Jessi and the Bad Baby-Sitter

  That’s exactly what they did. Dawn returned to her house with the girls and found her dad’s camcorder. Then she and the kids walked around the neighborhood. Their first stop was the home of two really wild kids named Erick and Ryan.

  I’m sure this was for Kristy’s benefit. She’d baby-sat for them when we visited. Naturally, Kristy, the conquering baby-sitter, had been able to manage them in the end, but they gave her a tough time in the beginning.

  When Dawn and the Clune girls reached Erick and Ryan’s house, they found the boys running around on their front lawn with the in-ground sprinklers on. The boys were wearing large, soaking-wet T-shirts, colorful knee-length beach jams, and matching over-sized sunglasses, and they were wielding Nerf Ball Master Blasters.

  When they saw the girls approaching, Erick and Ryan assumed battle-ready positions, aiming their blasters at them. “Aaaaahhhhh!” Erick (who is eight) cried, doing his best imitation of Macaulay Culkin, from Home Alone. “We’re under attack! Ready! Aim! Fire!”

  The next thing Dawn knew she was ducking a volley of squishy orange balls. (“You’ll see some wavery shots of sky and trees,” Dawn said in her letter. “And you’ll hear the girls squealing and me yelling, ‘Cut it out! Put those guns away!’ You know how I feel about guns!”)

  Their next stop was the house of a little girl named Stephie, whom Mary Anne baby-sat for while we were on our vacation. When Dawn rang the bell, she came out with her new neighbor and friend, Margie. They were glad to demonstrate cartwheels which they’d just learned to do.

  “Mary Anne will love to see Stephie looking so healthy and active,” Dawn wrote. That’s because Stephie has asthma. She even had an attack while Mary Anne was sitting for her. But Mary Anne learned that her attacks were brought on by emotional stress, not physical activity.

  Mary Anne and Stephie had grown very close during the trip. They had a lot in common since they’d both lost their mothers at a young age and both had overprotective fathers. (Mr. Spier had been way too protective of Mary Anne until he met Dawn’s mother. Then he loosened up a lot.)

  After Dawn and the Clones (I mean the Clunes) said good-bye to Stephie and Margie they went to the school Dawn is attending, and then to the elementary school the Clunes attend.

  Their final stop was back at Dawn’s house for a tour of her home. Jeff, Dawn’s younger brother, was there playing checkers with Carol in the kitchen. Jeff and Carol sang the chorus of “Uncle John’s Band,” which is a song by the Grateful Dead. (Jeff considers himself a major “Deadhead.”) Mr. Schafer waved to the camera.

  “This will be a real blast from the past for you guys,” Dawn concluded at the end of her letter. “I wanted to keep it a secret and surprise you, but I just couldn’t resist telling you it was coming. When I called Mary Anne yesterday she said there was a surprise coming my way, too. I can’t wait. Mary Anne is better at keeping a secret than I am. She wouldn’t tell what it was. I guess I’ll just have to be surprised.”

  Boy, would she ever be surprised. As far as I could tell from the date of her letter, at this very moment our two videos were probably crossing midair as they were flown from one coast to the other!

  At our next BSC meeting on Monday, I sat and waited anxiously, keeping my fingers crossed that Wendy would show up at five-thirty. I really didn’t want another tense scene between Kristy and Wendy. Since I’d brought Wendy into the club I couldn’t help but feel responsible for her.

  “You’re worried about Wendy, aren’t you?” observed Mallory from her spot at my right side.

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “You haven’t taken your eye off the door since you got here.”

  I smiled and turned toward her. “How are you feeling?”

  “A little better,” she said. “The resting helps. I just hope I’ll feel completely normal soon. Feeling crummy all the time is sort of depressing.”

  “I can imagine.”

  At 5:29 I heaved a sigh of relief as Wendy came through Claudia’s bedroom door. My smile faded, though, when I saw the look on her face. Her mouth was set in a thin line and her big brown eyes were narrowed and angry. “What’s wrong?” I whispered as she sat down beside me on the floor.

  She shrugged. “I was having a good time hanging out with some friends of mine. We were having a big Super Mario Brothers tournament. I was winning and then I just had to drop it to come here.”

  “It’s important that you’re here,” I said. To me, a club meeting seemed much more important than winning a video game. But then, I’ve never been a video game lover.

  Wendy nodded but she looked unconvinced.

  At the stroke of five-thirty, as usual, Kristy called the meeting to order. “I have some business I’d like to get out of the way,” she said immediately. “First, I spoke to Shannon today and she’s going to be here in a little while but she’ll be late. Second, Wendy, I’ve heard that you were pretty late for the job at the Pikes’ the other day.”

  Wendy looked at me sharply, her eyes full of accusation.

  “I told her,” Mary Anne spoke up. “I didn’t do it to be mean, Wendy. But Kristy is the club president. It’s the kind of thing I think she should know about.”

  “I was fifteen, maybe twenty minutes late,” Wendy said defensively. “Jessi was already there. I don’t see the big deal.”

  “The big deal is that when parents call here they know they can count on us in every way,” Kristy countered snippily. “That means they can be confident that they can get out the door when they need to. This business works because we run it in a professional manner.”

  Wendy opened her mouth to speak. Then she closed it and crossed her arms. She seemed undecided about something, but finally she spoke. “I don’t think this is working out for me.”

  “Why is that?” Stacey spoke levelly. I think she was hoping to diffuse the tension between Kristy and Wendy.

  “Too many rules,” Wendy said. “I like to do things my own way. My own way works for me.”

  “Is that all?” Claudia asked.

  “No,” Wendy admitted. “There are other reasons. I don’t particularly like the idea that I have to turn all my jobs over to you guys. And I don’t really want to have to be here three times a week, either. It takes up too much time.”

  “You knew the rules when you joined,” Kristy said.

  “No, actually, I didn’t,” Wendy replied. “The meeting I attended was so frantic that no one ever really explained them to me. All I knew was that Jessi’s crazy about the club. So I figured it must be great. And, it is great — for you. But not for me.”

  “Maybe this has just been an adjustment period,” Mary Anne said.

  Wendy got to her feet and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I have parents. I have teachers. I don’t need a club telling me what to do, too.” She aimed her next remark at Kristy. “That’s just one too many people bossing me around. Sorry it didn’t work out. ’Bye.”

  Without even looking at me, Wendy left the room.

  “Good-bye.” Kristy spat out the words. “No offense, Jessi. But I can’t believe you and she are friends.”

  “Wendy is pretty independent,” I said.

  “Maybe you’ve finally met your match, Kristy.” Stacey laughed.

  Kristy glared at her. “Wendy? Not likely. I don’t think there’s much value in being completely undisciplined and unable to follow a few simple rules.”

  I agreed with Kristy, but I also knew what Stacey was getting at. As much as they disliked each other, Kristy and Wendy were both headstrong and determined to do things their own way. They had a lot in common. The difference was that Kristy was a leader, and Wendy was a loner.

  “It looks like we’re back where we started from,” said Mary Anne.

  “I’m sorry she didn’t work out,” I told my friends. “I feel like I’ve let you guys down, but I honestly did think she’d be a good club member.”

  “It’s okay,” Kristy said. “You didn’t know. You tried. I’m
relieved that she quit. If she kept being late like that we’d have had to ask her to leave and that would have been pretty unpleasant.”

  “I had an actual nightmare over that,” Mary Anne said. “I had it last night. I dreamed we all had to stand in a circle and tell Wendy why she had to leave. In the dream, I couldn’t do anything but cry because I felt so bad for her.”

  “My mother says the thing she hates most about her job is when she has to fire someone,” Kristy said. “But sometimes she just has to.”

  At that moment, Shannon came in. “Hi, everybody,” she said brightly as she pulled off her jacket. “Sorry I’m late, but I had the very last meeting of the Honor Society dinner committee. The dinner is tomorrow. Thank goodness. It was so much work.”

  “That’s good news,” said Claudia. “Because we just lost our new member.”

  Shannon pulled off her red felt hat and shook out her hair. “From what Kristy told me she wasn’t working out too well, anyway. When is Dawn coming back?”

  “Not for months,” Claudia grumbled. “That is if she comes back.”

  “She’ll be back,” Mary Anne said.

  “Well, listen, I had an idea,” said Shannon as she perched on the end of Claudia’s bed. “Since you guys have been calling me a zillion times every meeting anyway, why don’t I just come to the meetings and be the alternate officer until Dawn returns? Then when she gets back, if you don’t need me, I’ll go back to my old position as associate member.”

  “That’s perfect!” Kristy cried.

  “You don’t think you’ll mind stepping back down?” Mary Anne asked cautiously. “I mean, you know, it might be hard.”

  “It’ll be spring by then,” Shannon pointed out. “I’ll be happy to have the time off to do outdoor stuff. Plus, I’m always really busy with school stuff. And my parents are talking about going to the shore, and I’ll probably go to camp again this summer, so I might not even be around then, anyway.”

  “You can’t go!” Kristy said urgently. “What will we do if we need you?”

  “Relax,” Stacey laughed. “We just solved one problem. Right now the summer seems very far away. Let’s worry about that then.”

  “All right,” Kristy said with a smile.

  The phone rang then and we didn’t have a moment to do anything but see who could take each job that was called in. Shannon was a lifesaver. She took a lot of jobs. We finally seemed to be back on track. Once again we were the smooth-running BSC I was used to.

  Not until I was walking toward my house, the fleecy collar of my denim jacket turned up against the wind and my hands jammed in my pockets, did I think about Wendy again. I had liked her so much when I met her.

  Did I still like her?

  She had let me down. And she had been sharp with Kristy, who was a good friend of mine. And now I knew she was unreliable — at least as far as being on time.

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about how much fun I had with her. She was always full of energy and in a good mood.

  Wendy hadn’t done anything terrible to me. And Kristy had treated her in her usual forth-right Kristy way. I’m so used to Kristy now that I forget she takes a little getting used to at first. Having a friend who wasn’t punctual wasn’t the end of the world, either. It might be annoying from time to time, but I could live with that.

  As I climbed the front steps to my house, another thought hit me. Even if I was willing to be friends with Wendy — was she still willing to be friends with me?

  That’s when I knew I really did want to continue my friendship with Wendy. The thought of her not wanting to be my friend anymore made me feel terrible.

  “Hi,” Mama greeted me when I entered the living room. She was on the floor building a tower of blocks with Squirt. “You look pretty serious,” she observed.

  “It’s Wendy,” I said. “Remember when I told you she was going to join the club?”

  Mama nodded.

  “Well, she quit today and now I’m afraid she won’t want to be friends with me anymore.”

  “Did she say that?” Mama asked.

  “No. We didn’t get a chance to talk.”

  “Then maybe you should call her,” she suggested as Squirt added the block that sent the tower crashing to the floor.

  While I was hanging up my jacket, I decided she was right. There was no sense wondering about it all evening until I saw Wendy at school the next day. I went into the kitchen and punched in Wendy’s number. “Hi, it’s me, Jessi,” I said when she picked up the phone.

  “Hi,” she said. A terrible, awkward silence hung between us.

  “Just get it over with,” she said finally.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re mad at me, right? So just say what you have to say!”

  “I’m not mad at you,” I told her. “I thought you were mad at me.”

  “Why should I be mad at you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just figured you hated me and everything connected with the Baby-sitters Club.”

  “No way!” Wendy exclaimed. “It’s just not for me, but I don’t hate it. I don’t even hate Kristy, even though she’s not my favorite person on earth. The BSC works for you guys, but I couldn’t fit into it. That’s all.”

  “I know where you would have fit in perfectly,” I told her, the idea suddenly occurring to me. “If you lived near Dawn in California, you’d do well in the baby-sitting club there. The We ♥ Kids Club is much less formal, much looser. Kristy was totally appalled by it.”

  That made Wendy laugh. “I’ll bet she was. I probably would have loved it, then. Too bad I don’t live in California.”

  “No, I’m glad you don’t,” I said seriously. “One good friend in California is plenty.”

  “Look out! Look out!” Mallory screamed as she careened toward Kristy and me, her arms flapping like a crazy bird trying to get off the ground. The roller skates on her feet were spinning at full speed.

  “Whoa!” Kristy laughed, catching hold of Mal and steadying her.

  Mallory panted as she worked to keep her balance. It was Saturday and the members of the BSC had the morning off. By some miracle, not one of us had a job until four that afternoon. So we had decided to go roller skating in the schoolyard.

  “I’ve never been good at this,” Mallory complained good-naturedly. She pointed to the Rollerblade in-line skates on Kristy’s feet. “And those would knock me cold in about three seconds.”

  “Nah, you just have to get used to them,” Kristy said, tightening her helmet. She pushed off and skated a fast circle around the empty cement basketball court.

  Stacey and Claudia were also on Rollerblades, but they were busy clinging to the chain-link fence around the court. Every so often, they would venture out on their skates. Even if they weren’t the greatest skaters, they looked terrific. Claudia wore hot pink stirrup pants and a fuzzy pink sweater that made a nice contrast with her neon green pads and helmet. Stacey looked cool as ever in jeans and a short brown leather jacket. Her helmet was black with silver streaks.

  Shannon, Mal, and I were using regular old roller skates, but we were having fun. At least Shannon and I were. Mal was flopping a lot, but she was moving and laughing. Compared to the droopy Mal of a week ago, this was a good sign.

  “Is it lunchtime yet?” Mal asked hopefully.

  Mary Anne looked at her watch and nodded. “Pizza time.”

  “All right!” Mallory cried.

  We took off our skates, left the schoolyard, and began the walk downtown. At Pizza Express we ordered a large pie with pepperoni. Everyone agreed that the one and only good thing about Dawn’s being gone was that we didn’t have to order half the pie plain or with veggies, since Dawn doesn’t eat red meat.

  “I wonder if Dawn got our video yet,” I said, wiping tomato sauce off my chin.

  “We’ll probably hear from her when she gets it,” said Kristy. “After all, we haven’t received hers, either.”

  In no time flat
, the pizza was devoured. I noticed that Mal hadn’t finished her slice. “Are you all right?” I asked her quietly.

  “Yeah, but I started to feel a little strange. Just dizzy,” she said. “I’m okay, though.”

  “You probably shouldn’t have come out skating,” I said. “Rest when you get home.”

  Mallory rolled her eyes. “I’m rested out. I couldn’t care less if I never rest again. But I guess you’re right. Skating was probably pushing things a bit.”

  “How’s Margo doing?” I asked her.

  “She’s not in jail, if that’s what you mean,” said Mal.

  “I didn’t mean that!”

  “I was just kidding,” Mallory said. “She’s fine. You won’t believe this, but she thanked me for insisting she tell Mom. She said to thank you, too. She knew what she was doing was wrong. It was giving her guilt stomachaches. She hasn’t had a single one since she gave the stuff back.”

  “Great,” I said.

  When we left Pizza Express we walked together back to Claudia’s house. That’s where we’d originally met that morning and each of us had left a jacket or a bag or something there that we now had to retrieve. As soon as we walked in the door, Claudia spotted a small package wrapped in brown paper sitting on the front hall table. It was addressed to the BSC. “It’s from Dawn,” said Claudia, reading the return address.

  In a flash she tore open the paper. It was the video!

  “Play it!” Kristy said eagerly.

  We hurried into the Kishis’ living room and Claud popped the video into the VCR. Instantly Dawn’s smiling face came on the screen. “Hi, guys!” she said brightly. “Since you can’t be in California, I’m bringing it to you. My guests today are Sally, Jenny, and Jeannette Clune. Our special guests will be … brace yourself, Kristy.” Here Dawn crossed her eyes. “Total terrors Erick and Ryan, plus the very sweet Stephanie Robertson. We’re not sure if they’re home yet, but we’re going to try to find them.”