Abby's Twin

  “Why are you going to an orthopedist?” Stacey asked, sitting forward on Claudia’s bed.

  I’d been so confused by the note I hadn’t even told my friends about it. Now, two days later, I felt calmer and I explained that Anna and I had received notes. “Did anyone else get one?” I asked.

  My friends glanced at one another as they shook their heads. I was glad for them, but a little disappointed, too. I wanted to think that a lot of kids had received the notes. If that were so, it would mean that the school was just being super cautious and there wasn’t really anything to worry about.

  Obviously, though, that wasn’t the case.

  “Well,” I said with a sigh, “Anna and I did, so we have to check it out.”

  “Anna, too, huh,” said Jessi.

  “Anna, too,” I said.

  “Are you scared?” Mallory asked.

  “Nah,” I lied. I saw concern coupled with disbelief in Mal’s eyes and realized there was no point in putting up a falsely brave front. These were my friends, after all. “A little, maybe,” I admitted.

  “I would be, too,” Mal said sympathetically.

  “I knew a girl at my school in the city who had scoliosis,” Stacey said. “It didn’t seem like a big deal for her.”

  “Did she wear a brace?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Couldn’t you tell?” I asked incredulously.

  “Not really.”

  “She probably didn’t have one, then,” I said. How could a person wear a brace without anyone being able to tell? “Maybe she had surgery instead,” I suggested glumly.

  “Surgery!” Kristy cried. “What do you mean, surgery?”

  “I just know that sometimes they treat scoliosis with surgery,” I said. Mom, Anna, and I looked up scoliosis in the encyclopedia and that’s what it had said.

  “You probably won’t need it,” Mary Anne offered hopefully. “Not everyone with scoliosis has surgery.”

  I could see by the expressions on their faces that my friends were becoming worried. I didn’t want to bring everyone down, so I forced a smile. “I’m sure it will all turn out okay,” I said as cheerfully as I could.

  The phone rang at that moment. Claudia answered. It was Mrs. Prezzioso needing a baby-sitter for Monday afternoon.

  “Abby’s not available,” Mary Anne said as she wrote my orthopedist appointment into the record book. “Let’s see who is.”

  After Kristy accepted the Prezzioso job, the phone rang again almost immediately. Mrs. Hill needed someone to sit for Norman and Sara.

  I was glad for the break. It gave me the chance to calm myself. After Claudia said yes to the job with the Hills, there was a moment of quiet. “Do you want to talk some more?” Kristy asked me. “Or does it just upset you?”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I might as well face the facts.”

  “But you don’t really have all the facts yet,” Claudia pointed out.

  “True,” I admitted. “I’ll tell you all more after we see the doctor on Monday.”

  “Okay, but if you need to … you know … talk, we’re here,” Stacey said.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “Any other business?” Kristy asked. No one said anything. “I have some,” she said. “Here’s the idea I didn’t have time to talk about at the last meeting. I’ve been noticing that the kids I’ve been sitting for seem really bored lately. Winter is just dragging on and on. What would you think of having a winter carnival?”

  We all turned our heads toward the window, where fat snowflakes drifted past. So far it had been a very snowy winter and it wasn’t showing any signs of stopping.

  “What would we do at a winter carnival?” Jessi asked.

  “We could do lots of stuff — winter stuff,” Kristy said enthusiastically.

  “Like have a snow sculpture contest?” Claudia suggested, her eyes brightening at the idea.

  “Sure, and sled races,” Kristy agreed.

  “We could sell hot chocolate,” Mallory added.

  “I once saw a snowshoeing race in Central Park,” Stacey said. “It was so funny.”

  Kristy smiled and nodded. “It would give everybody a lift, especially the kids. They really need it.”

  “I really need it,” I said. “I’d love to do anything to take my mind off my curved spine. Count me in.”

  “Great,” Kristy said.

  “Count Anna in, too,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” Kristy asked.

  “Sure I’m sure. She needs something to take her mind off scoliosis, too. She’ll help.”

  “Terrific!” Kristy said. “Does everyone else want to do this? If we held it three weeks from this Saturday that should give us enough time. What do you think?”

  A murmur of agreement filled the room. A winter carnival would certainly get rid of the winter blahs.

  “One problem,” Stacey spoke up. “We just restocked the Kid-Kits and there’s not enough money left in the treasury for a special event. I mean, won’t we need some supplies? Right off the top of my head I know we’ll have to make posters or fliers to advertise and buy food for refreshments. We might need plywood to make booths.”

  Kristy folded her arms and settled into the chair. “Hmmmm,” she murmured. I could almost see the idea wheels turning in her head. “How can we raise money?”

  The room grew quiet as everyone started thinking.

  “I could collect extra dues,” Stacey suggested.

  “Nooooo!” everyone said at once.

  “How about a bake sale?” Mary Anne offered.

  “We’d need money to buy baking supplies,” Stacey reminded her.

  “True,” Mary Anne agreed glumly.

  Kristy suddenly jumped up from her chair. She pointed toward the window with both hands. “There’s our answer!” she cried. “Snow!”

  “Uh …” I said, raising one eyebrow. “I don’t think we can pay for supplies with snowballs. In the desert, maybe, but not in Stoneybrook.”

  Kristy laughed. “We’ll shovel it! And we’ll get our sitting charges to help us.”

  “Great idea!” cried Mallory.

  “That is a good idea,” I agreed. “You know what they say — there’s no business like snow business.”

  Everyone groaned, then burst out laughing.

  The snow that fell during our Wednesday meeting didn’t amount to much. It tapered off after covering everything with a fresh coat of white. On Thursday the temperature dropped to eleven degrees but no snow.

  Kristy fretted about it through the entire Friday BSC meeting (while I silently fretted about my upcoming visit to the orthopedist). “How can we shovel snow when there’s no snow?” she muttered, glowering out the window at the sky. “Come on, cooperate! Snow!” she commanded the heavy, gray clouds.

  Wouldn’t you know it! When Kristy says go, even the clouds jump to action.

  Or so it seemed.

  On Friday evening it started to snow after dinnertime. It kept coming, in fat white flakes, all through the night and into the morning. At eight o’clock Saturday morning, Kristy called me. “This is it!” she said excitedly over the phone. “Operation Snow Lift is on! Round up your kids and meet in front of my house at nine-thirty.”

  “But I’m not sitting for the Braddocks until ten,” I told her.

  “Well … call and ask if Haley and Matt can come out earlier. Mr. and Mrs. Braddock will probably be happy to get them outside.”

  “All right,” I agreed.

  When I phoned, Mr. Braddock answered, and — as Kristy had predicted — he was definitely amenable to the idea of Haley and Matt leaving the house earlier than planned. Apparently they were bouncing off the walls, dying to play in the snow. Mr. Braddock happily volunteered to drop them off at my house.

  “Hi, guys,” I greeted them when they showed up at my front door.

  “Hi,” said Haley, who is nine and has short blonde hair (with a long tail down her back) and big brown eyes.

&nbsp
; I smiled at Matt and waved.

  Matt, who is seven, is deaf. With a grin, he waved back.

  Pulling on my jacket and grabbing my gloves, I went outside with the kids. I found a snow shovel in our garage, and we walked two houses down McLelland Road to Kristy’s house. When we arrived, Kristy was already outside, bundled up and holding a snow shovel. Karen and Andrew were beside her, carrying kid-size snow shovels.

  The Pike family’s two station wagons pulled up to the curb. Mallory climbed out first. Behind her came her sisters: Margo (who is seven years old), Vanessa (who’s nine), and Claire (five).

  Eight-year-old Nicky and the ten-year-old triplets, Byron, Adam, and Jordan, were in the second car. Hidden under their scarves and hats, they were even harder to tell apart than usual. (Mallory says that once you get to know them it’s a cinch to tell them apart. Being a twin myself, I know how that is, but still … the Pike triplets completely confuse me.)

  The kids greeted each other excitedly, threw down their shovels, and immediately started bounding around in the knee-deep snow on Kristy’s lawn.

  Stacey’s mother dropped her off, along with Charlotte Johanssen. Then Mr. Ramsey pulled up. Claudia climbed out of the car along with Jessi and her sister, Becca.

  Charlotte and Becca greeted each other with hugs. (They’re both eight and good friends.) Then they jumped onto the snowy lawn along with the others. In minutes Charlotte, Becca, Vanessa, Haley, Margo, and Claire were on their backs making snow angels.

  “Look at all the long driveways around here!” Kristy exclaimed happily, spreading her arms wide at the glistening, snow-filled driveways that opened off the road for as far as we could see. Not one of them had been shoveled yet. “We’ll make a fortune,” she added. “It’s so obvious, I don’t know why I never thought of it before.”

  As she spoke, a small blue truck with a bright yellow snowplow at its front came barreling around the corner, the snow chains on its thick, oversize tires thunking loudly. It turned into Mrs. Porter’s drive. (She lives in the house between Kristy’s and mine.) The driver lowered the plow blade and began pushing away the snow.

  “There’s one potential client gone,” Stacey noted glumly.

  “Oh, so what? It’s just one,” Kristy scoffed. But I could see she was worried. If a lot of those snowplows showed up we’d be out of business before we started.

  “Why don’t we start with your driveway?” Mallory suggested to Kristy.

  Kristy shook her head. “Charlie and Sam already have that job,” she said. “It’s one of their regular chores.”

  From the far end of the street, another snowplow truck came thunking down the block. It turned into my driveway. Kristy turned to me with questioning eyes.

  “I forgot,” I said. “After the last big snowfall, Mom called a snowplow guy whose number she saw tacked up in town. She told him to come do the drive next time it snowed.”

  “I hope everyone didn’t do that,” she muttered. “Come on, kids!” she called. “We’ve got snow to shovel.”

  The kids didn’t hear her or pretended not to. They were having too much fun chasing one another, kicking up fluffy sprays of snow as they went.

  “Snow shoveling time!” Kristy shouted again, casting an anxious glance at the snowplow, which had already started clearing out my driveway.

  Still no response.

  Kristy put her fingers to her lips and whistled loudly. That caught the kids’ attention. They turned and stared at her. “Come on. We came out to shovel snow, remember?” she said.

  The kids gathered their shovels and we traipsed down McLelland. Kristy sang “Heigh-Ho” from Disney’s Snow White, and we all joined in. (Except Matt, but he sensed the rhythm in everyone’s movement and marched along.)

  We felt good by the time we made our way up a long, snowy driveway and reached the front doorway of a big brick house. An elderly neighbor named Mr. Bendix answered, and I was sure he’d be glad to hire us. “Sorry,” he said, though. “My son, Gerry, is on his way over right now to do it for me.”

  “No problem,” Kristy said. “If Gerry wants some help, we’ll be around.”

  Still singing “Heigh-Ho,” we headed down the drive.

  The trouble with this neighborhood (at least in terms of snow shoveling) is that most of the houses sit at the end of long, sometimes steep, driveways. By the time we reached the next house, which belonged to the Kent family, I was panting a little. So was everyone else.

  “I’m sorry, kids,” Mrs. Kent there said. “I have a contract with a man who has a snowplow. He’ll be here to do my drive soon.”

  “Okay,” Kristy said. “If he doesn’t show up, we’ll be around the neighborhood.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll show up,” said Mrs. Kent, peering down the block. “I think that’s his truck down there in the Stevensons’ driveway. He’ll probably come to me next.”

  At Shannon Kilbourne’s house Shannon was shoveling her driveway, along with her eleven-year-old sister, Tiffany, and her eight-year-old sister, Maria. They’d already completed the top half closest to their house.

  Shannon waved when she saw us approaching with our shovels. “Hi, guys,” she greeted us. “I have to help Mom at the school book fair so I can’t go out with you to the other houses. But Mom says she’ll pay us to do the driveway, so I figured I’d get started,” she said. “Maria and Tiffany offered to help for free. All the money we earn can go to the Winter Carnival fund.”

  “All right!” cried Jessi.

  We got to work shoveling the driveway. With everyone working it went fast. In less than fifteen minutes we’d collected our money.

  “See how easy it is?” Kristy said.

  “Yeah, but we had Shannon and her sisters helping,” Claudia pointed out.

  Shannon wore an apologetic expression. “Sorry I can’t help with the rest,” she said. “I promised Mom a long time ago I’d help her at the school.”

  “No problem,” Kristy assured her as we waved good-bye and headed down the driveway.

  “We’ll do fine even without them,” Kristy said confidently, as she knocked on the next door. Mrs. Stellar, a short, dark-haired woman in a pink sweatsuit, answered. When we offered to shovel the walk, she smiled. “Super,” she said. Then she frowned uncertainly. “The driveway is awfully long and steep. Are you children sure you can handle it?”

  My friends and I exchanged glances. Was she calling us children?

  “Sure,” Kristy said. “We just did the Kilbournes’ driveway.”

  “All right, then,” Mrs. Stellar agreed. “The job is yours.”

  Everyone cheered and we set to work.

  It only took about two minutes, though, before a shovelful of snow went flying past me. Looking up, I saw that Nicky, Matt, and the Pike triplets were in the middle of a snow-throwing battle with Vanessa, Claire, Margo, Becca, Charlotte, and Haley.

  “Hey, you’re supposed to be working,” Kristy scolded them, as a ball of snow landed on her hat.

  “But shoveling is boring,” Vanessa protested.

  “And my shoulder hurts,” Haley added.

  “It’s not boring, it’s fun,” Kristy said brightly. “Hey, let’s sing ‘Whistle While You Work’!”

  “Enough with the Snow White songs, already,” said Byron.

  Kristy made a face at him as she lifted her shovel. “Come on, back to work,” she said firmly.

  We dug in again, but when I looked up a few moments later, I noticed that all the kids were gone. They’d begun building a snow elephant on the woman’s lawn. “Uh, guys,” I said to my friends. “We’ve lost our workforce.”

  “Oh, well,” said Claudia, laughing. “We might as well just do it ourselves.”

  We returned to work, keeping an eye on the kids as we did. Mrs. Stellar had been right. The driveway was hard to shovel. The snow felt heavier with every shovelful I lifted.

  By the time the job was done, my back and shoulders ached. Kristy went back to the house to collect our money and returned
with a disgusted expression on her face. “This is all she gave me,” she said, holding out two five-dollar bills. “She said, ‘You children go buy yourselves some hot chocolate.’ ”

  “Ten dollars,” Stacey moaned.

  “She was going to give me five, but she threw in the extra five when she saw the snow elephant,” Kristy added with a grin. “She thought it was adorable.”

  “Did you tell her it wasn’t enough?” Claudia asked.

  “I couldn’t. She closed the door too fast,” Kristy said, shoving the bills into her jacket pocket. “For the next job, we’ll have to settle on a price and state it up front.”

  The next job? I thought miserably. I was already sore. The idea of a next job wasn’t too appealing.

  “Byron put snow down my neck!” Margo complained to Mallory, her teeth chattering. She was covered in snow from head to foot.

  “Mallory, stop them!” Vanessa squealed. The triplets ran after her, each carrying a big chunk of snow.

  “Cut it out!” Mallory shouted at them, but they paid no attention.

  All the kids were red-faced and snowy. “Maybe we should call it quits,” Claudia suggested.

  “Quits?” Kristy said in a shocked voice. Then she looked down the block at the three small plows working in three different driveways. “Maybe you’re right,” she told Claudia.

  We gathered the kids and headed back to Kristy’s house. The kids were soaked and glad to take off their wet things. We draped all the icy scarves, hats, and mittens in the mudroom. They made little puddles as they dripped onto the floor.

  “Well, this was a dud idea!” Kristy said as she unceremoniously tossed the money we’d earned onto the kitchen table.

  “It’s not enough, but it’s a start,” Stacey said, smoothing the crumpled bills. “At least it gives us money to make advertising posters or have fliers printed.”

  Kristy took a gallon of milk from the fridge and poured it into a pot. “What’s the sense in advertising if we don’t have money to hold the carnival?”

  She certainly had a point. And I could see she was disappointed that her winter carnival idea might not happen. So was I. It sounded fun.