Annie's Adventures by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Author:Lauren Baratz-Logsted [Baratz-Logsted, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780547133492
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2008-12-29T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Annie stuck Pete's card to the fridge with a magnet, and it was as though it acted like a good angel, watching over our home. This peaceful state lasted all too briefly.

We awoke on Sunday to Annie ripping off our bedcovers and announcing, "Today we will go shopping!"

This caused a flurry of excitement. For the first time in more than two weeks we would be leaving our home to go somewhere other than school, and we would get there using something other than a bus or our feet.

"Where are we going to go?" we repeatedly asked while hurriedly brushing our teeth, putting on clothes, gulping our breakfast.

But Annie, drinking a cup of coffee—a new habit she had started that day and one that caused her to make funny faces—wouldn't say at first.

"The mall?" Rebecca guessed.

"Too common," Annie said.

"The great big drugstore where they also sell toys?" Zinnia guessed.

Annie looked down her nose so sharply, she might have been the McG. "Would you like to get your birthday present from a place where they sell toothbrushes and bad-tummy medicine?"

She made a good point.

"Where, then?" Jackie asked. "We could make Will something..."

"Don't be ridiculous," Annie said. "You know we'd never be able to agree on what to make. Petal would want to make him something like paper flowers, while Georgia would want to make him a miniature guillotine."

"But that could work," Marcia said, pouring Annie a second cup of joe. "Will would wind up with two presents instead of just one. And anyway, he could always dead-head the paper flowers with the guillotine."

"Perhaps," Annie conceded. "But I have something grander in mind."

We leaned forward breathlessly. "What?"

"The Grand Emporium of Children's Delights," Annie said.

We each let out a gasp.

The Grand Emporium of Children's Delights was one of the biggest toy stores in the world, rumored to have everything any child could want.

"We've never been there before!" Rebecca said.

"I've always wanted to go!" Zinnia squealed.

"Mommy always said that that sort of excess is bad for children," Marcia observed. Which was true, and which was why we had never been there.

"Well"—Annie winced at a gulp of coffee, then winked—"we're going now."

But first she said we had to help her get ready.

"If I'm to be the driver," Annie said, and none of us argued with her that she shouldn't, "then I'll need a disguise. We certainly don't want people all over town calling the police to inform them there's an eight-year-old driving a Hummer."

We didn't bother to correct her and say that she wasn't eight yet, none of us were, and the day we would be eight was still nearly seven months away. We were too excited for quibbles.

"Do you want me to go get your spear?" Rebecca asked.

"I don't think," Annie said, "that my riding around with a medieval weapon in my hand would do anything to deflect nosy people's suspicions. No, I was thinking along the lines of something subtle..."

Which was how we all found ourselves in the tower room, which in happier times was our playroom, going through our old costume trunk.

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