Dawn on the Coast

  “Whoa!” I said. “It’s only me.”

  “Dawn!” cried Clover. “My favorite baby-sitter in the whole wide world!”

  I must admit, when one of the kids gives you a compliment like that, it’s not very hard to love your job.

  Mrs. Austin gave me a big hug hello. It was like I was a long-lost friend, returning from a great war or something.

  “The kids have been so excited,” she said. She drew me into the room.

  I always loved the Austins’ house, especially the living room. Mrs. Austin is a weaver. Dad said when they were young, she and her husband used to be “flower children.” (I think he means hippies.) That’s why Clover and Daffodil have such odd names. Now, though, Mrs. Austin weaves professionally for a few stores that carry expensive hand-crafted goods, and she has three different-sized looms in her living room. The looms sit on the polished wood floor underneath the big bay window. I love to take a look at what she’s working on. She mostly makes pieces with deep, rich natural colors. Beautiful warm browns and earthy reds. And there’s always something different on the looms.

  “I never have to redecorate,” she laughs. “Whenever I change projects, I change the whole visual effect of the room.”

  That day, Clover and Daffodil were each wearing hand-woven cotton vests that their mother had made for them. Clover pulled a small change purse out of her vest pocket and shook the money into her hand.

  “Pieces of eight!” she cried. “I’m rich!”

  I had forgotten about Clover’s wild imagination.

  “I gave each of the kids some money,” Mrs. Austin explained. “There’s a small carnival that’s set up over in the field behind the mall. Since it’s such a beautiful day, I thought you might want to walk the girls over and spend the afternoon there.”

  “Super,” I said. The afternoon couldn’t be shaping up better.

  Mrs. Austin grabbed her shawl (hand-woven, of course) and headed out the door. She was going to a Craft Council meeting, so she’d be gone all afternoon.

  Before we could go off to the fair, Clover and Daffodil had to drag me all over the house and show me everything that was new. It had been a long time since we’d seen each other.

  “This is the kitchen and this is the refrigerator,” said Clover in her excitement.

  “She knows that, silly,” said Daffodil. “Come on. Let me show you my science project.”

  We went all through Clover’s and Daffodil’s rooms. They showed me new clothes, new toys, new books, new school projects, report cards, you name it.

  As they were winding down, I sat on Clover’s bed and she got out her comb to comb through my long hair. (She always did love to do that.)

  “I think somebody spun your hair into gold,” she said. “Did you ever meet a little guy named Rumpelstiltskin?”

  Of course I told her no, but I think Clover secretly went on believing her own imaginative version. Daffodil sat quietly by. Sometimes, even though she’s older, she gets overshadowed by Clover’s more outgoing nature. She’s also at that gangly stage — her legs and arms seem a little too long for her body.

  “Well,” I said, standing up. “Shall we head for the carnival?”

  Clover popped up beside me. “To see the gypsies!” she cried. She was down the stairs and out the door, with Daffodil and I trailing behind her.

  The day was warm and dry and the bright blue sky was streaked with thin, wispy clouds. We had only a short hike to get to the fairgrounds. Just as Mrs. Austin had said, the fair was set up behind the mall. There were a couple of rides — a ferris wheel and an octopus ride with cages that looped up and over.

  “A space creature!” shouted Clover.

  There were also lots of midway games, plenty of food booths (Hmmm. Hot dogs and cotton candy. Not my idea of a healthy treat), and a fenced-off ring with pony rides.

  Clover had me by one hand and I had Daffodil by the other. Clover dragged us from one booth to the next, trying to decide where we should start.

  “How about the ring toss?” Daffodil asked in a smallish voice.

  “Ring toss!” Clover boomed in echo.

  No sooner had she spotted it than we were there. The girls plunked down their money and got their handful of rings. As you can imagine, Clover was an enthusiastic player. Enthusiastic, but not very skilled. Out of six rings she got … six misses.

  “Oh, well,” she shrugged. It was Daffodil’s turn.

  Clover had pitched her rings quickly, but Daffodil took her time. She eyed the hook that was the target. She scrunched her eyebrows in concentration. One hit! Two! Three! A miss. Four hits! Another miss.

  “Wow!” I said. “Four out of six. That’s not bad at all.”

  Daffodil smiled shyly. Something about her reminded me of Shannon — she was like a puppy who had not yet grown into its paws.

  “Can I try again?” she asked quietly.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Daffodil bought another round of rings. Again she scrunched up her eyebrows in concentration before she started. One hit. Two. Three. Four. A miss. Another miss.

  “Oh,” I groaned. “So close!”

  Daffodil smiled and said nothing. Clover was already dragging us over to the pony ring.

  “Want to ride?” I asked Daffodil.

  Daffodil emptied her change purse into her hand and counted her quarters.

  “Nah,” she said. “I think I’ll wait.”

  Clover ran through the gate and hopped on the pony.

  “Giddy-up!” she cried. She nudged the pony’s ribs with her heels, but the pony stood still. It was waiting for a command from the young woman in jeans and cowboy boots who would lead it around the ring.

  “Charge!” cried Clover.

  I looked at Daffodil and grinned.

  “Who do you think Clover thinks she is?” I asked. “Teddy Roosevelt?”

  “Annie Oakley, I betcha,” said Daffodil.

  As it turned out, Clover was thinking of herself more as an Indian brave. She explained that to us after the pony ride and before the ferris wheel. Then, after the ferris wheel, of course, she had to go on the octopus ride. When she was finished, we were all ready for a little refreshment.

  “Cotton candy!” yelled Clover.

  Well, what could I do? Clover bought her cotton candy, and Daffodil and I got some fruit juice and vegetable fritters. We found a patch of grass to sit on at the edge of the carnival and let the sights and sounds play around us as we ate our snack.

  Daffodil counted her change again.

  “I could play two more times,” she said.

  “Ring toss?” I asked.

  She nodded her head. We waited for Clover to finish her cone of cotton candy (of course it got all over her face. She looked like some sort of sticky, pink elf), then we headed back to the booth. Daffodil looked determined. She may be a quiet one, I thought, but she’s got a lot of resolve.

  Her first game came in short of the others. Only three hits and three misses. Daffodil licked her lips as she bought the rings for her fourth and last game. One hit! Two! Three! Four! Five! … We all held our breath…. Six!

  “Yippee!” yelled Clover. She jumped up and down and shook her sister by the arm.

  Daffodil’s face broke into a wide, bright smile.

  “I knew it,” she said. “I knew I could do it.”

  In the back of the booth was a shelf of stuffed animals, which were the prizes.

  “The pink elephant, please,” Daffodil said to the man running the booth.

  It certainly was pink. It was as pink as the cotton candy that still stuck to Clover’s cheeks.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go home while we’re winners. And let’s get you cleaned up.” I ruffled Clover’s hair. “Miss Teddy Roosevelt-Annie Oakley-Spotted Deer, or whoever you are.”

  When Mrs. Austin got home, she had the same reaction I did to the stuffed elephant.

  “It certainly is pink,” she laughed. “Congratulations, sweetie.”

&nbs
p; I don’t think Mrs. Austin was going to pick that color for her next weaving project.

  The day had been so pleasant, so easy. I was thinking how I couldn’t wait to tell Sunny and the others all about it. There was a knock on the door. It was Jeff.

  “Mom’s on the phone,” he said. “Come on.”

  Mrs. Austin slipped me my pay and I ran home after Jeff.

  “ ’Bye, Dawn-Best-Baby-sitter,” Clover called after me.

  As I was running I found myself thinking not of Mom, but of the day, of Clover and Daffodil, of Mrs. Austin, the We Kids Club…. I got on the phone and Mom started right in talking. She told me about Granny and Pop-Pop and then she said she’d run into Kristy and her mother at the store. “Oh,” she said, “and Mary Anne called.”

  Wow! Mom, Granny and Pop-Pop, Kristy, even Mary Anne. I hadn’t thought of any of them all day long. What did that mean, I wondered. I suddenly felt wrenched out of one world and yanked into another.

  Well, some things never change. When you baby-sit for Karen Brewer, there’s bound to be ghosts involved, or witches with magic spells, or some such spookiness. Jessi had taken a job at the Brewers’ for Saturday afternoon. Kristy was going shopping with her mother, and Sam, Charlie, and Watson were out who knows where. That left the younger ones — David Michael, Karen, and Andrew — in need of a sitter, so Jessi filled the job.

  Kristy’s mom walked Jessi around the house, giving her all the usual information — showing her where the emergency numbers were, the snacks, etc. Of course, Kristy followed right behind. Sometimes you’d think Kristy was the Baby-sitting Police, not just the president of our club.

  “Aren’t you going to ask about the first-aid kit?” she prompted Jessi.

  “Uh, yeah,” Jessi stumbled.

  “It’s right in the medicine cabinet,” Kristy’s mom said, smiling.

  Mrs. Brewer could hardly get Kristy away from Jessi and out the door.

  “Shannon and Boo-Boo have been fed,” Kristy called from the doorway, “and the plants have been watered, and the dishwasher’s run through.”

  “And the lawn has been mowed,” Kristy’s mom teased, “and the house has been painted, and the telephone bill’s been paid.”

  Kristy blushed furiously.

  “Okay, ’bye,” she called to Jessi.

  Jessi picked up Andrew and together they waved good-bye.

  “Well,” Jessi said, when the door had closed. “Now it’s just the four of us.”

  “Oh, no,” Karen said firmly. “Five. Ben Brewer.”

  “Right,” Jessi smiled.

  “Come on,” Karen said, grabbing Jessi’s hand. “Time to play Let’s All Come In.”

  “Oh, no,” groaned David Michael.

  Let’s All Come In is a favorite game of Karen’s, if you can call it a game. She gets everyone to pretend that they’re different characters in a hotel lobby, checking in. What it really is, is an excuse to play dress-up. Karen dresses up in a long black dress and a hat, and the boys wear sailor caps. I think David Michael has played this game one time too many.

  “Andrew and I were in the middle of building a Lego city,” he said. “Weren’t we, Andrew?”

  “Yup,” Andrew agreed.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me,” Karen said to Jessi.

  “You, me, and Ben Brewer,” Jessi smiled.

  Jessi got the boys settled back in David Michael’s bedroom, where there really was a Lego city in progress.

  “I’m the architect,” David Michael said importantly, “and Andrew is the construction boss. Right, Andrew?”

  “Right,” Andrew smiled. Construction boss sounded pretty good to him.

  Karen took Jessi to her room and began to root through the trunk she kept her dress-up clothes in.

  “Hmm,” she said, looking Jessi up and down. “Do you want to be a cocktail waitress or do you want to be coming from the society ball?”

  “Society ball, of course,” Jessi replied.

  “I don’t think I have anything here to fit you,” Karen said slowly. “You know what that means?”

  “What?” asked Jessi.

  “That means” — there was an ominous tone in Karen’s voice — “we have to go to the other clothes trunk. And it’s on the third floor.”

  If this had been a movie, right at that moment scary music would have sounded. The third floor was, after all, where Karen believed Ben Brewer lived. As it was, the only sound was the nervous tapping of Karen’s little foot. She twisted her fingers and bit her lip.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “We don’t have to play Let’s All Come In,” said Jessi.

  Well, that decided it for Karen.

  “Oh, yes we do,” she said with great conviction. “We can’t let a ghost rule our lives.”

  Karen took Jessi’s hand and squeezed it firmly but bravely.

  “Come on,” she said.

  For her, I think, being scared is half the fun.

  Karen led Jessi up the narrow staircase that leads to the third floor of the Brewer mansion. The third floor is seldom used. The house is so big that the first and second floors can comfortably house the whole family, large as it is. The third floor is really only used for storage. It’s like one big attic, even though it’s sectioned into rooms.

  As they neared the top of the stairway, Karen began to creep.

  “Aughhh!” she screamed suddenly.

  “What is it?” Jessi asked.

  Karen’s eyes, big as saucers, focused on the top of the bannister. She didn’t say anything, she just pointed.

  There, in the dust that covered the wood bannister, someone had etched the words “Turn Back!”

  “Maybe we should,” said Jessi. She didn’t believe in the ghost, and yet …

  “There’s no turning back now,” Karen said dramatically. She pressed ahead.

  Karen crept down the hall to the room where the other trunk was stored. The door was closed, but not completely. It was open a small crack. Karen pushed the door slowly. CRASH! A can clattered on the floor in front of them and water splattered from the can all over their shoes and legs.

  Of course, Karen screamed again. At this point, though, Jessi began to be skeptical. The door had obviously been booby-trapped. Why would a ghost booby-trap a door with a can full of water? It seemed to Jessi that the tricks a ghost would play would be, somehow, more ghostly. This seemed more like a practical joke. And if she had to name a practical joker in the house, she was pretty sure she knew who that might be.

  Karen swung the door open wide and stomped loudly into the room.

  “Ben Brewer!” she called out. “We’re coming in. You can’t stop us. We’ve made up our minds.”

  Karen marched over to the large dusty trunk, unlatched it, and opened its lid. The smell of mothballs flooded the room. Karen lifted up a dark blue crushed velvet dress that lay across the top of the pile.

  “How about this dre —” she started to say, but her eye caught a note that had been tucked underneath the gown. The note was written in a thick, dark red ink.

  “Blood-red,” Karen whispered.

  She picked up the note and read it.

  “Death to all who enter here,” it said.

  Karen stood frozen, fixed in one spot. Her face paled.

  “I think we better go back downstairs,” she said to Jessi. Her voice was small and shaking. She dropped the note. It fluttered to the floor. She walked out of the room, gliding, like a sleepwalker or a zombie.

  Jessi picked up the note and looked it over. The paper had been torn off a notepad. On the other side was a printed logo.

  “SHS,” it said.

  SHS. Stoneybrook High School.

  Jessi folded the note and put it in her pocket. She followed Karen back downstairs.

  When Kristy and her mom got home, Karen ran down to the front hallway, frantic to tell them all the latest evidence.

  “It proves,” she said, “that Ben Brewer is living right up there on the
third floor. How do we know he won’t come down?” she asked. “How do we know he doesn’t want to take over the second floor, too?”

  As it happened, Sam and Charlie pulled in the driveway right after Kristy and their mom. When Sam came in, Karen was going on about the ghost.

  “The note was written in blood,” she said, then shuddered. “I wonder whose.”

  Sam smirked and nudged Charlie. Mrs. Brewer shot a look at Sam. He shrugged innocently.

  “I wonder how another child would fit into all this,” Mrs. Brewer wondered aloud.

  “Another child?” Kristy asked. “What do you mean?” Mrs. Brewer shrugged distractedly. Kristy shook her head and followed her mom into the kitchen with Karen trailing behind. Jessi pulled the note out of her pocket and handed it to Sam.

  “Lose something?” Jessi asked.

  Sam grinned sheepishly and shoved the note quickly into his pocket.

  Kristy came out of the kitchen.

  “Of course this ghost incident will have to be written up in the club notebook,” she said. “You realize that all the other club members should be aware of anything this important.”

  Jessi told me later she just smiled and nodded. Ben Brewer was living in the mansion, all right. It was Sam Thomas who’d made sure of that.

  All that weekend I looked forward to the next meeting of the We Kids Club. I had had such a good time with Clover and Daffodil, and couldn’t wait to tell Sunny and the other members of the club.

  When I arrived that Monday afternoon, Sunny was sitting on the floor of her room, with newspapers spread out all around her. She had a bag of potting soil, a couple of small clay pots, and a few jars in which she had rooted some babies from her spider plant.

  “Hi. Come in,” she said. “If you can find a place. I’m just potting these.”

  I sprawled out on an empty stretch of Sunny’s green shag rug. It was the usual relaxed, California atmosphere of the We Kids Club.

  While we waited for Jill and Maggie, I told Sunny all about my afternoon at the Austins’, about Clover’s wild imagination, and about Daffodil’s tries at the ring toss.