Claudia and the Clue in the Photograph

  That’s what Mary Anne called it: brainstorming. “We did brainstorming in my social studies class last year,” she said. “It’s the best way to come up with ideas. Everybody just shouts out anything they can think of, no matter how silly it is. You’d be surprised at the creative stuff we’ll come up with.”

  Naturally, after that, there were a few minutes of total silence. Nobody wanted to shout out the first silly idea. Finally, I decided to jump right in. “We could send an airplane over Dawn’s favorite beach, towing one of those big, long banners. It could say ‘DAWN SCHAFER, PLEASE COME HOME TO STONEYBROOK’!”

  “Uh-huh,” said Vanessa, writing it down. Nobody else said a word.

  “Well, you said we could say silly ideas,” I said, blushing.

  Just then, Buddy piped up. “If we put all our money together, maybe we could buy her a plane ticket home.”

  “Yeah!” said Nicky. “I have …” he dug in his pocket, “seventeen cents.”

  “And I have three dollars in my bank upstairs!” said Adam.

  “I think it’s going to cost a lot more than that,” said Mal gently.

  “Okay,” said Jordan, “speaking of planes, how’s this? We’ll hire a plane to fly over Stoneybrook and take one of those pictures from above. Then we’ll frame it and send it to her.”

  “That’s pretty expensive, too,” said Mary Anne. “Anyway, it seems like it should be something we can make for her.”

  The kids continued to brainstorm, shouting out ideas for everything from a singing telegram to a giant mural to a care package full of homemade cookies.

  “I’ve got it!” I shouted, after a few more minutes. I had been thinking hard, ever since Jordan had mentioned pictures. Since I have photography on the brain lately, my ears had perked up when I heard that word. “You know that book, A Day in the Life of America?”

  “You mean the one where they gave a whole bunch of photographers one day to take pictures all over the country?” Mal said. “We have that book. It’s pretty cool.”

  “Well, how about A Day in the Life of Stoneybrook?” I asked. “We can set up a bunch of you kids with cameras — I’m sure we can borrow a few — and you can take pictures all over town. Then we’ll make up an album for Dawn.”

  “Yeah,” said Buddy, starting to grin. “Yeah! I like it.”

  Mal went to find the book. When she brought it back, the kids passed it around and looked at it. They loved it, so the matter was decided. We agreed to round up more photographers — all clients and members of the BSC — and we set our “day” for the following Sunday.

  That night, Mary Anne couldn’t resist calling Dawn. “The kids are planning a big surprise for you,” she told her stepsister. “And you are going to love it.” Then she called me, and we talked about the project some more. I think Mary Anne and I were even more excited than any one of the kids who had been over at the Pikes’ that day, but none of us could wait for next Sunday.

  Before I went home that Saturday, I borrowed the Pikes’ copy of A Day in the Life of America. Later, when I sat down and looked it over more closely, I began to realize that our project was going to take a lot of planning. For the real Day in the Life book, the editors had asked two hundred of the world’s top photographers to take pictures all over America during one twenty-four-hour period. From what I read, it took a major amount of coordination to pull that together.

  We weren’t using two hundred photographers for A Day in the Life of Stoneybrook, but there was still a lot to figure out. My friends and I spent every spare minute during that week plotting and planning for our big day on Sunday. First, we called around to find out which of our regular charges wanted to be part of the project. Then we rounded up all the cameras we could find, so that each kid would be able to take pictures. I borrowed Janine’s Instamatic, and Mary Anne dug up her dad’s old Brownie camera. The Pikes had a Polaroid, and Stacey and her mom volunteered their one-step camera. Shannon was going to use her point-and-shoot, and Watson loaned Kristy his fancy Nikon, after she promised to take good care of it. We also withdrew some money from the BSC treasury to buy film and a couple of those new disposable cameras.

  And finally, we sat down with the club record book and figured out a schedule for the shoot. Not everybody in the BSC would be available that day. Logan was going away for the weekend with his family, and Stacey was going to New York to visit her dad. (She’d be coming back late Sunday afternoon, though, so we planned to meet her at the train station and take pictures of her arrival.) Kristy had a softball game with her team, the Krushers, first thing in the morning. Since many of the kids who wanted to be part of the project are also Krushers, we decided to meet on the ballfield on Sunday morning. We would take some pictures of the game, and then split up into smaller groups to cover the rest of Stoneybrook.

  * * *

  I woke up early on Sunday morning and, with my fingers crossed, jumped right out of bed to pull up my shades. As soon as I saw the blue sky outside, I grinned. It was a perfect day, just what we’d been hoping for. I dressed quickly, in jeans and my Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt (no high fashion today; I was planning to work hard) and started to load my camera bag. I’d be shooting in black and white, since I wanted to be able to develop my pictures myself, and I had stocked up on film. I stuck two rolls into the outside pocket of my bag and loaded a third into the Minolta. Our Day in the Life of Stoneybrook was about to begin, and I was ready.

  I was itching to start taking pictures, so I left my room with the camera around my neck. Just as I was heading for the stairs, I heard the bathroom door open. I whirled around, raised my camera, and started snapping away.

  “Claudia!” cried Janine. “What do you think you’re doing?” At least, that’s what it sounded like. Her words were kind of garbled.

  I lowered the camera and took a better look at her. She was wearing this ratty old pink robe that she refuses to give up, and there was a yellow towel wrapped turban-style around her head. Her voice had sounded funny because she was in the midst of brushing her teeth and her mouth was full of foamy white toothpaste.

  “Oops,” I said, trying to hide a grin. “Hey, it’s all just part of our project, Janine!” I said. “Don’t you want to be included? I see the caption saying something like ‘Janine Kishi prepares for her day, looking forward to —’ Hey, what are you doing today?” I asked.

  “Going on a picnic with Jerry,” she said. “And if you assume I’m going to reveal our destination, you’re most definitely mistaken.” She shook her toothbrush at me and stomped back into the bathroom.

  Jerry is Janine’s boyfriend. For a second I thought about trying to follow them and take candid shots without their seeing me, but then I remembered the very full schedule we’d made up for the day. There was no way I could fit anything else in. I shrugged and headed downstairs, where I quickly snapped pictures of my dad making waffles and my mom reading the Sunday paper. As soon as I’d finished my breakfast, I grabbed my camera bag and headed over to the ballfield.

  The Krushers were playing Bart’s Bashers that day. Bart Taylor, the guy who manages the Bashers, is Kristy’s boyfriend — although she’d kill me if she heard me say that. She insists she’s “not into that boyfriend-girlfriend stuff.” The game was almost over when I arrived, and the scene at the field was totally chaotic.

  Buddy Barrett was on first base, and Suzi was up at bat. Jamie Newton, who’s four, was waiting for his turn to hit. He was holding a blue plastic camera (the kind made for kids) and trying to focus on Kristy and Bart, who were talking over on the sidelines. Charlotte Johanssen, who’s nine, was leading cheers, along with Haley Braddock (also nine) and Vanessa Pike. Becca, Jessi’s sister, had talked them into making a mini-pyramid for a picture she wanted to take, but the pyramid kept collapsing because the girls were giggling too hard.

  I found Jessi, Mal, Shannon, and Mary Anne sitting together behind the backstop. “Have you guys started taking pictures yet?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” said
Jessi, grinning. “I caught Aunt Cecelia in her fuzzy slippers, Shannon took some pictures of her sister playing dress-up, and Mary Anne has already taken a roll and a half of Tigger playing with a catnip mouse.” Tigger is Mary Anne’s kitten.

  “You should have seen Nicky this morning,” Mal said, laughing. “He was trying to take a picture of Pow. First he tied this huge red bow around Pow’s neck. Then he got set to snap a picture. He’d tell Pow to sit, and then he’d walk away a few steps in order to focus. But as soon as Nicky was ready to take the picture, Pow would get up, walk toward him, and stick his big old snuffly nose right up against the camera. It was hilarious!”

  Suddenly, we heard cheering on the field, and we all turned to see what had happened. An ecstatic Matt Braddock was circling the bases, while his sister Haley signed frantically to him. “What’s she telling him?” I asked Jessi. Matt is profoundly deaf, and he and Haley (and most of his friends) communicate with American Sign Language. Jessi has learned ASL better than anyone else in the BSC.

  “She’s saying ‘It’s a home run! We win!’ ” said Jessi. “But from the look on Matt’s face, I have a feeling he already knows that.”

  “Now he’ll really have something to tell everybody about at that picnic today,” I said. Matt and Haley’s parents were hosting a picnic for hearing-impaired children and their families that afternoon. The kids were mostly from Matt’s school, which is in Stamford. Shannon and Kristy were going along, and they’d take pictures of the event for our project.

  As soon as the Krushers and Bashers had finished their post-game rituals (lining up to give high fives to the other team, and then chanting “Two-four-six-eight! Who do we appreciate?”), Kristy, Shannon, Mary Anne, Mal, Jessi, and I held a quick meeting.

  “Do you all have your cameras?” Kristy asked, after we had congratulated her on the game.

  We nodded and held them up.

  “Film?” asked Kristy. When we nodded, she grinned. “Then let’s go for it!” she said. She and Shannon headed off with Matt and Haley, while Jessi and Mal rounded up Nicky, Vanessa, and Jamie Newton. The Jessi-and-Mal team was planning to head for the barber shop in town, where the triplets had haircut appointments.

  “I can’t wait to call them cactusheads,” I heard Nicky saying as they set off.

  Mary Anne and I called Buddy, Suzi, Charlotte, and Becca together and made sure they all knew how to use the cameras they were holding. Then we set off for downtown. At first, the kids just kept snapping pictures of each other as we walked. Suzi told Buddy to say “sneeze,” and then she snapped his picture while Becca held up two fingers behind his head. “Rabbit ears!” Charlotte giggled. Then Charlotte flapped both her hands behind Becca’s head while Buddy snapped the picture. “Moose ears!” Suzi shrieked. Soon they were all giggling so hard they could hardly hold up their cameras.

  “Hey, you guys,” said Mary Anne, when we arrived downtown. “Why don’t you look around? There’s lots of interesting stuff to take pictures of.”

  Mary Anne was right. As soon as we started to check out what was going on around us, we saw amazing things. First, Suzi spotted a wedding party having their pictures taken in a little park. Then, Buddy caught sight of a really cool red sports car parked in front of the hardware store. Charlotte took a picture of the window of Polly’s Fine Candy, where there was a display of fancy boxed chocolates. And Becca took some arty shots of the Rosebud Café’s neon sign. Mary Anne was photographing everything, including the mannequins in the window of the Merry-Go-Round. (She took so many pictures that she ran out of film and had to borrow some of mine.) And me? I was taking picture after picture of the facades of downtown Stoneybrook.

  A facade, in case you don’t know, is the front of a building. (It’s pronounced fah-sahd, by the way. Don’t ask me why.) Some are plain, but some are really, really fancy. The fancy ones have stone carvings of vines or flowers or even people. There might be building names etched over the doorway, or numbers carved into the sides. Looking through my camera’s viewfinder, I was amazed. I had never noticed all those details before, even though I’ve been in downtown Stoneybrook about three million times. As Mr. Geist says, sometimes you see things completely differently when you look at them through a camera.

  I was especially fascinated with the facade of the old Stoneybrook bank building. It had vines and flowers and words, plus marble pillars and beautiful old revolving doors trimmed in brass. As the sun shone on the building, it cast really cool shadows over the carvings. I shot photo after photo of the bank, going through one whole roll of film and starting on a second. At one point, I noticed Mary Anne taking pictures of me taking pictures. She seemed to think that what I was doing looked funny. I just ignored her.

  By then, I wasn’t even thinking of Dawn or our project anymore. Instead, I had become obsessed with “capturing the essence” of that building, just as if it were a person I was taking a portrait of. I was even hatching a whole new project that I couldn’t wait to present to Mr. Geist: a portfolio of building portraits. I knew he’d love it.

  I had forgotten about Mary Anne and the kids until suddenly I felt a tug at my sleeve. “Claudia!” said Buddy. “What are you doing? Come on.”

  “Yeah, come on,” said Charlotte. “We already used up all our film. And we took much more interesting pictures than you’re taking.” She glanced at the bank. “I mean, that’s just a boring old building.”

  I tried to explain why the building fascinated me, but Mary Anne and the kids kept teasing me. Finally, Mary Anne pointed out that we needed to break for lunch soon if we were going to be at the train station in time to meet Stacey’s train. I took one last picture of the bank, and we headed for lunch at the Rosebud Café.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, we all met up in my room to talk about how the day had worked out. Shannon and Kristy reported that they’d each taken some great shots at the picnic, and Jessi and Mal were thrilled about their pictures of the triplets’ haircuts. Mary Anne told everybody about my obsession with the bank, and they teased me, but I didn’t let it bother me. I just said to them, “Wait and see. Those pictures are going to turn out great!”

  Little did we know (I love that phrase!) that those pictures would turn out to be very, very important.

  “Baby, baby, angel of mine, my heart is in your hands —” Stacey and I waltzed around my room together, crooning along with the radio. When the song ended, we fell onto my bed, giggling.

  “I adore that song,” I said.

  “Me, too,” said Stacey. “It reminds me of Robert.”

  “Oh, Robert, Robert, Robert,” I said, grabbing a pillow and bopping her with it. We giggled some more.

  “Order!” said Kristy, suddenly.

  “Is it five-thirty already?” I asked. I glanced at the clock on my night table. Sure enough, it was time for our BSC meeting. It was a Wednesday, three days after we’d done all that picture-taking, and my friends were gathered in my room for our meeting. I still hadn’t had a chance to develop the photos I’d taken on Sunday, mostly because I’d been working on my portrait series. The pictures of my friends were almost ready, and I could hardly wait.

  Kristy reached over and snapped the radio off.

  “No!” I cried, snapping it back on. “You can’t do that!”

  “Why not?” she asked. “It’s time for our meeting.”

  “I know,” I said. “But WSTO is playing a whole hour of Billy Blue right now. There’s no way I’m missing that.”

  “Who’s Billy Blue?” asked Kristy.

  “WHO’S BILLY BLUE?” Stacey and I shouted together.

  “Kristy, I don’t believe you,” Stacey said. “Sometimes I think you live under a rock or something. Billy Blue is only the best singer since — since —”

  “We’re wasting time here,” said Kristy impatiently. “How about this? We can leave the radio on, but you’ll have to turn it down.”

  “Cool,” I said. I reached over and inched the volume control down, ju
st the tiniest bit.

  “Lower,” said Kristy, giving me a Look.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, turning it way down. I could still hear Billy Blue, but just barely. Still, it was better than nothing. Right then he was singing another song I love, called “Your Sweet Kiss.” Stacey and I grinned at each other as we mouthed the words silently. Kristy pretended to ignore us.

  “Any new business?” she asked.

  Nobody said anything. Stacey and I started to sing very softly along with Billy. Kristy reached over as if to turn the radio off again, and we broke off in mid-song. “Sorry! Sorry!” I said. “We’ll stop, I promise.”

  Kristy just gave me another Look and turned to ask Stacey about the state of the treasury. “My Kid-Kit is almost due for some new stickers and markers,” she said. “Do we have enough money?”

  “Sure,” said Stacey, instantly serious. She always knows exactly — and I mean to the last penny — how much is in the Treasury. “I need some stickers, too.”

  “We should plan a shopping trip,” said Mary Anne. “I’m all out of those little coloring books, and Suzi Barrett has a fit if I show up without one.”

  “Do you have a job with them soon?” asked Shannon.

  “With the Barretts and the DeWitts,” said Mary Anne. “Kristy and I are sitting for both families together next week.”

  “Whoa!” said Jessi. “That should be a challenge.”

  Just then, Billy Blue stopped singing, and this time Kristy wasn’t responsible. “We interrupt this program for a special bulletin,” I heard an announcer say. I held up my hand. “Hey, listen, you guys!” I said.

  “This is exactly why I don’t want the radio playing during —” Kristy began, but Stacey shushed her. She had just heard the same thing I had heard — a mention of the Stoneybrook Bank.