Annie's Adventures Read Free

order to reveal what happened to your parents. Have you got all that?
    The note was unsigned.
    "See?" said Zinnia. "It says gifts . I knew there would be presents!"
    "I don't think this means those kinds of gifts," Annie said.
    "What do you make of this?" Durinda asked.
    "It means Mommy and Daddy really have disappeared," Georgia said.
    "Or else they're dead," Rebecca put in.
    One tear swam out of Petal's left eye as another ran out of Zinnia's right eye, and Jackie put her arms around both.
    Then eight sets of very similar brown eyes looked at one another, wondering what we should do next.
    As the grandfather clock struck midnight, marking the New Year and turning us all over into 2008, Annie turned to Georgia and spoke.
    "You said you were bored. Well"—she nodded—"I suppose we've all got plenty of excitement now."

CHAPTER TWO
    "So what do we do now?" Georgia demanded.
    "We feed the cats and go to bed," Annie said.
    "Is that all? "
    "Well, the cats do need to be fed."
    There were eight cats living in the house, one for each of us: Anthrax, Dandruff, Greatorex, Jaguar, Minx, Precious, Rambunctious, and Zither. Each was gray and white, and it was always hard for anyone other than us to tell them apart. The cats could, of course, tell all of us apart too.
    "But aren't we going to do anything?" Georgia insisted. "You know, about Mommy and Daddy disappearing?"
    "The best thing we can do right now is take care of the cats and take care of ourselves. In the light of day, we'll see things more clearly."
    And we'd have been able to see things a lot more clearly even then if the lights hadn't gone out right after we finished feeding the cats in the cat room. The cat room was like our drawing room, only for cats.
    "Oh no!" Zinnia cried out. "Whatever bad person took Mommy and Daddy turned out the power—something awful is about to happen!"
    "Now, now," Durinda soothed. "Annie," she directed, "call the electric company and find out what's going on. It's what Daddy would do."
    So Annie stumbled her way back to the drawing room, where, with the light from the fire, she could still make out the phone.
    Annie phoned Information and waited to be connected to the electric company. When we heard her speak, her voice was deeper than usual.
    "Hello"—she cleared her throat—"this is Robert Huit at Eight-eight-eight Middle Way, and I was wondering if you could tell me: Is it just my power that's out, or is this a citywide problem?" She paused. "Ah, yes. Jolly good. Thanks so much. You chaps do great work." And she hung up.
    "Well," Georgia said, "what's going on?"
    "It started snowing again"—Annie was still speaking in her faux Daddy voice and had to make herself stop—"and they say there must have been too much ice on the lines somewhere and one of them came down. They should have it fixed by morning." She forced a smile. "I don't think we'll freeze by then if we put extra blankets on."
    "Thank God ," Petal said, "that this is affecting everyone and not just us. I was sure it was the work of the ax murderer."
    "May I ask you a question?" Rebecca said to Annie.
    "Of course."
    "Why didn't you say you were Lucy Huit? It would have been easier to impersonate Mommy, I should think."
    "Huh," Annie said. "I dunno. I guess I never thought to impersonate anyone other than Daddy."
    "And what," Rebecca pressed, "was all that stuff about jolly good' and 'you chaps'? Daddy never talks that way! You made him sound British! "
    "Well, but he could be British, couldn't he? I mean, the electric company doesn't know where we come from."
    Rebecca harrumphed. She did not find the answer satisfying.
    But we were all tired by then.
    It is strange. You would think that enormous amounts of fear, the kind we'd been through, would have been enough to keep us awake for weeks. But human beings are funny things, and we Sisters Eight are nothing if not human. We yawned as a group for, in the end, fear had worn us out.
    Annie took down the twin candelabras from the