Marcia's Madness

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  We all thought about that: the idea that one of us could do something that previously only Annie had been able to do and might even be able to do some things Annie couldn't, like rocket science.

  It was a lot to digest.

  Then:

  "Durinda?" Marcia asked. "Do you think you might make me a pot of coffee? After all that bill-paying, I could really use a cup of joe."

  Petal gasped. "But Annie's the only one of us who can drink coffee!"

  And then Petal really did faint.

  TWO

  The rest of Thursday passed pretty much as any Thursday normally would. We did our homework, ate dinner, played, watched a little TV, tried to solve some of the mysteries in our world—failed on that one—and brushed our teeth and went to bed. The only change was that Annie seemed a little more subdued than usual.

  But then Friday came, and there was a big change.

  When we arrived at our third-grade classroom at the Whistle Stop, Mandy Stenko and Will Simms were there, but the McG wasn't waiting for us at her usual post behind her desk. This was strange, because ever since the day early on in the school year when Jackie had managed to sneak a toad into her desk drawer, the McG had made it a point to arrive before we Eights did. In fact, the only time since then that she hadn't arrived ahead of us was when she'd been abducted. Principal Freud had later introduced us to our substitute, who was then calling herself Serena Harkness.

  "You don't think the McG's been abducted again, do you?" Durinda wondered aloud.

  "That hardly makes sense," Annie said. "Pete the mechanic ran Crazy Serena out of town back in March."

  "Perhaps there could be another substitute teacher?" Zinnia suggested.

  "Oh no!" Petal said. "Not another evil substitute! Quick, everybody, hide under your desk!"

  "Get out from under that desk, Petal," Rebecca directed sternly. "Don't you know anything? Not all substitutes are evil. And saying that they are would be like saying that all Eights are like me because I am the way I am."

  "I'm pretty sure that in the wider world," Jackie said gently to Petal, getting down on the floor to speak to her under the desk, "every time a teacher is a little bit late, it doesn't mean she's been abducted by evildoers."

  "Yes," Marcia agreed. "Sometimes there's just a lot of traffic."

  "I don't care about any of this," Georgia said. "I'm bored."

  "Don't say that!" Annie pointed an accusing finger at Georgia. "Everything in our lives is your fault."

  "My fault?" Georgia was clearly both horrified and a little excited at the idea.

  "Yes, your fault," Annie said. "Back on New Year's Eve, you were the one who complained that you were bored. And it was after that that Mommy and Daddy disappeared and all our troubles started."

  "That's not fair," Marcia observed. "Saying that Georgia somehow made those things happen makes as little sense as Petal thinking all substitutes are evil or, as Rebecca said, people thinking that all Eights are like Rebecca simply because she is the way she is."

  "I don't like it when you all fight," Mandy Stenko said with a shudder. "It's worse than when my parents fight."

  "Perhaps we should do something to take our minds off things until our teacher or some other adult arrives?" Will suggested helpfully.

  We all beamed at Will, even Mandy Stenko. But that wasn't surprising. When it came to Will Simms, what was there not to beam at?

  "Perhaps," Mandy offered, "we could quiz each other on math to pass the time?"

  Rebecca snorted so loudly, she might as well have been a horse. "Oh, that sounds like tons of fun, a real ride on the carousel. Maybe after we're done quizzing each other on math, we can each tear out our own fingernails one by one."

  "I know what we could do!" Georgia said.

  She was so excited, we all turned to look at her, hopeful expressions on our faces. Even Petal, still under the desk, looked perkier.

  "We could have another spitball fight!" Georgia said.

  Seven Eights, plus Mandy and Will, groaned.

  "What's wrong with that?" Georgia looked hurt. "It was fun the last time. Well, at least until Serena Harkness walked in and I beaned her with a big one square in the forehead."

  "Your shining hour," Rebecca said.

  "It's just that we did that already," Durinda said gently.

  "Durinda's right," Jackie said with an apologetic shrug. "We really don't like to repeat ourselves once we've done a thing, not unless there's a good reason to."

  "Petal Huit! What are you doing under that desk?"

  Who said that?

  Those of us who were sitting jumped slightly in our chairs. Those of us who were standing straightened our postures. Even Petal jolted up a little, banging her head on the underside of the desk.

  We swiveled our heads to where the voice had come from.

  Oh! The McG! Of course!

  Only she wasn't alone.

  Standing beside her was a tall man, even taller than her tallness! Where the McG was very thin and tidily dressed, the man was lanky, his baggy gray suit fitting him like a sack. Where the McG had a long nose that she used to hold up her horn-rimmed glasses, the man had a ridiculously small nose—we wondered how he could even breathe through such a tiny thing—and no glasses at all covering his gray eyes. And where the McG had her blond hair pulled up into a tight bun, the man had his long blond hair pulled into a loose ponytail.

  Idly we wondered if this last item would bother Rebecca, since she was the only Eight who wore her hair in a ponytail and we'd always imagined she was rather proud of her unique look.

  "Who's the dude?" Rebecca wanted to know.

  The McG ignored her.

  "Principal McGillicuddy," Mandy Stenko said, her eyes flitting back and forth between the McG and the long list of items on the right-hand side of the chalkboard, "yesterday when you made out the schedule for today, you didn't put anything on it about there being a visitor."

  Mandy Stenko didn't like unscheduled changes to the schedule. They made her nervous.

  The McG had ignored Rebecca, and she ignored Mandy Stenko too. Well, who could really blame her in either case?

  "Mandy, Will, and... the rest of you," the McG announced, "I am pleased to inform you that the Whistle Stop has finally hired a new permanent teacher for your class."

  Wait a second. What was this? With it already being May and with the end of the school year next month, we'd been kind of secretly hoping that we could simply finish out the year with the McG. It wasn't that we were so all-fired crazy happy about having her as a teacher, but at least we were used to her.

  And maybe we were more than used to her. Maybe we even liked her, seeing as how we had—through Annie—arranged for her to become principal in the first place. And there had already been so many changes in our world this year.

  "Allow me to introduce you to your new permanent teacher," the McG said, gesturing toward the man as though he were some sort of prize. "Please say hello to Mr. McGillicuddy."

  Mr. Mc—?

  "Is he your father?" Petal asked, finally coming out from under the desk. "You do have the same last name, you know."

  "No, he's not my father!" The McG was clearly exasperated by the idea. "Can't you see he's around my age, maybe just a little older or younger?"

  "Is he your brother, then?" Zinnia asked. "I've always thought it would be nice to have a brother. On birthdays and holidays, I imagine brothers give different presents than sisters do."

  "No, he's not my brother!" the McG said. "He's my—"

  "Distant cousin?" Durinda said.

  "Young uncle?" Jackie said.

  "Old son?" Rebecca said.

  "Relative you never knew you had?" Marcia said. "Because if that's the case, we do know what that's like. We have at least one of those, possibly more."

  "He's none of those things!" the McG practically shouted. "He's my husband!"

  Husband?

  We reeled in horror at the thought. We weren't even sure why we were so h
orrified. We only knew that we were.

  "Your husband?" Georgia said. Then she spoke aloud the thoughts we were all having, at least us Eights. "But if he's your husband, why didn't he come looking for you the time Crazy Serena teachernapped you and held you hostage for two weeks?"

  "I'm sure he did try very hard—" the McG started, but then she shook her head violently and glared at us as though this were somehow our fault, like we'd somehow made her answer questions she didn't want to think about.

  "Never mind all that now," the McG said. "Mr. McGillicuddy is your new permanent teacher."

  Mandy Stenko timidly raised her hand for permission to speak, even though the rest of us were speaking without raising our hands.

  "Yes, Mandy?" the McG said. "I'm sure you have something sensible to say about all this. Or at least I doubt you have anything to say that's idiotic."

  "But ... but ... but," Mandy Stenko stammered, "isn't hiring your own husband to replace you a case of gross and criminal nepotism?"

  "What's nepotism?" Petal whispered to Jackie, giving her a little poke in the side.

  "Nepotism," Jackie whispered back, "is favoritism, as in appointment to a job based on kinship. It means hiring someone because they're related to you."

  "I believe there are actual laws against it," Marcia whispered.

  "Hmm," Rebecca whispered darkly, "I rather like the sound of this nepotism thing. I know I'd like to get ahead in life based on something other than merit."

  We may have been making the effort to whisper, but everyone in the room could hear every word we said.

  "It is not nepotism!" Now the McG really was shouting. "Mr. McGillicuddy was simply the most qualified person to apply for the job! Besides," she added, taking the time to glare at each of us in turn: Annie, Durinda, Georgia, Jackie, Marcia, Petal, Rebecca, and Zinnia. Funny, we thought, she didn't glare at either Will Simms or Mandy Stenko. "Besides," the McG repeated, "when the other applicants learned about you Eights, no one else wanted the job!"

  Ooh! Harsh!

  The McG regained control of herself, straightening her glasses and skirt.

  "Now then," she said calmly. "I'm sure Mr. McGillicuddy and all of you will get along fine for the rest of the school year, particularly since there's not much more than a month left." She gave a little nervous laugh. "What can go wrong in such a short period of time?"

  We stared back at her. We all knew how much could go wrong in a short period of time.

  "As for me," the McG went on, ignoring our meaningful stares, "now I can finally assume my principalship duties in full."

  And she was gone.

  We were fairly certain that there was no such word in the English language as principalship. We would have liked to ask Jackie just to be sure, but there wasn't time for that now. We also thought it odd to hear the McG referring to her husband as Mr. McGillicuddy—we had never heard our mother call our father Mr. Huit in our lives!—but there wasn't time to think about that either.

  Because our new teacher, whom we already thought of as the Mr. McG, was staring at us like we were ten lions in a cage and he was a lion tamer with a chair and whip, while we were staring back at him like Oh yeah? Do you really think you can tame us?

  It was going to be an interesting rest of the year.

  THREE

  We arrived home that day feeling dejected. It didn't help that as we walked up the long driveway to our house, we saw our evil neighbor the Wicket staring out at us from behind her cracked-open front door.

  As soon as she saw us seeing her, her head disappeared and she slammed the door shut.

  "Do you think she blames us," Georgia said, "for her going on that wild-goose chase to Beijing?"

  "Well," Rebecca said, "the fake note from Mommy we made for the Wicket to see did say specifically not to look for her in Beijing, so if the Wicket is upset about the wild-goose chase, she can't blame anybody but herself!"

  "Do you think she's planning to sneak into our house again?" Petal worried aloud.

  "I have no idea what goes on inside the minds of evil people," Annie said, "although Rebecca might. All I know is, whatever the Wicket is up to, it can't be anything good."

  We entered our house.

  Normally, coming home on a Friday was our happiest time of the week, a weekend of fun and leisure—or as much as we ever had, what with our parents missing-stretching out ahead of us.

  But not that Friday.

  "I can't believe the Mr. McG gave us homework over the weekend!" Durinda complained. "Doesn't he realize some of us are too busy on Saturday preparing food for the Sunday feast?"

  "The McG never gave us homework over the weekend," Georgia added.

  It was true. None of our teachers at the Whistle Stop ever had, because the Whistle Stop had a no-homework-on-weekends policy. When Mommy was still here she'd explained to us that the school's theory was that if the teachers hadn't drilled enough into the students' heads between Monday and Friday, it was no one's fault but their own.

  "This Mr. McG." Rebecca shook her head. "The man's got an attitude problem."

  "I know!" Zinnia cried, for once agreeing with Rebecca. "Homework on the weekend—it's like the world's biggest anti-present!"

  "And the way the Mr. McG assigned it." Petal shuddered.

  "I know," Marcia said, proceeding to do a decent imitation of our new teacher as she quoted what he'd said. "'This weekend, be sure to study... everything.'" Marcia returned to using her own voice. "How is it possible for anyone to study everything?"

  We didn't know. And here's a thing we hadn't known until just then: that Marcia could imitate a man's voice so well. Previously, the only one of us who could do that was Annie, who imitated Daddy's voice whenever she had to call Outsiders Who Didn't Know We Were Living Without Adult Supervision. But whenever Annie did it, she wound up using a British accent. Marcia's imitation of the Mr. McG had been perfect.

  "Oh well." Annie sighed. "There's nothing else for it. Guess it's time for us to start studying everything."

  "I wonder why he wants us to study everything?" Marcia wondered.

  "Who knows?" Jackie said. "At least tomorrow is Saturday."

  ***

  The next morning, seven of us enjoyed the breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes that Durinda had prepared with Jackie's help in order to fortify us for the long day of studying ahead. We say seven of us because once again Marcia was nowhere to be seen.

  "Do you think she's off again stealing your job of paying the bills?" Georgia asked Annie as Annie settled down with her schoolbooks. "And if so, would you like me to get the spear and threaten her with it to make her stop?"

  The spear was part of the suit of armor we referred to as Daddy Sparky. We dressed him up in a quilted smoking jacket, corncob pipe, and fedora to throw off nosy parkers who peeked in our windows. We also had a dressmaker's dummy we referred to as Mommy Sally that wore a sleeveless purple dress, a string of pearls, and a wig.

  Georgia was very fond of that spear.

  "No, I don't," Annie answered Georgia. "All the bills for this month have been paid already, so unless Marcia's making up new bills just for the fun of it—"

  "Oh, I forgot to mention." Durinda cut Annie off. "When Jackie and I were preparing the pancakes, Carl the talking refrigerator said that we were getting low on eggs and milk."

  "How about pink frosting in a can?" Rebecca wanted to know. "Did Carl say anything about that?"

  We ignored her. None of the rest of us cared quite so much about the pink-frosting situation as Rebecca did.

  "I really do think," Durinda continued, "we'll need to do a big shop soon."

  "Fine." Annie sighed as though the weight of the whole world were on her shoulders and her shoulders alone. She put aside the book she'd been trying to study. "I suppose I'll have to go up to the tower room now and get my me-imitating-Daddy disguise out of the costume trunk so that I can drive us into town to get more food."

  That's when the telephone rang.

 
; "Let's go see who's calling!" Zinnia urged, excited.

  Since Mommy and Daddy's disappearance, we almost never answered the phone anymore, for a variety of very good reasons. But back in April, when we almost missed a call from the Tax Man, we'd realized that some calls were too important to miss. Since then, Annie had had caller ID installed so we could always tell who was calling us and decide whether we wanted to talk to them or not.

  "I wonder if it's Will inviting us over to play!" Zinnia said as seven of us raced for the phone in the drawing room.

  "I hope it's not Bill Collector!" Petal worried aloud.

  "There's no one named Bill Collector," Georgia said with a Rebecca-worthy sneer. "There are people referred to as bill collectors, because that's the job they do, but there's no Bill Collector."

  "Maybe it's the McG," Durinda said, "calling to tell us she's fired the Mr. McG."

  "Has anyone else noticed," Jackie said, "that the McG has gone back to being as awful to us as she was before we rescued her from Crazy Serena? It's as though none of it ever happened!"

  "I just hope it's not a telemarketer," Rebecca said. "I hate telemarketers. People trying to sell you stuff over the phone—how do I know I really want it if I can't actually see it?"

  At last we were all gathered around the phone in the drawing room staring at the number displayed on caller ID.

  Annie looked puzzled.

  "Annie?" Durinda said soothingly. "What's wrong?"

  "It's that number," Annie said.

  "You recognize it?" Rebecca demanded.

  "Yes," Annie said. "It's the number from the car phone. You know, the car phone inside our Hummer?"

  "But what could it mean?" Georgia asked as the phone stopped ringing and then immediately started again, displaying the same number.

  "I know what it means!" Petal said.

  Six heads swerved in her direction, shocked. When did Petal ever know what anything meant?