“Shannon! No!” cried David Michael.
It sounded like war between the species had broken out beyond the kitchen door. That brought us all to our feet. We dashed into the hall and I led the way toward the noise.
Lou was standing on the couch in the den. She was holding a very angry Boo-Boo high above her head, while she bounced up and down on the sofa cushions.
Why hadn’t Boo-Boo torn Lou’s arms to shreds? Scratched her eyes? Because Lou had stuffed Boo-Boo in a pillowcase, and all I could see were the very tips of his claws, like needles poking out of a pin cushion the wrong way.
Shannon was leaping around below, barking excitedly while David Michael tried to pull her away by the collar. Karen was standing at the foot of the couch with her hands on her hips, her face flushed angrily. Linny, Hannie, and Andrew looked on. Thank goodness Emily was elsewhere. And thank goodness Mom or Watson or Nannie hadn’t reached the den yet.
“Jump!” Lou taunted Shannon. “Jump!”
“Lou! Stop that right now!” I ordered.
“Here, Shannon. Jump.” Lou swung the pillowcase invitingly and Shannon leaped up after it, toppling David Michael.
I strode to the sofa and reached for the pillowcase.
Lou looked down, then let go just before I could grasp it. The pillowcase landed on top of me and I fell back, trying to protect my face and other exposed parts from Boo-Boo’s furious claws. He dug a couple of holes in my arms as he made his escape. The next thing I knew I was lying on the floor with Shannon ecstatically licking my face, major flesh wounds on my arms, and a circle of faces looking down at me.
“Are you okay, Kristy?” Karen asked worriedly.
“I’m fine,” I said through gritted teeth.
I stood up and looked around the room until I found Lou. She was standing off to one side, watching me in a detached, disinterested sort of way.
“Lou McNally,” I said, “don’t you ever, ever do something like that again. It is cruel to tease animals.”
Lou shrugged. “I was just playing.”
“Tormenting helpless animals is not playing. Do you understand?”
Lou reached over and slapped David Michael on the shoulder. “You’re it,” she said, and ran out of the room.
David Michael looked at me anxiously.
“Go on,” I said resignedly.
It seemed as if we had barely settled down in the kitchen again when a horrible new noise met our ears.
Crash!
Somehow I wasn’t surprised to find Shannon backing in circles in the living room, pawing at her face, which was tied up in a scarf so she couldn’t see. She backed into a bookcase and knocked half a dozen books off, then yelped when one hit her.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. (Talk about déjà vu!)
Hannie explained, “It’s a game. We were seeing if Shannon could find her bone blindfolded. We hid it on the chair.”
“Who did this?” I asked, reaching down to untie the scarf. Shannon, none the worse for the wear, gave the air a couple of experimental sniffs, then zeroed in on her bone.
Everyone looked at Lou. What a surprise.
Lou shrugged. “I used to know a dog who could do that.”
I took a deep breath. “Even if you did, Shannon is just a puppy and she doesn’t understand.”
“She’s not very smart,” said Lou.
David Michael entered the room then, just in time to hear Lou’s words. (I’d wondered where he was. I didn’t think he’d let Lou do that to Shannon.)
“She is, too!” said David Michael. “Especially for a puppy.”
“I wouldn’t have a dumb old dog as dumb as her,” said Lou.
“That’s enough,” I said. With the help of the rest of the BSC we settled everyone down and involved the kids in quieter pursuits (we hoped), then made our weary way back to the breakfast table.
“Silence is golden,” said Mary Anne with a sigh as we finished breakfast at last.
“Yeah,” I agreed. I looked around at everyone. “And you know what? I feel sorry for Lou. But she is the absolute worst kid I have ever met.”
Not one single person disagreed with me.
“Hey there, what’s going on?” Dawn tried to sound calm as she stood in the bathroom doorway.
None of the three occupants of the bathroom answered. Sari and Noodle were bent over the toilet. Noodle’s tongue was lolling out and her tail was wagging. Sari’s mouth was open, too.
Without looking up, Lou flushed the toilet again.
This set Noodle off and she began barking wildly. Sari clutched the edge of the toilet and looked up at Lou.
“Wheeee!” said Lou.
“Wheee!” said Sari.
“Hey!” said Dawn again. She ran to the toilet, bravely reached in, and retrieved the tennis ball.
“Hey!” exclaimed Lou. “What’s the big deal?”
Drying the tennis ball off with a towel (which she threw in the hamper), Dawn answered, “The deal is, you could stop up the toilet. And even if you didn’t, I don’t think you should tease Noodle like that.” Dawn didn’t add that she hated to think what kind of ideas Sari had gotten from the display.
Lou said, “I wasn’t teasing Noodle. I once knew a dog who used to like to drop her toys in the toilet. It was her favorite game.”
“If you want to play Noodle’s favorite game, why don’t you take her into the backyard and play fetch?” Dawn held out the damp tennis ball and Noodle gave a hopeful bark.
But Lou shook her head. “Never mind,” she said and walked indignantly out of the bathroom. Dawn gave the tennis ball to Noodle and took Sari’s hand. “You’re all wet, Sari.”
“Wet,” agreed Sari.
“Let’s go pick out something nice and dry to wear, okay?”
Sari went peacefully along with the idea (although she insisted on wearing one blue tennis shoe and one red one to match her red, white, and blue playsuit). “Very Claudia,” Dawn told Sari approvingly. Sari completed her ensemble by grabbing her latest favorite toy, a plush green pickle with yellow felt eyes and a big red felt smile. (Personally, although Dawn is a vegetarian, she felt the pickle was sort of scary.) Then they went downstairs to the Papadakises’ playroom just in time to hear Lou say, “Cats are stupid. Everyone knows that.”
“They are not,” said Linny.
“If they’re so smart, why can’t they do tricks?”
“Pat the Cat knows a lot of tricks.” That was Hannie.
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“She … chases balls,” said Hannie.
“Any cat’ll do that,” Lou told Hannie scornfully. “That’s not a trick, that’s a … a …”
“Trait,” supplied Dawn, coming into the room. “It’s something an animal does instinctively, so Lou is right. It’s not a trick.”
“Trick or trait!” cried Linny.
Dawn rolled her eyes at Linny’s awful pun, but she couldn’t help smiling. Then she went on, “Just because Pat doesn’t do things a dog would do, doesn’t mean she isn’t smart. She’s just a different kind of smart than, say, a dog. I knew someone in California who had cats that came when you whistled. She’d trained them to do that.”
“Could we train Pat to do that?” asked Linny. “Just like Noodle?”
“I don’t know. You could try. If you whistle every time you feed her, maybe after awhile, she’ll connect whistling with food, and come when you whistle.”
“Wow,” said Linny, sounding truly impressed.
For a moment, Lou looked almost enthusiastic, too. But when Dawn gave her an encouraging smile, she turned away. So Dawn said absentmindedly, “Oh. I almost forgot. I have a carob brownie recipe I want to test. Your mother said it was okay to try it … if anybody wants to …”
“Brownies!” said Hannie, skipping toward the kitchen.
“What’s carob?” asked Linny.
“Like chocolate, only healthier.”
“Yuck,” said Lou. But she and Linny and Hannie followed Dawn and Sari to the kitch
en, where Dawn had left her backpack with the ingredients in it. Soon Linny and Hannie and Lou were wrapped up in aprons. (Lou, however, had insisted that she didn’t need one and that aprons were for sissies, until Dawn put her own apron on and gave Lou a Look and even then, Lou wouldn’t tie the sash. She just tucked it into the waist of her jeans.) Sari sat in her high chair, banging her spoon on a wooden bowl.
Dawn opened the carob chips. “Here. Want to taste some?”
Sari immediately opened her mouth, like a hungry bird. She ate her carob chips thoughtfully, then banged on the bowl some more. Dawn wasn’t sure whether she was signaling approval or disapproval. Hannie liked them, though, and Linny said they were okay. Lou shrugged.
Things were going along smoothly until Dawn turned her back and Lou scooped up some batter and, instead of eating it, flapped it on top of Hannie’s head. “Cowpie, cowpie, Hannie’s got a cowpie on her head,” sang Lou.
Hannie’s mouth dropped open. (So did Dawn’s.)
“Lou!” Dawn exclaimed.
Hannie burst into tears. “I hate you!” she shrieked. “I hate you!”
Lou leaned over and stared into Hannie’s swimming eyes. “And I hate you,” she said.
And that was when Dawn did something completely uncharacteristic: She grabbed Lou, lifted her clear up off the floor, and carried her out of the kitchen. “Put me down!” commanded Lou.
Dawn kept going without answering. When she reached Lou’s room, she carried her in and dropped her on the bed.
“Congratulations, Lou,” said Dawn through gritted teeth. “You get to stay in your room until you can behave. I wonder how long that will be.”
Lou gave Dawn a measured look, then said, “I hate you, too.”
Dawn turned her head and returned to the kitchen.
It took a little while for Dawn to restore order. She washed the batter out of Hannie’s hair, and put the brownies in the oven, promising samples for Hannie and Linny after they’d finished some of their homework. “I have a book to read,” said Hannie. “For a real book report. Can I read it to Sari?”
“Sure you can,” said Dawn.
“Come on, Sari,” said Hannie in a very grown-up voice, her tears forgotten. Soon Hannie and Sari were sitting together on the couch in the den.
Linny went upstairs to his room to begin his homework. At last the house was quiet.
Collapsing at the kitchen table, Dawn began to twist one end of her long, pale blonde hair around and around her finger. She was trying to enjoy the smell of carob brownies baking, and the sound of silence. But she couldn’t. For some reason, it felt too quiet.
So she did what every good baby-sitter does when things are too quiet. She decided to find out what was wrong. She started by checking on the kids.
Hannie and Sari were doing fine in the den. Linny was so absorbed in his homework that he didn’t even notice when she peeked around his door.
But Lou was not in her room.
Dawn was tempted to panic. In fact, her first thought was, Oh no, Lou’s run away and it’s all my fault. But she took a deep breath and decided to check out the rest of the house first.
She found Lou in Hannie’s room, sitting on the floor. Her back was to the door as Dawn pushed it open. Her thin shoulders were hunched over.
“Lou?” said Dawn softly.
“Go away,” said Lou fiercely. She half turned and Dawn saw that she was cradling one of Hannie’s dolls in her arms. And she’d been crying.
Dawn’s first impulse was to put her arms around Lou and cradle her the way Lou was cradling that doll. But her instincts made her sit down quietly next to Lou instead. She didn’t mention the doll or the fact that Lou had been crying. She just said, “Oh, Lou.”
Lou hunched forward again. “I hate you,” she whispered. “I hate everybody.”
Then she started to cry again.
She cried as angrily and intensely as she had done everything else since she’d come to live with the Papadakises. But along with the flood of tears came a flood of words.
“He left me. I want my father. He left me!”
“Oh, Lou,” said Dawn again. “He wouldn’t have if he could have helped it. You know he loved you very, very much.”
“And Jay’s gone and my mother doesn’t want me. She left. She didn’t have to leave.”
“Maybe she did. You don’t know what happened.”
“I want my mother. I want my mother. I want to go home …” Lou clutched the doll convulsively and began to cry even harder.
“Shhh,” whispered Dawn. “It’s okay, Lou. It’ll be okay. You have friends here. We’ll take care of you. And things will work out.”
Lou shook her head, but gradually her crying became less anguished. “I want my mother,” she whispered very, very softly.
Dawn leaned over and tried to put her arm around Lou. Lou jerked back like she’d been burned.
“Don’t do that,” she cried. “You can’t do that to me.”
“Lou, what’s the matter?” asked Dawn, pulling back.
“Don’t touch me,” Lou gasped. “You’ll just be nice to me and pretend you like me and then you’ll leave me. That’s what everyone always does. Even m-my doggg …”
Lou almost started crying again, but she dug her fist in her eyes and kept herself from it.
“You had a dog?” asked Dawn.
“He was a good dog. He was smart. His name was Jingles.” For a moment Lou’s face brightened. “He knew all kinds of tricks and everything. He understood what you said to him.” Then her face closed up again. “But he left. He got out and ran away and never came back. And then our father …” She took a deep breath and almost shouted “… died.”
Oh, thought Dawn. That’s why Lou was pestering all the animals. Keeping them — and us — all from getting too close to her. Testing us.
Aloud she said, “It’s not always like that, Lou.”
Lou didn’t answer, so Dawn went on. “And even if someone is gone, you remember him. Your father loved you. He didn’t stop loving you. And you didn’t stop loving him. You’ll always remember him and love him. That’s okay. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Lou still didn’t answer. Dawn cautiously patted Lou’s shoulder. She flinched, but she didn’t pull away.
Standing up, Dawn said, “I smell some carob brownies that are just about ready. Why don’t you come down and have some with us in a little while?”
Shortly afterward, as Dawn was cutting the brownies and handing them around to Linny, Hannie, and Sari, Lou came into the kitchen. She didn’t look at Dawn as she took her brownie and sat down at the table.
“These aren’t bad,” said Linny, watching Lou out of the corner of his eye.
“I think they taste good,” declared Hannie. She snuck a quick look at Lou, then looked away.
“I’m sorry,” Lou said to Hannie, not quite looking at her.
There was a little silence. Then Hannie said, “Okay.”
Lou took a bite of her brownie and made a face. “I like chocolate better,” she said.
That evening back at her house, Dawn called me and told me about the afternoon’s events. “She’s not the worst kid ever, Kristy,” Dawn told me. “She’s the saddest.”
The woman on the phone said her name was Mrs. Graves and that she was Lou McNally’s social worker. She had a pleasant voice.
“I’m Kristy Thomas,” I told her. “I’m babysitting for the Papadakises. They’re out right now and won’t be home for another hour. May I take a message?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Graves, “this is important. I need to talk to Lou as soon as possible. Would you tell the Papadakises, if they should call, that I’m on my way over? Or I’ll see them when I get there.”
She hung up.
I stared at the phone for a moment, worrying. Then I pulled out the piece of paper with the list of all the places Mrs. Papadakis could be reached. She had called me at home at the last minute to sit for an hour while she took Pat the Cat t
o the vet for her yearly shots (the veterinarian had had a cancellation).
But Mrs. Papadakis had just left. Plus, I knew she planned to stop at the cleaners on the way home, but I didn’t know which one.
What if Mrs. Graves arrived before Mrs. Papadakis came home?
I decided I’d better tell Lou that Mrs. Graves was on her way.
I don’t know what I expected, exactly. Lou had seemed a little subdued when I’d gotten there, for which I was grateful. In fact, things had been unusually calm.
She wasn’t subdued now. When I gave her the message her face lit up and she actually smiled at me — and I suddenly realized what a cute kid she was. What she said surprised me even more than the smile. “She found my mother. My mother’s coming to get me!”
“Ah, Lou,” I said, “she didn’t tell me anything like that. She just said it was important.”
But Lou didn’t hear me. She whirled away and began spinning around, almost ricocheting from room to room.
By the time Mrs. Graves arrived, she was in a fever of anticipation.
“Why don’t you go in the living room?” I suggested.
Mrs. Graves smiled, a smile as pleasant as her voice sounded over the phone. “Thank you, Kristy,” she said. “Come on, Lou. We have some important news to discuss.”
“I know,” said Lou, smiling that big, new, wonderful kid smile.
I turned away from the door with a sinking heart. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I heard Mrs. Graves say, “You and Jay have a new home. And it is with a family.”
Could Lou have been right? Had they found her mother?
“Your father’s brother and his wife — your aunt and uncle — were so excited to hear about you two. You’ll be leaving here in less than a week for your new home!”
Mrs. Graves sounded so excited for Lou! Did she expect Lou to be excited, too?
Probably. But Lou was enraged. “Noooooooo!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!”
“Lou!” exclaimed Mrs. Graves.
“Where is my mother? I want my mother!”
“Lou,” said Mrs. Graves. Then, “Kristy?”
I hurried into the living room to find Lou pushing over stools and chairs, and grabbing pillows off the sofa and hurling them around. Mrs. Graves tried to catch Lou but she slid away, falling over a chair.