Free Zinnia's Zaniness by Lauren Baratz-Logsted Page A

said, "I do think that."
    "That's not helpful," Jackie told Rebecca as she put her arm around Annie.
    "You're right," Rebecca said. "I don't honestly think she enjoys being thought of as the bossy Eight. But I do think she enjoys being bossy. A lot."
    "That's not helpful either," Jackie said.
    "No, no," Annie said, sounding so very sad. "Rebecca's right. Perhaps I have enjoyed it too much, you know, being bossy."
    Oh, we hated seeing Annie like this. Seeing Annie looking sad and broken was far worse than having her order us around. We were almost certain that, despite the nasty things she said, even Rebecca felt this way.
    After Annie's tears and all that she'd said, we felt we understood her a little better. True, there was some choice in her behavior toward us, but mostly it just had to do with her being her. Why, Annie couldn't stop herself from acting as though she were in charge of everything any more than Marcia could stop herself from blurting out the answer to 2 times 16.766. It was just her nature.
    Suddenly, we felt we had to do something to make Annie feel good.
    "You know, Annie," Zinnia said, "I really do feel like doing Summer Workbook ."
    "If you dry your tears," Petal promised, "I'll get out my Summer Workbook right now."'
    "I know we only just had breakfast a short time ago," Durinda offered, "but I could make us all a snack for extra brainpower while we work."
    "I'll go get the pencils," Georgia offered.
    "This is great," Marcia said when we all had our pencils and workbooks in front of us. "I love doing Summer Workbook! "
    "There's no need to lay it on quite that thick, Marcia," Rebecca said.
    "What are you talking about?" Marcia said. "I do love doing Summer Workbook. ." Marcia gave a happy sigh. "I just love learning things."'
    "Could someone look at my forehead?" Petal said. "I feel as though my brain is expanding already and I am worried it might be beginning to bulge."'
    Oh, Petal.
    Jackie studied the proffered forehead kindly. "No worries," Jackie said. "It looks like your brain is probably still the same size."
    Annie cleared her throat. "You do know," she said, "that I do love all of you and that's partly why I am the way I am, right?"
    Yeah. We did know that.
    Just then there came a rumble of thunder followed by a downpour of rain, sheets of it.
    "That roof never did look sound," Pete said. "I'll go find some buckets to catch the water that's leaking through the ceiling."
    While Pete did that, Petal grabbed one of Pete's work boots and placed it under the biggest leak. "Stinky but effective," she pronounced.
    It was a good thing, we thought as lightning crackled through the sky, that we hadn't left for the beach.
    And it was a good thing, we thought as it continued to rain throughout the day, that we had something with which to keep ourselves occupied inside.
    ***
    It is funny how summer can affect a person's brain. You go through the school year, learning all sorts of things, and then summer comes and you think: Well, that's enough of that for now. Yippee!
    But doing Summer Workbook that day as a summer storm raged outside reminded us of all we'd been missing, the excitement of learning about new things a person hadn't even dreamed existed.
    By the time Zinnia lifted her head up, we'd long passed the combined quota for that day and the day before, and none of us had complained about all the work we were doing, not once, not even Rebecca. Perhaps we hadn't complained because we were too busy having fun seeing how much we did know and how much we could know.
    "What's this?" Zinnia asked, her finger marking a spot on the page.
    We all gathered round Zinnia and saw that she was working in the Mathematics section.
    "It's an infinity symbol," Annie said.
    "Yes, I know that," Zinnia said. "I can read the caption under the diagram as well as you can, but I still don't understand what it means or what it does."
    "Sorry, I haven't gotten to that page in Mathematics yet," Annie said. "I've been working mostly