Dawn and Whitney, Friends Forever

  Mary Anne is Kristy’s oldest and best friend, a classic case of opposites attracting, at least personality-wise. Mary Anne and Kristy sort of look alike — they’re both short and have brown hair and are pretty conservative dressers — but Mary Anne is quiet and very shy and sensitive, while Kristy is outspoken and opinionated and occasionally thick-skinned. I’ve almost never seen Kristy cry, but it doesn’t take much to bring tears to Mary Anne’s eyes. Her boyfriend, Logan, knows to be prepared when they go to movies that have the least possibility of being sad.

  Mary Anne is also my best friend in Stoneybrook and my stepsister, and I think she is a super excellent friend and sister, especially sister. After her mother died, her father raised her very strictly (he wanted to be sure he did things right) and I think that’s one of the reasons she is such a terrific sister. She’d never had a brother or sister or a mom before. So when our parents got married and we made up a whole new family, it was a whole new, special thing for Mary Anne in even more ways than it was for me.

  Anyway, I miss her patience and the way she listens and how supportive she is, and how stubborn she can be about something she believes in. I know Mary Anne misses me, too, and we try to stay in close touch.

  I like to imagine her at the meetings, keeping the record book — and keeping Kristy and the other BSC members in line!

  Claudia? Well, she’s one of the original members of the BSC and the only member with her own phone line, which is the reason the meetings are at her house in her room. (That and quick access to junk food!) Claud is an artist and someday she’s going to be world-famous. But right now she does her art, keeps her look super-cool and uniquely Claudia-esque (she’s Japanese-American, with dark eyes and long black hair), and tries not to be bothered by the fact that school work is mostly a mystery to her. Claudia has a genius older sister who thrives on school, but maybe Claudia’s beginning to realize, deep down, that she’s a genius too, in her own way — an artistic one.

  Stacey McGill is Claud’s best friend and the BSC treasurer. She was born and raised in New York City, which gives her a distinct “city” style. She moved to Stoneybrook with her parents, moved back to NYC with her parents, then moved to Stoneybrook again with her mom after her parents got divorced. Stacey’s a math whiz. She’s got long blonde hair (darker than mine), is an only child (like Mary Anne) and, like me, watches what she eats. But Stacey does it because she really has to. She has diabetes, which means her blood sugar level can go haywire. She has to be very careful with her diet and inject herself every day with insulin.

  Jessica Ramsey and Mallory Pike are sixth-graders and junior club members, best friends, and talented, too. Jessi is a ballerina who is already taking special classes, while Mallory writes and illustrates her own stories. Both Jessi and Mallory are the oldest in their families. Jessi is the oldest of three kids, and Mal is the oldest of eight, which means she came to the BSC with plenty of experience. In fact, her family was and is one of the BSC’s biggest clients. Mallory has pale white skin with freckles, red hair, glasses, and braces. Jessi has medium brown skin, brown eyes, and loooong legs. Mal and Jessi are crazy about horses.

  Logan, Mary Anne’s boyfriend, is the other associate member (actually, the only one, now that I’m in California and Shannon is filling in for me). He doesn’t attend meetings all that often, but he takes occasional jobs when we can’t handle them all. Shannon Kilbourne, who has my job now, used to be an associate member, too. She’s Kristy’s neighbor and the only BSC member who goes to a private school, Stoneybrook Day School. She’s a bit like Kristy — involved in everything, and organized enough to make it look easy.

  A baby-sitters convention. Would it ever happen? And what would it be like?

  The phone beeped and we stopped laughing, and Sunny, who was closest to the phone, picked it up. “We Love Kids Club,” she said.

  And that was how our meetings usually came to order.

  It was the day after Sunny had slept over at my house and we were at a regular meeting of the We ♥ Kids Club.

  I looked around the room at my fellow club members. We are all blonde: I’m the palest, with white-blonde hair. Sunny’s a strawberry blonde. Maggie’s got short golden blonde hair (with purple raccoon streaks over each ear today, to match the long tail of blonde hair braided with purple string hanging down her back). And Jill has dark golden hair.

  We’re all health food fans, too. But that doesn’t mean we don’t eat snacks at our meetings, too. Our snacks just tend toward the fruits and nuts and yogurt variety instead of potato chips and brownies and sugar-frosted cereal (yes, Claudia’s been known to eat sugar-frosted cereal right out of the box).

  Sunny put her hand over the receiver and announced the job. We all looked at each other, and Maggie said, “I can do it. I think.”

  Jill pulled out the record book from under a stack of books on Sunny’s desk and tossed it across the room to Maggie, who flipped through. She ran her finger down the page.

  “Yup, no prob,” said Maggie, scrawling her name and the time on the date.

  Sunny nodded and got back on the phone to confirm.

  See? Much more casual than the BSC.

  Maggie traded the record book for our version of the club notebook — our own personal health-food cookbook. “I know there was a recipe for tofu-vegetable skewers in here somewhere,” she muttered.

  “A cookout?” asked Sunny, suddenly focusing. (Food is our favorite shared interest).

  “Yeah.” Maggie shrugged. “My dad has some people coming in from Hollywood and he’s doing this cookout thing.” She wrinkled her nose. “I think snails are involved.” We all shrieked and began making gross suggestions as Maggie flipped through the book.

  Maggie wasn’t kidding — about the snails or Hollywood. Her father is in the movie business and stars go in and out of her house. And she lives in a mansion, too. It’s California-style, with a landscaped pool (natural shape, not square), a screening room, a gym, and dozens and dozens of rooms. Her kitchen is so big you could Rollerblade in it.

  But to Maggie, it isn’t a big deal. It’s not that she’s trying to be super-cool and pretend it doesn’t matter. It’s just that she’s used to it, I guess.

  Maggie keeps her hair short and punkish (as you might have guessed from my description of it) with clothes to match, like a favorite leather bomber jacket that she wears rain, shine, hot, cold. She’d brought it with her today, over a black cropped tank top, leopard leggings, and lace-up black boots.

  Jill reached over and pointed. “You just passed the recipe, Mag.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Jill smiled. “Snails,” she said. “Ugh.” And then, “Poor snails …”

  She was only half kidding. Jill is probably the most serious of us, and she’s sensitive in ways that remind me of Mary Anne sometimes. Jill lives with her mom and older sister Liz in the hills at the edge of town, along with three huge boxers: Spike, Shakespeare, and Smee. She’s the only one of us who doesn’t live in the neighborhood and she usually takes a bus to meetings. Like the rest of us, Jill likes to surf. And she is seriously good at it, too.

  The phone rang again and Jill picked it up. “We Love Kids Club,” she said. The little smile on her face turned into a serious expression as she listened. “Oh,” she said. “Mmm. Well, we need to check our schedule book. We’ll call you right back.”

  We all looked at Jill in surprise as she wrote down the caller’s name and phone number and hung up the phone.

  “Whoa,” said Sunny. “What was that all about?”

  “A new client. Mr. Cater,” Jill said.

  “New clients are good,” said Maggie encouragingly. “What’s the prob? A problem child? We can handle it.”

  “No. No, not a problem child.” Jill looked around and said, “His daughter’s name is Whitney. Mr. Cater wants a sitter/companion for her for the next few weeks.”

  “A long-term job. That’s good.” Sunny leaned over and fished for the record book.

&
nbsp; “She’s twelve,” said Jill.

  That stopped us.

  “Twelve?” I asked. “She’s almost our age!”

  “She’s been attending a special school with a summer program, but she’s leaving the summer program because she’s about to be switched out of her old school and into the public school system. Her parents have found a day camp for Whitney and they’re going to take off alternate mornings for the next few weeks until the camp begins. But they need a sitter for the afternoons.”

  Jill paused, then added, “Whitney has Down syndrome.”

  There was a little silence, then Maggie said, “Like Corky, right? In that TV show.”

  “Yeah,” said Jill.

  “Okay,” said Sunny. “It’s a long job. Does anybody want to take on the whole thing, every afternoon? Or do we want to split it up?”

  “I’ll take it,” I said. “Unless someone else …?”

  Maggie said, “I would, but I can’t do the whole thing. Having just one person on the job might be easier. But I’d like to be counted as your substitute if you can’t make it someday or something.”

  “Done deal,” said Sunny, handing the record book to me.

  I took it and Jill handed me the phone number and Mr. Cater’s name.

  I called Mr. Cater back at his office.

  “Good,” he said. “Let me write that down in my book. Dawn Schafer.” He gave me the details and concluded. “Whitney will be pleased, I think. We’ve decided to tell her you’re a new friend, rather than a baby-sitter. She feels she doesn’t need a baby-sitter, especially now that she’s graduating to public school.”

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”

  I hung up the phone, intrigued and pleased with my new job and with the prospect of steady work for several weeks to come.

  The Caters didn’t live far from our house, so I walked there the first afternoon I was supposed to baby-sit for Whitney.

  Baby-sit? No, it wasn’t exactly the right word. I had talked to both Mr. and Mrs. Cater several times since taking the job and although I hadn’t actually met them, I felt as if I knew them, and Whitney, too.

  I admit, I had been a little worried at first, even though the job had intrigued me. I had never met anyone with Down syndrome before and I wasn’t sure quite what to expect. I didn’t think it would be the same as the baby-sitting job Kristy had had, back in Stoneybrook, with an autistic girl named Susan, who never spoke or even seemed to pay attention to what was going on around her. (Although she could play just about any piece of music on the piano after hearing it only once.)

  No one knows why children with Down syndrome are born the way they are according to Mr. Cater.

  “It’s a congenital defect,” he said. “That means it develops before birth. It’s caused by a chromosome abnormality, the appearance of a certain chromosome three times instead of twice in some or all of the cells. No one knows why it happens.”

  “Oh,” I said. At that point, I didn’t understand much more than I had before.

  Mr. Cater went on. “Practically speaking, it means that Whitney has learning disabilities. She doesn’t have any extreme manifestations of physical traits commonly associated with Down syndrome, such as impaired growth or coordination, or thank God, a heart condition. It’s one of the reasons we feel that Whitney will be able to mainstream fairly easily, relatively speaking. Of course, she’ll continue to take some special courses, and to work with specialists, like her speech therapist.”

  “Oh,” I said again. I understood a little more of what Mr. Cater had said this time, but I didn’t know how to ask him what I really wanted to find out: What was Whitney like?

  I smiled as I walked down the street, remembering what had happened next. Mr. Cater had cleared his throat and said, “Perhaps you should speak to Annette. My wife. I’ll have her call you when she gets home from work.”

  Mrs. Cater had called soon after. What she told me had been less technical and more specific.

  “Whitney is so excited about going to a new school,” she’d said, right away. “And so excited about meeting a new friend.”

  “About that. The new friend story,” I’d said. “Are you sure that’s what you want to tell her?” Somehow, the idea made me uncomfortable. I’d never lied to anyone I’d sat with before.

  “That’s what we have told her. That you are a new friend. As my husband may have explained to you, Whitney’s pride would be hurt if we told her we’d hired a baby-sitter. After all, she is twelve years old!” Mrs. Cater laughed.

  “I can understand that,” I said, remembering how hard some of us (such as Mary Anne) had worked to convince our parents that we weren’t little kids anymore, that we could make decisions on our own and handle more grown-up responsibility. But even though I could understand, I wanted to say more. However, Mrs. Cater didn’t give me a chance.

  “Good,” she said emphatically. “Anyway, Whitney is easygoing. She likes to laugh. She’s a good listener. She’s very sympathetic and sensitive to others’ moods. She’s friendly and outgoing. I don’t think you’ll find her too different from any of your other baby-sitting charges, ultimately.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Sounds great.”

  We had worked out the details of my first visit, and hung up.

  Ooops! I’d been so busy thinking that I’d almost walked right past the Caters’ house. I backtracked a few steps, hoping no one was watching, and headed for the front door. The Caters opened the door almost as soon as I’d knocked.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m Dawn Schafer from the We Love Kids Club.”

  “Of course,” said the woman. “I’m Annette Cater and this is my husband, James.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Cater. Hello, Mr. Cater.”

  “Come in,” said Mrs. Cater, stepping back.

  I stepped in, then followed the Caters down a broad hall to a large sunny room at the back of the house.

  “Whitney is folding her laundry and putting it away,” explained Mrs. Cater. “She’ll be here in a minute. I told her it was important to have a clean room for her guest.”

  “Oh.” I said, trying to remember the last time I’d cleaned up my room when Sunny or anyone had come over.

  “I’m going in to my office this afternoon,” said Mrs. Cater. “James is here on his lunch hour, so we’ll both be leaving shortly. There is a list over by the phone of our office numbers, emergency numbers, and neighbors’ names and numbers if anything should come up.”

  “Great,” I said. We baby-sitters love it when parents are prepared like that. Surprisingly, not all parents always are. I was about to ask if Whitney had any rules I should know about, or any special foods she should or shouldn’t eat, allergies or medications I should know about, but Mr. Cater beat me to it.

  “Whitney is prone to ear infections,” he said. “She has to wear special earplugs when she goes swimming and put drops in before and after. Other than that, she has no allergies or anything that you need to worry about.” He paused, then smiled. “Except she does have a sweet tooth.”

  I was about to ask if Whitney had any games or special things she liked to do, but Mrs. Cater looked past me toward the door and said brightly, “Whitney. Here’s Dawn. She’s come to keep you company this afternoon while we’re at work.”

  I stood up and turned around to see a short, somewhat stocky girl standing in the door of the room. She had straight brown hair and brown eyes that seemed to slant slightly at the corners. Her face was round and she had a short nose. As she stood there looking at me, she didn’t change expression at all.

  I smiled. “Hi, Whitney.”

  Whitney’s face immediately broke into a wide grin and she said, “Hi, Dawn! That’s a pretty name.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Whitney’s voice was low, almost hoarse, and she spoke carefully.

  Whitney came toward me and held out her hand. “How do you do?” she asked.

  Smiling inwardly at this lesson in manners that Whitney was so obviously practi
cing, I took her hand. “Fine, thank you. How are you?”

  “Fine, thank you,” said Whitney. Then she burst out, “I want earrings, too.”

  I could tell the Caters had heard that before. “When the right time comes, dear,” said Mr. Cater, standing up. He bent to kiss the top of Whitney’s head. “Your mother and I are going to work while Dawn stays here. We’ll be back at six.”

  “Good-bye,” said Whitney. She was staring intently at my ears. Then she said triumphantly, “You have four earrings, Dawn. I want four earrings.”

  “I’m thirteen,” I said quickly. “Maybe when you’re my age, you can get earrings.”

  Mrs. Cater smiled and patted her daughter’s shoulder. “See you in a little while, Whitney. There’s juice in the refrigerator if you want something to drink, Dawn. And help yourself to whatever you want in the kitchen. But don’t let Whitney spoil her appetite for dinner.”

  I was worried for a moment that Mrs. Cater’s instructions would sound too much like she was leaving me in charge, like a baby-sitter, but Whitney didn’t seem to notice. She looked up at her parents and said, “Good-bye, Mom. Good-bye, Dad.”

  A few minutes later, the Caters were gone.

  “What a beautiful day,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

  In answer, Whitney caught my hand and pulled me out into the hall.

  “Where are we going, Whitney?” I asked.

  “To my room,” explained Whitney. “It’s clean.”

  “That’s great. I’m not so good about cleaning up my room. But if I’m bad, you should see my brother Jeff! The messes he makes are awesome. My father just closes the door sometimes and says as long as he can’t smell anything, he’s assuming it’s okay.”

  Whitney nodded, almost absently, and flung the door of her room open proudly. “Look!” she said.

  I wasn’t sure what I expected to see, but it was a typical girl’s room, decorated in green and white and soft peach. A big canopy bed stood in the middle of the room with a patchwork quilt across the foot. A wide desk with a chair was by the window, and next to it was a comfortable looking armchair. Bookshelves lined one wall and on the other wall was a big poster of seals cavorting in the ocean.