Jackie's Jokes

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  The limo to the railroad station was a fun and zippy good ride, but when we arrived at the station, we must say, it was all so confusing.

  So many people! Everybody rushing! People here! People there!

  "I'll get the tickets," Pete said, and we waited as he went off to buy nine of them.

  "Do you think the Big Bad Wolf lives in the Big Bad City?" Petal asked.

  "If you promise not to say any more stupid things," Rebecca said to Petal, "we'll let you have the window seat."

  "But that might make me feel sick to my stomach and then I might throw up," Petal said. "All the world rushing by my window. Whoosh! WHOOSH! It will be so awful—"

  "Oh, bother," Georgia said.

  "Here we are, then," Pete said in his jolly way, waving the tickets in the air. "Nine tickets."

  This was exciting! It was exciting because it was a beautiful spring day and we looked pretty in our dresses and we were going into the Big City and each of us was holding her own ticket. Pete was the sort of adult who understood that that was what we would like to do, and so he didn't hold on to them himself as though he thought we might do something foolish, like lose them.

  We were feeling so excited and so wanted to be good and behave ourselves properly for Pete that we stood on the platform and waited for the train patiently. Then, when the train arrived, we let the passengers that were on it debark before boarding ourselves in an orderly fashion.

  When we walked anywhere, we usually walked in order of age and height, Annie through Zinnia. But on that day, Jackie lagged behind because she was busy pulling up her blue socks. Of all the Eights, Jackie was the one who always had the most trouble with her socks, although we all admit that socks can be a tricky thing.

  And so it was that Jackie was the last in line to get on, and Jackie was still outside on the platform when a lady came up to her and asked her a question. We couldn't hear what was asked or answered, but of course we saw Jackie's mouth moving and we knew that she was answering, which of course she would, because that is the polite thing to do when someone asks you a question.

  But all we could hear was the sound of our own voices shouting out the windows we'd forced open: "Jackie! Please! Hurry up! You'll miss the—"

  She couldn't hear us and we couldn't hear her because just then the sliding doors closed, the whistle blew, and the train rolled down the tracks, leaving the station...

  And Jackie wasn't with us.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We stood at the windows of the train, watching as Jackie in her blue dress grew smaller and smaller behind us. The conductor gently asked us to sit down.

  "I don't see you telling the adults to hurry up and sit down," Rebecca objected.

  "Yes," the conductor said kindly, "but I just don't want to see you kids get hurt."

  "Yeah, right," Rebecca muttered as the conductor moved off to take someone else's ticket. "You're probably just worried about lawsuits."

  "Do we even have a lawyer?" Zinnia wondered. "I think it would be nice to have a lawyer."

  "We must have one," Annie said. "We have a CPA."

  Then, as the train picked up more and more speed, a blue dot zipped by the windows.

  "Did you see that?" Marcia asked.

  "I've never seen anything like it," Pete said.

  "Could it have been a shooting star?" Zinnia asked. "I've always wanted to see one of those."

  "I don't think shooting stars fall in the daytime," Georgia said.

  "And I'm fairly certain that whenever they do fall," Rebecca said, "they don't shoot sideways like that."

  "Could whatever that was be dangerous?" Petal asked. "Do you think we're under attack? You know, our bus driver did say something the other day about aliens—"

  "Now let's have no more of this attack talk," Pete said, getting us all settled down into our seats. "Let's just try to enjoy our nice train ride."

  But much as we had looked forward to it, we couldn't relax. We were too worried about Jackie.

  "I know you must be worried about Jackie," Pete said, reading our minds. "You Eights—or should I be calling you Sevens right now, since Jackie's not here?—have to relax. Jackie is a smart girl. She'll be fine."

  Still, we worried. Yes, Jackie was smart. We knew that. But we also knew that she was back there all alone at the train station. She was miles from 888 Middle Way, with no money. How would she get home? Would she wait for us? It would be hours before we got back. We hoped she knew better than to accept a ride from strangers.

  "She'll be fine," Pete said again.

  Nonetheless, when we looked at him closely, we could tell that even he was a bit worried. He reached into the inside pocket of his Armani and pulled something out.

  "Breath mint?" He offered the roll around.

  So that's what we did for the next hour, we temporary Sevens: knocked back a few breath mints while the world whizzed by our windows, and tried not to worry about the CPA ahead of us and the Jackie behind us.

  ***

  The train pulled into the station at the Big City and we all debarked, only to find...

  Jackie waiting outside the door, leaning against a post in her pretty blue dress as she casually studied her fingernails.

  "What took you all so long?" she asked with a bored yawn.

  "Jackie?"Poor Pete. He looked like he was about to have a heart attack. "But what...? How did you...? That is to say..."

  "I think," Annie said in the calm voice of one who knows about such things, "that Jackie just found her power."

  "Yes," Jackie said, looking incredibly pleased with herself. "Apparently, my power is that I'm faster than a speeding train."

  "That was you that zipped past our windows?" Pete asked.

  Jackie nodded.

  "I'd never have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes," Pete said. Then he shook his head. "In truth, I didn't see it. All I saw, all any of us saw, was a tiny blue dot whizzing by our windows." He thought some more about this, studied us. "Does it always happen like this, when one of you gets her power? One minute you're normal, and then—boom! bang! lickety-split!— there it is?"

  Durinda shrugged. "Pretty much."

  "It truly is amazing," he said, awed.

  Eight heads bowed humbly.

  Zinnia was the first to recover from our humble moment. "Oh, Jackie!" she said. "What an awesome power!"

  "No one will ever beat you again on Field Day!" Petal said.

  "I knew when she cut her hair that things were going to change," Rebecca said.

  "Well." Pete clapped his hands. "We're all together again. Shall we go see your CPA now?"

  ***

  Bright lights! Big City!

  We liked to think that the place we lived was pretty special, but it was nothing like this.

  Everywhere we looked, there were people walking and taxis speeding. Horns blared, and on every corner there was a little metal hot-dog cart.

  "Do you think we have time to go see a musical?" Petal wondered. "I think a musical show might be just what I need to calm my nerves."

  '"Fraid not," Annie said, not unkindly.

  So instead of seeing dancing girls and listening to show tunes, we made our way to the offices of Alan Watts, CPA.

  If his secretary was surprised to see nine of us show up for the appointment, she didn't let on.

  Alan Watts, on the other hand, couldn't hide his surprise at the sight of Pete. He stood up from behind his desk and came over to us.

  "And who might you be?" he demanded, as if Pete were some stranger who'd followed us in off the streets.

  Alan Watts had a body like one long comma, and he had a horseshoe of black hair around an otherwise bald head. His eyes were big and green, the color of money, and they were behind incredibly thick, dark-rimmed glasses. Although he wore a suit, we will say this about Alan Watts: his suit had nothing on Pete's Armani.

  "Pete Huit," Pete said, extending his hand for a shake. "Robert's brother. I didn't like the idea of the girls
coming into the Big City on their own, so I decided to come along for the ride."

  "I hope you had a nice trip in, at any rate," Alan Watts said.

  "Oh yes," Pete said. "Why, when we were on that train, you could say that some pretty astonishing things flew by our window."

  "Pete Huit," Alan Watts said. "What an interesting name. Did you ever wonder what your parents were thinking when they gave you that name?"

  "I can't honestly say I've ever given it any thought." Pete shrugged.

  "Are those real glasses?" Rebecca asked Alan Watts.

  "Excuse me?" he asked, his eyes growing even more enormous behind the glasses in question.

  "It's just that I've never seen glasses so thick before," Rebecca said. "I wondered if they could possibly be real or if this was some sort of practical joke. You know, like April Fools'. And I hear that you play golf. Are you actually able to keep your eye on the ball with those glasses?"

  "Please ignore Rebecca," Annie directed Alan Watts. "She's like this with everybody. We do try to keep her under control. But, well, she is Rebecca."

  Before Rebecca, or any of us, could say something else insulting to our CPA, Annie pulled out the file we'd brought and handed it over to Alan Watts.

  He sat down behind his desk while his secretary hauled in seats for the rest of us, since he had only two other chairs. It occurred to us that the secretary worked awfully hard and we hoped she was well paid for it.

  "Well, let's see what the damage is," Alan Watts said with a laugh as he opened the file.

  We failed to see the humor because we were fairly certain that damage never meant anything good.

  "I see here that Robert is still modeling and that Lucy is still with SOLSA," Alan Watts said.

  SOLSA?

  "What is SOLSA?" Annie asked for all of us as we moved to the edge of our seats.

  "You don't even know where your own mother works?" The CPA didn't wait for an answer. "Why, SOLSA stands for the Secret of Life Scientific Agency."

  "Then Mommy really is working on—" Rebecca started to say, but Durinda, in a rare act of violence, kicked her.

  "And is that what they really work on at this agency," Annie asked coyly, "the secret of life?"

  "Oh, I doubt that very much." Alan Watts laughed. "I've always assumed it was just a cover—you know, a ridiculous-sounding name so no one will ever take it seriously or look too closely into what they're doing over at the Agency."

  "And what exactly are they doing over at ... the Agency?" Annie pressed.

  "Well, I don't rightly know, do I?" Alan Watts said. "Your mother, Lucy Huit, has always been something of a mystery. Really, I am quite certain that even your father would agree with me on that."

  "First the pictures on the computer back home," Rebecca mused aloud, "and now this ... SOLSA thing—does anyone else feel like everything we come across is yet another clue? How are we supposed to ever figure out what really means something and what doesn't?"

  Sometimes, you just can't get to Rebecca in time to kick her.

  "Did you say something?" Alan Watts asked. Thankfully, he'd already turned his attention back to the tax file.

  "I said that I really like those glasses," Rebecca said sweetly.

  "My," the CPA said after a few moments, addressing Pete as if he were suddenly the only other person who mattered in the room. Some adults were like that, we knew: always thinking that children were or should be invisible. In our family, the only one who really could be invisible was Georgia. And Greatorex.

  "Your brother and his wife did very well for themselves last year," Alan Watts said.

  "Please address your comments to the Eights too," Pete directed him. "They are here, in case you haven't noticed."

  God, we loved Pete.

  "Yes." Alan Watts reddened. "As I was saying, er, all of you, Robert and Lucy did very well in 2007. In fact, you could say they're my wealthiest clients."

  When we'd put the 2007 taxes information into the folder, we'd briefly looked at the sheets of paper. There were lots of numbers on those sheets, but that's all they'd been to us: lots of numbers. None of it meant anything.

  But now what we were hearing did mean something. We felt that it must mean that our family was rich, even richer than we'd thought.

  Who knew a scientist and a model could do so well?

  "I'll just keep this," Alan Watts said, putting the folder to one side. "Then, after you leave, I'll run some numbers, call you up with the amount, and send some forms for you to sign and return with a check." Alan Watts looked at Pete closely. "You are authorized to write checks for your brother, are you not, Mr. Huit?"

  Pete looked at us, a question in his eyes. He knew a lot about us, probably more than anyone in the world, but he didn't know how we managed our money.

  "Oh yes," said Annie, who wrote all our checks, "the Tax Man will get paid."

  "Very good," Alan Watts said. "Oh, but I do wish Robert were here. Usually, by this time of year we've already started planning the taxes for the next year."

  "I'm afraid that's impossible right now," Annie said.

  "Well, then, do you have any idea how much money your parents have made so far this year? At least if I had a place to start—"

  "They haven't made anything," Rebecca blurted out.

  Georgia kicked her, but it was too late.

  "Nothing?"Alan Watts was shocked.

  "Don't you think they deserve a break from working?" Durinda said hurriedly.

  "They've always worked so hard," Marcia said, "too hard."

  "And we are incredibly wealthy," Petal said.

  "So don't you suppose they deserve a break from the rat race?" Zinnia said.

  "I suppose, I suppose," Alan Watts said.

  But we could tell that he really didn't understand why people wouldn't make money every second of the day if they could. Well, look at the man. He'd given up his golf game and had his secretary come in on a Saturday just to meet with us.

  "Where are Robert and Lucy, by the way?" Alan Watts asked as we all stood up to take our leave.

  "Didn't they tell you?" Pete said. "Why, they're in France."

  ***

  After stopping at a little metal cart for hot dogs, we got on the train. The train ride home was much less eventful than the train ride out had been. We were no longer worried we'd go to jail for not paying our taxes and we had Jackie back with us.

  Jackie did say she thought it would be fun for her to race the train home, but Pete was firm.

  "I'm not letting you blur out of my sight again, pet," he said.

  It was a lot to handle sometimes, we thought, making our way in an adult world, and we were lucky to have Pete with us.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When we returned home, we invited Pete in for a juice box. We felt we owed him at least that much. After all, he'd taken us to the Big City, helped us with our CPA, bought us our train tickets, and even paid for the hot dogs.

  "We've ridden in automobiles and trains since Mommy and Daddy disappeared," Zinnia said as Annie unlocked the door. "Do you think planes will be next? And if so, do you think we'll need to learn to pilot one ourselves?"

  But we'd barely shoved the straws in our juice boxes, and none of us had had the chance to take even a sip, when Zinnia shouted, "Jackie! Go check the stone in the drawing room!"

  There was always a note left behind the stone in the drawing room whenever parents disappeared, or died, or when one of us found her power or her gift.

  Eight of us got very excited then, and Pete tried his best to look excited too, even though he couldn't really know what this was all about. For a man with salt-and-pepper hair, Pete could sometimes be very good at acting like he was one of us little girls, and now he trotted faithfully behind us as we went to the drawing room.

  Sure enough, the stone was loose. We thought that if our life were a mystery book or a mystery TV show, that loose stone would be an ominous sign. Come to think of it, the pigeons that occasionally visited us
would be too.

  Jackie pulled the stone all the way out and removed the note we all knew she'd find behind it. We crowded around her, looking over her shoulder as she read:

  Dear Jackie,

  Well done! I always knew you were the fastest in the bunch! Seven down now, nine to go––almost halfway there. Just discover your gift, and you will be. See you soon.

  As always, the note was unsigned.

  It occurred to us then that the note was right: we were almost halfway to discovering what really happened to Mommy and Daddy. This idea made us feel both excited and scared. On one level, we realized that knowing was supposed to be better than not knowing. But on another, we worried: what if the truth was something really awful? That would be hard.

  Thankfully, there was Pete, in all his excitement, to distract us from our fears.

  "What a house!"he said. "Talking refrigerators, mysterious notes." Then his own expression turned a little sad. "Sometimes I wish that I lived in such a place."

  "At least you have Mrs. Pete," Petal said, placing a soothing hand on his arm.

  "Maybe you could ask her to leave you secret notes," Georgia suggested.

  "I don't think it counts as a secret if you have to actually ask someone to leave one for you." Rebecca sneered.

  Pete was such a good man, though, he could never be kept down for long, and he cheered himself up almost immediately.

  "Say!" he said, his blue eyes brightening. "Isn't it always the case that when one of you lot gets her power, your cat gets the same power? What's your cat's name again?" He snapped his fingers at Jackie. "Jetta? No, that's not it. Jeep? No, that's not it either. Please don't tell me. I've almost got it." He snapped his fingers again."Jaguar!"

  Since we wanted to keep Pete looking so happy, we trooped off to find the cats. Plus, we were curious too.

  We found the cats lazing around in Spring, licking their paws and their own bellies. Spring seemed an odd room choice, since it was in fact spring, but then we figured that maybe the cats were just very content to live in that season.

  The cats had a favorite toy. It was rather large, stuffed with catnip, and in the shape of a German shepherd.