Remarkable (5 page)

I
t did not take the esteemed Dr. Presnelda long to determine that the Grimlet twins were responsible for the disruption at the gifted school. The evidence of their guilt was overwhelming. They’d been caught blue-handed with seventeen empty bottles of bluing rinse and wide wicked grins on their nefarious faces. And just in case anyone suspected that they might still be innocent, they’d prepared a signed confession, written on blue vellum paper in blue fountain-pen ink and covered in their sticky blue fingerprints. “I
T WAS US!”
the confession read. “B
WAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!
S
INCERELY,
M
ELISSA
AND
E
DDIE
G
RIMLET.”

The only thing left to do was to decide how to
punish them. Dr. Presnelda arranged for an emergency meeting to be held at the school that night, and then went home to prepare herself.

Dr. Presnelda lived with Ms. Schnabel in a small yellow house near the library. They happened to be sisters, although most people never guessed this since their address was the only thing they had in common. Ms. Schnabel was tall and tended to slouch. Dr. Presnelda was quite short but had perfect posture. Ms. Schnabel usually had a glum expression on her face as if she were perpetually unhappy, while Dr. Presnelda was almost always wearing a smug, self-satisfied smile. Ms. Schnabel rarely found anything to laugh about, but when she did, the whole town could hear her deep, bellowing guffaws. Dr. Presnelda had no sense of humor whatsoever and, consequently, never laughed at all.

The two sisters had never liked each other very much, and they only spoke to each other when it absolutely necessary. So Ms. Schnabel was quite surprised when Dr. Presnelda knocked on her bedroom door.

“You’re going to be late if you don’t start getting ready soon,” Dr. Presnelda told her. “And you know mother always said it was rude to be late.”

“Late for what?”

“For the emergency meeting I’ve called at the gifted school. I need to discuss how I plan to punish the Grimlet twins.”

“Why should I care? They didn’t turn my school blue,” Ms. Schnabel said. She was reading a book on Sir Francis Drake and didn’t want her evening disrupted.

“You should care because…because…oh never mind!” Dr. Presnelda pursed her lips as though she’d like to say something more but didn’t dare. Then she walked out of the room and slammed the door behind her.

Although Dr. Presnelda never had much to say to her sister, she tended to be long-winded in most other situations. And because she enjoyed having other people listen to her almost as much as she enjoyed the sound of her own voice, she’d made the emergency meeting mandatory for all parents of gifted-school students.

Jane’s parents knew the meeting was likely to last a very long time, so they asked Grandmama Julietta Augustina and Grandpa John to come over to make sure that Jane, Anderson, and Penelope Hope did
their homework and got to bed at a reasonable hour. Grandmama Julietta Augustina was only too happy to spend time with her grandchildren, but she did think Dr. Presnelda was overreacting.

“Hmph!” Grandmama said to no one in particular, even though Jane was standing right in front of her. “Not much of an emergency, if you ask me.” She wasn’t the least bit impressed by the fact that the Grimlet twins had turned an entire school blue, or even that they’d somehow managed to specially reformulate the bluing rinse so that it wouldn’t wash off. Anderson Brigby Bright Doe III and Penelope Hope Adelaide Catalina had spent hours scrubbing their skin and shampooing their hair, but they were still just as blue as before.

Grandpa John disappeared into the kitchen to cook everyone a nice dinner of plain noodles and unbuttered toast. But just as soon as he was out of sight, Jane’s grandmother forgot all about him and picked up the phone to order dinner from Remarkable’s House of Otherworldly Pizza.

Exactly three minutes after Grandmama placed the order, the doorbell rang. Jane went to answer it, expecting that the pizza had arrived. Remarkable’s
House of Otherworldy Pizza had the fastest pizza delivery anywhere. Madame Yvette Gladiola, who owned the pizza parlor, was psychic and could see the future. She knew who would be ordering pizza from her before they knew it themselves.

But when Jane answered the door, she didn’t see the Otherworldly Pizza delivery driver standing on the front porch. Instead, she saw a pirate.

At least Jane was pretty sure the man on the porch was a pirate. He was wearing a big pirate’s hat, had a large green parrot on his shoulder, and had not one, but two peg legs.

“Ahoy,” the pirate said politely. The parrot on his shoulder said nothing, but gave Jane a sideways stare.

“Ahoy,” Jane replied. “. . . er, I mean, hello.”

“Me name be Captain Archibald Rojo Herring,” the pirate said. “I be seeking the architect that lives in this ’ere house. Be she available?”

“Oh,” said Jane. “I’m afraid my mother’s not home right now.”

“Arggh!” the pirate said. “That be a shame. Will ye be expecting her back in her home port soon?”

“No, not for a while I’m afraid. Can I give her a message?”

“Arggh!” the pirate said again, and then he sat down on the front porch to rest his weary peg legs. “Perhaps you could help me then. I be looking for the new fine bell tower that she built as an addition to the post office—but, blimey, I can’t seems to find it anywheres.”

“Jane? Who’s at the door? Is it the pizza?”

Grandmama Julietta Augustina came to see what was taking Jane so long. When she saw the pirate, her eyes narrowed. Grandmama Julietta Augustina did not approve of pirates.

“Who are you?” she demanded. Captain Rojo Herring took off his hat and bowed.

“Captain Rojo Herring, at your service, ma’am. And this be me parrot, Salzburg.”

“And what, might I ask, is a pirate captain doing in Remarkable?”

“He came to see the bell tower,” Jane explained.

“Well, it hasn’t been built yet,” Grandmama told him. “We had some complications in the planning stage.”

“I be sorry to hear that,” Captain Rojo Herring said. “A lovely town like this deserves to have a lovely bell tower.”

“Hmph!” Grandmama Juliette Augustina said. She still didn’t approve of pirates, but she always had a soft spot for people who spoke highly of Remarkable. “Seems a shame you’ve come all this way for nothing. Come inside and have dinner with us. Bring that bird, too.”

The pirate took a moment to consider her offer, and the parrot on his shoulder snapped its beak at the tip of his ear. Jane didn’t know much about parrots, but she thought this one looked hungry.

“Thank ye,” the pirate said, nervously covering his ear with his hand. “We don’t mind if we do.”

T
here was plenty of food for dinner that night. Just as Grandpa John finished cooking a big pot of noodles and a stack of plain white toast, Madame Gladiola’s delivery driver showed up with an extra-large super-duper supreme pizza with all the toppings. The pizza was a whole size larger than what Grandmama had ordered, because Madame Gladiola had foreseen that the Doe family would have an unexpected dinner guest. Madame Gladiola had even sent over a small plastic container of pineapple for the parrot, and as soon as Grandmama opened it up, the parrot flew to her shoulder and began eating from it.

“Hmph!” said Grandmama Julietta Augustina. She thought the parrot was being rather impudent, but Jane noticed that she didn’t try to shoo the bird away.

“Does your parrot have a name?” Penelope Hope asked Captain Rojo Herring.

“I calls her Salzburg,” the pirate answered. “She won’t answer to it though. But then, I don’t think she like me much.”

From her seat on Grandmama’s shoulder, Salzburg growled at Captain Rojo Herring like an angry cat.

“Now now,” Grandmama said sternly. She did not approve of growling birds. Salzburg immediately stopped and went back to eating pineapple.

The pirate had lovely table manners. He always said please and thank you, he took off his giant pirate hat before he sat down, he kept his elbows off the table, and he remembered to put his napkin on his lap. He was also much too polite to mention that Anderson Brigby Bright and Penelope Hope were blue.

“Is it true you came to Remarkable just to see the bell tower?” Penelope Hope asked Captain Rojo Herring.

“Aye, it is indeed. Bell towers be a hobby of mine.”

“You can’t have come across too many at sea.”

“True enough,” said Captain Rojo Herring. “But I love to hear them chime, I do. Such a disappointment to find out that I won’t be hearing the fine sounds of yours today.”

“It will be chiming soon enough,” Grandmama told him.

“Ye mentioned thar be complications with its construction?”

“I’m afraid not everyone agreed that it should be built,” Grandpa John told him.

“Well, blow me down,” the pirate said. “Why on earth not?”

“Oh, Charles Duke Anno, the celebrated astronomer, thought we should add a planetarium to the post office instead of a bell tower,” Grandmama explained. “And Dr. Bayonet wanted the space to build another glass-domed butterfly house.”

“And some people think the post office looks just fine without an addition,” Grandpa John added. “Some people like the post office just the way it is.”

Grandmama glanced at Grandpa John with irritation. “Who thinks that?”

“Well, I do I guess,” Grandpa John answered, but
by that point Grandmama Julietta Augustina was no longer paying attention to him.

Anderson Brigby Bright wasn’t paying attention either. He was busy starting at the reflection of his handsome blue face in the back of a serving spoon.

“Do you think,” he asked as he twisted the spoon to get a better angle on his debonair smile, “that maybe Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa will finally notice me now that I’m bright blue?”

“Doesn’t seem likely to me,” Penelope Hope told him. “Since everyone else at the school has been turned bright blue, too.”

Anderson Brigby Bright’s beautiful smile drooped down to a pout. “Do you always have to be as logical as you are good at math?” he snapped, and then he ran upstairs and slammed his bedroom door behind him.

“What on earth was that about?” Grandmama Julietta Augustina asked. She did not approve of sudden departures from the dinner table.

“Anderson Brigby Bright’s in love,” Penelope Hope explained, rolling her eyes at the ridiculousness of it all. “Her name is Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa.”

“And apparently, she has perfect pitch,” Jane added. “I don’t know what that is, though.”

“It be the ability to hear a note of music and know where it be on the musical scale,” Captain Rojo Herring said. “If she hears a song, she would be able to say ‘ah, that first note be a D-flat, and that second note be a G-sharp, and that third note be a middle C without even looking at the sheet music.”

“Really?” Jane hoped he’d say more about perfect pitch, but he was distracted when Penelope Hope passed him a plate of toast. His eyes lit up when he saw it.

“I don’t suppose you might have a wee smidgeon of jelly to go with the likes of this toast, would ye?” he asked. “I do likes a smidgeon of jelly with me toast.”

Penelope Hope ran to the kitchen. A moment later she was back holding a big jar of violently purple jelly with a large label that read M
UNCH
J
ELLY
F
ACTORY
on one line and
GENERIC FRUIT FLAVOR
underneath.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is all we have.”

The pirate didn’t seem to mind. He grabbed a spoon to serve himself some—but he served himself more than just a wee smidgeon. In fact, he put nearly half the jar onto his slice of toast. He took a bite and chewed it with great enthusiasm.

“Har!” he said, sounding as happy as a pirate can
sound. “This be the best jelly I ever did taste. I’ll wager it be the best jelly in the whole wide world.”

“Hmph!” said Grandmama, and when she “hmphed” this time, it was with so much emphasis that the pirate looked up from his toast to see how he had offended her.

“That jelly is
not
the best jelly in the world,” Grand-mama Julietta Augustina corrected him sternly. “That jelly will rot your teeth. We produce a much finer jelly here in Remarkable.”

“Is that so?” Captain Rojo Herring said as he slathered another huge helping of generic jelly on his toast. “Well, I’ll have to try to get me hands on some.”

When dinner was over, Captain Rojo Herring politely thanked Jane’s family for a delightful meal, gathered up his large pirate hat, and headed for the door. The parrot screeched and bit Captain Rojo Herring on the thumb when he went to take her off of Grandmama’s shoulder. It was clear to everyone that Salzburg would have much rather stayed where she was.

“That’s a fine bird,” Grandmama said approvingly as Captain Rojo Herring and his parrot disappeared into the night. “But I don’t think Captain Rojo
Herring is much of a pirate. It’s such a shame. If Remarkable is going to have another pirate captain, it would be nice if he were a little more impressive.”

“What do you mean, Grandmama?” Penelope Hope asked. “There aren’t any other pirate captains in Remarkable.”