Claudia and the World's Cutest Baby

  Add to that a whole zoo’s worth of pets, and it’s a pretty crowded place, even for a mansion.

  Because Kristy’s new neighborhood is so distant, Charlie has to drive her to BSC meetings. Despite that, she’s never been late.

  That Wednesday, I was about to be. And I live in BSC headquarters.

  I dashed into my room, holding a bottle of mustard, just as Kristy belted out, “I call this meeting to order!”

  I leaped onto my bed.

  “Who has the pretzels?” I asked.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch. Six silent moving jaws answered me.

  Stacey held up an almost-empty bag. I pulled out a pretzel and squirted mustard all over it.

  “Philadelphia, here I come,” I said, inserting it into my mouth.

  “How is it?” Mallory asked.

  I chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “I don’t see what the big deal is.”

  “I think you’re supposed to use soft pretzels,” Stacey said.

  “Now you tell me.”

  Rrrrring!

  I picked up the receiver. “Hello, Baby-sitters Club, Claudia speaking.” (My mustard breath bounced back at me. Boy, was I glad smell doesn’t transmit over phone lines.)

  “Hello, Claudia, it’s Linda Arnold. I know it’s short notice, but do you have anyone available for Friday night?”

  “I’ll check and call you right back,” I replied.

  I said good-bye, hung up, and gave the information to Mary Anne.

  That’s our procedure. As secretary, Mary Anne keeps the record book, which contains a calendar of all our jobs. She needs to know everyone’s availability for each day, so she marks the calendar with all our conflicts: doctor and dentist appointments, after-school lessons, family trips, and so on. In the back of the book she maintains an up-to-date list of client names and addresses, the rates they pay, and the ages and special interests of their kids.

  “Uh-oh,” Mary Anne said. “Abby’s going to a show that night, Claud’s at the Prezziosos’, Stacey’s going to New York, and Kristy and I are having pizza night with our families.”

  “What about Shannon?” Jessi asked.

  “Debate team practice.” Mary Anne reached for the phone. “I’ll call Logan.”

  She tapped out her boyfriend’s number, and within minutes we had a sitter for the Arnolds for Friday night.

  Good system, huh?

  By the way, in case you’re wondering, I’m the BSC’s vice-president. I have three jobs: (1) answering all the calls that come in during nonmeeting hours, (2) hosting all the meetings, and (3) providing the junk food (believe me, I have much more than just pretzels stashed away).

  What I do is nothing compared to what Mary Anne does. Her middle name is Organized. (Mine is Chaotic. You should see my room.)

  Mary Anne also used to live across the street from me, in the house next to Kristy’s. What a threesome we were. Mom says that when we were little, Kristy would build towers out of blocks, Mary Anne would sort them by size and color, and I would try to eat them. That pretty much sums us up.

  None of us ever knew Mrs. Spier. She died when Mary Anne was a baby. Mr. Spier raised Mary Anne with tons of rules. She had a super-early curfew and had to wear pigtailed hair and little-girl dresses to school. Forget about getting her ears pierced. The trouble was, Mary Anne was too sweet and shy to complain, so it took awhile for her dad to realize she needed to grow up.

  Mary Anne’s life changed a lot when Dawn Schafer moved to Stoneybrook from California and joined the BSC. Dawn and Mary Anne discovered that Dawn’s mom (who was divorced) had grown up here and had been Mr. Spier’s high school girlfriend. So guess who ended up reuniting, dating, and marrying? (With a little help from matchmakers Mary Anne and Dawn.)

  The Schafers lived in a rambling, two-hundred-year-old farmhouse, so Mary Anne and her dad moved in with them. Dawn has since moved back to California to live with her dad and brother, and boy, do we miss her.

  Mary Anne wears normal clothes now, and a pretty cool, short hairstyle. She looks a little like Kristy, short and brown-haired. In fact, Kristy and Mary Anne are best friends — although you’d never mistake one for the other. Mary Anne’s quiet and sensitive and thoughtful. She’s also a top-notch crier. Mention the word “wedding” and watch the mist start to form. Logan always teases her for blubbering at movies. (But let’s face it, he loves it. The sadder the movie, the more she snuggles with him.)

  If Mary Anne wins the BSC Most Sensitive award, Stacey nails down the Most Unique (nosing out yours truly, I think). Why? Top of the list: She likes math. Because of that rare quality, she’s the BSC treasurer. On Mondays she collects dues, which the club uses for special events, advertising, my phone bill, and gas money for Charlie Thomas.

  Stacey’s my best friend. She’s also the only BSC member to hail from New York City. Personally, I think NYC is the coolest place in the world. You could spend months just going from one art gallery to the next. Stacey spent her whole life there, until her dad’s company transferred him to Connecticut. That was when she joined the BSC. But she wasn’t here long, because the company made him move back to New York again. Well, all the moving must have worn down her parents’ marriage, which wasn’t doing too well anyway. All of a sudden we heard that they were divorcing, and Stacey was moving back to Stoneybrook with her mom. (She actually turned down the opportunity to stay in the Big Apple with her dad. Why? Because of her great friends here, of course.)

  You would recognize Stacey instantly at a BSC meeting. She’s the only one with blonde hair, and the only one who turns down sweets. Stacey has a condition called diabetes. If she eats too much sugar, she could go into a coma. She can lead a normal life as long as she eats regular, sugar-free meals and injects herself daily with a hormone called insulin. I have seen her do this, and it is not disgusting at all. (Well, not very.)

  Stacey may be good in math, but her passion is fashion. She dresses cool, sleek, and urban. She can predict what the next hot look is going to be, weeks in advance. I guess she picked up that talent while living all those years near New York City boutiques.

  Too bad Stacey didn’t know Abigail Stevenson back then. They might have spotted each other on those crowded Manhattan streets. Abby’s a former Long Islander and frequent NYC visitor.

  Abby and her twin sister, Anna, grew up near the beach, and their mom commuted to her job with a publishing company in the Big Apple. (Their dad died in a car accident when they were nine, but they don’t talk about that much.) Abby’s our alternate officer, which means she takes over the duties of any regular officer who might be absent.

  Dawn Schafer used to be our alternate. After she moved to California, we tried to function with just six regular members. It was a nightmare. We became so busy, some of us were doing two jobs in a day. We came very close to needing to turn down work (which would have given Kristy a heart attack).

  Imagine the look on Kristy’s face the day Abby and Anna moved into a house down the street from the Brewer mansion. Not one, but two thirteen-year-old girls with great personalities! I’m surprised Kristy didn’t drag them by the hair to a meeting.

  Actually, in a nice, civilized way, we offered both sisters membership. Anna Stevenson turned us down, though, mostly because she’s a serious musician who practices all the time.

  So Abby became our new alternate officer. And boy, are we glad. She’s outgoing and hilarious. You would not believe her imitations. She impersonated me once, gabbing away with a mouthful of caramels while wrapping her hair in twist-ties. I almost died from laughing so hard.

  Abby has the world’s most gorgeous hair. It’s a deep, luscious brown, so thick and curly it falls in ringlets to her shoulders. She has to work hard to put it into a ponytail for sports. (She’s an amazing natural athlete, which made Kristy a little jealous at first.)

  Like Stacey, Abby has a serious health condition. Abby’s is asthma (plus about a million allergies). She keeps an inhaler with her at all times.

  Now y
ou know all our regular officers. Jessi and Mallory are our junior officers because they’re eleven and in sixth grade (the rest of us are thirteen and in eighth grade), and their parents won’t let them baby-sit at night.

  How do they feel about this? Furious is the closest word. They both think their parents treat them too strictly. Mal calls it “the oldest child syndrome.” She says younger siblings are treated much more leniently. (I wish she’d talk to my parents about this.)

  Jessi and Mal are best friends. Total horse lovers, too — they talk about Saddle Club characters as if they’re real people. Mallory wants to be a writer/illustrator of children’s books and create a horse series of her own someday.

  Maybe she’d be better off writing a sitcom about a humongous family. Mallory has seven younger siblings. Sitting for them takes two BSC members (a traffic cop would be nice, too). Mal has thick, reddish-brown hair and pale skin, and she wears glasses and braces (which she hates).

  Jessi has an eight-year-old sister and an almost two-year-old brother. Her family moved to Stoneybrook from Oakley, New Jersey. There, the Ramseys were one of many African American families. Here, though, they are in a small minority, and I’m embarrassed to say that some Stoneybrookites were awful to them at first. (I’ve felt prejudice here myself, so I really sympathized.)

  Our two associate members aren’t required to attend meetings or pay dues. They take up slack when we’re extra-busy. Logan is one of them. He’s a great sitter. He has a killer smile, blondish-brown hair, and a slight Southern accent (he’s from Louisville, Kentucky).

  Our other associate is Shannon Kilbourne. She goes to a private school called Stoneybrook Day School, where she’s in the Honor Society and about a million other clubs. Even so, she usually finds time to sit when we need her.

  As you can tell from our close call with the Arnolds, we are a hot ticket in Stoneybrook. One more call for Friday night and we’d be stuck.

  The phone did ring three more times during the meeting. The first two calls were jobs for the upcoming week.

  The third call came while everyone was preparing to leave, just before six o’clock.

  “Hello, Baby-sitters Club,” I said.

  “Claudia?”

  I didn’t recognize the voice at first. It sounded male and young, but not like any of the dads who call us.

  “Yes?”

  “Heyyyyy, it’s thaaaaat time!” the voice said, sounding like a game show host.

  My mind flashed an Alan Gray Alert. Alan is the Crème de la Creeps of SMS, and phone pranks are his great love.

  “If this is you, Alan, we’re not —”

  “Claudia, it’s Russ! I’m about to take Peaches to the hospital.”

  My heart almost burst out of my chest. “Wha — is it — you mean, now?”

  “We think so. The contractions are regular enough. Listen, Claudia, I called your parents’ number and left a message on the machine. But I figured I’d catch you in person —”

  “Yeah! I mean, okay. I mean, go! What are you talking to me for?”

  Russ laughed. “Next time we see you, there’ll be three of us. ’Bye!”

  “I can’t wait! ’Bye!”

  I hung up the phone.

  And then I screamed my lungs out.

  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” “What happened?” Stacey asked.

  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

  “Claudia, calm down!” Kristy screamed.

  “That was Russ,” I told them. “He’s taking Peaches to the hospital right now!”

  “Yaaaaaay!” My friends wrapped me in a great big hug.

  Except Abby. She looked confused. “Taking peaches to the hospital? Is this some kind of ancient birthing ritual?”

  “Peaches is my aunt,” I explained.

  “Oh!”

  Abby joined the hugfest. Everyone started talking at once:

  “Take a camera!”

  “Take a camcorder!”

  “Bring her warm clothes!”

  “Give her a kiss from us!”

  “Give her our flier!” (That was Kristy.)

  “Call us the minute she has the baby!”

  We gabbed all the way downstairs. Then we hugged again and said good-bye.

  I waved to my friends as they walked away, shouting instructions to me.

  I shut the door and raced to the phone. I called Mom’s and Dad’s offices, but they’d both left already.

  When I hung up, I didn’t know what to do with myself. My legs took me to the right. Then they shifted and took me to the left. I rearranged furniture. I bit my nails.

  Thoughts tumbled through my mind.

  I could run to the hospital.

  Nahhh, it was too far. Besides, my parents would be home soon, and I was sure Russ wanted me to tell them in person.

  But what if Little Mimi were born while I was waiting? What if Dad hit a lot of traffic? What about Janine? Mom was supposed to pick her up from the community college on her way home. What if Janine were in the middle of discovering a new theory of physics, and the teachers wouldn’t let her leave?

  I must have looked at the living room clock a million times. It was moving so slowly, I thought it had broken.

  When I heard my dad’s car pull up in the driveway, I nearly died.

  I ran into the front screen door. Yes, into. I forgot to reach for the knob.

  By the time I fumbled with the knobs and pushed the door open, Dad had driven inside the garage. I raced around the side of the house and saw him climbing out of the car.

  “Get back in!” I called out. “Start it up! We have to go!”

  Dad looked at me blankly. Now I could hear Mom’s car rolling up the driveway behind me.

  I turned around. Mom and Janine were sitting in the front seat. “Stop! Back up! Peaches is having the baby!”

  Dad gasped. “They called?”

  “Russ did!” I was screaming now, turning my head from Mom’s car to Dad’s. “A long time ago! They’re probably there already! The baby might be born!”

  Mom blew her horn. I don’t know why, probably out of joy or excitement, but it made me nearly jump out of my clothes.

  As she backed into the street, I ran to Dad’s car and climbed in.

  I have never seen Dad back up so fast. The engine was whining. “How far along is she?” he asked.

  “Oak Street, if they had a late start,” I said. “But they’re probably —”

  “I mean, in terms of the birth! Has the baby dropped?”

  “Dropped what?”

  “Never mind!”

  We were already on the street and straightening out.

  We followed Mom and Janine to the hospital. I know, I know, we should have all gone in one car. But we were beyond bananas. No one thought about it.

  We tore into the parking lot of Stoneybrook General Hospital. Mom found a parking space near ours, and the four of us dashed for the main entrance.

  “How close is she?” Mom asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  “What room is she in?” Janine asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  I must have said “I don’t know” about five more times before we reached the reception desk.

  The nurse sent us to the maternity wing, on the fourth floor.

  I had never seen so many red eyes in my life as I saw there. Dads paced wearily in the hallways. New moms in hospital gowns shuffled slowly in and out of their rooms, supported by husbands, friends, and parents. It seemed as if the whole floor was having a massive Bad Hair Day.

  Me? I wanted to cry.

  From happiness.

  You cannot imagine the joy in the air of a maternity wing unless you’ve been there. It seems to float around everybody like a huge shimmering light. Inside everybody, too. You see it behind the spidery veins in the eyes. You see it in all the sagging faces and stooped, exhausted postures.

  You know that none of those people would want to be anywhere else in the world.

  I saw a teeny
little baby, fast asleep, being rolled into a room in a bassinet. And a split second later I heard a burst of laughing and cooing and crying.

  I nearly lost it.

  I nearly lost my family, too. They were gone when I turned around.

  “Mom?” I called out.

  Mom peered from around a corner. “This way!”

  I followed her to another desk. Behind it was a nurse, wearing a green outfit and a mask and a green plastic hat that looked like a shower cap. She and Dad were scanning a clipboard together.

  Overhead, a sign that said Delivery pointed down the hallway.

  “Miyoshi Benedict?” the nurse said. “She’s in delivery right now with her husband. If you’ll take a seat in our lounge, I’ll let them know you’re here …”

  Delivery.

  I know this sounds stupid, but I thought the sign was pointing to the mailroom. Duh. Delivery meant baby delivery!

  Peaches was in there. Beyond the sign. About to give birth.

  “You made it!”

  I turned at the sound of my uncle Russ’s voice. He had on a green outfit just like the nurse’s.

  He wasn’t wearing a mask, probably because they could not find one big enough to fit over his smile.

  Mom, Janine, and I hugged him and Dad pumped his hand.

  “So?” Mom said. “What’s the news?”

  “She’s only about a centimeter,” Russ replied. “But the head is down and the fetal monitor’s strong, so if the dilation doesn’t increase they may induce with Pitocin.”

  Oh.

  Right.

  I nodded and pretended I understood.

  “In other words,” Russ said, “it may be awhile, folks.”

  “That’s okay,” I blurted out. “We’ll wait.”

  “I’ll tell Peaches you’re here,” Russ said.

  “Thanks,” Mom said.