Dawn on the Coast

“Star Tours!” cried Jeff. “Big Thunder Mountain Railroad! Jungle Cruise! Space Mountain!” He kept going. “Matterhorn! Pirates of the Caribbean! Davy Crockett’s Explorer Canoes! Penny Arcade!”

  “Whoa! Slow down,” laughed Dad.

  Disneyland is made up of seven theme areas, and Jeff had managed to name exhibits and rides in every single one. Dad grabbed a pad and a pen.

  “I knew it would be a good idea to talk about this beforehand,” he said. “Okay, let’s narrow down what areas of the park we’re going to.”

  Jeff named three choices (Tomorrowland, Bear Country, and Frontierland) and I named mine (Fantasyland, New Orleans Square, and Jungleland). You’ll notice that none of our choices overlapped.

  “Of course you don’t agree,” said Dad. “That would be too easy. How about if you each pick two? We could probably manage to squeeze in four altogether.”

  “Does that count Main Street?” I asked. (Main Street, U.S.A., is the area leading into the park.)

  “I guess not,” Dad smiled. “Four, plus Main Street.”

  “All riiight!” Jeff said loudly. Jeff was already starting to get what Dad calls “Disneyland Wild.”

  “So what’ll it be?” Dad asked. “Two each.”

  “Tomorrowland and Frontierland!” said Jeff. “No, Tomorrowland and Bear Country! No! I mean, Tomorrowland and Frontierland! Yeah, that’s my vote.”

  My choices were Fantasyland and New Orleans Square.

  Then Dad asked us what rides we wanted to go on and what things we wanted see. By the time we got out of the house and on the freeway, we had the whole trip planned out.

  Disneyland is really super. I’d forgotten how much I love it. Dad bought our “Passports” at the front gate. Those are the tickets that let you go all through the park and on all the rides. (Of course, you can’t buy things, like food or souvenirs, with them, but I’d brought along plenty of baby-sitting money for extras.) Jeff had brought his camera with him and took my picture by the Mickey Mouse face as we walked in.

  “Dawn! Dawn! Stand over here!” he called to me.

  It’s things like that that let me know just how much Jeff really likes me. That was only the first picture of many. He must’ve taken two whole rolls of me that day.

  We entered the park and walked up Main Street, U.S.A., which is made up to look like a small American town at the turn of the last century. It has horse-drawn streetcars and an old-fashioned fire engine, and because our visit was in the spring, there were tulips blooming everywhere. All the shops that line the street look like old shops, but you can buy really cool things in them.

  I dragged Dad and Jeff into three stores. One for postcards (I was going to have a lot of those to write), one for Mickey Mouse ears (I bought a pair for each member of the Baby-sitters Club), and in the last store I got a special present just for Mary Anne (a plush Minnie Mouse doll for her bed).

  “What do you say, think we’ve had enough?” teased Dad.

  “No!” cried Jeff.

  We had just begun.

  At the end of Main Street is Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, and that’s the entrance to Fantasyland. When I was a little kid, I thought that castle was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I could picture myself moving right into it. It really is fantastic. When I walk over the moat and through the castle, I really feel like I’m in Disneyland.

  In Fantasyland, Jeff and I went on the Mad Tea Party ride (you sit inside these oversized teacups and spin all around) and on the Matterhorn Bobsleds. (Dad let Jeff pick one roller coaster ride and that one was it.)

  From there we went on to Tomorrowland (with Jeff running ahead all the way). Of course, Jeff wanted to go on Star Tours, which has a really cool flight simulator.

  “Too bad, Dawn,” Jeff teased as we waited in line. “‘Children under three not allowed.’”

  Believe it or not, that’s exactly the kind of talk you miss when you don’t have a brother around.

  After Star Tours, we headed to Captain Eo, which is a 3-D Michael Jackson video. When we came out, Jeff started moonwalking. Brothers! They drive you crazy, but I have to admit, they can be pretty funny.

  “Onward!” said Dad.

  We caught the train that circles the park and rode it all the way to Frontierland. That’s where Jeff wanted to go on the Mark Twain Steamboat. “Ah, here we go,” said Dad. “A ride for old fogies like me.”

  The steamboat circles an island and I like to pretend that I’m Mark Twain, navigating the Mississippi, thinking up the stories I’m going to write.

  “So. We’re finished,” Dad said as we got off the boat. “We’ve done everything on our list.”

  There was a teasing twinkle in his eye.

  “No way!” cried Jeff. “You forgot New Orleans Square!”

  Jeff was still more than a little “Disneyland Wild.”

  Everybody was getting hungry, so we decided to stop in one of the New Orleans “buffeterias” … after one more ride.

  “Pirates of the Caribbean!” shouted Jeff.

  “No,” I said. “Haunted Mansion. That was my whole reason for picking New Orleans Square.”

  “You could split up,” Dad suggested.

  That’s exactly what we did.

  Haunted Mansion is right up my (spooky, ghost-ridden) alley. On the outside it’s an old New Orleans house. You know the kind. It has those wrought-iron, curlicue trellises bordering all the porches. Inside, though, it’s a real spook house. To go through, you get in a Doom Buggy. Sound creepy? That’s the least of it. Ghost Shadows are cast on all the walls, and eerie music plays in the background. Upstairs, in the attic, there’s about an inch of dust on everything. I’m telling you, one trip through Haunted Mansion equals about ten good ghost stories. And I ought to know.

  Jeff and I met Dad at the French Market restaurant, where he had already snared a table for us.

  “Yum!” I said, as I looked at the menu. It was hard to decide between Cajun-seasoned trout or spinach quiche.

  “Want to split them?” Dad asked. It was the perfect solution.

  Now that we were sitting down and eating, Jeff began to wind down. Well, a little bit. We finished our meals and watched the Mark Twain steamboat glide by beyond the restaurant porch.

  “Hey, Dawn,” Jeff said. “Watch this.”

  Jeff made one of his silly monkey faces.

  “Glad to see your sister, huh?” Dad laughed.

  “Yeah,” Jeff said sheepishly. He smiled at me, an awkward, self-conscious smile. “Sometimes I miss you, Dawn,” he said.

  Dad ruffled my hair, as if I were a puppy or something.

  “We both miss you,” he said. “That much is for sure.”

  There I was, back in Disneyland, sitting with my dad and my brother, and both of them being gushy. It sure felt good.

  Dad looked at his watch.

  “What time do you have to be at Sunny’s, Dawn?” he asked.

  “Five o’clock,” I said. Whatever her surprise was, I’d better be on time.

  “I think we have time to do one last thing,” said Dad.

  “Jungle Cruise!” shouted Jeff. He was never at a loss for ideas.

  “No, this one’s for your old man,” said Dad. “I spotted it right as we came in the park. Back to Main Street, guys. Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Jeff.

  “You’ll see,” said Dad.

  He had that glint in his eye.

  When we got back to Main Street, Dad led us straight to the Main Street Cinema, an old movie house that plays old cartoon classics, ones like Steamboat Willie and Mickey’s Polo Team. It was really fun to see them.

  “They sure don’t look much like the cartoons we have today,” I said.

  “They’re better,” said Dad.

  “No way!” said Jeff.

  All in all, it had been a perfect day in Disneyland. And the day wasn’t over yet, either. I couldn’t wait to get home to see Sunny. I couldn’t imagine what she might have for a surprise.
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  No wonder Sunny wanted to surprise me. When I got back from Disneyland, I ran over to her house. (She lives only a few houses down the block. I used to be there so often I could find it in my sleep.) I got there at five o’clock on the dot. Sunny’s mom opened the door.

  “Dawn,” she smiled. “Look at you! Look how you’ve grown! Oh, I know I’m not supposed to say that. Come in. Come in.”

  Sunny clambered down the stairs. She was grinning from ear to ear. She had a bandana in her hands. Sunny and her surprises …

  “Hold still,” she said to me, “and close your eyes.”

  She tied the bandana on me like a blindfold.

  “What … ?” I said.

  “I told you,” she insisted. “It’s a surprise!”

  Sunny took my arm and led me up the stairs to her room. She swung open the door and undid my blindfold.

  “Ta-da!” she said.

  There, in the room, sat two other girls, Maggie Blume and Jill Henderson. I remembered them because I used to be in their class at school. Was this the surprise? I smiled faintly. I knew these girls, but I hadn’t ever really been great friends with them.

  “Sit down,” said Sunny. “Make yourself at home. What are you waiting for? Haven’t you ever been to a meeting of a baby-sitters club before?”

  Sunny still had that wide, teasing grin stretched across her face.

  “Baby-sitting club?” I said.

  “Yup,” said Sunny, proudly, “the We Kids Club.” And she told me all about it.

  “Remember all those letters you sent me?” asked Sunny. “With all the news about your club?”

  “Sure,” I said. (I must’ve sent her about a hundred.)

  “Well,” she said. “It sounded like a good idea. I’d been baby-sitting a lot around the neighborhood, and so had Maggie and Jill —”

  “It sounded like a great idea,” Jill broke in. “Before, we were all sitting, but we were just out there on our own.”

  “So we got together the club,” said Maggie.

  “And we named it the We Kids Club,” said Jill.

  “And it was all I could do to keep it a secret!” Sunny laughed.

  To tell you the truth, I was shocked she’d been able to carry it off. Well, if there was a surprise involved, Sunny could do almost anything.

  “How long have you been meeting?” I asked.

  “Six months,” Sunny grinned. “Six long, silent months.”

  Of course, I had lots of questions. I wanted to know exactly how they ran their club. Some things were the same as ours — Sunny had gotten a lot of ideas from my letters.

  “Like advertising,” she said. “When we first started, we made up flyers and stuck them in every mailbox for ten blocks.”

  “And of course we collect dues,” said Jill.

  “For Kid-Kits!” Sunny cried out. She was practically exploding from the excitement of finally getting to tell her secret.

  “You have Kid-Kits, too?” I asked.

  Kid-Kits are a great idea that Kristy thought up. They’re boxes that we fill with all kinds of things for kids to play with — books, games, crayons, puzzles. We bring them to the houses we baby-sit at and, of course, the kids just love them. They’re also good for business. They show we really are concerned and involved sitters.

  Sunny pulled out her own Kid-Kit, and I took a look through. Play-Doh, cookie cutters, watercolors … and a cookbook!

  “‘Kids Can Cook … Naturally,’” I read.

  “It’s a great book,” said Sunny. “All the recipes are easy for kids — none of them involve the oven or stove. And they all use natural foods.”

  “Wow,” I said. Imagine if I tried to introduce that book to my club.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Sunny, “and we’ve got an appointment book.”

  She pulled out a thin notebook and opened it to the day’s page.

  Well, it certainly did look as if the clubs were a lot the same, but believe me, there were lots of differences, too.

  After Sunny had told me about the club, I figured she would call the meeting to order. I almost expected her to pull out a director’s chair, just like Kristy sits in, and call for order. Instead we just sort of sat around and talked some more. They told me all about Mr. Roberts, their science teacher, and asked me if Connecticut schools make you dissect a worm.

  Then the phone rang. Maggie reached for it and took the call. She put her hand over the receiver and said, “Mrs. Peters. Thursday. Anybody take it?”

  “I will,” said Jill.

  It was as simple as that.

  “Don’t you take the information and call them back?” I asked. That’s the way we did it.

  “Why?” said Maggie.

  I just shrugged my shoulders. Somehow it seemed too complicated to explain.

  After the call, Sunny wandered off to the kitchen and brought us back a snack — apple slices with natural peanut butter.

  It’s true, I thought. I really am back in California. This was a far cry from Claudia’s Ring Dings.

  “So who are your officers?” I asked.

  “Officers?” asked Sunny.

  “You know, president, vice-president, secretary …”

  “We don’t have anything like that,” said Sunny. “Everybody just does what they do.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Another call came in. This time Sunny took the job.

  Jill pulled a bottle of nail polish out of her purse and started working on her nails. I could just see Kristy if one of us tried that back in Stoneybrook.

  I got up and looked at Sunny’s bookshelves — two whole shelves of ghost stories. Sunny and I had fallen in love with ghost stories back in fourth grade, at just about the same time. When our class went to the school library, we used to race each other because we both wanted to get there first, to get whatever ghost books were in that week. (I can still hear Mrs. Wright, our teacher, now. “Girls! No running in the halls!”) Sunny had a lot of new books on her shelves now, a lot of books I hadn’t ever heard of, like Ghost in Whitcomb’s Briar and Seven Gothic Ghosts.

  “Have you read Spirits, Spooks, and Ghostly Tales?” asked Maggie.

  “Maggie loves ghost stories, too,” Sunny explained. “I got her into them.”

  “Phew, I have to sit down,” I said. What had happened? Had I died and gone to Dawn heaven? It sure felt like it. I was in California, where the weather was warm and beautiful. I was staying with my wonderful, goony dad and I had my good ol’ brother back, too. Next, I found out my best friend in California had started up a baby-sitting club. Where they served apple slices for snacks. And to top it off, my old friends liked ghost stories, too! Sunny was piling up books in my arms to take back to Dad’s with me.

  “Vacation reading,” she said.

  Just then, the third and last call came in. It was Mrs. Austin, Dad’s next-door neighbor. She needed someone Saturday during the day to sit for Clover and Daffodil. I’d been their sitter many times before when I’d lived in California.

  “You want it?” Sunny smiled at me.

  “You bet!” I said.

  Jill handed me the notebook and I penciled myself in.

  We still had a few minutes of the meeting to go, so Jill painted all our fingernails and we sat around, waving our hands back and forth to dry the shimmering gloss.

  “I’ve got one more surprise for you,” said Sunny, blowing on her nails.

  Another surprise? Sunny’s eyes were twinkling. She blurted out the news.

  “Our school’s on spring break these two weeks, too!”

  “Perfect!” I squealed. It was.

  When it was time to go home, I grabbed my stack of books, popped in to say good-bye to Sunny’s mom, and practically skipped the whole way home. It was 5:30, but the sun was still bright. It warmed my shoulders and toasted my hair.

  The We Kids Club might not be as busy or have as big a business as the Baby-sitters Club, but it sure was fun. I loved the way everything in California was so easy, so f
ree. I swung my hair from side to side as I skipped into the house.

  “Hey,” said Dad. “You look happy. Anything special?”

  I stumbled to the table and dropped my books all over its top.

  “Everything!” I laughed.

  The Newtons, the Feldmans and the Perkinses. That’s one big group, all right. And that group is a handful and a half.

  Mrs. Newton had cleared everything ahead of time with Mary Anne and Claudia. All the parents were going out together for dinner and a concert, so it seemed natural to put the kids all together and get two sitters. The plan was that everyone would stay at the Newtons. Jamie Newton is four and his little sister Lucy is just a baby. They’re real cute kids. By themselves they’re a pleasure. Then there’re the Perkins girls, Myriah, who’s five and a half, Gabbie, who’s two and a half, and Laura, the baby. (I hope you’re counting babies. That makes two.) Baby-sitting for Myriah and Gabbie is usually as easy as baby-sitting for Jamie. Myriah’s really smart and Gabbie is really cute. She calls everybody by their full names. “Hello, Dawn Schafer,” she always says to me.

  So far, so good. But when you put those kids together with the Feldmans, well, then you might have yourself a problem. The Feldman kids are Jamie and Lucy’s cousins. There’s Rob Feldman (he’s ten), Brenda Feldman (she’s six), and Rosie Feldman (she’s four). Hmm, what can I say about the Feldmans? Well, to start, Rob is a girl-hater. He’s got it in his head that girls are no good, and that goes double for girl baby-sitters. His sister Brenda is just a fussbudget. It’s hard to get her to enjoy anything. And the little one, Rosie, well, she’s a one-girl noise machine. (But the thing is, unlike a machine, you can’t just turn her off. And she can really give a baby-sitter a headache.)

  When I got to talk to Mary Anne about it, she told me that she and Claudia had tried to plan the whole thing out ahead of time. They were going to give the kids an early dinner, and then, while it was still light, they were going to put the babies in their carriages and march the whole group over to the school playground. Outside, Rosie could make as much noise as she wanted. Rob could even hate girls. He could show off on the monkey bars and feel as superior as he wanted. The other kids, of course, would be perfectly happy on the swing set or in the sandbox. And when they’d tired themselves out? Home to the Newtons’ house and into pajamas.