Jessi and the Bad Baby-Sitter

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He said he can’t wait for an answer and he’ll have to start phoning some other sitters,” Kristy said somberly. “This is exactly what I was afraid would happen. It’s the worst possible thing. That’s it! Enough is enough. We have to replace Dawn!”

  “But what will we do when Dawn comes back?” asked Mary Anne.

  “We’ll worry about that then,” Kristy replied. “Right now we have to do something. Anyone have any suggestions? Does anyone know someone who would be a good sitter?”

  There was silence as each of us looked at the others. Suddenly, I thought of Wendy. I wasn’t sure Kristy would want another junior member, but it was worth a try. “I know someone who’s a good sitter,” I said. “She’s my age, but I think she —”

  Just then the phone rang again. “Good, bring her to the next meeting,” said Kristy before picking up the phone. Mrs. Barrett was calling. Dawn always liked sitting for the Barrett kids. She’d have jumped at the job. But Dawn wasn’t here. “I’ll have to get back to you,” Kristy told Mrs. Barrett.

  In the process of figuring out who could sit for Mrs. Barrett, Kristy forgot about looking for a new member. It turned out that Claudia had to take one of Stacey’s jobs, so Stacey would be free to take the Barrett job. In order for Claudia to make that switch, I had to agree to take her afternoon job so that she could do her homework before going to the Barretts’, because hardly anybody ever got any homework done at the Barretts’ house. Those three kids keep you running.

  The meeting was so confusing! Even the great organizer, Mary Anne, was starting to look frazzled. By the time we straightened out the Barrett job, it was almost six, but the phone rang yet again.

  I decided to give everyone a break and I answered the phone myself. “Baby-sitters Club,” I said in my most professional voice.

  “Hi, it’s me,” said a lively, familiar voice.

  “Dawn!” I cried, delighted to hear from her. “How are you? How is everything out there?”

  As soon as I shouted out Dawn’s name, everyone began to gather around me.

  “It’s great,” Dawn replied. “I’m so glad I caught you. I raced all the way home from school so I could call before the meeting ended.”

  “You go to school until six?” I said.

  “No, silly.” She laughed. “We’re on Pacific time. It’s three hours earlier out here.”

  “I forgot,” I said, embarrassed. “What have you been up to?”

  “Lots of goofing off,” she laughed. “It feels great to go to the beach again and to see Dad and Jeff. A lot of my old friends are in my class in school. Everything is great, but I miss you guys a lot. Are you all there?”

  “Yeah, except for Mal. She’s not feeling too well. She says she’s tired all the time.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s too bad. Find out if she’s taking vitamins. That might help her.”

  “All right. I’ll ask her.”

  “How are you, Jessi?”

  “I’m good,” I said. “Feeling a little overloaded, but basically all right.”

  “Listen, I’d like to talk more, but I’m paying for this call myself and I want to say hi to everyone. My baby-sitting money is running out. I need to find some sitting jobs out here.”

  “Too bad you’re not here. We’ve got a ton of them,” I told her. “Take care, Dawn. I’ll put someone else on.”

  Everyone was anxious to talk to Dawn, but Kristy was right beside me so I handed her the phone.

  That might have been a mistake.

  “Dawn, you have to come home, like, right away,” she said urgently into the phone. “No, I’m not kidding. We’re in a mess here and we need you back.”

  “You’re going to make her feel bad,” said Mary Anne, reaching out to take the phone from Kristy.

  Kristy turned away from Mary Anne, still talking into the phone. “Yes, that was Mary Anne…. No, you can’t talk to her until you swear you’ll come back right away.”

  Mary Anne reached around and scooped the phone out of Kristy’s hand. “Don’t pay attention to her,” she told Dawn. “We’re doing all right.”

  “No, we’re not!” Kristy shouted into the mouthpiece.

  At ten after six, Claudia was talking to Dawn, with Stacey hanging onto the phone next to her. “We really miss you,” Claudia said.

  “We sure do,” Stacey spoke up.

  Silently I waved good-bye to my friends as I scooped up my jacket and walked out of the room. I was excited about the idea of Wendy joining the club, but I was also sad about the idea of trying to replace Dawn — as if anyone could.

  Rare tropical bugs! That’s Mal and her runaway imagination for you. But, in truth, it was beginning to sound possible to me. What else could be causing Mal’s mystery fatigue?

  Mal and I sat for her younger brothers and sisters the next day, Thursday. She hadn’t been in school so, when I arrived at her house, I was relieved to discover that she wasn’t seriously sick. But, to tell the truth, she didn’t look seriously well, either.

  “Hi, Jessi.” She greeted me dully at the front door as her mother rushed out the back door. She was wearing a faded lavender sweat outfit, her blue terrycloth robe thrown over it. “Come on in.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” I asked.

  Mallory shrugged listlessly. “I don’t have a fever, or a sore throat or anything. I’m just so tired. Mom let me stay home from school today because she thinks I’m coming down with something.”

  “It could be,” I said. “Maybe your body is fighting a flu and it’s taking all your energy.”

  “Maybe,” Mallory agreed, flopping down on the living room couch.

  “Where is everybody?” I asked.

  “The monsters are in the rec room,” she said, and I knew she meant her brothers, Nicky (who is eight), and the triplets, Byron, Adam, and Jordan (they’re ten). “Vanessa is playing Chutes and Ladders upstairs with Claire, I think, and Margo is in her room doing something, I don’t know what.” (Vanessa is nine, Claire is five, and Margo is seven.)

  Just then, I sensed another presence. I looked up and saw Claire, dressed in a tiger costume. She was prowling down the stairs. She growled at me when I spotted her.

  “Aughhh! A tiger! Save me!” I played along.

  “I am Shere Khan, Lord of the Jungle,” she told me in a menacing voice. From three steps off the floor, she pounced down into the living room — and banged her shin hard against a chest of drawers. “Ooooowww!” she cried, clutching her leg.

  I ran to her. “Are you okay?”

  “Ow! Ow! Ow!” she sang out in pain as her eyes filled with tears. I pushed up the leg of her tiger pants and examined her shin. Sure enough, a purple bruise was already starting to form. “Owwwwww!” she continued.

  I looked at Mal, who was now sitting forward on the couch. “Could you get some ice?” I asked her. I’m afraid there was a little edge of annoyance in my voice. But after all, this was her sister and Mal wasn’t actually dying or anything. I shouldn’t have had to ask her for help.

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” Mal agreed. She got off the couch as if she were in a slow motion film and walked into the kitchen.

  By then Claire’s cries had died down and she was just sniffling. “This is going to be my Halloween costume,” she said, between sobs. “Isn’t it cool?”

  “Very cool,” I said as Mal returned with ice wrapped in a towel.

  I was pressing the ice against her bruise when suddenly the entire living room began to vibrate. I’m not kidding, the floor was actually shaking!

  Suddenly Byron, Adam, Jordan, and Nicky bounced into the room on strange purple shoes that seemed to have springs on their bottoms.

  “You’re not supposed to use those in the house,” said Mallory as she held tight to a shaking lamp. The boys ignored her and kept bouncing across the living room.

  “Come on, guys,” Mallory pleaded weakly.

  “We’re not hurting anything,” Byron argued as he
jumped in place like a human ball.

  I expected Mallory to take action. As the oldest of eight kids, she’s used to taking charge, and is not a bit shy about it. But not this time. She just shook her head and sighed. I could see I was going to have to take control. “Listen, you guys,” I said. “You have to take those outside. Really. Something’s going to get broken.”

  The boys boinged slightly up and down as they thought about this.

  “Please,” I asked.

  It proved to be the magic word, because they started bouncing toward the hall closet and grabbing their jackets. “The Kangaroo Corps will continue maneuvers outside,” Adam said gallantly.

  “Thank goodness.” Mallory sighed.

  The pictures, vases, and knick-knacks rattled just a few seconds longer as the boys bounced out the front door, slamming it behind them.

  No sooner had the door slammed than an anguished cry came from upstairs. Mal and I looked at one another in alarm. “What’s Vanessa doing?” Mal asked Claire.

  “Setting her hair,” Claire replied.

  “How dangerous could that be?” I asked. But another pained cry came from above us.

  “You’d better go see what’s the matter,” Mallory said to me.

  “Me?” I cried. “What about you?” Mallory gazed at the stairs with weary eyes as if I’d asked her to climb the Himalayas. She sighed a long, exaggerated sigh.

  “Oh, all right,” I grumbled, heading upstairs. “I’ll go.”

  When I reached the head of the stairs I saw Vanessa standing in the bathroom with the door open. Her face was red with frustration and her mouth twisted into a grimace as she tried to pull an electric roller from her hair.

  “Ouch,” I said sympathetically. “How did you manage that? And what happened to Chutes and Ladders?”

  Snarled around one roller were two others, their small spikey grippers entangled in Vanessa’s fine brown hair. The result was that on one side Vanessa had springy curls, while the other side looked as if birds had been trying to build a nest in her hair.

  “We finished our game,” replied Vanessa. “And I’m going to a pizza birthday party today at five-thirty. I wanted to look nice, so I thought I’d try out Mom’s electric rollers. She never uses them, and now I see why.”

  Gingerly, I tried to pick the hair out of the roller, but it was hopelessly tangled. “Ow! Careful!” Vanessa complained each time I tugged.

  “I’m trying,” I said, feeling frustrated myself. After several more minutes, I gave up. “I’m going to have to cut these out,” I said apologetically.

  “No!” Vanessa cried in horror. “You can’t! It’ll look awful!”

  “It’s up to you, but I can’t think of anything else to do.”

  Vanessa studied herself in the mirror. “Oh, all right,” she relented with a dismal, defeated sigh.

  “Do you have a sharp pair of scissors?” I asked.

  “Mallory does, but I don’t know where they are.”

  I went to the top of the stairs and hollered down. “Mal! Where are your scissors?”

  I waited for her answer but none came. I ran downstairs and discovered Mallory asleep on the couch with a book of fairy tales on her lap. She was snoring.

  “Shhh,” said Claire, who was sitting on the floor below her, coloring. “She fell asleep while she was reading me The Three Bears. I don’t blame her. I think it’s a very boring story, too.”

  My only choice was to awaken Mallory with gentle shakes. “Mal, Mal,” I said. “Wake up.”

  Her eyes fluttered behind her glasses. “Huh? What?”

  “Where are your scissors?” I asked.

  She blinked hard and looked at me blankly, as if my question made no sense to her. Then she woke up more fully. “Margo was using them. I lent them to her,” she mumbled sleepily.

  I ran back upstairs and knocked on Margo’s bedroom door. “Go away!” Margo shouted although she didn’t sound upset.

  “It’s me, Jessi,” I called to her. “Do you have Mallory’s scissors?”

  “Just a minute,” she replied. A moment later the door opened a crack and Margo handed me out the scissors.

  “What are you doing in there?” I asked.

  “Playing,” she answered.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I’m fine.”

  “Okay, thank you for the scissors.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Vanessa and I went into the room she shares with Mallory and began working on her hair. “Don’t cut too much,” Vanessa kept fretting each time I took a careful snip. When I was done, her hair did look a bit choppy. “Now what am I going to do?” Vanessa wailed, peering at herself in the mirror.

  “I know.” I hopped off the bed and gathered up the short newly chopped strands of hair on Vanessa’s right side. I braided them, tying the end with a rubber band that I took from the top of her dresser.

  “Cute!” Vanessa said, smiling at herself. “Thanks, Jessi.”

  “No problem.”

  Back downstairs, I colored with Claire for awhile as Mallory slumbered. Every so often I checked the backyard where the boys had taken off their bouncing shoes and were busy playing chicken, trying to knock each other off their shoulders and into the piles of leaves on the lawn.

  After an hour I checked on Margo. “I’m still playing,” she called, answering my knock without opening the door. It struck me as strange that she didn’t come out, but she sounded fine so I let her be.

  I returned to the living room in time to keep the boys from flinging their jackets all over the furniture as they came in from outside. However, Adam threw his on top of Mallory and she didn’t even stir. But I suddenly had a new insight into why she might be so tired. Taking care of these kids all by yourself was — well, it was exhausting!

  If I think Fridays are usually a rush, this Friday was beyond belief. For starters, Mme Noelle (she’s my ballet teacher) kept us in class an extra five minutes. And then traffic in Stamford was horrendous! To top it all off, I had offered to pick up Wendy and bring her to the meeting.

  She wasn’t quite ready when I finally arrived at her house. I tried not to be aggravated with her, but she just wasn’t moving fast enough. If she were me, I would have been flying around the house like a nut trying to get ready.

  Finally, though, we raced to the car and Daddy drove us to Claudia’s. “Come on, hurry, hurry, hurry,” I urged Wendy as she climbed out of the car.

  “Okay, but what’s the big deal if we’re five minutes late?” Wendy asked.

  “Five minutes!” I yelped. “I’m worried about being half a second late! Come on!” I grabbed Wendy’s wrist and pulled her along the walk. Luckily, Claudia leaves the front door open on meeting days, so we didn’t have to knock. Still holding onto Wendy, I ran inside and up the stairs.

  Breathless, I burst into Claudia’s bedroom. It was five-thirty on the dot!

  “Meet Wendy Loesser everybody!” I said.

  Wendy smiled a bit nervously. “Hi.”

  Everyone said hello and then I introduced my friends by name. Even though we go to the same school, they hadn’t met Wendy. And Mal (who was at the meeting despite her droopy eyes) is in the same grade but doesn’t have any classes with her. “Hi, Wendy,” said Mal, stifling a yawn. “Jessi has told me a lot of nice stuff about you.”

  “Same here about you,” Wendy said.

  “You’re pretty young, Wendy,” said Kristy, being her usual blunt self. “Have you ever baby-sat before?”

  “Sure,” Wendy replied. “I have two younger sisters. They’re six and eight. And my neighbor next door asks me to play with her two-year-old for a few hours while she sells stuff over the phone. Plus, I sit for two kids down the street so their parents can go out and have supper together sometimes.”

  “That sounds like good experience,” said Stacey.

  Just then, the phone rang. “Baby-sitters Club,” Kristy said, answering it. “Hi, Mrs. Rodowsky.” She noted Mrs. Ro
dowsky’s information on her pad and hung up. “Now this is how we operate,” she told Wendy.

  Taking on an ultra official, chin-up posture, Kristy turned to Mary Anne for the demonstration. “Mary Anne, please consult your book. I need a sitter for next Tuesday at five o’clock at the Rodowsky residence.” (Kristy was being so formal for Wendy’s benefit that I had to work hard not to laugh.)

  “Are you out of your mind?” Mary Anne cried.

  Kristy’s hands went to her hips as she scowled at Mary Anne. I was sure this wasn’t the way she wanted her demonstration to go.

  “I’m sorry,” Mary Anne defended herself. “But that time slot filled up three days ago.”

  “Are our associates Logan and Shannon busy then, too?” Kristy asked, still very official.

  “Yup, they’re booked,” Mary Anne said, nodding solemnly. “The only one free that day is Jessi, but she can’t sit that late.”

  “Wait! Wait!” cried Claudia. “I’m supposed to sit for Mrs. Barrett on Tuesday from three until six. Why doesn’t Jessi take that job, and then I’ll be free to sit for the Rodowskys.”

  “I have an early ballet class. I couldn’t get there until four-thirty,” I explained.

  “All right, come and take over for me then, and I’ll have time to get to the Rodowskys’ house by five,” Claudia suggested.

  I didn’t really want to do that. It would mean I’d be baby-sitting every afternoon for the rest of next week. “Maybe Wendy could do that job?” I suggested.

  Kristy shook her head forcefully. “Wendy isn’t officially in the club yet,” she said. “I have to ask her some questions and if she can answer them, then she has to go on a test job with another sitter.”

  “Oh, all right.” I sighed. Everyone was working so hard. I had to do my part.