Kristy's Great Idea

  I flashed the light once to let her know I was there.

  She flashed back. Good—she was ready.

  Then I flashed out this message (it took forever):

  HAVE GREAT IDEA FOR BABY-SITTERS CLUB. MUST TALK. IMPORTANT. CAN’T WAIT. WE CAN GET LOTS OF JOBS.

  There was a pause. Then Mary Anne flashed: WHAT? and I had to start all over again. I shortened the message. At last, Mary Anne flashed: TERRIFIC. SEE YOU TOMORROW. And we put the flashlights away. Mary Anne hasn’t been caught once, and we plan to keep it that way.

  I was just closing the drawer where I hide my flashlight when Mom knocked again.

  “Come in,” I said curiously, turning the light on. Mom doesn’t usually come back for a second chat. On the other hand, I don’t usually keep my door closed for so long.

  This time, Mom sat at my desk and I sat on the bed.

  “I just wanted to let you know,” she said, “that I’m going out with Watson on Saturday night. I forgot to tell you before.”

  I groaned. Mom has been seeing this guy, Watson, off and on for about four months. She likes him a lot, but I don’t like him much at all. He’s divorced from his wife and has two little kids. Plus, he’s getting bald.

  “I’m not asking for your permission, Kristy,” Mom said. “I just want you to be able to plan on my being out Saturday. Charlie’s got a date, but Sam will be home.”

  I nodded.

  “I wish you could be a little more open-minded about Watson,” said Mom. “I can’t make you like him, but you haven’t given him much of a chance.”

  The truth is, I haven’t given any of the men Mom has dated a chance. I’m afraid that if I break down and treat them nicely, one of them might marry Mom. Think what could happen then. We’re happy the way we are.

  “One more thing,” said Mom. “This is Watson’s weekend to have the children and he has to work on Saturday morning. He doesn’t like it, but that’s the way it is. He wondered if you’d baby-sit for Andrew and Karen while he’s at the office.”

  I shook my head. Watson has asked me at least three times to sit for his kids, but I won’t do it. I don’t want to have anything to do with him or his family. I either make up an excuse or else I flatly refuse.

  “Okay,” said Mom. “It’s your choice.” She sounded as if she meant, It’s your funeral.

  But she came over to me and kissed the top of my head, so I knew she wasn’t angry.

  “Going to bed soon?” she asked.

  “Yeah. You can leave the door open,” I told her as she left my room.

  I said good-night to my brothers, and a half hour later I crawled into bed. Louie sacked out next to me. I lay there, stroking him and thinking about Mom and Watson and Andrew and Karen. Then I remembered the Baby-sitters Club and cheered up.

  Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough!

  Mr. Redmont accepted my composition on decorum. I handed it to him before school, so he wouldn’t have to read it while the entire class was hanging around. He didn’t count the words, just skimmed it, looked up at me, and said, “This is fine, Kristy. Fine work. You express yourself very nicely on paper.”

  And that was it. No words of wisdom, no scolding.

  I heaved a sigh of relief and walked to my desk with decorum.

  After school, Mary Anne and I ran home together again. It wasn’t quite as hot as it had been the day before, so we weren’t as uncomfortable.

  “You’re sitting for the Pikes today?” I asked Mary Anne as we jogged along.

  Mary Anne nodded.

  “How many of them?” There are eight Pike children.

  “Two. Claire and Margo.”

  “Oh, not bad,” I said. Claire and Margo are four and six. They’re fun. More important, they like baby-sitters.

  “Where are you sitting today?” asked Mary Anne.

  “The Newtons’. David Michael is coming with me. He can play with Jamie.”

  “Oh, hey, great! Maybe I’ll bring Claire and Margo over for a while. They can all play together. And then you can tell me about the baby-sitting club.”

  “Okay!” I agreed.

  We parted when we reached my house, and I was glad to see that I’d gotten home before David Michael. I let Louie out and made a pitcher of lemonade.

  At 3:30 sharp, David Michael and I were standing on the Newtons’ front steps. Punctuality is an important part of baby-sitting. I have never once been late for a job. My customers appreciate that.

  I let David Michael ring the bell. In a few seconds, the front door was flung wide open.

  “Hi-hi!” exclaimed Jamie. Jamie is three.

  David Michael gave me a look that said, I have to play with a three-year-old who goes hi-hi?

  I patted David Michael on the back.

  “Hi, Jamie,” I replied.

  “Look!” he exclaimed as we stepped into the Newtons’ front hall. “Look what I got!” He held out a little doll in an army uniform. “It’s a G.I. Joe.”

  “Really?” said David Michael, suddenly interested.

  “Yup,” said Jamie proudly.

  “Got any others?” asked my little brother.

  “Sure,” replied Jamie. “Come on.”

  The boys ran off. Mrs. Newton greeted me from the kitchen. “Thank goodness for G.I. Joe,” she said.

  I smiled. “Sorry about David Michael, but it looks like it’ll work out okay.” I never like to impose on my clients.

  “I’m sure it will be fine.” Mrs. Newton patted her bulging stomach. “Jamie better get used to other children.”

  “How long until the baby’s due?” I asked.

  “About eight weeks.”

  I sighed. “Oh, I wish it would hurry up!”

  “You wish!”

  Mrs. Newton gave me the instructions for the afternoon. “Just the doctor’s appointment and a few errands,” she reminded me. “I should be back by five-thirty.”

  “Okay. Five-thirty,” I repeated.

  As soon as she was gone, I called Mary Anne at the Pikes’. “Come over whenever you want to,” I said.

  The Pikes live just a few doors away, so Mary Anne showed up in ten minutes. She was pulling Claire and Margo in a red wagon.

  “Hi-hi!” Jamie greeted them cheerfully.

  “Hi-hi!” Claire, the four-year-old, replied.

  David Michael and Margo eyed each other suspiciously. They hadn’t played together much, and David Michael was wary of any little girl, especially one who wasn’t in his class at school.

  We took the kids out back to Jamie’s swings. When they were playing happily, Mary Anne said, “So what about the baby-sitting club?”

  “Well,” I replied, “I thought we could get together with a couple of other girls who baby-sit and form a club—sort of like a company—”

  We were interrupted by a thump and a wail.

  Jamie had fallen off one of the swings.

  “Wahhh!” he cried.

  I ran to him and checked him over. No bumps, no skinned knees.

  “Wahhh!”

  “Where does it hurt?” I asked him.

  He pointed to his tummy, then let his hand drift to his knee and finally up to his head.

  “Everywhere?” I suggested.

  He nodded miserably.

  “Maybe we better go,” said Mary Anne, rounding up Claire and Margo.

  “Okay,” I replied. “Listen, why don’t we tell Claudia the idea? Let’s go over to her house when we’re done sitting. She’ll be back from her art class then.”

  “Okay. See you.”

  Inside, I gave Jamie a cookie, and he and David Michael played with the G.I. Joes and then watched Sesame Street on TV. Jamie’s accident was long forgotten by the time his mother came home.

  Mrs. Newton paid me and I ran to my house, leaving David Michael with Sam, and then ran across the street to Claudia Kishi’s.

  Recently, I haven’t felt quite as comfortable visiting Claudia as I used to. This year, she had to go and start growing up faster than
us. She’s wearing a bra, and the way she talks, you’d think boys had just been invented.

  She acts like all the guys in the seventh grade aren’t the same goony boys they were last year. Last year, the boys were saying, “Want some ABC gum?” and then handing us the gum out of their mouths, saying, “It’s Already-Been-Chewed, get it?” and laughing hysterically. Last year, the boys were giving us noogies on our arms and throwing spitballs at us. Last year, the boys were pulling our chairs out from under us when we stood up to answer questions. This year (if you listen to Claudia), the boys are heroes. Personally, I don’t see any change.

  I rang the Kishis’ bell. Claudia came to the door. She was wearing short, very baggy lavender plaid overalls, a white lacy blouse, a black fedora, and red high-top sneakers without socks. Her long black hair was carefully arranged in four braids. I felt extremely blah compared to her.

  I was so used to seeing Claudia in outfits like that that I didn’t bat an eye. What I did notice was that she was wearing makeup. There was blue stuff on her eyelids, gold stuff above her eyes, and magenta stuff on her cheeks.

  “Claudia!” I gasped. “Your face! You look like”—I couldn’t stop myself in time—“you got made up for the circus…. I mean … it’s so colorful.…”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “No, honestly, Claud. You don’t need makeup. You’ve got such a beautiful face….”

  “Nice try,” said Claudia.

  Claudia’s parents are originally from Japan. They came to the United States when they were very young. Claudia has silky jet-black hair, dark eyes, and creamy skin without so much as a trace of a pimple. She’s absolutely gorgeous. But she has this wild streak in her that makes her buy belts made of feathers and wear knee socks with palm trees on them. Makeup was something new, though.

  “Are you going to wear that”—I pointed to her face—“to school tomorrow?”

  “If I can get away with it.”

  I nodded. Claudia’s parents are very conservative. They don’t understand her taste in clothes at all. They’re pretty nice about the fedoras and stuff, although they won’t buy any of those things for her. (That’s why she has to baby-sit—to earn money for all that stuff.) But I didn’t know how the Kishis would react to Claudia’s Day-Glo face. I didn’t know how our teachers would react, either.

  I said hello to Mimi, Claudia’s grandmother, who was busy making dinner, and followed Claudia upstairs to her room. “Where’s Janine?” I asked.

  Claudia rolled her eyes. “At the university, where else?”

  Janine is Claudia’s fifteen-year-old sister. She’s only a sophomore in high school, but she’s taking classes at Stoneybrook University. This is because Janine is a real live genius. An average person has an IQ of 100. An above-average person has an IQ of 120 to 140. A person with an IQ of 150 is considered a genius.

  Janine’s IQ is 196.

  Sometimes she makes me want to barf. She almost always makes Claudia want to barf. She thinks she knows everything. (Actually, she does.) She’s forever correcting us. If I say, “David Michael, you can’t play outside today because it’s raining,” Janine will say, “Kristy, you should say, ‘David Michael, you may not play outside today.’ If you say he can’t, it means he’s physically unable to, and that’s not true. What you mean is that he does not have permission to play out of doors.”

  Janine sounds like a textbook. Her best friend is this fourteen-year-old math nerd who’s going to graduate from high school in the spring. Her second best friend is her computer.

  I’m sure it’s because of Janine that Claudia concentrates on art and is a terrible student.

  I was relieved to hear that Janine wasn’t home.

  Claudia and I plopped down on her bed. “Mary Anne’ll be here in a few minutes,” I said. “I have this really great idea that I want to tell both of you about.”

  Claudia’s eyes lit up. “What is it?”

  “A baby-sitters club,” I announced.

  “A baby-sitters club?” she squealed.

  “Yeah, I’ll explain it all when—” Just then, the doorbell rang.

  Claudia thundered down the stairs, yelling, “I’ll get it!” She flung open the front door and hauled Mary Anne up to her room. “I like clubs!” she exclaimed. “Tell us your idea!”

  “Well, it all started last night,” I began. I told them how Mom had had to call nearly everyone in Stoneybrook, looking for a baby-sitter, and how long it had taken, and how bad David Michael had felt. “So I thought we could sort of join together. We all baby-sit anyway. We could advertise ourselves and get more customers. We should meet a few times each week and tell our customers what those times are. Then they can make one call and reach a whole bunch of us at once. And if, like, Mrs. Pike wants two sitters, she’ll only have to make one call.” I explained everything else I had thought of and wound up with, “Okay, here are two things to think about: One, where should we hold our meetings; and two, who else could we ask to join the club?”

  “I can answer both questions,” said Claudia. “We should hold the meetings here, because I have a phone in my room.”

  “Oh, terrific!” I exclaimed. (I’d been hoping Claudia would suggest that.)

  “And I know someone who might want to join the club.”

  “Who?” Mary Anne and I asked.

  “She’s new. She just moved to Stoneybrook. She lives right over on Fawcett Avenue, and she’s in my class. Her name is Stacey McGill.”

  “Well, okay …” I said slowly. “Of course, we’ll have to meet her.”

  “Oh, sure. You’ll really like her. She’s from New York City,” Claudia added.

  I was impressed. I could tell Mary Anne was, too. She opened her eyes wide. “I wonder why her family wanted to leave there to come here,” she said.

  Claudia shrugged. “Don’t know. But I’m glad they did. Stacey’s really cool.”

  Mary Anne and I glanced at each other, not sure that this was a good sign.

  “What’s everyone doing tomorrow afternoon?” asked Claudia. “Can we meet then?”

  “If it’s at five-thirty again,” said Mary Anne. “I have to baby-sit before then.”

  We agreed to meet late the next afternoon. And that was how the Baby-sitters Club officially began.

  Promptly at five-thirty the next afternoon, I crossed the street to Claudia’s house and rang the bell. Claudia answered it again, this time wearing a baggy yellow-and-black-checked shirt, black pants, red jazz shoes, and a bracelet that looked like it was made from a telephone cord. Her earrings were dangling jointed skeletons that jumped around when she moved. I noticed she wasn’t wearing any makeup.

  “Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me,” she said.

  “Well, you got away with the skeletons.”

  Claudia grinned. “I didn’t put those on until I got to school,” she whispered. “Mimi’s the only grown-up home now and she doesn’t mind if I wear skeletons.”

  “Oh, very sneaky!” Claudia knows every trick.

  As we went up the stairs, Claudia said, “Stacey’s already here. I really hope you like her.” She lowered her voice. “And Janine’s home.”

  I groaned.

  “Sorry. Her door’s open, too.”

  At that moment, Janine stuck her head out into the hall. “Oh, hi, Kristy,” she said. “I thought I heard voices. Claudia told me about the Baby-sitters Club. That sounds like an outstanding idea.”

  “Well, hopefully it will—” I began.

  Janine’s face took on her know-it-all look. “Kristy, hopefully is one of the most commonly misused words in the English language. The word means ‘in a hopeful manner.’ It is not acceptable to use it to mean ‘it is to be hoped.’ If I were—”

  I didn’t have the vaguest idea what she was talking about. “Gee, Janine, I gotta go.” I cut her off as Claudia went on into her room. “Stacey’s waiting for us. See you.” I really cannot take much of Janine. And I always make a mistake in front of her. I don’t know how Clau
dia manages to live in the same house with her.

  Just as I reached Claudia’s bedroom, the doorbell rang. “That’s Mary Anne,” I called. “I’ll let her in, Claud.” I ran downstairs, opened the door, warned Mary Anne about Janine, then ran back upstairs with Mary Anne at my heels. We ran straight to Claudia’s room, careful not to look in at Janine as we ran by her open door.

  “Hi,” Claudia said, closing her door behind us. “You guys, this is Stacey McGill. Stacey, this is Kristy Thomas and this is Mary Anne Spier.”

  “Hi!” Stacey and I said brightly.

  Mary Anne suddenly turned shy. “Hi,” she said softly, speaking more to a wall than to Stacey.

  I looked at Stacey. I could see why she and Claudia were friends already. Stacey had on a pink sweatshirt with sequins and a large purple parrot on the front; short, tight-fitting jeans with zippers up the outsides of the legs; and pink plastic shoes. She was very pretty, tall and quite thin with huge blue eyes framed by dark lashes, and fluffy blonde hair that looked as if it had been styled recently. I glanced at Mary Anne. She and I were still in our school clothes. I was wearing jeans and sneakers. Mary Anne was wearing a skirt and saddle shoes. Mary Anne’s hair was, of course, in braids, and I was wearing a blue hair band.

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Well,” I cleared my throat. “Claudia, did you tell Stacey about the Baby-sitters Club?”

  “Just what we talked about yesterday,” she replied.

  “Did you baby-sit in New York?” I asked Stacey.

  “Oh, all the time. We lived in this big building. There were over two hundred apartments in it—”

  “Wow,” said Mary Anne.

  “—and I used to put up signs in the laundry room. People called me all the time.” She paused. “I can stay out until ten on Friday and Saturday nights.”

  Another “Wow” from Mary Anne.

  I was feeling more and more like a baby. How was it possible to feel so much younger than someone who was the same age as you?

  “I’d really like to be in the club,” said Stacey. “I don’t know too many kids in Stoneybrook yet. And it’d be nice to earn some money. My mom and dad buy my clothes, but I have to earn money for other things—you know, CDs and jewelry and stuff.”