Claudia and the Little Liar

  “Hmmm.” I considered. “Ring-Dings … let me think.” In a second I remembered, reached behind my dresser, and handed a box to her.

  Abby opened it. “Thanks. It’s just what I need to build up my strength for another hard half hour of alternating.”

  She was joking — something she does a lot. Her joke referred to the fact that she’s our alternate officer. This means that she has to know how to do every job so that if someone is absent, she can take over. Most of the time, she doesn’t have anything to do, since we’re seldom absent. She’s such a take-charge person that I think it frustrates her not to have a more active office. But instead of acting put out, she jokes about it.

  Abby grew up on Long Island, in New York State. She recently moved into a big house with her mother and her twin sister, Anna. (Their father was killed in a car accident a few years ago.)

  It’s easy to tell Anna from Abby, even though they’re identical twins. Abby wears her curly, dark hair long, while Anna’s is short. They both need glasses, but they have different frames, and Abby tends to wear her contact lenses more than Anna does. Their energy styles are also different. Abby is always bouncing around, while Anna is more calm.

  Abby is a sports person. She plays soccer and runs. Anna is a talented violinist who takes her playing very seriously.

  They both have some health problems, but they’re also different. Abby has lots of allergies. She says life makes her sneeze. Plus she has asthma and keeps an inhaler with her in case of an attack.

  Anna was recently diagnosed as having scoliosis, which is a curvature of the spine. She’ll have to wear a brace for the next few years in order to straighten out her spine. It’s fitted especially to her body and worn under clothes, so you hardly notice it.

  Anna and Abby rely on each other a lot since their mother works long hours as an executive editor for a big publishing company in New York. Often she’s not home on weekends or for dinner because her job demands so much time. It’s a good thing that Abby and Anna have each other.

  “Why don’t you cut it a little close, Mary Anne,” Abby teased as Mary Anne ran into the room at exactly five-thirty. (Kristy insists we all be on time. Sometimes getting here by exactly five-thirty becomes a little stressful.)

  “I wasn’t worried,” Mary Anne replied. “I have the walk from my house to Claudia’s timed to the minute.”

  I knew Mary Anne was kidding, but I almost believed her about having timed the trip to my house. Being organized is one of her strong points. As club secretary she’s in charge of our record book and has never made a mistake in it. This is a huge job.

  When a client calls, the person nearest to the phone picks it up and takes down the client’s request and information. Then she says she’ll call right back and hangs up. From there, Mary Anne looks in the record book to see who’s free to take the job.

  Mary Anne has recorded everyone’s schedule in the book. She knows when I have an art class and when Stacey is going to visit her father. If Kristy has a Krushers game or if Abby has an appointment with her allergist — it’s recorded in the record book. Sometimes Mary Anne knows our schedules better than we do!

  Once Mary Anne has figured out who is free to take the job, she offers it to one of us, based on how recently we’ve worked. She’s always super-fair and no one ever has a complaint.

  Mary Anne is not only fair, she’s also extremely nice. Nice may sound boring, but I don’t mean it that way, because she’s not boring. She’s a great listener and really cares about people. When someone has a problem, Mary Anne is so sensitive she sometimes bursts into tears. It’s as if she shares the other person’s pain.

  I sometimes wonder if this quality comes from the fact that Mary Anne herself has known some hard times. Her mother died when Mary Anne was a baby. Soon after, Mary Anne was sent to live with her grandparents. They were very caring, but the time came when her father felt he was able to deal with raising her on his own. Then there was a legal fight over who should raise her. In the end, her father won.

  He’s been a great father but not an easy one. I remember when we were all younger here on Bradford Court (which is the name of the street where Kristy, Mary Anne, and I grew up). Mary Anne’s father, Richard, had rules for everything. I guess it was his way of trying to be a good parent. He was so strict that he would have driven me crazy. By the time we were in the seventh grade, Mary Anne still looked like a little kid, with her hair in braids. She even had to wear these awful pleated skirts with white blouses.

  Then an unexpected thing happened. Mary Anne became friendly with Dawn. Although they looked very different they were soul mates and quickly became best friends.

  One day they browsed through Dawn’s mother’s high school yearbook and discovered that their parents were once sweethearts. Sharon, Dawn’s mom, was originally from Stoneybrook but had gone to college in California and stayed there. Now, though, she was divorced from Dawn’s dad and had come back to Stoneybrook, along with Dawn and Dawn’s younger brother, Jeff.

  Mary Anne and Dawn hatched a plan to get their parents back together. And it worked. Mary Anne and Dawn became stepsisters.

  Unfortunately, Jeff had already returned to California. Mary Anne and Richard moved too, away from Bradford Court and into Dawn and Sharon’s old farmhouse on Burnt Hill Road. Some time later, Dawn decided she wanted to return to California to live with her brother, her father, and her father’s new wife. We were all sad (Mary Anne especially) that Dawn was leaving. Even though she comes back for vacations and is an honorary member of the BSC, it’s not the same as when she was here all the time.

  Luckily, Dawn didn’t leave Mary Anne entirely alone. She has us, and she also has a boyfriend, Logan Bruno. He’s also an associate member of the club. That means he doesn’t come to meetings but we call him if we have more jobs than we can handle. If he’s free — meaning if he’s not busy with one of the many teams he’s on — he’ll take the job.

  We have one other associate member. Her name is Shannon Kilbourne and she lives across the street from Kristy. Shannon attends Stoneybrook Day, a private school. The good thing about that is that if there’s a school function we all want to go to, Shannon won’t be involved in it and might be free to take a job.

  The phone rang. It was one of our regular customers, Mrs. Braddock, wanting a sitter for Friday night. Mary Anne checked her book. “You’re the only one free, Claudia,” she informed me. “Want it?”

  “Sure,” I agreed. “Matt and Haley are always fun.”

  “Great,” Mary Anne said as she wrote my name in the record book. When she was done writing, she glanced at Jessi. “Are you okay?” she asked softly.

  I saw why she was concerned. Jessi was sitting on the rug, her chin propped on her hand, keeping quiet and looking glum. If anyone could understand how it felt to lose a best friend, Mary Anne could. That’s exactly what had happened to Jessi. As I mentioned, her best friend, Mallory, had departed for Riverbend, a private boarding school in Massachusetts. As with Dawn, she’d remain an honorary member, but it wouldn’t be the same.

  “Club meetings are the hardest,” Jessi said. “Otherwise I’m too busy to feel very lonely.”

  Jessi is truly a busy person. She’s a talented ballet student who takes classes in Stamford, the closest city to Stoneybrook. Because Jessi is eleven, she’s a junior officer, which means she takes only afternoon jobs during the week, or evening jobs for her own family.

  “Hey, Claud, these uniforms are going to look great,” Kristy said, picking up one of the shirts from the bed. “I love that they’re so simple and sporty.”

  “Thanks,” I said, nodding. It was almost as if she knew I was planning a tie-dye waistband and was telling me not to do it.

  “What happened to this one?” Abby asked, picking up the shirt Josh had more or less mangled.

  “Oh,” I replied with a smile, “Josh has been helping me. Sometimes his help is not so helpful.”

  “Oh, but it’s so cute of him to
try,” Mary Anne said.

  “He’s really adorable,” Jessi added.

  I smiled at them, appreciating their praise. But they made it sound as if Josh were a puppy instead of a guy. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

  It’s not far to the Braddocks’ house from mine. On Friday I arrived right after our BSC meeting, at 6:05. (The Kristy influence is wearing off on me. I’m starting to tell time in exact minutes.)

  Seven-year-old Matt peeked out the front window and then opened the door for me. With a quick wave of his hand, he shaped his fingers into the American Sign Language symbol for “Hi,” and I returned it. Matt attends the School for the Deaf in Stamford. He’s been profoundly deaf since birth.

  Because we sit for him, everyone in the BSC has learned a little sign language. Jessi knows more than the rest of us because when Mrs. Braddock first began using us as sitters she taught Jessi some signs and Jessi was fascinated and wanted to learn more.

  I probably know the least since I’m so bad with vocabulary. But nine-year-old Haley Braddock is a whiz at sign language and she’s usually willing to interpret for me.

  “Hi, Claudia,” Haley greeted me as she came bouncing down the stairs.

  Mrs. Braddock came in from the kitchen. “Oh, great, Claudia, you’re here. How are you?”

  “Fine.” I turned to Haley. “I’ve been working on the uniforms for your team.”

  “Awesome!” she cried. Haley was one of the girls in the GSBA.

  “Would you like a blue waistband or a plain one?” I asked.

  “Whatever,” she said with a shrug. Not much help there.

  Mrs. Braddock called up the stairs to her husband, telling him I’d arrived. Then she went to the front hall closet for her jacket. “We’ll just be at the elementary school for a meeting of the spring dance committee. We shouldn’t be much past nine at the latest,” she told me. She pulled on her jacket as Mr. Braddock came downstairs and took his from the closet.

  “Oh, and Haley,” Mrs. Braddock said, pulling open the front door, “make sure you do your homework.”

  “But Mom, it’s Friday!” Haley protested. “I have all weekend.”

  “We talked about this, Haley,” Mr. Braddock said firmly. “Remember, we agreed to get homework out of the way on Friday so we don’t have any more Sunday night panics.”

  “Oh, all right,” Haley grumbled.

  “No TV until she does it,” Mrs. Braddock told me.

  “Okay,” I agreed. I hated having to enforce a tough rule, but I was there to do what the Braddocks asked.

  Almost the very moment they left, Haley snapped on the TV. She plunked herself down on the living room sofa next to Matt and began to watch. “Sorry, Haley,” I said, “but you have to do your homework.”

  “You’re not going to really make me, are you?” she asked.

  “I don’t have any choice.”

  “Sure you do. You can let me watch TV for a while, and then I’ll do my homework.”

  I hated this kind of argument. It made me feel like some kind of authority figure, and that’s not a position I like being in. I’d rather be friendly and make sure the kids don’t get themselves into trouble. But I was stuck with an authority role and I had to be responsible.

  “Haley,” I insisted, “please do your homework.”

  She twisted her face into an expression combining exasperation and disgust. “I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” she grumbled, dragging herself up the stairs to her room.

  As I sighed, Matt tapped my shoulder. He waved me to follow him to the TV and held up a new video game he’d gotten. It had just come out and had amazing graphics. He pointed back and forth between himself and me. I understood that he wanted to show me how to play.

  I nodded and smiled, taking a seat on the floor in front of the TV. I watched as Matt showed off his skills at driving his video cart around sharp turns and over hazards. Then I struggled to learn what to do as he patiently showed me how to maneuver the controls. For about an hour it was wipeout city, I’m afraid.

  After a particularly awful crash, I decided I needed a break. Handing the controls to Matt, I signaled that I’d be right back and strolled into the kitchen for some soda.

  On my way to the refrigerator, I noticed that one of the lights on the Braddocks’ wall phone was lit. That indicated that someone was talking on one of their two phone lines. That someone could only be Haley.

  It was possible she was only making a quick homework-related call. It was also possible that she’d been chatting on the phone from the minute she went upstairs. I figured I’d better find out which it was.

  Maybe it was sneaky, but I stood outside her door for a moment before knocking. It told me all I needed to know.

  “Can you believe it, Vanessa?” I heard her say. “I can’t wait until the movie opens. It stars all three of those guys, and they sing. I didn’t even know they had a band. Have you ever heard them sing? Me neither!”

  This didn’t sound like a homework conversation. It sounded like nattering with her best friend, Vanessa Pike.

  I knocked on the door. Haley was suddenly silent. “Come … come in,” she said in an unsteady voice.

  When I stepped inside, I found Haley sitting cross-legged on the end of her bed, holding a cordless phone to her ear. Upon seeing me, she changed her casual tone to one of serious formality. “That equation sounds right,” she said into the phone. “Thanks for your help on this math. I couldn’t have done it without you, Vanessa.” She listened as Vanessa spoke. “Oh, Claudia is here now, so I’ll have to go.”

  I tried not to smile. I knew the “Claudia is here” part was to explain why she’d switched gears so abruptly.

  She clicked off the cordless phone and set it beside her on the bed. “Vanessa was helping me with math,” she said. One glance around her room told me there wasn’t a math text or notebook in sight. I didn’t want to make a huge deal over it, though.

  “What homework have you got?” I asked.

  “Now that the math is done,” she said, going to her desk on which sat a computer, “all I have to do is write my monthly book report.”

  “Do you need help?” I offered.

  She shook her head. “No. I started it before I called Vanessa. I only have to write a few more sentences.”

  “Okay. Let me see it when you’re done.”

  “Mom didn’t say you had to check my homework,” Haley protested.

  “I know, but I have to be sure it’s done,” I explained.

  She pouted and folded her arms. “Why are you taking this so seriously, Claudia?”

  This was a new tone of voice for Haley. It was more grown-up — in an unpleasant sort of way.

  “Your mother asked me to make sure you did your homework,” I said. “Matt and I aren’t even watching TV,” I added. “We’re playing a video game. When you’re done, we’ll turn on the TV and we can all watch it together.”

  Back downstairs, I played the video game with Matt for another fifteen minutes. Then Haley appeared with several papers in her hand. “My report,” she announced, handing the papers to me.

  “The Great Brain,” I said, reading the title of the book she’d reported on. Flipping through, I saw the report was neatly typed. The little I read seemed sensible and even enthusiastic. “Looks good to me,” I said, handing it back to her. “That’s all you have to do?”

  “That’s all,” she replied, picking up the TV remote control. “Now can we watch TV?” She stepped in front of Matt and signed to him. I assumed she was asking him the same thing.

  He made a face and shook his head. Obviously he wasn’t done playing his video game.

  She signed some more and his expression brightened. He snapped off the video game and turned on the TV. “Matt almost forgot that his favorite movie is on tonight,” Haley explained.

  The three of us settled in on the couch to watch. The movie was nearly over when the Braddocks returned home. “Well, it looks like everything is calm en
ough here,” Mr. Braddock commented as he pulled off his jacket and hung it up in the hall closet.

  “Is your homework done?” Mrs. Braddock asked Haley.

  “Yup,” she replied, her eyes still on the TV.

  “Her report on The Great Brain is right over there on the table,” I added.

  Haley turned from the TV and looked at me sharply.

  Mrs. Braddock frowned.

  I was confused.

  “Haley, this isn’t the same report on The Great Brain that you did last month … is it?” Mrs. Braddock asked sternly.

  Uh-oh. From the trapped look on Haley’s face, I suddenly knew what had happened. Haley had simply printed out last month’s report, figuring she’d fool me and then watch TV.

  “Haley! How could you do such a deceitful thing?” Mrs. Braddock scolded.

  “I’ll do the report,” Haley insisted huffily. “I just didn’t want to do it tonight.”

  Mr. Braddock returned from hanging up his coat. “Haley,” he said in a firm “Dad” voice. “Go upstairs and do your report right now.”

  “Thanks a lot, Claudia,” Haley snapped at me, her arms folded angrily. “If you hadn’t turned me in, everything would have been fine.”

  “That’s enough, Haley,” Mrs. Braddock warned her. “Go to your room.”

  As Haley stormed off, Mrs. Braddock turned to me, wearing an apologetic expression. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her lately.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, standing up. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize about the report.”

  “There was no way for you to know,” Mrs. Braddock assured me. “This is entirely Haley’s fault.”

  I knew that was true, but I wondered if Haley saw it that way. Somehow, I strongly suspected she didn’t.

  Stacey wasn’t actually baby-sitting that Saturday afternoon. At least she wasn’t being paid for it. Kristy had volunteered her to help out with the girls’ basketball team that afternoon in the Stoneybrook Elementary School gym.