Kristy and the Worst Kid Ever

  “Look,” said David Michael. He reached under a chair with the stuffing coming out and pulled out a dusty wooden box.

  “Treasure,” breathed Karen.

  We knelt down and I carefully pulled the lid off.

  “Newspapers,” said David Michael disgustedly. And that’s what was in the box. Dozens of old copies of the Stoneybrook News, all yellowed and crumbling. I poked through them carefully, but they turned out not to be so old after all.

  “Too bad,” I said, replacing the box lid. “Some old newspapers are really valuable. We’ll leave these, though. Maybe in a hundred years, they’ll be valuable to someone else.”

  “Maybe Ben Brewer likes to sit in this chair and read them,” said Karen.

  David Michael peered critically at the lumpy old chair. “It looks awfully uncomfortable. Do ghosts read, Kristy?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I aimed my flashlight hastily around the room to find something to distract Karen and David Michael from thoughts of Ben Brewer. “Look!”

  It was a dusty old leather bag. I unzipped it and started to laugh.

  “What is it?” Karen said as she and David Michael leaned over to peer in the bag.

  “A pink bowling ball,” I said. “Maybe it belongs to Nannie.”

  “Wow,” said Karen. “Can we have it for our playhouse?”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said. “We’ll ask Nannie.”

  “What do you need that for?” said David Michael.

  Karen shook her head impatiently. “It matches,” she explained. But I don’t think David Michael understood her.

  We poked around for a little while longer. We found all kinds of weird and interesting things, but nothing good enough for the auction. I have to admit, at this point, I would have welcomed old Ben Brewer’s ghost, if he would have helped me find something super.

  But the pink bowling ball was the biggest (and heaviest) treasure we found. Nannie said, “Heavens, I’d forgotten that,” when we asked her about it, and told us to do whatever we wanted with it. So that afternoon I took the bowling ball outside when Hannie and Nancy came over to work on the playhouse. The girls were suitably impressed with it.

  “Gigundoly super,” said Hannie.

  “Super gigundoly super,” said Nancy.

  “Where do you want me to put it?” I asked.

  “By the door,” said Karen. “We will use it as a doorstop.”

  “You don’t have a door,” David Michael pointed out.

  “We will,” said Karen firmly. Then they set to work decorating the “shutters” that Claudia had painted around the windows on the outside of the playhouse. They were using an assortment of flower and seashell stickers.

  “Beautiful,” said Karen.

  “Fabuloso superoso,” I said.

  “Hey! Hey, David Michael!” It was Linny and Lou, crossing the backyard.

  David Michael waved and trotted over to them.

  To my surprise, Lou headed toward the girls and me.

  “Hi, Lou,” said Karen, pushing her glasses up her nose. “You want to help us?”

  “With a playhouse? No way. It’s not a real house,” said Lou scornfully.

  “It’s fun, though.” That was Hannie. She looked a little wary of Lou, but she smiled.

  “Fun?” Lou retorted. “I don’t think so.”

  “Try it,” urged Nancy. “Here.” She handed Lou a sheet of seashell stickers. “Pick a good one and stick it up.”

  Lou held the sheet of stickers awkwardly for a moment, then slowly peeled one off. She studied the shutters and I felt myself tense.

  Then her eye fell on the bowling ball. She leaned over and stuck the sticker on the bowling ball. “There,” she said.

  “What a good idea,” said Karen, bending to examine the bowling ball.

  “It’s a dumb bowling ball,” said Lou.

  “No, it’s a doorstop now,” said Hannie.

  The Three Musketeers were being extremely nice to Lou. I was touched. But Lou wasn’t. In fact, the nicer they were, the meaner she became.

  “It’s a stupid house with a stupid doorstop without a stupid door,” said Lou. She turned and stomped away.

  Karen, Hannie, and Nancy were quiet for a moment. Then Karen said thoughtfully, “If we had an old shower curtain, we could use it for the door and the window. Then our house would be waterproof …”

  Lou joined the boys and I sat down nearby to scratch Shannon’s chin. The sounds of the kids playing floated around me: “Faster, faster,” called David Michael. “Come on.” (Lou.) “Yay, me!” (Linny.)

  And behind me, Hannie said, “This be a playhouse and a clubhouse. Then Lou could use it, too.”

  “We’d need a real door, though,” said Nancy. “I think we’d need a real door. We could still use shower curtains for the windows, though.”

  Karen said, “Yeah. And Lou’s right. If you have a doorstop, you really do need a door.”

  “We could make a sign, too. It could say Clubhouse and Playhouse.”

  “In alphabetical order,” Karen agreed with Nancy.

  In the street I saw the mail truck cruise by. I stood up and trotted toward the front of the house. Might as well see what celebrity items had (or more likely, hadn’t) shown up.

  Lou shot past me at top speed then, braked long enough to make sure no traffic was coming, then ran to the Papadakises’ mailbox. She pulled out a fistful of mail and shuffled through it.

  Obviously, she didn’t find anything she liked. She crammed the mail back in with a scowl, slammed the box shut, and ran fiercely across the street.

  I hadn’t found anything either.

  “Saturdays are always slow for mail,” I told Lou as she sped by.

  She didn’t even slow down. “Who cares!” she shouted over her shoulder.

  “Have you ever noticed,” asked Claudia, “that pizza is like all those weird math problems? If you have six pieces of pizza and you eat one, what’s left?”

  “Not enough pizza!” Jessi liberated a slice and held it up triumphantly.

  “We have two pizzas,” Mary Anne pointed out.

  Claudia grabbed her throat in mock horror. “No, no, no! Two pizzas is not part of the math problem!”

  “This is not a math problem, Claud, this is dinner,” I said.

  “You’re right.” Claudia grinned, picked up a slice from one pizza box, and laid a slice from the other face down on top of it. Taking a big bite, she explained, “Pizza sandwich,” only it sounded like “izza unwich.”

  That was the signal for the feeding frenzy to begin and we divided it up while passing around the diet soda and napkins and plates. For a little while, no one talked about anything.

  It was Saturday night. Watson and Mom had taken David Michael and Emily Michelle and Andrew and Karen to the movies. Nannie, Charlie, and Sam were out doing Saturday night things. And the BSC was sitting around my kitchen table finishing off two pizzas, one with everything (hold the anchovies) and one super vegetarian (everything, hold the meat and the anchovies).

  Only two weeks were left before the auction and we had not one single thing to donate. Not a single celebrity had written back to us. And all of our searching through attics, basements, garages, and a barn hadn’t turned up a single treasure worthy of donation.

  We were in trouble, which is why I suggested a BSC brainstorming and sleepover party.

  “Too bad we can’t donate all the pizza you can eat to the auction,” I said.

  “How do you think Cokie convinced Power Records to donate that shopping spree?” mused Dawn for about the hundredth time.

  “Her charm,” said Claudia solemnly.

  “Her father’s connections,” said Stacey.

  “Everybody’s talking about what a great donation it is,” said Mary Anne.

  I nodded glumly. “Especially Cokie and Grace. If I hear Cokie say what a record-breaking auction this is going to be one more time, I’ll … I’ll …”

  “Do something fiendish to
her?” suggested Mallory innocently.

  “Thanks, Mal,” I said, and we all cracked up.

  After a moment, I realized that Claudia was staring at me intently.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Did I spill something on my sweater? Do I have pizza stuff stuck in my teeth?”

  “Kristy, I’ve decided.” Claudia stood up. “I’m going to give you a makeover.”

  I ducked, putting my hands over my head.

  Mary Anne started laughing. “It’s okay, Kristy. Try it. You’ll like it.” (Mary Anne had had one herself recently.)

  “Yeah, it’ll be fun,” said Jessi.

  “Fun, ha!” I exclaimed, as Claudia grabbed my elbow and began to lever me out of the chair.

  “We’ll clean up this mess and meet you in the den,” said Stacey.

  “Okay,” replied Claudia.

  “Wait a minute,” I protested.

  But a few moments later I was sitting on a footstool in the den while Claudia rummaged through the contents of various makeup kits. Dawn tucked a kitchen towel into the neck of my sweater. “Try that Body Shop lotion,” she said. “It’s all-vegetable.”

  I winced as Claudia began to rub something on my face. “It’s cold.”

  “It’s good for you,” Dawn told me.

  Stacey, who had finished cleaning up and was crouched down by the videos with Jessi and Mal, said, “Oh, wow, look! The Wizard of Oz.”

  Mal groaned. “We’ve seen that about a million times at our house. It’s one of Claire’s favorites.”

  “I still love it,” said Mary Anne.

  “Me, too,” Dawn said. “Except I never could watch the scary part in the beginning.”

  “The tornado!” cried Stacey happily, pushing the tape in. “We’ll just watch the tornado part, Mal, okay?”

  I smiled — and Claudia frowned. “Don’t move,” she warned me.

  She put more goop on my face. She wiped some off. She told me not to blink. She told me to blink. She tilted my head back.

  “No peeking up my nose,” I said.

  “Ewwww!” squealed Jessi.

  “Don’t talk,” Claudia ordered.

  Just about the time the tornado was finished with Kansas, Claudia was finished with me.

  “Voilà!” she cried as the munchkins danced onto the screen in full color.

  Everyone turned to stare at me.

  “Don’t all laugh at once,” I muttered.

  “It’s … different,” Dawn said.

  I snatched the mirror out of Claudia’s hand and stared at myself.

  Claudia had made a layer of little braids in my hair, which made my ears stick out. She’d given me raspberry colored eyelids and had put mascara on my eyelashes. I looked startled. My eyebrows had been brushed up, which made me look even more surprised — which I was.

  I had blush on my cheeks, and glitter shadow beneath my eyebrows and raspberry colored lips. And Claudia had painted little stars on my earlobes. As I put one finger up to touch my ear, she said, “You really need earrings, Kristy.”

  My big mouth that says things without thinking said, “Eeeek!”

  Mary Anne said quickly, “It looks good, Claudia. It just doesn’t … it just doesn’t look like Kristy.”

  “How about something a little more — natural?” suggested Dawn.

  “It works,” said Stacey. “But …”

  “But it’s just not Kristy,” finished Claudia. “I see what you mean.” She sighed, then reached for the makeup. “Maybe I could …”

  But I slid hastily away.

  Just then Stacey punched the mute button on Oz and flipped on the radio. “Request time!”

  “Maybe Curtis Shaller will dedicate a request to Jessi,” said Mallory slyly.

  Without hesitation, Jessi picked up a pillow and winged it at Mallory.

  Mallory shrieked and whapped her back and the pillow fight was on.

  Saved by a pillow, I thought, grabbing the nearest feather-filled weapon. In another second we were screaming at the top of our lungs and racing through the house.

  When no one was looking, I detoured into the bathroom and gave my face a hasty wash. I figured I could say it all came off in the pillow fight, if anyone noticed. Then I returned to the game and chose a strategic position behind the sofa in the den.

  I was lurking there, waiting for some unsuspecting BSC member to walk into my web and thinking, What if some of the kids we sit for could see us now?, when the words on the radio pulled me back to nasty reality.

  “And this song goes out to all the generous people whose donations to the Stoneybrook Middle School Fundraising Auction will make it an enormous success.”

  Whap! “Gotcha!” shouted Mallory.

  I grabbed her pillow. “Listen!”

  Jessi tumbled in with Mary Anne in hot pursuit. When they saw us standing frozen in the middle of the room, they stopped.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Mary Anne, still holding her pillow over her head.

  I nodded toward the radio and, as if on cue, the DJ, Random Dan, started his spin again. Dawn and Stacey and Claudia had run in and we listened as he said: “That’s the Stoneybrook Middle School Fundraiser Auction. For you listeners who don’t know what’s happening, stay tuned after this tune for some of the key donations and the details of how you can give or buy something really fabulous!”

  As the music kicked in, I grabbed a pencil and my notebook and said, “We have to think of something. Now!”

  We sprawled around the room with our pillows.

  Silence reigned.

  “What about makeovers?” suggested Claudia.

  I kept my big mouth shut.

  Then Stacey said, “Why would you bid on a makeover when you could get one free at the cosmetics counter at a department store?”

  “True,” said Claudia. “But these could be really special. Personalized.”

  “Clown makeovers!” I exclaimed.

  Fortunately, Claudia didn’t take that personally. She just looked puzzled.

  “We could offer a special Baby-sitters Club party, complete with clown faces for the kids,” I explained.

  “I like that,” said Claudia.

  “Another great idea, Kristy,” Dawn agreed.

  “What about Kid-Kits?” suggested Mary Anne. “We could make up special Kid-Kits for the auction, sort of like a mystery grab bag.”

  Soon we were on a roll: errand services, pet-sitting, dog walking, baby-sitting. Not all the suggestions worked (such as health food cooking for kids) but it was a pretty creative list. Enough to take the pressure off, even if we couldn’t match Cokie’s donation. Enough so we didn’t feel guilty about goofing around and eating tons of junk food the rest of the night before crashing somewhere in the middle of the late, late, late horror movie.

  Sunday morning was gray and chilly. We were all burrowed deep into sleeping bags and pretty happy about it — but in a house like mine, noise has a way of finding you no matter what. I gave in (and up) at noon when Karen answered the front door and let Hannie, Linny, and Lou in.

  Nannie, who was standing in the kitchen holding a bowl, nodded briskly when we came in. She is a morning person, so, since it was already afternoon, she was really awake.

  “Hi, Nannie,” I said, foraging in the cupboards with Mary Anne while everyone draped themselves sleepily around the kitchen.

  “We made chocolate-covered popcorn,” Claudia explained, gesturing at the bowl Nannie was holding.

  “Oh,” said Nannie.

  “And we left the dirty pan to soak,” added Jessi. “I guess we forgot to put the water in it.”

  “Interesting texture and patterns,” murmured Claudia taking the bowl from Nannie.

  “Looks like snails have been crawling in it, if you ask me,” Mallory said.

  Mary Anne made an “eww gross” noise and I took the bowl from Claudia, squirted some liquid soap in it, and filled it with water.

  Shaking her head and smiling, Nannie fixed herself a cup of coffee and
left the kitchen to us.

  As Mary Anne and I put out cereal and bowls and milk the house was quiet — for about thirty seconds.

  “Eeeeeeeeeeeek!”

  I jumped about twenty feet. “Karen?” I gasped. But before I could do anything I heard David Michael shout, “Ha, you’re it!”

  “Ohh.” I sank down in a chair. Claudia started to giggle. A moment later, when Andrew burst into the kitchen, looked wildly around and then dove into the pantry, she went off into gales of laughter. By the time Karen came charging in a minute later, we were all laughing helplessly.

  “HIII! What’s so funny?” she shouted.

  “Indoor voice,” I answered automatically.

  “Hiii,” she stage-whispered. “Has anybody seen Andrew?”

  “No fair asking,” came Andrew’s voice from the pantry.

  Karen’s eyes grew large behind her glasses. Then she leaped across the room, threw the pantry door open, tagged Andrew, and shouted, “You’re it!”

  She tore out and Andrew, after a stunned moment, ran after her panting, “Not fair, not fair!”

  “Nofe air,” murmured Dawn, raising her eyebrows at Mallory, whose little sister Claire pitches temper tantrums, shouting “No fair, no fair!” — until the words sound like “Nofe air.”

  We started laughing all over again.

  “How does anyone have so much energy so early in the day,” said Claudia weakly.

  “We did stay up most of the night,” Stacey pointed out.

  “True,” agreed Claudia. “Working on auction ideas.”

  “And gross food combinations,” said Jessi. “Like chocolate popcorn.”

  “And Fritos dipped in butterscotch pudding.” Mallory made a face.

  To everyone’s complete surprise, Mary Anne said, “I kind of liked the way they tasted.” She looked at me and her eyes widened. “Kristy? Are you turning green.”

  “She got you, Kristy,” said Dawn.

  Mary Anne looked sheepishly pleased. She had gotten me. After about a zillion gross food comments at lunch, which have made Mary Anne turn green, she had gotten me.

  “Eeeeeeee!”

  I flinched, but I didn’t jump this time. I waited for someone to shout, “You’re it!”

  “ARRRRorow, arrowww!”

  Boo-Boo?