Eleven Kids, One Summer

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 Abigail and the Train-Trip Disaster

  2 Calandra and the Mystery Next Door

  3 Faustine and the Great Fish Protest

  4 Hannah and the Ghosts

  5 Ira and the Hospital Adventure

  6 Janthina and the Beauty Treatment

  7 Dagwood and the Million-Dollar Idea

  8 Gardenia and the Movie on the Beach

  9 Bainbridge and the Case of the Curious Kidnapping

  10 Eberhard and the House of the Cursed

  11 Keegan and the End of Summer

  About the Author

  Also by Ann M. Martin

  Copyright

  The train started with a jerk and pulled out of the station. Abbie Rosso breathed a sigh of relief. As she looked out the window, she could see her father standing in the parking lot by the van, which was packed to the gills. Mr. Rosso was waving and smiling.

  Abbie decided to take a head count. Thank goodness. The Rossos were right where they ought to be. Every one of them. Her brother Bainbridge was sitting next to her. Candy and Hannah were across the aisle. Woody and Hardy were in the seat in front of her. Faustine and Dinnie, the twins, were across from them. And farther ahead were Ira and Jan, their mother, Keegan, and Zsa-Zsa the cat, meowing in her carrier.

  “All present and accounted for,” murmured Abbie.

  “Huh?” replied Bainbridge. He had bought a copy of The Nation’s Enquirer at the newsstand at the train station and was deeply engrossed. Ordinarily, Mrs. Rosso didn’t allow her children to buy tabloids, but she’d made an exception for the long trip ahead. Abbie peered over Bainbridge’s arm. He was reading an article titled “Two-headed Calf Saves Injured Chicken.”

  “Hey, Mom!” yelled Woody from his seat. “You got the gum?”

  “No, I have it,” replied Abbie. “And keep your voice down.”

  She rummaged around in her tote bag for the gum they’d brought along and tossed a pack to her brother.

  Bainbridge let out a loud snort. “It says here that this guy saw the face of Elvis Presley glowing on the front of his refrigerator, so he went to get his wife, but when they came back the face was gone!”

  “Bainbridge, shhh!” said Abbie.

  Honestly, the worst thing about having ten brothers and sisters was that it could be so embarrassing. Especially when you’d been named in alphabetical order using a “name your baby” book according to a system developed by your mother. That was how Abbie and her brothers and sisters had ended up with names like Bainbridge and Faustine — and worse. Mrs. Rosso had a rule or a system for just about everything, and the baby-naming system worked like this: Abbie, the oldest child, had been given the first name on the A page in the girls’ half of the book. Bainbridge had been given the second name on the B page in the boys’ half. Candy had been given the third name on the C page in the girls’ half, and so on down to Keegan, the baby, who’d been given the eleventh name on the boys’ K page.

  Most of the kids had nicknames, thank goodness, because some of their real names were pretty awful. Abbie was short for Abigail, which was a nice name. Candy was short for Calandra, which was a romantic name. Woody, however, was short for Dagwood, Hardy for Eberhard, Dinnie for Gardenia, and Jan for Janthina, which everyone agreed were terrible names. And there was nothing Bainbridge, Faustine, Hannah, Ira, or Keegan could be shortened to. In some cases it didn’t matter. Hannah and Ira liked their names, and Keegan was too little to care about his.

  There was another thing about the Rossos and their mother’s systems. The kids had all been born a year apart, so, at least until the twins came along, they were like stairsteps. That was what Mrs. Rosso had always wanted — ten stairstep children. (Abbie thought of the twins as a landing on the stairs so as not to spoil the image.) This worked fine with the first ten children. Abbie was now fifteen, Bainbridge fourteen, Candy thirteen, Woody twelve, Hardy eleven, Faustine and Dinnie ten, Hannah nine, Ira eight, and Jan seven. Then Keegan had come along. He didn’t fit into the stairsteps at all. He was only six months old. What did that make him? Hannah, who liked to tease and play jokes, said it made Keegan a pile of laundry at the bottom of the stairs, but Abbie didn’t think that was funny at all.

  “Meow, meow,” cried Zsa-Zsa pitifully.

  “Mommy? Are we almost there?” called Jan. She wiggled out of her seat and squeezed herself between Zsa-Zsa’s carrier and her mother, who was holding a sleeping Keegan in her lap.

  “Not yet, honey,” replied Mrs. Rosso. “Remember? I said it would be a long trip. We have quite a few hours to go.”

  The Rossos were on their way to Fire Island, which is a narrow spit of land off the coast of Long Island in New York. They’d boarded the train in New Jersey and were traveling to Pennsylvania Station in New York City.

  When they reached the station, Abbie, her mom, and her ten brothers and sisters would have to get off the train — with Zsa-Zsa, their tote bags and pocketbooks and knapsacks, and Keegan’s diaper bag and stroller — walk through the station, find the Long Island trains, and get on the one to Patchogue. Before they reached Patchogue, though, they would have to switch trains in a town called Babylon.

  Abbie hoped they would make it. She thought it would be a miracle if they reached Patchogue without losing anything — or anyone. She wanted a smooth start to her family’s trip. The Rossos were going to spend the entire summer in a rented house right on the beach.

  Abbie had never been to a beach for such a long stretch of time. No one in her family had. And that was why her father was driving to Patchogue instead of taking the train. The Rossos’ van was loaded with a summer’s worth of clothes, toys, and Keegan’s baby equipment, plus things that didn’t come with the house: sheets, blankets, beach chairs, a small TV, a portable radio, a blender, Zsa-Zsa’s litter box, Mrs. Rosso’s sewing machine, Mr. Rosso’s woodworking tools, and a few other things that Abbie couldn’t remember.

  Abbie was terribly excited about the summer on the beach. Fire Island sounded so glamorous. Who knew what might happen, whom she might meet. The one bad thing about the summer was that her father could only spend weekends with his family. The rest of the time he would have to be at his job in New York City.

  “Poor guy,” said Bainbridge, interrupting Abbie’s thoughts. He turned to his sister. “I was just thinking about Dad,” he explained.

  “Me too!” exclaimed Abbie.

  “He gets stuck driving the van to Patchogue to meet us at the ferry dock,” Bainbridge went on. “He spends this first weekend with us when mostly we’ll be cleaning the house and unpacking and putting our stuff away, and then he has to leave on Monday morning to get back to the city — and stay with Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Martha and Scott and Lyman and Courtenay and Eleanor.”

  Abbie’s father held some top-level job at a big, important advertising agency. Normally, he commuted between New York and the Rossos’ New Jersey farm. But a daily commute between Fire Island and New York was too long, so he had arranged to live with his brother’s family in New York City on weekdays that summer. Abbie felt sorry for him. He didn’t get much of a vacation.

  “Are we almost there?” Jan asked her mother again. Jan had moved back to her seat next to Ira, her favorite person in the family.

  “No,” replied Mrs. Rosso. “Why?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Because … because … my tummy doesn’t feel good.”

  Ira leaped out of the seat in a second, ran down the aisle, and squished himself next to Bainbridge, which was as far from Jan as he could get without being in another car. Ira might be a nice older brother, but he was finicky and neat and clean, and didn’t want to have a thing to do with Jan if she
was going to throw up.

  Which she did.

  But Mrs. Rosso was prepared. She whipped a plastic bag from among Keegan’s supplies and thrust it at Candy who rushed it over to Jan and held it open just in time.

  “Oh,” groaned Jan when she was finished.

  “See? I told you not to ride facing backward,” said Candy. (Jan and Ira had gleefully chosen a seat facing Faustine and Dinnie so that the four of them could play games. Faustine and Dinnie had not been nearly so enthusiastic about the arrangement as the younger kids had.) “You always get sick when you ride backward,” added Candy.

  Bainbridge stood up and slid the back of Jan’s seat in the other direction so that she could face forward. Then Jan sat down looking uncomfortable and angry, and Candy held up the barf bag for the whole world to see and said, “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  Abbie slid down in her seat, wanting to die. She loved her brothers and sisters. She really did.

  But this was just too much.

  “Take it into the bathroom and dispose of it,” Mrs. Rosso replied formally.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” asked Candy. She was still holding up the bag. It was dangling from between her thumb and forefinger, and Abbie was terrified that she would drop it.

  “At the back of the car, near Bainbridge,” said Mrs. Rosso, pointing.

  Candy walked to the bathroom, holding the bag with one hand and her nose with the other. When she emerged a few moments later, she announced, “Whew, does it ever smell in there — and it wasn’t Jan’s barf.”

  Abbie opened a newspaper and tried to hide behind it. Ordinarily, she acted like a mother to the other kids, but on this train full of people, she was hoping no one would know she was part of the Rosso family. She waited until things had died down a little before she put the paper away, sat up straight, and counted heads again.

  The trip remained uneventful until just before the train reached Penn Station in New York, Then everything fell apart. First, Abbie realized that her mother was feeding Keegan strained bananas, and the whole car smelled of banana baby food.

  Then she noticed that Woody and Hardy were having a terrible time keeping still. They kept jumping up and running down the aisle or asking Mrs. Rosso questions.

  Hardy went to the drinking fountain eight times, getting a new paper cone at each visit and using the cones to make horns for his head and ridiculous pointed noses.

  Then Abbie realized that the twins were missing. She had to search frantically to find them. They’d secretly moved themselves to the front of the car and were pretending they were French — as if anyone would believe them. Abbie heard snatches of conversation that sounded like this:

  “Voo-voo-vay de-jay?”

  “Ah, non, non, non. Moi, je voo-voo touchay le voudoire, non ploo?”

  “Ah, oui, but of course. Le voudoire ooh le vood-weeze. Comme çi, comme ça. Le pay ay le cacherel. Ça la.”

  Abbie made a dash for her mother. “Mom,” she hissed. “The twins are pretending they’re —”

  But Mrs. Rosso interrupted her. “Honey, we’re just about to reach the station. Would you please make sure nobody forgets anything? And ask Bainbridge to help me with Keegan’s stroller.”

  “Okay,” Abbie replied calmly, but her head was spinning. She was certain they were going to lose someone. She made a mental note to take Zsa-Zsa’s carrier herself. She was sure that, in the excitement, no one else would remember the cat.

  Abbie approached each of her brothers and sisters and said, “Pack up all your stuff. We’re going to get off soon.” Then she remembered to tell Bainbridge to get Keegan’s stroller off the overhead rack.

  The train jerked to a stop, and suddenly the aisles were crowded with people. Somehow, the Rossos reached their next train on time. They ran through Penn Station, Mrs. Rosso pushing Keegan in his stroller, Abbie holding tightly to Zsa-Zsa’s carrier, and the older kids holding onto the younger ones. When they dashed onto the second train, Abbie took yet another head count before anyone even sat down — ten kids, one baby, one mother, one cat, one stroller, and a million tote bags and knapsacks.

  They had done it.

  The train reached Babylon, and the Rossos made another successful switch onto the last train. Then finally … finally … they pulled into Patchogue.

  “Where’s Daddy?” asked Ira immediately.

  “He’s across town at the parking lot for the ferry dock — I hope,” replied Mrs. Rosso. “We’ll have to take taxis to get there.”

  “Poo-pay moi le ou-bluh-jay,” remarked Faustine.

  Abbie rolled her eyes. Then she looked around and saw the line of taxis waiting to drive people to the ferry dock. The Rossos hailed four of them, squeezed inside, and set off on the ten-minute drive through town. When the driver of Abbie’s taxi turned the corner to the ferry dock, Abbie immediately noticed two things: one, her father and the van were waiting, and two, it had begun to rain.

  “Oh no,” said Abbie. “Rain, ugh. But at least Dad’s here.”

  “La, la, la. Une terrible shame,” said Dinnie, and Hannah nudged her in the ribs and told her to shut up.

  Abbie’s cab parked first. Abbie flew out, Zsa-Zsa in hand, paid the driver, and ran to their father.

  “We made it!” she announced, holding a sweater over her head to keep the rain off, and peering through the window at Mr. Rosso.

  He didn’t answer. He was engrossed in a carpentry magazine.

  “Dad?” said Abbie.

  Mr. Rosso dragged himself away from the magazine. “Yes? … Oh, Abbie! You’re here!” He leaped out of the van. (Her father was so absentminded, thought Abbie.)

  “Yup, we made it,” she replied. “We didn’t lose anyone, and Jan only barfed once. But the twins are doing that French thing again.”

  Mr. Rosso grinned. Then his smile faded. “It’s raining!” he exclaimed.

  How, Abbie wondered, could her father have sat in a metal van and not have heard the rain?

  “It started a few minutes ago,” she informed him, “and it looks like it’s going to get worse.” She glanced at the sky over the bay. It was as black as tar. In the distance she could hear thunder.

  “Well, in that case,” said her father, “I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that the ferry doesn’t leave for forty-five minutes and there’s no waiting room here. The good news is that your mother probably knows exactly where the raincoats are packed.”

  Abbie nodded grimly as she was surrounded by the other members of her wet family, and the taxis drove off. It turned out that there was more good news and more bad news. The good news was that her mother did know exactly where the raincoats were packed. The bad news was that Mr. Rosso would have to unpack the entire van to get to them, and Mrs. Rosso didn’t want to unpack until it was time to board the ferry, because of the rain.

  In the end, they placed Keegan in the infant seat in the van while the rest of them huddled under a plastic tarp for almost forty-five minutes.

  Then the ferry office came to life. In no time at all, the Rossos had bought tickets for the ride to Fire Island, loaded everything from the van into the freight compartment of the ferry, and soon were boarding the boat themselves.

  The ferry was named Kiki and had seats on top, out in the open, and more seats below, where it was dry.

  “We’re going to sit on top!” cried Woody, heading for the stairs, followed by Hardy and Hannah.

  “In the rain?” replied Mrs. Rosso. “Oh no, you’re not.”

  “Les boys eh Hannah son tray, tray bad,” whispered Faustine to Dinnie, as Woody, Hardy, and Hannah sat sulkily with the rest of their family.

  A few moments later, Abbie felt a bump, then heard the sound of engines starting, and realized that the Kiki was pulling away from the dock.

  “Good-bye, van,” said Mr. Rosso, looking out at the parking lot. He had paid to leave the van there over the weekend. It had cost a fortune.

  Twenty minutes after the ferry had left Patchog
ue, it arrived at … Fire Island! Abbie’s family was staying in a little community called Davis Park, which was so close to another community, Ocean Ridge, that you could barely tell where one ended and the other began.

  The first thing Abbie said as she emerged from the ferry was “Ooh, look!”

  Fire Island was not at all what she had expected. On the bay side, where they had landed, she could see only wooden houses, narrow wooden boardwalks, and, in the middle of the island, trees. Trees? At the beach? And there were no roads or cars, and nothing that even looked like a town.

  “On the other side of the island are the beach and the ocean,” her father said, as they stood dripping in the rain (except for Keegan who had been zipped inside the plastic cover of his stroller).

  It took at least five trips between the ferry and the Rossos’ beach house (which was a good walk from the dock) to transport all of their possessions — even with the help of the red wagon that was chained to the porch of the house.

  “A wagon!” Hardy exclaimed in dismay. “I’m not pulling one of those around. They’re baby toys.”

  “Not here,” Mr. Rosso informed him. “They’re like cars. Everyone uses them.”

  Woody snorted. Then he went off to explore the house.

  Abbie explored it, too, once she’d helped out with some of the unpacking. It was a huge house, as Davis Park houses seemed to go. And it was set on a stretch of beach which looked deserted, but that might have been due to the rain.

  “Maybe we’ll have the beach to ourselves all summer!” said Candy.

  Abbie hoped not. She wanted to meet some new people.

  She was about to leave the living room, with its view of the ocean, to see what the kitchen was like, when suddenly Candy gasped.

  “What is it?” asked Abbie, alarmed.

  “Look at the house next door!”

  Abbie looked out a side window at the rundown, ramshackle house. It was obvious that no one had lived in it for years. “So?” she said.