does it?"

"If it did, the world would be chaos!" Petal said, horrified.

"And aside from that," Annie went on, ignoring Petal, "there are only two weeks left until the wedding. So even if we could get a nice adult to go with us to the passport office—like
you,
say—I'm sure the passport office doesn't move that quickly. It's a bureaucracy, and believe me, I know all about working with bureaucracy. Its wheels grind slowly."

"They do," Pete admitted, "for normal people. But I know a man who knows a man who ... Put it to you like this: we'll just snap a few pictures of you lot, and then I can get this taken care of for you in no time. You'll get your passports."

We looked at Pete, stunned. He wasn't just a mechanic; he was well connected. The man was a miracle worker!

"But wait a second." Annie narrowed her eyes. "This sounds fishy: a man who knows a man who ... Are you sure this is legal?"

Thankfully, Pete didn't take offense. He simply shrugged. "If it's not, it should be," he said. "You're eight little girls who want to go see some relatives get married. You should be able to do that if you want to, even if it's in France. There shouldn't be any laws keeping you from leaving the country. I mean, it's not like you're criminals." He paused, thought about that one for a bit. "Are you?"

Eight heads shook.

"Well, I sort of am," Annie admitted, timidly for once.

"
You?
" Pete's eyes widened. "What have you done that's criminal? Robbed any good banks lately?"

"No," Annie said, "but I do forge Daddy's signature on checks and when I pay with his credit card. I also forged his name when I signed his tax returns in April. I'm fairly certain all those things are against the law."

"Details." Pete waved his hand dismissively. "You only do those things out of necessity. You'd never do it if you didn't feel you had to in order to survive." He paused again. "You wouldn't, would you?"

Annie shook her head, clearly outraged at the very thought.

"There you go then," Pete said. "So, okay, we've got the passports covered, or will soon enough. But this problem of what to say about why your parents aren't with you ... I have to admit, that
is
a big problem."

"Yes," Zinnia said seriously as she placed her hand on Pete's arm. "But I have faith in you. You'll solve it."

"Hmm ... can't say they're in France..." Pete thought, and then his eyes lit up and he snapped his fingers. "
I
know!"

"You
do?
" Georgia sounded shocked. And then we realized that Georgia didn't always have quite the faith in Pete that the rest of us did, certainly not as much as Zinnia.

"Why, yes," Pete said, "it's so simple. I don't know why none of us thought of it sooner."

"But since you
have
thought of it," Rebecca said grumpily, "you can tell the rest of us anytime now."

"You just need to say to anyone who asks," Pete said, "that your parents had to stay home, that your father had a big modeling job locally and your mother had an important new invention that was keeping her close to home as well."

Huh. That had never occurred to us. We could simply go, now that Pete was arranging for our passports, and then say Mommy and Daddy had to stay home for work purposes. No one would ever question the importance of the work of a model or an inventor/scientist.

"But we don't have a present to give them," Annie said.

Pete looked at Annie wryly. "Didn't take you long to come up with another excuse not to go, did it?"

"It's not an excuse." Annie blushed. "But you do need to bring a present when you're going to someone's wedding, don't you?"

"Oh yes!" Zinnia said. "A wedding—any celebration, really—is not complete without presents."

"I hate to admit it," Rebecca said, "but they're right. We would need to bring a present, and I doubt we would find one at the Grand Emporium of Children's Delights."

"That's our favorite store," Jackie put in.

"It's the only one we've ever gone to on our own in order to buy someone else a present," Marcia added.

"It was grand there," Durinda said. "And it was definitely an emporium. A delightful one, actually."

"I wish we could go back." Zinnia sighed.

"It's true, you would need to bring a present," Pete said, "and Rebecca's right, I don't think you can get an appropriate one at that store you mentioned."

Rebecca's right
—those weren't words you heard around our house every day, certainly not together.

"But there's an easy fix for that one too," Pete went on. "The missus would be happy to take you. In fact, I can't imagine anything she'd like more."

The missus was what Pete called Mrs. Pete. We liked her. In fact, if our own mommy never came back, we'd seriously consider her for the job. Not that Mommy could ever be replaced. But Mrs. Pete loved us and was kind to us. She didn't even dislike Rebecca or Georgia, and she hardly noticed when Petal fainted. Honestly, she'd do in a pinch.

Pete looked at Annie, amused now. "Go on, pet. Make up another problem."

"I'm not making them up." Annie looked frustrated at the unfair accusation. Then her eyes lit up. "The RSVP! We can't go because Zinnia has already RSVPed no! I'm right, aren't I? You can't say no to an invitation and then turn around and say, 'Oops, sorry, I really meant to say yes. How did I ever get those two words confused? Silly me!' Right? You can't say that."

"Well, not like that, no," Rebecca said. "' Silly me'? Who talks like that? You'd sound like an idiot!"

None of us wanted to say so, but once again, Rebecca was right. That would be an idiotic way to put it.

"Oh," Pete said. "You already RSVPed no?"

"Yes," Annie said. "Zinnia said she'd do it."

"I didn't know that part." Pete's face fell. "I'm sorry. I guess this has all been a waste. Since you've already formally said no, you can't—"

"Um, about that RSVP," Zinnia cut in with a pained smile.

"
Zinnia Huit!
" Annie rounded on her. "Don't tell me you never RSVPed? But that's so rude!"

"Well, I was hoping—" Zinnia started to say.

"Hope all you want to," Annie said. "But the RSVPs were due back by today, June seventh, remember? It's too late now. Oh, this is just great. We never RSVPed and now we've missed the deadline. Our relatives will think we're rude."

"Well, Serena's crazy," Rebecca said, referring to our former substitute teacher who we later found out might be a relative of Mommy's, since at one point they'd shared the same last name, Smith. "Rude us, or some of our crazy relatives—who is to say which is worse?"

"Please, Annie," Zinnia said. "Can't we go anyway?"

"But what about the late RSVP?" Annie objected.

"So the RSVP will arrive a little late." Marcia shrugged.

"They'll still be happy to have us," Jackie said, "no matter how late our reply. I'm almost sure of it."

"You mean you both want to go too?" Annie said.

Marcia and Jackie nodded.

"I should like to go too, please," Rebecca said in the nicest voice we could remember her using in a very long time. She must have wanted to go very badly indeed.

"Me too," Georgia said. "I could use a spot of adventure. It's been a long time since I clawed my way out of that avalanche."

"How about you?" Annie turned to Durinda.