So, rather than directly answering his question, Annie sidestepped with “Who are you?”
“I’m Drew Ocho, of course,” he said. “And there’s no need to introduce yourselves. I know all about the eight of you. Why, if it weren’t for you, I’d never have landed KP duty in the first place.”
“What’s KP duty?” Petal said, hiding behind Jackie. “And will we be eating soon?”
“KP duty is an army term,” Jackie explained. “KP stands for ‘Kitchen Patrol,’ so he obviously means that it’s his duty to prepare the food around here.”
“That’s right,” Drew said, “which I wouldn’t have to do if it weren’t for you.”
“You’ve already said that once,” Marcia said. “What do you mean by that?”
“Mummy used to do most of the cooking around here, but she’s been preoccupied a bit these past few months, and Duddy hasn’t really been around either.”
“Who’s Duddy?” Zinnia asked.
“That’s what we call our father.” Drew’s eyes narrowed. “Why? What do you call yours?”
“Daddy,” Zinnia said. “Like most people.”
“We do believe it’s the norm,” Marcia added.
“No wonder your father hasn’t been around much lately,” Georgia said. “If our daddy were called Duddy, he’d probably hide from the world too.”
“I didn’t say he was—” Drew started, but Durinda cut him off.
“Wait a second,” she said. “Your brother’s Andrew and you’re Drew. Isn’t that a bit odd, two brothers named Andrew and Drew, which are practically the same name?”
“I’m not sure,” Drew said, “that people named Durinda should be throwing stones. Now, would you please put the items you took back in the fridge and get out of my kitchen?”
“Fine,” Durinda said, putting back the eggs. “But I don’t understand why you’re so possessive about your kitchen when just a minute ago you were complaining about KP duty.”
“Just because a person resents something,” Drew said, “doesn’t mean he’d want to relinquish that something to someone else.”
“Anyway,” Durinda said, putting back the juice, “it’s not like it’s such a great kitchen anyway. Why, your refrigerator doesn’t even talk.”
“And yours does?” Drew blinked.
“All the time,” Durinda said. “His name’s Carl. He’s a regular Chatty Cathy and he’s in love with robot Betty. Mommy invented both of them. Mommy is a great scientist-inventor.”
“Yes,” Drew said. “I’ve heard that about her.”
Now it was our turn to blink.
“You know things about our mother?” Annie said, being the first to recover. “Is she here?”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Drew said. “I can only tell you I’ve heard about her and her . . . special talents. All my life, really, it’s practically all I have heard about.” Before we could question him further, he snapped his fingers at Rebecca, which, we can tell you, was not something that usually happened to Rebecca. “I’ll take that, please,” he said, at least showing a minimum of manners as he pointed at the can of blue frosting and then opened his hand.
“Fine,” Rebecca said, depositing the can in his outstretched hand. Then she tossed the spoon into the can. It made a hollow thunking sound. Rebecca wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. “I was finished with it anyway.”
Drew peered into the can, but we could have told him what he’d find in there: nothing.
“Oh dear,” he said. “Roberto’s not going to like this.”
“Who’s Roberto?” Georgia asked.
But Drew ignored her. We all did, because just then there was a thumping sound—vastly different from a thunking sound—at the kitchen window.
“Oh, look,” Durinda said, opening the window. “A carrier pigeon.”
The window slid shut as the pigeon hopped across the counter and landed on Durinda’s outstretched finger.
“Friend of yours?” Durinda said, extending the pigeon toward Drew. “Friend of the family?”
Drew took a step back. “I’ve never seen that pigeon before in my life.”
Durinda shrugged. “Must be here for me, then.” Durinda looked all around the pigeon and located the tiny metal tube attached to one of its legs, which made sense. If the pigeon hadn’t had one, it would have been just a regular pigeon, not a carrier pigeon.
Durinda removed a tiny scroll of paper from the tiny metal tube, and we gathered around to see what it said, all except Drew, who seemed oddly scared of the pigeon. The note said:
You’re doing fine work here. Now challenge Drew to a cook-off. He gets very testy when anyone challenges his cooking skills, and he’s bound to make a mistake.
“What does that say?” Drew asked.
“‘Frost will come early this year,’” Durinda said, crumpling the note and putting it deep in her pocket. Then she opened the window again, and we watched the pigeon fly away. We figured he couldn’t get very far, this being a snow globe and all. There was snow on the ground outside, which made what Durinda had said only a semi-lie.
“Brr,” Durinda said, latching the window closed. “Now then.” She turned back to Drew. “What do you say you and I have a cook-off?”
“What are we cooking off for?” Drew asked, pulling ingredients from cabinets. Durinda did the same. Durinda was, of course, at a disadvantage during this portion of the cook-off, since Drew knew everything he had on hand and where it was, while she did not.
“Simple,” Durinda said. “If you win, my sisters and I go hungry. But if I win, meaning I make the tastier food, you let us finally eat something and be on our way, fortified.”
“But who will be the judge?” Drew said.
“We’ll be each other’s judge,” Durinda said.
“But won’t we lie?” Drew objected.
“Of course we won’t,” Durinda said. “A person might lie about something like, oh, I don’t know, the contents of a note, but no real cook would ever lie about which dish has a superior flavor, not even if something really important was on the line.”
We thought she might be exaggerating just to trick Drew, but when we looked at Durinda’s face, we realized something terrifying: she was telling the truth.
Did she know what she was doing?
What if Drew was the superior cook?
If that was the case, we’d never get to eat, and then we’d starve to death before we could rescue Daddy!
(We did realize that we were all starting to sound like Petal, but intense hunger can do strange things to a person’s emotional state of mind, never mind seven people’s.) (Wait a second. Could Petal have been in a tizzy all her life because she was intensely hungry and just needed to eat more? Nah. She was just Petal.)
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Durinda,” Annie said, speaking for all of us.
“What’s that thing?” Rebecca asked when Drew had finished with his first culinary creation.
“It’s rack of lamb,” Drew said. “Haven’t you ever seen one before?”
“It looks very nice,” Jackie said.
“And those little paper booties on its feet or whatever those things are look very cute,” Petal said.
“But we don’t eat meat,” Durinda said. “Zinnia’s doing. She said the cats said we should all become piscatarian, so you see, you’ll never win with that, because none of us can eat it.”
“Fine,” Drew said. “Then how about this?” He banged around with some pots and pans, did something to a fish, shoved it in the oven, waited, and then pulled it back out. “There! Sole amandine! You’re fish-eaters—that should make you happy.”
“Amandine? Made with almonds? Really?” Durinda said. “I think that’s rather risky, given all the people who suffer from nut allergies these days, don’t you?”
“Do any of you suffer from nut allergies?” Drew asked.
“Well, no,” Durinda admitted, “but that’s hardly the point. It’s the principle of the thing
. So, what else have you got in your culinary arsenal?”
“Hold on,” Drew said, eyes narrowing. “When are you going to cook something in this cook-off?”
“I’m just trying to be polite,” Durinda said, leaning one hip against the counter and studying her manicure coolly. “I’m letting you go first.”
“Fine,” Drew said, slamming down a pie plate. He did this, that, and the other thing and soon presented us with a pie that had several inches of lightly toasted frosting on top. He’d used a blowtorch to get that toasted effect. We had to admit, it was an impressive-looking pie.
“What is that?” Georgia asked.
“It’s a baked Alaska,” Drew said.
“What’s in that frosting?” Rebecca said. “I didn’t see you using any frosting from a can.”
“Well, no, but—” Drew started.
“Then it can’t be any good,” Rebecca said, cutting him off.
“Anyway,” Durinda said, “we need something substantial to eat. None of us eats dessert for a main meal, except for Rebecca, and she’s already told you your baked Alaska doesn’t meet her standards.”
“Look here,” Drew said hotly. “I’ve made you my three most impressive recipes—rack of lamb, sole aman- dine, and baked Alaska—and you haven’t made a single thing. Now it’s your turn.” He glared at Durinda and ordered, “Make something.”
“Very well,” Durinda said, reaching into a lower cabinet and pulling out a sack of potatoes. “First,” she narrated, “you take a French potato—”
“How do you know that’s a French potato?” Drew demanded. “It’s probably from Idaho or somewhere more usual like that.”
“Well, of course it’s a French potato,” Durinda said, as though he were the dimmest boy in all the world. “I’m about to make French fries, so what other kind of potato could this possibly be?”
We all looked on, our mouths watering, as Durinda did something to the potatoes that she called julienne slicing, then arranged the raw fries on a baking sheet and popped them into the oven.
“But you’re not even frying them,” Drew objected. “You’re baking them.”
“Yes, I do know that,” Durinda said. “Carl the talking refrigerator says that certain oils in moderation can be a good thing but that too much oil, or the wrong oil, is bad. You’d know that if your own refrigerator could talk to you.”
Drew harrumphed and then drummed his fingers on the counter as we all waited for the timer to ding.
Ding!
“There!” Durinda said, using an oven mitt to remove the baking sheet. “Yippee! I win!”
“What do you mean, you win?” Drew demanded. “We haven’t even tasted any of the food yet!”
“Well, of course I win,” Durinda said. “I already explained: we can’t eat the rack of lamb at all; we can’t eat the baked Alaska for a main meal; and, honestly, do you really think sole amandine can compete with a nice warm tray of French fries?”
“But—” Drew started to object.
“Here,” Durinda said, popping a French fry—made with real French potatoes, we might add—into Drew’s mouth, “taste one. I’m sure you’ll agree, they’re quite good. What do you think?”
“Yes, it is very—” Drew started to say.
“Yippee!” seven Eights shouted. “Durinda won! We can eat now!”
“No, she didn’t, and no, you can’t,” Drew said, his face darkening with rage and frustration as his hand began to tap nervously against his leg.
Then we saw him do a thing we’d seen one of us do before. He tapped his hand against his leg three times rapidly, then he snap-pointed his finger at Annie, who froze where she was standing. Then he did the same thing to the rest of us who’d been shouting at him—Georgia, Jackie, Marcia, Petal, Rebecca, and Zinnia—and all of them froze where they stood too, except Zinnia.
“Huh,” he said, looking at his finger as though it had betrayed him by not freezing Zinnia. Then he shrugged. “I suppose I should have guessed that.”
He tried to freeze Zinnia again, and if most of us hadn’t been frozen, we would have seen Zinnia’s image stutter as though she’d been frozen for just the briefest of seconds.
Durinda looked at him with open-mouthed wonder. “You can . . . you can . . . you can do what I used to do!”
“Yes,” Drew said dryly. “Handy, isn’t it?”
“Why, I wish I could still do that,” Durinda said, looking frustrated now. In her frustration, she tapped her hand three times rapidly against her leg as Drew shouted, “No! Don’t!” And then she snap-pointed her finger at Drew.
He froze before he could shout anything else. And as he froze, Annie, Georgia, Jackie, Marcia, Petal, and Rebecca came unfrozen.
“Huh,” Durinda marveled, staring at her finger as though it were a smoking gun. “If he can freeze people, and I can freeze him, he probably could have frozen me if he’d tried. So I’m both a freezer and can be frozen —who knew?” She shrugged it off. “Oh, well. Everybody hungry?”
Five
We gathered around the table that was in the dining room that was in the snow globe to enjoy our meal of sole amandine, French fries, and baked Alaska. Durinda had even found juice boxes for us, although they were starfruit, not mango. We had no idea if we were eating a very late breakfast, an early lunch, or an extraordinarily early supper—we had yet to see a clock, and it was tough to keep track of time in the snow globe.
“Hey!” Marcia said, slamming down her juice box. “I just realized something. If Durinda can freeze people again, maybe we all have our powers back here. We should try to—”
Before she could get any further, Andrew entered the dining room. “Do you mind if I join you?” he asked. “I smelled all the food, and paying bills does always make one hungry.”
“Why not?” Annie said magnanimously from the head of the table, as though this were her house. “Go grab a plate and pull up a chair.”
Andrew went into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a plate. “Hey!” he said. “One of you froze Drew—good show!”
Good show? He was happy we’d frozen his brother?
“It does get annoying,” he explained as though reading our minds, “Drew freezing other people all the time whenever he gets upset, so it’s rather nice seeing it happen to him for a change.”
“Do you have any idea how long he’ll stay like that?” Marcia asked.
“I haven’t a clue,” Andrew said. “He’s never been frozen before.”
“Then we’d better eat quickly,” Petal said, “before he unfreezes and does something dire to us out of revenge.”
Despite the threat of something dire happening, we all continued eating our food. It was nice to gain sustenance, and it was also kind of nice, the ten of us enjoying a peaceful meal together.
Wait a second. Ten of us? We counted—eight of us . . . plus Andrew . . .
Who was that boy sitting and eating quietly next to Georgia, and where had he come from?
“I recognize you!” Georgia said. “You’re George, that boy who was following us on the beach when we were on vacation last week!”
“That’s right,” Petal said. “You admitted that you might have been following me, although you said it wasn’t for anything bad . . . and then you just took off running.”
“That’s not possible,” Andrew scoffed. “You’re right, his name is George, but he wasn’t at the beach last week. He couldn’t have been. I’m quite certain he was right here the whole time.”
But from the sly smile on George’s face, some of us suspected this might not be wholly true.
“George . . . George . . .” Georgia mused. “Now, where have I heard that name before? I know! We have an uncle George!”
“So do I, as it happens,” George said, speaking for the first time. “He married your aunt Martha back in June. It was a shame we were unable to attend the wedding. I’m actually named for Uncle George. I suspect you are too.”
“I highly doubt”—Georgia
sniffed, looking offended—“that I was named for some boy relative.”
We decided it was best to let Georgia think what she liked. Most of the time it was better that way.
“Too bad you couldn’t go to the wedding,” Durinda said. “It was a very nice wedding.”
“Well,” Petal said, “except for the part where Rebecca was almost thrown off the Eiffel Tower by Crazy Serena and I was the one who had to save her, it was just peachy.”
“You probably would have enjoyed the wedding week and France in general more,” Rebecca said, “if you hadn’t spent most of the time under your bed.”
“Details,” Petal said.
“Why weren’t you able to go to the wedding, George?” Jackie asked.
“Because Mummy said we couldn’t,” George said, not sounding hugely bothered by it. Considering that George was Georgia’s Ocho counterpart, we were finding him to be pleasingly mild-mannered. “She said we were too busy here.”
“But you did send them a nice wedding present,” Zinnia remembered for us, “or at least the wrapping paper looked very pretty and the package itself was a respectable size. What did you give them? We gave them a Deluxe Perfect-Every-Time Hamburger Maker / Manicure-Pedicure Machine. It was super and duper.”
To George’s credit, he didn’t look at Zinnia peculiarly, the way others might have done at her pronouncement.
“Um, I’m pretty sure we gave them a punch bowl,” George said.
Wow, we thought. How unimaginative.
“I suppose that would make a nice present too,” Zinnia said charitably.
“Everybody finished?” Durinda asked. Then, before anyone could answer, she added, “Jackie, will you help me clear the table?”
“This isn’t our house,” Rebecca scoffed. “We don’t have to bother with all that.”
“It’s just good manners,” Durinda said with a shrug.
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