One of my biggest fears is confronting people and dealing with people I don’t know — like picking up the phone to get information, or talking to sales clerks, or asking for directions. Dad knew all that. Maybe when I stopped avoiding things, he would notice.
Even though my father didn’t know about the fight everyone in the Baby-sitters Club had had, I decided that it was really time to do something about it. Whether the fault was mine or somebody else’s (or everybody’s), I was going to fix things. Now that was taking on responsibility.
I realized that the evening at the Pikes’ could have been a disaster. If the kids had noticed that Kristy and I were fighting, it would have looked bad for our club. Luckily for us, the Pike kids are easygoing and have a sense of humor.
Luckily.
What if one of the kids had gotten hurt, and Kristy and I hadn’t been able to agree on what to do about it? What if the kids had realized what was going on? They might have blabbed to their parents, and our club might have lost some of its best clients.
Besides, trying to run a club without meetings was stupid.
It was time to put the club back together before it fell apart completely. Since Kristy is the club president, I thought that the best way to do it was to make up with her. That was going to be a real challenge. It would take plenty of responsibility.
How to make up with Kristy? Long after I’d turned out my light, I lay in bed thinking. I could try to write her a note — one I could actually send her:
Dear Kristy,
I’m really sorry about our fight. I’d like to make up and be friends again.
Your best friend (I hope),
Mary Anne
That was good. Short but sweet.
And it was truthful. I really was sorry about our fight, no matter who had started it or whose fault it was. And I really did want to be friends again.
The next morning was Saturday, but I woke up early anyway. I ate breakfast with my father. Then I went back to my room and wrote the note to Kristy.
And then — how was I going to get the note to her? If I took it over personally, she’d close the door in my face. Maybe I could leave it in the mailbox, or give it to David Michael to give to her.
No. How could I be sure she’d read it? Maybe a note wasn’t a good idea. But I couldn’t think of another way to make up with Kristy.
I was still stewing about it when I heard the phone ring. A few moments later, my father called up the stairs, “Mary Anne! It’s for you!”
“Okay!”
As I ran to the phone, one teensy little part of me thought it might be Kristy, calling to apologize to me.
No such luck. It was Dawn. But I was glad to hear from her.
“Hi!” I said.
“Hi! What are you doing today?”
“Nothing. What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Want to come over?”
“Sure! Right now?”
“Yeah. I don’t know what we’ll do, but we’ll think of something.”
“Okay. I’ll be right there.”
“Good,” I said. We hung up.
Dawn rode over on her bicycle, and she reached my house in record time.
I met her at the door and we ran up to my room. The first thing Dawn said was, “Mary Anne, I was thinking as I rode over here, and you know what we forgot to do?”
“What?” I asked.
“Find out if your father and my mother knew each other when they were young.”
“Oh, that’s right!” I exclaimed. “Did your mom go to Stoneybrook High?”
“Yup,” replied Dawn. “Did your dad?”
“Yup! Oh, this is exciting!”
“What year did your father graduate?” Dawn asked.
“Gee,” I said slowly, “I don’t know.”
“Well, how old is he?”
“Let’s see. He’s forty-one…. No, he’s forty-two. Forty-two. That’s right.”
“Really? So’s my mom!”
“You’re kidding! I bet they did know each other. Let’s go ask my father.”
We were racing down the hall and had just reached the head of the stairs when Dad appeared at the bottom. “Mary Anne,” he said, “I’ve got to go into the office for several hours. I’ll be back this afternoon. You may heat up that casserole for lunch. Dawn is welcome to stay, all right?”
“Okay. Thanks, Dad. See you later.”
Dawn nudged me with her elbow. I knew she wanted me to ask Dad about Mrs. Schafer, but it wasn’t the right time. Dad was in a hurry, and he doesn’t like to be bothered with questions when he’s rushing off somewhere. As soon as he left, Dawn said, slightly accusingly, “Why didn’t you ask him?”
“It wasn’t a good time. Believe me. Besides, I have another idea. His yearbooks are in the den. Let’s go look at them. I used to go through them all the time when I was little, but I bet I haven’t opened one since I was nine.”
“Oh goody, yearbooks!” said Dawn.
In the den, we stood before a bookcase with a row of heavy old yearbooks in it. “Why are there so many?” asked Dawn.
“They’re my mother’s and my father’s — high school and college. So there are sixteen in all. Now let’s see. Here are the Stoneybrook High yearbooks. These are Dad’s, since my mother grew up in Maryland. Which one should we look at first?”
“His senior yearbook,” Dawn answered immediately. “It’ll have the biggest pictures. What year is this? Oh, this is the year my mom graduated, too! So they were in the same class. I bet they did know each other.”
Dawn pulled the book off the shelf, and I blew the dust from the cover. “Yuck,” I said. We stopped for a moment to look at the book. The year Dad had graduated was printed across the cover in large, white raised numbers.
We opened it gingerly, as if it would fall apart.
“Here are the seniors,” said Dawn, turning to the front of the book. We peered at row after row of black-and-white photos, the students looking funny and old-fashioned. Under each picture was a little paragraph, words that meant nothing to Dawn and me. Inside jokes, I guessed. I wondered if the people who had composed them would know what they meant twenty-five years later. Under one boy’s photo was written: “Thumpers … Apple Corps … Arnie and Gertrude … S.A.B.” Under a girl’s was written: “White Phantom Chevy … ‘Broc’ junior homeroom … ‘Rebel Rousers’ & George.” And one boy had written something that Dawn and I decided must be a code: E.S.R., A.T., DUDE, FIBES, G.F.R…. ALRIGHT.
“He spelled ‘all right’ all wrong,” Dawn remarked.
Then we started laughing. “Look at that girl’s hair!” I shrieked. “It looks like she blew it up with a bicycle pump!”
Dawn rolled over on the floor, giggling. “Now let’s find your dad,” she said. The seniors were in alphabetical order. We flipped through until we reached the S’s.
“There he is!” I cried, jabbing at the picture in the upper left-hand corner of a page. “There he is! Oh, wow, I forgot how weird he looks! He doesn’t look like my father at all. He looks … like an alien!”
“He was only seventeen, I guess, but somehow he looks a lot older,” Dawn pointed out.
“He had a crew cut! Let’s see what’s under his picture…. This is weird. It says: “To S.E.P.: Don’t walk in front of me — I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me — I may not lead. Walk beside me — and just be my friend. — Camus.’ Who’s Camus?” I asked.
“Beats me,” Dawn replied, “but S.E.P. — those were my mother’s initials before she got married.”
Dawn and I looked at each other with wide eyes.
“Quick!” exclaimed Dawn. “Turn to the P’s! We’re looking for Sharon Porter.”
Frantically, we flipped the pages back.
“Stop! We’re in the M’s! ”
We went forward a few pages.
“There she is!” shouted Dawn. “Sharon Emerson Porter. That’s all it says under her picture. Just her name. No quotes or silly stuff
.”
“But she signed Dad’s yearbook,” I said, looking at the scrawly message in blue ink that covered Sharon Porter’s face.
We leaned over.
“ ‘Dearest Richie,’ ” Dawn read.
“Richie!” I cried. “No one calls him Richie.”
Mystified, Dawn read on. “ ‘Four years weren’t enough. Let’s start over. How can we part? We have one more summer. Hold on to it, Richie. (Love is blind.) Always and forever, Sharon.’ ”
“I guess they did know each other,” said Dawn at last.
“I’ll say,” I said. “I’ll say.”
Dawn and I practically suffered dual heart attacks after reading what was written in my dad’s yearbook. We agreed not to mention our discovery to our parents, although we weren’t sure why we wanted to keep the secret.
We spent the rest of the day hashing it over. Then on Sunday we went through Dawn’s mother’s yearbook. The book was hard to find, since it was still packed away. We finally located it at the bottom of a carton labeled KITCHEN.
“Kitchen?” I said to Dawn.
She shrugged. “Don’t ask.”
We opened the book, knowing exactly where to look. Written across my father’s picture in round, familiar handwriting was, “For Sharon, who knows what this means.” (An arrow pointed to the quote from the person named Camus.) “Remember — the summer can be forever. Love always, Richie.”
“People sure get poetic in high school,” Dawn remarked. “What does ‘the summer can be forever’ mean?”
I didn’t know. But far more interesting than what Dad had written was what was pressed between the “S” pages of Dawn’s mother’s book. It was a rose, brown and dried, with a stained, yellowing ribbon tied to the stem.
Although I had vowed to find a way to get the Baby-sitters Club back together, things kept coming up to take my mind off of it. First, of course, was the discovery about Dawn’s mother and my father. Dawn and I talked about it all week. We had a million questions, and we could only guess at the answers to them.
“What do you think the rose is from?” asked Dawn.
“A prom?” I suggested. “I bet they went to their senior prom together. I wonder what they wore.”
“Hey,” said Dawn. She crunched loudly on a piece of celery. Dawn refused to buy the school lunches, saying they were starchy and gross. As soon as her mother had gotten their kitchen in order, Dawn had insisted on bringing her own healthy lunches to school each day. “Don’t parents always take pictures of their kids just before they go off to their proms?” she asked. “I mean, even back in those days, it was like a rule of parenthood. Your daughter’s date arrives to take her to the prom. He’s wearing a tux and your daughter is wearing her new gown and carrying a shawl. Then the parents have to make them pose in front of the mantelpiece in the living room for the ceremonial prom pictures, which they send to the relatives and to the boy’s family.”
I giggled. “But what does that have to do with our parents?”
“Well, there must be a prom picture of them somewhere. If we could find a picture, we could see if my mother was wearing a rose with a satin ribbon tied to it.”
“Oh! Great idea,” I said. But we couldn’t find any prom pictures.
Another day we tried to guess what their notes to each other meant.
“ ‘Just one more summer,’ ” I repeated sadly. “I wonder why they knew they would have to break up at the end of the summer. Or maybe that’s not what they meant at all.”
“It must be what they meant. But why?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wonder what your mother meant by ‘love is blind,’ ” I said to Dawn on Friday.
“Maybe someone disapproved of their relationship, but my mom and your dad were too much in love to see what was wrong.”
“But what could have been wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Dawn replied. “But I bet someone disapproved of them.”
“But we don’t know for sure,” I pointed out.
“No, that’s true.”
On Saturday, something else happened to keep my mind off the club. It was what turned out to be my scariest baby-sitting experience ever. Earlier in the week, Mrs. Prezzioso had called needing a baby-sitter for Jenny all Saturday afternoon. Even though the Prezziosos are weird, I sort of like Jenny. So I took the job.
I arrived at the Prezziosos’ house promptly at 11:30. I rang the bell.
A few moments later I could hear little feet run to the door. Then I heard the locks being turned. “Hey, Jenny!” I called. “Ask who it is first.”
“Oh, yeah,” I heard her say. “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Mary Anne Spier, your baby-sitter.”
“Are you a stranger?”
I sighed. “No. I’m Mary Anne. You know me.”
The door was opened.
“Hi, Mary Anne,” said Jenny. She was wearing a pale blue dress with a white collar and cuffs. Her tights were white. Her shoes were white. Her hair ribbon was white. I could tell it was going to be a long day.
Jenny’s mother appeared behind her. “Well,” began Mrs. Prezzioso, smoothing away a nonexistent wrinkle in her black silk cocktail dress, “Mr. Prezzioso and I are going to be up in Chatham for a basketball game.” (Mrs. P. was wearing a cocktail dress to a basketball game?) “My husband’s college is playing their biggest rival. It’s some sort of important championship or something. He’s very excited about it, so we’re going to drive up there, meet some friends, go to the game, and go out for an early dinner. We should be home by seven at the very latest.
“I’m a bit nervous, though, about being so far away,” she added. (Chatham is an hour north of Stoneybrook.)
“I’m sure everything will be fine,” I said.
“Well, I’ve left you a lot of phone numbers — our phones, Jenny’s doctor, the number of the gymnasium where the game will be held, our next-door neighbors, and the usual emergency numbers.”
“Okay,” I said. I realized Jenny was being awfully quiet. I wondered what she had up her sleeve.
But I didn’t have much time to dwell on it. At that moment, Mr. P. ran down the stairs. He was wearing blue jeans and a striped polo shirt. I was willing to bet that there had been some battle over his clothing that morning. Maybe that was why Jenny was so quiet.
I looked at her. She was sitting in an armchair in the living room, her legs sticking out in front of her, her head leaning back listlessly. She appeared to be listening to us.
I noticed that Mrs. P. did not stand next to her husband and ask me how they looked. Frankly, I couldn’t blame Mr. P. for dressing the way he did, but I was sorry if it had caused a fight that had upset Jenny.
At last, after lots more instructions and cautions, the Prezziosos left. Jenny didn’t even bother to wave good-bye to them.
“Well,” I said to her, “what do you want to do today? We’ve got the whole afternoon to play.”
Jenny stuck out her lower lip. “Nothing.”
“You don’t want to do anything?”
She crossed her arms. “No.”
“Hey, come on. It’s not that cold out. You want to see if Claire Pike can play?”
“NONONONONO!”
For such a little kid, Jenny certainly has a big set of lungs.
“Okay, okay,” I said. What a fusspot. “I brought the Kid-Kit,” I told her a few moments later.
“I know. I saw.”
What she didn’t know was that there was nothing even remotely messy in it. The paint-with-water book was at home on my bed.
I decided to try one more thing. “Do you want to read a story?”
Jenny shrugged. “I guess.”
At last. That was a relief. I took Blueberries for Sal, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, and Caps for Sale out of the Kid-Kit. “Which one?” I asked.
Jenny shrugged.
I chose Blueberries for Sal. “Come sit by me on the couch.” Wordlessly, Jenny got up, climbed onto the couch, and leaned
against me. I began to read. When I reached the part of the story that I thought was the most exciting, Jenny didn’t even make a sound. I glanced at her. She was sound asleep.
That’s strange, I thought. Mrs. P. had told me Jenny had slept late that morning and probably wouldn’t take her afternoon nap. Yet there she was, asleep at twelve noon.
I eased myself up and laid Jenny on the couch. That was when I realized how warm she was. I put my hand on her forehead.
She was burning up.
I shook her gently. “Jenny! Jenny!”
“Mmphh,” she mumbled. She stirred but didn’t wake up.
My heart pounding, I raced upstairs to the bathroom off of Jenny’s parents’ bedroom and looked frantically through the medicine cabinet. When I found a thermometer, I dashed downstairs with it.
Even though Jenny was still asleep, I stuck it under her tongue. I sat there until the thermometer beeped, then I removed it and peered at the numbers.
One hundred and four degrees!
One hundred and four. I’d never had a fever that high.
I began making phone calls.
First I tried Mr. P’s and Mrs. P’s phones. No one answered. I left messages.
Next I called Jenny’s doctor and got his answering service. A bored-sounding woman said the doctor would call back when he could.
That might not be fast enough. I called the Pikes. No answer.
I called the next-door neighbors. No answer.
I called my dad, even though I knew he was out shopping and rarely remembered to turn his phone on. No answer.
What to do? I didn’t dare call the other members of the Baby-sitters Club, so at last I called Dawn.
“I’ll be right there,” she told me.
While I waited for her, I called the gym in Chatham and left an urgent message for the Prezziosos to be paged as soon as possible and told to call home. I knew they hadn’t reached the gym yet.
When Dawn arrived, I showed her Jenny sleeping on the couch, and told her the people I’d tried to reach.
“And the doctor hasn’t called back yet?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I guess we could just call for an ambulance, but really, she’s only got a fever. I mean, it’s not like she broke her leg or something.”