"Good choice. Okay then," Pete said. "You've got your assignment. Ring me back as soon as you find what you're looking for, and we'll take it from there."
"But don't you have work you have to do?" Jackie asked. "You know, cars to fix?"
"Course I do," Pete said then added, "but nothing's more important than you lot."
Pete may have been a man in a navy blue T-shirt, but he was the best man in a navy blue T-shirt in the entire world.
***
"Sometimes," Annie said, "I wonder if we rely on Pete too much. I think maybe we shouldn't."
"Why's that?" Marcia asked.
"You don't think Pete's evil, do you?" Petal said with a gulp.
"Of course he's not," Durinda said sharply, in a tone she almost never used with Petal. "He's a mechanic and he's our friend."
"I just mean," Annie said, "that I don't think it's good for us to rely on any one person too much. We need to learn to stand on our own two feet."
"Sixteen feet, you mean," Marcia corrected. Good math was very important to Marcia.
"Annie may be right," Jackie said, "and one day we'll have to stand on our own. But that day isn't this day, and now we'd better hunt for the file."
So that's what we did.
The only problem was, the file we were looking for was nowhere to be found. We looked in every file cabinet in the house, we looked in those kitchen cabinets we hardly ever used, we even asked robot Betty if she knew where the tax file might be hiding itself. But if Betty knew anything, she wasn't talking.
By the time we finished tossing the place, our home was a shambles.
"Great," Durinda said. "We're no better off than we were before. In fact, we're worse off, since someone will now have to clean this place and I have an awful feeling about who that someone will be."
"There's only one thing for it," Jackie said decisively. "We'll need to get in that computer."
So we all proceeded with dragging feet to the computer in Mommy's private study. Even though Pete had suspected Daddy was organized, Mommy was the only one who had a computer in the house.
We stared at that technology beast, unwilling to draw close to it.
"Well, Annie," Rebecca said, "aren't you going to take charge? You usually like doing that."
"Oh no," Annie said. "Not this time. Why, Jackie's done so well with taking control of this whole tax problem, I think she should be the one."
Without even taking the deep breath that any of us would have taken before starting, Jackie strode to Mommy's desk and sat in Mommy's chair.
Then she hit the power button on the computer, and the dark screen turned a brilliant shade of red.
That made us jump. The computers at school glowed an eerie blue when they were turned on. Leave it to Mommy to march to her own drummer.
"Okay," Jackie said. "It looks like we need to know the password to get in to see the files. What would such a password be?"
"Usually," Marcia said, "people select words that are important to them."
"Right," Annie said. "It's easier to remember that way. But you don't want it to be too easy, because then others will be able to guess it."
"How about Daddy's name?" Durinda suggested. "He's important to Mommy."
Jackie tried typing in Robert, but it didn't work.
One strange thing we noticed as Jackie typed: her fingers flew over the keys in a blur. This was odd, because whenever we had to type on the computers at school, we'd all been hunt-and-peck kinds of typists.
"What about trying our names?" Georgia suggested. "I should think we're as important to Mommy as Daddy is."
That didn't work either. Not when Jackie tried the names individually, not when she strung them all together in one long word.
"What about avocado?"Petal suggested.
We ignored her.
"What about Huit?"Rebecca suggested.
No luck.
"These are all too easy and obvious," Annie said.
"Except for avocado," Marcia pointed out.
"Which is exactly why it could very well be—" Petal started to say, but she got cut off.
"I know!" Zinnia's eyes were lit up with excitement."Eights! I'll bet anything the password is Eights!"
Only it wasn't.
We were all puzzled, not to mention out of ideas.
But then Jackie's eyes lit up even brighter than Zinnia's, and she pressed one single key rapidly several times.
"What are you doing?"Annie asked.
She didn't have to wait for an answer, however, because—poof!—we were suddenly in.
"What password did you use?" Marcia asked, always curious. In truth, we were all curious.
"I simply hit the number eight eight times," Jackie said with a smile. "That's us numerically: we're eight Eights."
Once we were in, it was no problem finding the right file. There it was: Taxes 2007.
"Open it up," Annie said.
"Print it all out," Marcia said.
So that's what Jackie did.
"Okay, now close the computer down quick," Petal said, "before something tragic happens to us."
"Not so fast," Jackie said. "I've been thinking lately. Ever since New Year's Eve, we've mostly discovered things—powers, gifts, who's evil and who's not—by events happening to us. Don't you think it's time we took a more active role in finding out what's going on?"
"How do you propose we do that?"Rebecca demanded.
"By looking around in Mommy's computer," Jackie said with a twinkle in her eye.
"Oh no!" Petal cried. "That will bring disaster down upon our heads!"
"I say you go for it," Annie directed Jackie, ignoring Petal's cries.
Jackie looked down the list of files. There were so many of them! A lot of them looked like they might be interesting, like the one marked Inventions, but we were still in something of a hurry to get the Tax Man squared away, so we figured we'd save that one for another day.
Then Jackie came across a file marked Persons of Interest.
"Open that one," Georgia said. "We could use some interesting people around here."
When Jackie did, the file contained pictures of three people: a short woman who looked like a toadstool; a pretty, dark-haired woman with an insane look in her eyes; and a man with an egghead.
We knew those three people.
"That's the Wicket!" Durinda said.
"That's Crazy Serena!" Zinnia said.
"What's Principal Freud doing with the two of them?" Marcia wondered.
"He's not with them," Annie said. "Those are three separate pictures. Still, it is odd."
"My, those are interesting people." Rebecca's eyes glittered.
"I don't think we have time right now to figure out all the answers to all the questions in the universe," Jackie said. "So let's put this one aside for a while and look at one more file before we get back to those taxes."
Jackie closed that file and returned to the list of other files: Holiday Shopping; Mysteries of Egypt; Things to Do...
Zinnia desperately wanted Jackie to open the one called Holiday Shopping. "At least then," she said, "I'll finally know what I would have gotten for a present this year if we'd ever gotten our presents."
"Jackie's not going to do that," Rebecca said, "not if we're only going to look at one more file today."
"But why not?" Zinnia asked.
"Because we won't let her," Annie said firmly.
"Hey," Jackie said, "how about I open this one marked Family?"
"That could be good," Zinnia said, starting to cheer up already. "It'll probably be all about us."
Only it wasn't about us at all. In the folder marked Family, there was a picture of three women: Crazy Serena, Mommy, and another woman who looked almost exactly like Mommy.
CHAPTER SIX
"What does it all mean?"Zinnia asked.
"I haven't a clue," Jackie said. "But I'll tell you one thing."
"What's that?" Durinda asked.
"We don't have time
for this right now," Jackie said, shutting off the computer. "We have to call Pete back and figure out what to do next about the Tax Man."
"Are you crazy?"Georgia asked.
"Excuse me?" Jackie said mildly.
"How can you just turn off the computer at a time like this?" Georgia said, looking like she wanted to punch something. Or someone.
"By pressing that little button," Jackie said, indicating the power switch.
"That's not what I meant!" Georgia shouted. "We just saw a picture of Mommy with a woman who looks almost exactly like her and Crazy Serena. We saw a file containing a picture of Principal Freud along with pictures of the Wicket and Crazy Serena. Don't you think it's more important that we focus on that rather than calling Pete about the Tax Man?"
"No, I don't," said Jackie simply.
"Please explain," Georgia said, tapping her foot, "before I hit something. Or someone."
See? We knew Georgia wanted to do that.
"It's like this," Jackie said. "At the end of your adventure month, we started to finally see the pattern of things. We saw that we were getting our powers and gifts in order of our birth, from Annie through Zinnia, with each girl getting her power and gift during the course of a single month. We remembered the original note we found behind the loose stone in the drawing room telling us that we all needed to find our powers and gifts before we could discover what happened to our parents. So we did the math and it finally sank in: we realized we wouldn't really know the whole truth until August, Zinnia's month."
"We did?" Georgia asked.
"Actually," Jackie said,"you did.You were the one who put it all together."
"I..." Georgia looked puzzled, but then a light dawned in her eyes. "Why, yes, that was me!"
"You were very smart in that moment," Durinda said to Georgia kindly. "Really, except for rejecting your gift at the very beginning of the month, you were smart nearly the whole time."
"I really was," Georgia said, looking pleased with herself.
"What's more," Annie said, "we have to keep in mind at all times that we always have two problems."
"And those are?" Rebecca asked.
"Discovering what happened to Mommy and Daddy," Annie said, "and keeping the rest of the world from discovering that eight little girls are living home alone."
"Because if the world discovers that,"Petal said with a shudder, "they will surely split us up and then we will be eight little orphans living in eight separate houses."
"Exactly," Annie said. "And somehow, I don't think we'll ever learn what's really happened to Mommy and Daddy if we get split up."
"So you see," Marcia said, "discovering what happened to Mommy and Daddy is what you would call a long-range problem. But if Mommy and Daddy's taxes aren't paid on time like normal, people will begin to suspect that something is not right here, and then the jig will be up. So dealing with the Tax Man is a more immediate problem."
"Okay, I can see all that now," Georgia said, "and it is nice being reminded of how smart I was last month. But now that we've seen those ... pictures on Mommy's computer, shouldn't we be doing something more active to learn what's going on? I mean, even if we know that we won't really know everything until Zinnia gets her power and her gift in August—"
"But Jackie did do something more active," Zinnia pointed out. "It was Jackie who thought to look around more in the files of Mommy's computer in the first place."
"And I'm sure we'll all become more active in the search for the truth when we have the time to be," Jackie said, "but right now we have a more immediate problem to deal with, which is exactly what I'm going to do."
Then Jackie picked up the phone again and speed-dialed our man in navy blue.
"Mr. Pete," she said when he answered, "we found the file and printed everything out."
"Excellent!"
"What do we do next?"
"Why, next you call back that CPA person and make an appointment as soon as possible. Then call me and tell me when the appointment is."
So that's what we did.
"Here you go," Annie said to Jackie, holding out the slip of paper with Alan Watts's phone number.
"I must say," Marcia said, "that I'm finding this all rather odd."
"How so?" Annie asked.
"It's just that you never let anyone else take charge of anything," Marcia said, "and now you're letting Jackie take charge of everything. It makes me wonder if, someday, another one of us might not wrest some power from you."
Marcia was the one who was most concerned about power; she had been ever since Annie changed which bedroom she slept in. Marcia was now the youngest in the bedroom with Annie, Georgia, and Jackie, and Annie had put Durinda in with Petal, Rebecca, and Zinnia. Before that, Marcia had been the oldest of the youngest; now she was the youngest of the oldest. We knew she didn't like that.
Marcia's words had a strong effect on Annie, who could also be a little power crazy. Just as Jackie was about to take the slip of paper with the phone number, Annie snatched it back.
"On second thought," Annie said, "I'll call him myself. I only thought to let Jackie do it because it is her month. But really, I should be the one."
Jackie just shrugged. Funny, Jackie didn't seem interested in power at all, in who had it and who didn't, so long as the job got done.
Annie punched in the number and told Alan Watts's secretary that Annie Huit was calling. We supposed she figured that since we were going to have to meet him in person, there was little point in impersonating Daddy now.
"Alan Watts here," a deep voice said.
"And Annie Huit here," Annie said with authority, "Robert and Lucy's daughter."
"Well," Alan Watts said, "it's good to finally be hearing from someone in your family at any rate, although I must say, I was hoping it would be your father."
"About that," Annie said. "We've received your messages, but I'm afraid both Mommy and Daddy are, um, out of the country right now and may be for some time, so they won't be able to bring you that information you wanted."
"But that's dreadful news! If I don't file their taxes for them by the fifteenth—" CPA or not, this Alan Watts was working himself up into a Petal frenzy, so it was a good thing Annie cut him off, saying: "But I have the information right here, and I and my sisters will be happy to bring it to you."
"Eight little girls are going to deliver the tax information?" Alan Watts sounded stunned.
"I'm trying very hard not to get offended by your tone," Annie said with dignity. "When shall we bring this to you?"
"How about tomorrow?"
"On a Thursday?" Annie said. "But we can't do that. That's a school day. Same holds true for Friday."
"Fine. Then I'll cancel my golf game on Saturday and you can come in and see me that morning."
"Can you tell me where you're located?" Annie said, pulling out her trusty pencil.
Alan Watts gave her the address.
"At any rate, I'll see you Saturday morning at ten sharp," he said, then hung up.
We all looked at the address in the city.
"How will we get there?" Zinnia asked. "It sounds like a long way away."
"Annie will drive us, of course," Durinda said.
"Oh no, Annie will not," Annie said with a vehement shake of the head.
"But why not?" Marcia asked.
"Because we live in the small city and that's the Big City," Annie said. "I'd need to drive on the highway. I'd need to drive really fast on the highway to get us there." Annie shuddered. "To be honest, I don't think I'm ready for highway driving yet."
"Are you scared?" Rebecca sneered.
"Yes," Annie said simply. "Only a seven-year-old idiot wouldn't be scared of driving a Hummer on the highway."
"Then how will we get there?" Georgia asked.
"The train!" Jackie burst out suddenly. "We could take the train!"
"Oh, that would be exciting!" Zinnia said. "It would be like a real adventure: taking the train into the Big City!"
"But don't trains go really fast?" Petal wanted to know. "I'm not sure I'd like that. Plus, I really don't like the sound of this Big City..."
Durinda placed an arm around Petal's shoulders. "We'll all be together," she said, trying to soothe her. "It will be all right."
But when Jackie called Pete to inform him of our plans, it turned out Pete had plans of his own.
"I've decided to take Saturday off," he said. "I'm going with you."
"But why?" Jackie asked. "We already have the file for the CPA."
"Because I want to make sure no one takes advantage of you," Pete said. "Besides, it'll give me another chance to wear my Armani jacket. We can tell Mr. CPA the same thing we tell everyone else, that I'm your uncle.
But as we talked about our plans further, it turned out that we were still in disagreement on how to get there.
"I'll pick you lot up in the flatbed at eight fifteen," Pete said. "Or, since this is a formal business occasion, would you prefer I bring the limo?"
The flatbed? The limo? But we—at least, seven of us—had been looking forward to the train!
"Neither," Jackie said. "Or anyway, not all the way into the city. You can pick us up in the vehicle of your choice, and then you can drive us to the railroad station. You see, we've decided to take the train in, and Petal has her heart set on it, and we'd so hate to disappoint her."
Petal started to protest, rather loudly, but it was too late.
Jackie had already hung up.
***
It's amazing how quickly Thursday and Friday fly by when you know you are going to see your CPA on Saturday.
Saturday dawned the warmest day yet all year. It was T-shirt weather, and not just for Pete. Except...
"We're going into the Big City to meet with our CPA," Annie said. "So take off those T-shirts and put on some more formal clothes."
If Marcia hadn't commented that Annie seemed less concerned with power and control, would Annie be acting less bossy now? we wondered.
Still, we obeyed, exchanging our T-shirts and jeans for dresses and shoes. And we supposed we did fit better with Pete when he arrived, given that he was wearing, as promised, his Armani tuxedo jacket over his navy T-shirt and jeans. He also had on the wide and wild tie we'd seen once before.
Jackie's Jokes Page 4