Stacey's Broken Heart

  “Yeah, or maybe Robert had to talk to a friend who really needed him but he didn’t think you’d understand, so he lied,” Claudia suggested.

  Those possibilities made me feel a little better. But not a whole lot better. Something was up with Robert. I had to find out what.

  During the rest of the meeting, my mind reeled with possibilities. Was Robert dating someone else? Was this a one-time thing, or was he about to dump me?

  The phone rang several times but I didn’t pay attention since I wouldn’t be around to take new jobs. Who was this girl? Was it Andi Gentile? She had dark brown hair. Or maybe Jacqui Grant — the movie hopper — who has dark red hair. That was more likely. Jacqui always flirted with Robert. Still, it could be Andi. I recalled how Robert had smiled at her the other day.

  Before I knew it, it was time to vote on whether we thought Abby could handle the role of interim president. Mary Anne handed out slips of paper and we all took pencils from a cup on Claudia’s desk. I voted yes. Abby seemed perfectly capable, even if she was a little overeager. After all, it was just for a week.

  We gave the folded slips to Mary Anne. She counted six yes votes and one no vote written in Kristy’s distinctive, neat handwriting.

  “Way to go!” Abby cheered. “Thanks guys. You won’t be sorry. I’ve been thinking about coming up with some great new project to breathe some life into this club. I’m going to think about it tonight and come up with something truly great! I’ll call you all tomorrow and let you know what it is.”

  As everyone left, they said good-bye to Kristy and wished her a great vacation. To her credit, Kristy shook Abby’s hand and wrote down the name of the hotel where she’d be in Hawaii. “You can call me there if you need me,” she said.

  “Thanks, but I don’t think I will,” Abby replied.

  When everyone left, I stayed behind. “What are you going to do?” Claudia asked, her face concerned and sympathetic.

  “Spy,” I said decisively.

  “What?” Claudia cried.

  “I have to know what’s really going on with Robert,” I said as I got off the bed and started pacing the room.

  “Ask him,” Claudia suggested.

  “What if he lies to me again?” I replied. “He already has once. I can’t leave for New York without knowing. Want to do some spying with me?”

  “Not particularly,” Claudia replied.

  “All right, then I’ll do it myself.”

  “Okay, okay,” Claudia relented. “I’ll go with you. What good is a best friend if she won’t spy with you?”

  “Thanks.” I didn’t like the idea of spying on Robert, either. But I had no choice. If I didn’t learn the truth about this, I was going to go crazy.

  Abby did come up with a fun idea for the club to get involved in. On Thursday morning, she called me and told me what it was. Her sister, Anna, is involved with an orphanage in Mexico. Anna’s music class sends the children tapes of music they have performed. The kids from the orphanage write back. So, Abby’s idea was for the BSC to put on a Mexican festival to raise money for the orphanage. She thought it would be something in which we could involve the kids we baby-sit for.

  I said it sounded great to me but I wouldn’t be in Stoneybrook on the day she wanted to hold the festival. Abby said she knew but she wondered if I wanted to get together that day to start working on it. “After all, I have to pull this off while I’m still president,” she said with a laugh.

  I said I really couldn’t. Robert had called me that morning and wanted to go for a bike ride. I had told him I’d go, although I had no idea what it would be like now that I knew he had lied to me.

  Abby then asked if she could spend money from the treasury for craft supplies. “I want to make piñatas for the festival,” she told me.

  I knew how much money was in there, so I told her she could take twenty dollars. “I think we should hang on to the rest of the money,” I said, “especially since you won’t be collecting dues while I’m away.”

  “Yes, but we won’t be paying Charlie to drive,” she reminded me. “So how about another ten? Thirty dollars would buy what we need.”

  “All right,” I said. In her own way, Abby was as dynamic and persuasive as Kristy.

  The bike outing with Robert that afternoon didn’t go very well. I thought I was being myself, but Robert kept asking me what was wrong. Each time I said, “Nothing.” Somehow I just couldn’t come out and confront him. I wanted to, but I was too chicken. What if he became insulted because I didn’t trust him? What if he gave me an answer I didn’t believe? I didn’t want to go away for a week if things between us weren’t right. So I left my questions unasked.

  As soon as I came home, the phone rang. It was Claudia and she was dying to tell me what had happened during their first day of planning for the festival.

  On short notice, Abby had managed to pull together a small crew of kids and BSC members to start preparations for the festival. They met at the old barn behind Mary Anne’s house.

  That worked out fine for Mary Anne and Claudia, since they were scheduled to baby-sit for Mrs. DeWitt. (There are seven kids in the DeWitt family, so Mary Anne and Claudia were sharing the job.) Mary Anne simply asked Mrs. DeWitt to drive the kids to her house instead of Mary Anne and Claudia going over there. “Glad to,” Mrs. DeWitt told Mary Anne. “The kids are going bonkers with boredom. I can’t wait until school starts. They’d love to get out of the house.”

  When Mrs. DeWitt remarried, she went from three kids to seven! They are: Buddy (eight), Suzi (five), and Marnie (two) (their last names are Barrett); Lindsey (eight), Taylor (six), Madeleine (four), and Ryan (two) (they’re DeWitts). Can you imagine having two two-year-olds?

  Anyway, Mrs. DeWitt drove the kids to the barn in her van. “Good luck!” she told Mary Anne and Claudia as the kids filed out of the van.

  A few minutes later, Mallory arrived with her brothers and sisters. Then Jessi came with Becca. That day Abby was baby-sitting for Haley and Matt Braddock, who are nine and seven. She brought them along, and soon everyone was assembled in the barn, ready to create piñatas.

  Abby laid out the materials she’d brought along: papier-mâché powder, strips of craft balsa wood, pipe cleaners, masking tape, glue, crepe paper, construction paper, paint, markers, and fabric paint. She even had a bag of plastic swirly eyeballs. “You bought all that for thirty dollars?” Claudia said.

  “Fifty. I threw in twenty of my own,” Abby said as she pulled a thick book titled Party Crafts from the bag. “It says right here how to do everything.”

  Mary Anne found some rubber tubs in the barn and dragged in the garden hose. Abby ripped open the bag of papier-mâché with such zeal that everyone around her was lightly powdered with the stuff. Naturally Claudia, with her artistic flair, threw herself into the project. “You pour the powder while I pour the water,” she instructed Abby. “The thickness has to be just right or it doesn’t work.”

  While they poured and mixed, Mary Anne went into her house and found a stack of newspapers in the family’s recycling bin. “This is an unusual form of recycling,” she said as she returned to the barn and set the stack down. “But it is recycling.”

  “Sure it is, and for a good cause,” Abby replied, stirring the grayish-white papier-mâché glop.

  Abby, Claudia, Mary Anne, Mallory, and Jessi helped the kids create the frameworks for their piñatas using balsa wood, pipe cleaners, masking tape, and some glue. Becca, Haley, and Vanessa got together to work on a unicorn. Matt joined Nicky and the triplets to work on a piñata jet plane. Margo and Claire decided to make a teddy bear. And the Barrett and DeWitt kids teamed up to make a big dragon.

  Claudia smiled as she watched the Barretts and DeWitts work, with Buddy and Lindsey directing things. Those two families of kids hadn’t blended so well at first. But now they seemed to be getting along great.

  “This was a good idea,” Claudia told Abby. “It’s working out really well.”

  Abby grinne
d. “Piece of cake. See? You don’t have to be a tyrant to make things work. Kristy turns everything into a major scene, like it has to be planned down to the last tiny detail.”

  “Well, things don’t always run as smoothly as this,” Claudia said. “Sometimes we’re really glad she keeps things under control.”

  Abby spread her arms, gesturing toward the group. “Everything’s under control, isn’t it? No problemo.”

  As their older siblings worked on the dragon, Marnie and Ryan discovered the joy of squishing their fingers in the gloppy papier-mâché. They were having such a ball that Claudia let them do it for a few minutes. But then they started smearing it in their hair and on their clothing. “That’s enough,” Claudia said, steering them away from the tubs. “Go help work on the dragon.”

  “No, they’ll wreck everything,” Suzi complained as the sticky toddlers headed toward the dragon.

  Claudia gave Marnie and Ryan a quick course in being gentle to the dragon, taking their hands and softly patting it. “See?” she said. “Nice dragon. Gentle!”

  “Roarrrr!” Marnie shouted, sending Ryan off in a gale of laughter.

  Within half an hour, the forms were done and the kids started to wet their newspaper strips and lay them across the forms they’d created. This was when things began to get just the teeniest bit out of control.

  The paper strips stuck to their hands and sleeves. Unknown to him, Nicky was now dragging around a long sticky tail, which Byron had stuck to the back of his pants. A paper strip wrapped itself around Margo’s shoe. She struggled with it as if it were some kind of snake wrapping itself around her foot. At one point Claudia wouldn’t have been surprised if the kids wound up looking like living mummies.

  But, as time went on, the piñatas began taking shape, and they were coming out very well. (Most of them, anyway. Margo and Claire’s bear was extremely lopsided.)

  “Our dragon rules,” Taylor boasted as he worked on bringing its long tail to a point. “It’s the best one.”

  “Is not,” cried Vanessa. “Dragons drool and unicorns rule!”

  “No way!” Buddy protested. “That unicorn looks like a donkey.”

  “Does not!” Becca shouted back.

  “They’re all terrific.” Abby stepped in to defuse the argument. “You’re all doing a great job.”

  “Dragons rule, dragons rule,” Taylor mumbled stubbornly.

  “I’d better get more newspaper,” Mary Anne said, heading for the door. “Want me to open this door, anyone? It’s warm in here.”

  “Yeah, open it,” Mallory said. “The smell of that papier-mâché is getting to me.”

  Mary Anne pushed the door open, letting in a flood of afternoon sunshine and a gentle breeze.

  “That breeze will help dry the paper,” said Claudia, who was now working on the teddy bear with Margo and Claire.

  “Marnie! Stop!” Madeleine complained. Marnie was pulling off the triangular scales Madeleine was trying to glue to the dragon’s back. “Someone make her stop!”

  “Go away, Marnie,” said Buddy as he worked on the dragon’s face. “You’re making a mess.”

  “Marnie, stop!” said Jessi, Mallory, Abby, and Claudia, all at once. Wide-eyed at being the center of so much attention, Marnie put her hands to her face and smeared it with papier-mâché.

  “Eeewww! Gross!” shouted Madeleine.

  Claudia laughed and swept Marnie up in her arms, wiping her face. At the same time Ryan yanked at the hem of her shirt. “Up! Up!” he cried, holding his arms up. Claudia set Marnie down and picked up Ryan.

  Just then, Margo and Claire let out a horrified yowl. “Teddy!” Claire shrieked as their papier-mâché piñata toppled to the right, caving in.

  “It’s ruined!” Margo wailed.

  “We can fix it,” Claudia assured her as she set Ryan down. Ryan toddled off and Claudia righted the fallen teddy. She set to work reuniting his broken balsa wood frame with pieces of masking tape. Then she overlaid the repaired frame with strips of papier-mâché. When she was done, Teddy looked better than he had before his fall.

  “Thank you so, so, so much,” Claire said, hugging Claudia.

  “You’re welcome.” Claudia stood and blew a strand of hair from her face and wiped her gloppy hands on her denim shorts. With her artist’s eye, she surveyed the scene around her. Everyone was working diligently on the piñatas, quiet and absorbed in the project, at least for the moment. Colorful scraps of paper dotted the earth colors of the barn. A shaft of bright sunlight streamed through the open door. Claudia wished she’d brought her pastels and a pad so she could sketch the scene in color.

  But, as she planned her sketch, she became aware that something was making her uneasy. What was it? Scanning the area, she tried to imagine what it could be. Then she realized. “Where’s Marnie?” she asked, her eyes darting to every corner of the barn. “Has anyone seen Marnie?”

  Jessi looked up from the newspaper she was tearing into strips. “She was standing next to Buddy a minute ago.”

  “Buddy?” Claudia cried, fighting her panic.

  Buddy shrugged. “I haven’t seen her.”

  “Me neither,” said Lindsey.

  Claudia looked at the open door. Could Marnie have run out while no one was watching? She dashed into the yard. “Marnie! Marnie!”

  “Not here?” asked Abby, coming out of the barn behind her. Claudia shook her head. Abby bounded past her to Burnt Hill Road and looked in both directions. “Ma-a-a-a-rniiieee!”

  As Claudia wondered what to do next, Mary Anne returned carrying another stack of newspapers. “What’s wrong?”

  “We can’t find —” Claudia began, but Abby cut her off, grabbing Mary Anne’s arm.

  “Come back to the house with me, come on!” she said frantically. “We have to call nine-one-one. Marnie is missing.”

  Mary Anne paled. “Marnie is —” Abby didn’t let her finish. She tugged at Mary Anne’s arm, causing her to drop the pile of papers at Claudia’s feet.

  Claudia watched them run toward the house. Her heart banged like a jackhammer. What had happened? Had Marnie been kidnapped? The thought made her dizzy with fright.

  “Any luck?” Jessi called from the barn doorway.

  Just as Claudia turned toward her, the sound of terrible screaming came from the barn. Claudia ran back inside.

  “It’s alive!” Claire shrieked, pointing at the dragon. “It moved. I saw it!”

  Then Margo screamed and grabbed her sister in a tight, frightened hug.

  “It did move!” Becca shouted, pointing. “I saw it, too!”

  With that, Lindsey, Buddy, Taylor, and Suzi exploded into peals of hysterical laughter. “You fell for it!” Buddy howled.

  Lindsey held her side as she laughed. “I don’t believe you! How dumb can you be?”

  Taylor and Suzi were laughing so hard they had to hold each other up.

  The dragon moved again and a noise came from inside. On a hunch, Claudia gingerly lifted the dragon. Marnie was beneath it.

  She pouted and looked close to tears. “Poor Marnie,” said Claudia, picking her up. She was upset with Buddy and Lindsey. They should have known better. But she could also understand how a kid might think this was funny.

  Suddenly, Claudia gasped. Abby was calling 911.

  Claudia handed Marnie to Jessi. “I’ll be right back,” she called, running for the door. She darted across the yard to Mary Anne’s kitchen door.

  “I’m not sure what she was wearing,” Abby was saying into the phone. “Yes, she’s two.”

  “We found her!” Claudia said, panting.

  Abby took the phone away from her ear. “You what?”

  “She’s all right.” Claudia gasped, falling into a chair.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” Mary Anne said.

  Abby turned back to the phone. “We found her. I’m very sorry. She’s all right…. No, really. We don’t need assistance…. I’m sure…. Okay. Thanks.”

  Claudia told them wh
at had happened. Abby leaned heavily against the kitchen counter. “Oh, man. That was close. Really close.”

  “Maybe we were trying to do too much,” Mary Anne suggested. “You know, it’s a big project to do with so many kids, especially little kids.”

  Claudia told me she agreed with Mary Anne. Kristy probably would have insisted that they have more sitters for that many kids. Or that each sitter had to stay with a particular group, or something else which would have kept them from getting disorganized and losing sight of a kid.

  “Boy, was that scary,” Abby said.

  “I told you things don’t always run that smoothly,” Claudia reminded her.

  “This was just one of those things,” Abby objected. “It could have happened to anyone.”

  But Claudia wondered about that. Somehow, she couldn’t picture it happening to Kristy.

  On Friday, my opportunity to spy on Robert came. I called his house in the morning and his mother told me he’d gone to the movies at Washington Mall.

  All kinds of suspicion bells started ringing for me. The day before on our bike ride he hadn’t mentioned it. Normally he would have said something like, “I’ll be going to the movies with some guys tomorrow. See you in the afternoon.” But he hadn’t. He’d just kissed me lightly and said, “See you later.”

  Immediately, I called Claudia. “Operation Robert is on,” I announced.

  “Stacey, this is so dumb,” she complained. “Do we really have to?”

  “You promised,” I reminded her.

  “Oh, all right.”

  We took the half-hour bus ride to the mall and entered the main lobby. “Will you take off those sunglasses, please,” Claudia said to me as the lobby fountain sprayed pink water into the air behind us. “Do you really think you’re going to fool Robert? He’s seen you in sunglasses before. It’s not as if he wouldn’t recognize you.”

  I took off the glasses. “All right. But if we’re going to spy on Robert, we have to do it right.” I pulled a list from the pocket of my flowered sundress. “Here’s where we should look for him. I say we start at Critters. Robert likes the iguanas. He thinks they’re cool but his mother won’t let him have one.”