Jack? Since when did Alana call my father Jack?
But Dad didn’t seem to notice. He nodded and turned his attention back to the stadium. A moment later, he was leaping to his feet, trying to get a wave started, cheering loudly.
Under her breath, Alana muttered, “Jerk.”
“What did you say?” I heard my voice go up.
Alana gave me a small superior smile. “Shh. You don’t want to upset Jack the jerk, do you?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “What?” I repeated, leaning forward.
Alana opened her mouth. And shrieked as I dumped my lemon-lime seltzer in her lap.
“You did that on purpose!” she sputtered, scrubbing at the wet spot with her napkin.
“Alana the genius,” I retorted, giving her a mean smile.
The game went on forever. Alana and I warily ignored one another for nine long innings. Dad spent the time shouting things like “Good play!” and having Kayla say things like, “You call that a good play, Jack? Really? How — interesting.”
After we dropped Alana and Kayla off, no one needed to say it aloud: the family date had been a big strikeout.
Jeff and I settled in for the Saturday midnight monster movie. Dad, looking discouraged, said, “I’m going to call it a night. See you guys tomorrow.”
After he’d left, Jeff said, “Yuk.”
“Double yuk,” I said. “Where does Dad find these people?”
“The supermarket,” Jeff answered. “The video store. Work.”
“Yeah, and Monsters are Us,” I added. I paused then went on, “Remember Carol?”
“Yeah,” said Jeff.
We were both silent for a moment, thinking about Carol. She and Dad had actually been engaged. But then they’d decided they weren’t compatible and called it off.
Jeff and I hadn’t been all that crazy about Dad remarrying and we hadn’t given Carol much of a chance. I wondered now if maybe we hadn’t been wrong. All Carol had ever done was try too hard to be nice — something any normal person might do, especially if she loved someone and wanted his family to like her.
Normal. All these people we’d had family dates with had been “normal.” Nice, normal people who were nasty to people who were different from them, or full of weird rules and regulations, or just plain obnoxious.
I was sick of normal people. Dad deserved someone better than that. Someone like Carol.
I looked at Jeff. He looked at me. I knew we were thinking the same thing.
“We’ve got to get Carol and Dad back together,” I said aloud.
Jeff put up his hand, and we gave each other the high-five.
In spite of the war between the Barretts and the DeWitts, the wedding between Mrs. Barrett and Mr. DeWitt was still on. Kristy had been hearing some of the details of the wedding, since her mom and Mrs. Barrett were friends. Of course Kristy, being Kristy, hadn’t paid much attention to important details like who was wearing what and what the flowers were going to be. But she did remember to tell the BSC that the Barretts and the DeWitts were not going to live together in one or the other of the two families’ houses. Instead, they were going to buy a new, bigger house for the whole family. They’d never planned that one of the families would share the other’s house, because they knew that it would be a tight squeeze and it would also mean that whichever family moved into the other’s house would thereafter be viewed as interlopers.
Mary Anne was particularly relieved to hear the news, since she’d seen the DeWitt-proofing incident first-hand.
As it turned out, not only were Mrs. Barrett and Mr. DeWitt buying a new house, they were also going to include the seven kids in the house-hunting. And they called the BSC for assistance on the first house-hunting outing.
Shannon and Kristy got the job.
When they got to the Barretts’ that Saturday morning, Franklin and his four kids had already arrived in an enormous blue van.
“Cool wheels,” Kristy said to Lindsey, who was sitting in one of the seats by an open window.
Lindsey made a face. Taylor and Madeleine had gotten out and were playing a halfhearted game of tag in the front yard. Ryan was asleep in his car seat.
Mrs. Barrett, holding Marnie, was just coming out the front door with Suzi and Buddy.
Shannon leaped forward and she and Kristy began to help get seven kids (and two adults) organized for the house-hunting trip.
It was not an easy thing. Suzi opened the van door and hopped in, claiming the window seat behind the driver. Taylor immediately said, “That’s my seat.”
“Ha,” said Buddy, rushing to his sister’s defense. “Is your name written on it?”
“No, but it’s our father’s van, so we get first choice.”
“Mom, is that true?” wailed Suzi. “I get carsick if I can’t look out the window.”
“It’s true,” said Mrs. Barrett, starting to look frazzled already.
“Oooh! Carsick. I’m not sitting next to Suzi,” said Taylor, abruptly reversing his position. “She stinks.”
“I do not!” shouted Suzi.
“Well, I’m not sitting next to any DeWitts. You all stink,” said Buddy.
“Not like the Barrett Stink Bombs,” Lindsey said.
“Enough!” said Kristy, in her best no-nonsense voice.
It silenced both the Barretts and the DeWitts. Soon she and Shannon had all seven kids seated (with Kristy and Shannon in between so that no Barrett was sitting next to a DeWitt and vice versa.)
Shannon said, as they pulled out of the driveway, “It’s sort of like one of those math problems in school, you know?”
“Yeah,” said Kristy, giving Buddy, who was leaning forward to stick his tongue out at Taylor, a warning look. Buddy leaned back. “Don’t ask me how we did it, though!”
She and Shannon thought they were going to have to spend the rest of the house-hunting expedition acting as referees. But midway into the tour of the first house, they realized they were wrong.
The real estate agent kept his smile firmly in place as the van pulled up to the first house, a split level ranch house with a fenced-in backyard, and seven kids, two baby-sitters, and two adults spilled out. “Ah,” he said. “How delightful. What a lovely family you have here.”
Shannon and Kristy looked at the agent as if he were nuts, since the DeWitts and the Barretts had taken advantage of the new territory to draw up new lines of battle. (“I’m not walking next to her!” “Oh, he has cooties. He touched me, he touched me!”)
“I’m sure we have the perfect house for you,” the agent went on, leading the way down the wide, straight front walk.
Buddy paused to look up and down the sidewalk. “It’s a good sidewalk for skateboards,” he noted. “Smooth. Good curb.”
Lindsey stopped, too, as if struck by what Buddy had said. She studied the sidewalk for a moment from a couple of angles and then said, “You’re right.”
It soon became clear that the kids and the adults were looking for somewhat different things in a house.
“Notice the number of closets,” the agent said, throwing open a closet door as if he’d built it himself especially for Mr. DeWitt and Mrs. Barrett.
“Wow, look at that! A tree house!” cried Suzi, running to press her face against the sliding glass door that led from the kitchen onto the back deck.
“Neat,” cried Taylor, coming to stand beside her. “Look, Madeleine,” he said to his sister, whose hand he was holding. “A tree house.”
“May we go look?” Buddy asked Mrs. Barrett.
“Of course, of course,” said the agent, his big fake smile growing bigger. “It’s very sturdy. Has a safety rail around it.”
“A lovely view from the kitchen,” said Mr. DeWitt as the four kids raced out, followed by Kristy holding Ryan, and Shannon holding Marnie.
“Look at this!” exclaimed Buddy a moment later, leaning on the rail. “You can see everything.”
While the adults toured the rest of the house, the kids compared n
otes on the tree house and the backyard.
“Look, it even has a dog house!” cried Lindsey.
“But we don’t have a dog now,” said Suzi, looking distressed.
“It can be a guest dog house,” said Lindsey. “Like a dog hotel.”
“And we could use the dog house as a fort-in-disguise,” said Buddy.
“Time to go,” said Mr. DeWitt.
Everyone piled back in the van, but with a lot fewer complaints and disputes.
“No tree house,” said Buddy immediately at the next house.
“Five lovely bedrooms,” said the agent, smiling and smiling. “And three baths, including a bath in the master bedroom.”
“There are seven of us,” said Suzi. “Who gets their own bedroom?”
“Marnie and Ryan can share. They’re little. They won’t mind,” said Buddy.
“Ohh, look at this little room,” said Suzi. “It’s cute.”
“I like this big one,” said Taylor. “It has cool window seats.”
“Me, too,” said Buddy. He and Taylor looked at each other and so did Shannon and Kristy, waiting for the fight to break out.
Then Buddy said, “We could put a terrarium in one of the windows.”
Taylor nodded. “Neat,” he said.
After that, the kids raced up to each house as if it were a big adventure. While the adults talked about things like dry basements and insulation and solar heating and access to schools, Buddy and Suzi and Taylor and Lindsey and sometimes Madeleine and Marnie and Ryan looked at backyards from a kid’s point of view; rated trees for climbing and tree-house potential; timed how long it took to run around the house for future race potential; checked out sidewalks for skateboard, Rollerblade, and bicycle possibilities; and peppered the real estate agent with questions about whether they could slide down bannisters and how many containers of ice cream would fit in the freezer in the refrigerator. They were particularly impressed by one house that had a whole separate freezer in the basement. By Buddy’s estimate, it would hold enough ice cream for an entire year.
By the time the house-hunting expedition was over, the only point of serious disagreement was over what kind of ice cream to put in the freezer.
“Maybe we’ll get a farm,” cried Suzi, her eyes shining. “With horses and goats.”
“Horses, horses,” said Marnie, catching her sister’s enthusiasm.
“Or a house with a swimming pool,” suggested Lindsey.
“Or a farm with a pond,” said Buddy.
“For swimming or fishing,” Taylor added.
Listening to them talk, Shannon and Kristy were relieved to see that the war between the Barretts and DeWitts was over. From her own experience, Kristy knew that the road ahead would not always be smooth. But the first part, in some ways the hardest part, accepting that things were going to change and looking for the good possibilities in the changes, had begun.
They were on their way to making a new family.
Clover was holding a bowl on her head — right side up. Daffodil was running after her with the hose, trying to fill the bowl up. Both girls were wearing their bathing suits and the sprinkler was on full force.
“I’m wet, I’m wet,” shrieked Clover, and I smiled.
I was baby-sitting for the Austins and I couldn’t think of a better place to be on such a hot, hot day.
Still, watching them race through the sprinklers made me tired and thirsty. I decided it was about time they took a break.
“Clover! Daf! Water-break!” I called.
Clover went into peals of laughter and so did Daffodil. “That’s funny, Dawn!” shouted Clover.
“No, really, I mean it. Let’s take a rest and drink some juice.”
“Five more minutes,” pleaded Daffodil.
The two stopped and turned to look at me pleadingly.
“I’ll get the juice and come back out,” I said. “Stay in the backyard, okay?”
“Okay,” said Clover instantly. She took advantage of the moment to dash the contents of her bowl of water on her older sister. Instantly, the two took off through the sprinklers again.
Smiling and shaking my head, I went inside to fix some orange juice.
Five minutes later I came out onto the back steps. “Juic …” I called. My voice trailed off.
The sprinklers were off. And Clover and Daffodil were nowhere in sight.
I put the tray of juice and glasses down on the table by the steps and checked the backyard quickly. Both girls’ sneakers and T-shirts were gone from the lawn chair where they had tossed them.
“Clover! Daffodil!” I called.
No answer. Nevertheless, I checked around the front and the backyard in case they were hiding, playing a game. But although I looked in every possible place and listened carefully for stifled giggles, I found (and heard) no sign of the two girls.
I didn’t panic. Friends had probably come by and the girls, forgetting their promise to stay in the yard, had gone to play with them. But although there were a number of kids up the street, no one had seen Daffodil or Clover.
My heart was beginning to pound heavily now. I had to force myself to stay calm as I returned to the Austins’ house and checked it carefully one more time.
No Daffodil. No Clover.
I raced back out of the house and down the sidewalk, headed for a group of kids at the other end of the block. They were older boys, unlikely to play with Daf or Clover, but I thought they might have seen something. I was running so fast that I almost knocked over a little boy standing and watching the big boys play basketball.
“Whoa! Sorry,” I gasped, grabbing him before he toppled backward. “Are you okay?”
He gave me a scornful look, refusing to act like a little kid in front of the big kids. “ ’Course I am.”
On impulse, I said, “You haven’t seen two girls go this way? One about your age?” I described what Daffodil and Clover were wearing.
To my surprise — and relief — the little boy nodded.
“Where?” I asked.
He pointed up the sidewalk. “They were walking with a lady,” he said.
“What lady?” I asked. My heart started to hammer. “What did she look like? Tall? Short? Brown hair? Gray hair?”
But he shook his head stubbornly. “A lady. That’s all. Just a lady.”
Had Daffodil and Clover been kidnapped? I couldn’t believe they’d go somewhere with a complete stranger. But I didn’t know what else to think, and I couldn’t take any chances. And Mrs. Austin couldn’t be reached right away. She was at an outdoor crafts fair exhibiting her weaving and wouldn’t be back until early evening.
I called the police.
They were there in no time. And before long, a whole group of neighbors, plus my father and Jeff, had spread out to search for Clover and Daffodil.
“I can’t believe it,” I kept saying. “They were in the backyard. Inside the fence. I just went indoors for a second.”
My father patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Sunshine. They’ll turn up. There’s probably a perfectly logical explanation for all this.”
I wanted to believe him. But I couldn’t.
I raced up and down the streets, calling their names. Then, realizing that I was just covering the same ground that the neighborhood search party was covering, I left the neighborhood, still calling, still looking.
But with less and less hope.
Eventually, I found myself looking up at a Ferris wheel. It was the last day of the carnival, the one we’d gone to on that disastrous family date with Clarice when I’d gotten the lime green toy I’d given to Whitney.
Like the whirling in my brain, the Ferris wheel circled and circled. What was I going to do? How was I going to tell Mrs. Austin?
Suddenly, my eyes focused. And I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Because going around and around on the Ferris wheel were Daffodil and Clover Austin. Whitney Cater was sitting in the middle with one of the girls on either side.
I was so
astonished, I didn’t know what to do.
Clover saw me and shouted, “DAWWWWN!” She waved wildly, beaming.
Daffodil smiled, too. Whitney looked at me without any expression at all.
When the Ferris wheel touched down and the girls got off, I rushed up to them. “There you are!” I cried.
“It’s so much fun!” cried Clover. “We’re going to the funhouse next.”
Realizing that they didn’t even know they were missing, I took a deep breath. “Maybe in a little while. But right now, we need to get back home. Come on.”
“Clover and Daffodil are good,” said Whitney, hanging back a little.
“Come on, Whitney,” I said. “Help me walk them home.”
Whitney nodded and fell into step beside us. I spotted a police officer ahead. “Wait here,” I said.
I raced up to the officer and, never taking my eyes off the three as they stood at a little distance, told her what had happened. The officer nodded. “That’s what usually happens,” she said, getting out her radio to call off the search. “I’m glad that was the case this time, too.”
Clover, who had pulled the other two closer, yanked on my arm. “We weren’t lost!” she said indignantly. “We were with Whitney!”
“I took care of them,” Whitney said. “I was baby-sitting.”
“See?” said Clover.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Whitney came by and asked us to go to the carnival while you were inside. She said she was baby-sitting. We thought it would be okay,” said Daffodil.
“But first I made them turn off the sprinklers and put on their shirts and sneakers,” said Whitney. “That was right.”
“Yes, that was right,” I said. “But you shouldn’t have gone anywhere without telling me.”
Just then, I looked up and saw a familiar face. “Carol?” I said.
“Dawn! I thought that was you. My girlfriend and I were just buying some cotton candy and I saw you over here. Are you having fun?”
“Ah … well,” I said.
Carol turned to Whitney and held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Carol.”
“How do you do,” said Whitney. “I’m Whitney. This is Clover and Daffodil.”
“Yes, I’m glad to see you all,” said Carol, smiling at them. “You know, Whitney, I watched you earlier on the merry-go-round. You looked like you were having fun.”