Claud was born and raised here in Stoneybrook. She lives with her mom and dad and her older sister, Janine. She’s an incredibly talented artist. She can sculpt, draw, paint, even make jewelry. Unfortunately, she is not a wonderful student. She could be, if she wanted, since she’s smart. But school doesn’t interest her much.
Claud has two addictions that she tries to keep secret from her parents: junk food and Nancy Drew mysteries. Her parents don’t approve of either, so Claud hides stuff all around her room. Lift up her pillow and there’s a Snickers bar. Look in the back of a desk drawer and there’s a bag of Fritos. Search through the mess on the floor of her closet and there’s The Clue of the Tapping Heels. Claud is such a character.
I wish you could see Claudia Kishi. She’s absolutely beautiful. And exotic. She’s Japanese-American. Her hair is silky and black and long. And her eyes are dark and almond-shaped. She’s tall and thin and a very distant dresser. Claud cares about clothes as much as Kristy doesn’t care about them. That’s one thing Claud and I have in common. If I may say so, we are pretty sophisticated. We both like wild outfits — leggings, cowboy boots, short skirts, the layered look, cool hats. And we pay a lot of attention to our nails and our makeup and especially to our hair. I am constantly getting my hair permed. (My hair is blonde and wavy; the perm makes it look even wavier.) Claud likes to experiment with different hairstyles. And she likes hair ornaments — beads and ponytail ties and flowers. You know what’s kind of funny? Claudia and I are both a little boy-crazy. That’s safe to say. But neither of us has had a steady boyfriend. (Sigh.)
While I’m on the subject of me, I’ll tell you about my role in the BSC. As treasurer, I’m the one who collects club dues from everybody at our Monday meetings. Since I like math, I’m good at keeping track of the money in our treasury. I dole out the funds as they’re needed, usually to buy supplies for the Kid-Kits, to pay Kristy’s brother Charlie to drive her to and from meetings now that she lives across town, and to help Claudia pay her phone bill.
We decided to make Dawn our alternate officer. (Well, Kristy thought of the idea, of course.) The alternate officer is supposed to be able to take over for any member of the club who can’t make a meeting. This doesn’t happen often. (I mean, we don’t miss meetings often.) Even so, Dawn has to be familiar with the duties of the president, the vice-president, the secretary, and the treasurer. So far, she’s done a terrific job.
Like me, Dawn was not born and raised in Stoneybrook. She moved here in the middle of seventh grade. All the way from California. Her parents were getting a divorce, and her mom wanted to live in the town in which she’d grown up. So she moved Dawn and her younger brother, Jeff, clear across the country. The move was difficult, but Dawn and her mother adjusted. Jeff did not, though, and finally he moved back to California to live with his father. He’s happier there. Dawn misses him, of course, but she’s happier now, too — ever since her mom married Mary Anne’s dad. Overnight she acquired a second family.
Dawn’s pretty easygoing. Maybe that’s one reason Mary Anne likes her. She’s also fairly self-confident and very much an individual. Mostly, she does what she wants without worrying what others will think of her. (She isn’t thoughtless, though. Just sure of herself.) Dawn is pretty. She’s slender with bright blue eyes, a few freckles, and very long, straw-colored hair. She dresses in her own style, casual but trendy. (I think she dresses for comfort as well as for looks.)
Now, don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about the two junior members of the BSC, Mal and Jessi. (They’re the ones who are eleven and in sixth grade.) “Junior member” means they’re younger and their parents don’t allow them to baby-sit at night, unless they’re watching their own brothers and sisters. Mostly, they sit after school and on weekend days.
Jessi and Mal are excellent baby-sitters. They ought to be. Each of them has younger brothers and sisters. That’s an understatement for Mallory. She has seven younger brothers and sisters. (Jessi has one younger sister and a baby brother.)
Mal and Jessi have a lot in common, which is nice, considering they’re best friends. Both of them wish their parents would let them grow up faster. And both of them adore reading, especially horse stories. Mal also likes mysteries. But they have separate interests, as well. Jessi is a dancer, a ballerina. She’s extremely talented and has danced onstage in lots of productions. Mallory is a writer, an aspiring author. She hopes to write children’s books someday. Maybe she’ll illustrate them, too.
Jessi and Mal do not look a thing alike. Jessi has chocolatey brown skin, dark eyes, black hair, and does not wear glasses. Mal has pale skin, blue eyes, unruly red hair, and she does wear glasses. Her parents say she is too young for contacts. At least they caved in and let Mal get her ears pierced. (Jessi’s parents did the same thing.)
* * *
I looked around Claud’s room. The time was 5:25, according to her digital clock (which is the official club timepiece). The seven main members of the BSC had arrived. (I should mention that two other people belong to the club, but they don’t attend meetings. They are associate members, reliable sitters we can call on just in case someone phones in with a job that none of us is available to take. Guess who one of the associate members is. Mary Anne’s boyfriend — Logan Bruno. The other is Shannon Kilbourne, a friend of Kristy’s in her new neighborhood.)
We were sitting in our usual spots. Mal and Jessi were cross-legged on the floor, leaning against Claud’s bed. Mary Anne, Claudia, and I were lined up on the bed, leaning against the wall. Dawn was straddling Claud’s wooden desk chair backward, her chin resting on the top rung. She was chewing on the end of a Bic pen. Then there was Kristy. Our president sat regally in Claudia’s director’s chair. As always, a visor was perched on her head and a pencil was stuck over one ear. She was looking impatiently at the clock, waiting for five-thirty.
“Hey, everyone,” I said. “I’m glad you’re here early. Guess what.”
“What?” replied Jessi, her mouth full of gum. She craned her neck around and looked up at me. (She and Mal were working on another in a series of gum-wrapper chains.)
“In a couple of weeks we’re going to have a visitor.”
“We are?” said Claudia. She stopped braiding her hair.
“Well, sort of. I just got off the phone with Laine.”
I told my friends about Laine’s visit.
“Distant!” exclaimed Mallory. “I can’t wait to see her again.”
“Hey, she’ll be here for the Valentine Dance,” said Mary Anne. “Won’t she? That’s on the night of Friday the thirteenth.” She paused. Then, “Oh, ew! The dance is going to be on Friday the thirteenth? Who planned that?”
“Our teachers, who else?” said Kristy.
“The Valentine Dance! I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “Fresh. She’ll be here for Valentine’s Day, too, then. That’ll be fun.”
Mallory cleared her throat. She put down her end of the gum chain. “Um, I have a small announcement to make,” she said. “Ben asked me to the dance.”
In all honesty, this came as no great shock to me. Ben Hobart (who lives right across the street from Claud, in Mary Anne’s old house) had taken Mal to our school’s last big bash, the Winter Wonderland Dance. When you’re eleven, though, I guess you don’t expect relationships to last very long.
“That’s great, Mal,” said Kristy. “Bart’s taking me.”
“Logan’s taking me,” Mary Anne spoke up.
“Surprise, surprise,” Dawn said, and giggled.
As it turned out, we had all been invited to the dance. Dawn and Claud and I were going with guys who are just friends of ours. Jessi was going with a seventh-grade boy. She sounded unreasonably excited whenever she said his name, Curtis Shaller. Maybe she was excited because a seventh-grader is an older boy. Or maybe she was just relieved to be going to the dance at all, considering that Quint, her real boyfriend, lives in New York City and wouldn’t be able to take her. Or maybe —
“Order, pl
ease!” cried Kristy, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
The meeting was beginning.
It was a fairly normal meeting. I say “fairly” because an out-of-the-ordinary thing did happen. Kristy had one of her flashes of brilliance — a great idea. She gets plenty of great ideas, as I’ve said, but she doesn’t get one at every meeting. In the middle of phone calls and scheduling and talking about our sitting charges, Kristy jumped to her feet. “Oh, my gosh! I just got a terrific idea!” she exclaimed. “Valentine’s Day is on Saturday this year. Why don’t we give a Valentine party for a bunch of the kids we know? I bet they’d love it. They could exchange cards, and we could buy some of those candy conversation hearts …”
Kristy was off and running. Of course, her idea was terrific. A party would be great publicity for the club. More important, the kids would have fun.
What a day it had been!
The Pike kids. Mal is the oldest of eight, remember? And I’m an only child. Even though I’ve spent lots of time at the Pikes’, I have difficulty imagining how it would feel to live in a house so full of people.
Let me introduce you to the rest of the Pikes: Claire is five and she’s the baby of the family. She can be very silly at times. Margo is seven. She and Claire are best friends. Having your best friend right in your family must be awfully nice. Claire and Margo are lucky. (So are Mary Anne and Dawn.) Anyway, next in the Pike family is Nicky, who’s eight. Sometimes Nicky feels a little left out of things. His brothers are older and don’t always let him hang around with them, and Nicky does not like getting stuck with a “bunch of girls” — his words. Nicky is a good kid, though, and he has lots of friends in the neighborhood. Vanessa is nine years old and the family poet. (Writing must be in the Pike genes.) She’s usually far-off and dreamy. Now. Maybe you’re wondering. How can there be eight Pike kids, the oldest eleven and the youngest five, and space to squeeze in only one more kid between Vanessa and Mallory? Good question. The answer is there are three ten-year-old Pikes — identical triplets! Their names are Jordan, Adam, and Byron. What a household.
My sitting job with Mallory took place exactly one week and one day after my idea to invite Laine to Stoneybrook for her vacation. Since then, the plans for the BSC Valentine’s Day party had really taken shape. We were going to call our party the Valentine Masquerade. This is why.
“In the olden days,” said Jessi at our Monday club meeting, “didn’t people used to send valentines without their names on them? You know, unsigned? Like, the card would read ‘Happy Valentine’s Day, my dearest darling sweetheart. All my love, guess who.’ ”
We laughed, and Mary Anne said. “I don’t know, but that gives me an idea. What if, at the party, the kids exchanged cards and signed their names in code? We could tell the kids ahead of time who the other guests were going to be, and then they could make a card for each one. That would give them something fun to do the week of Valentine’s Day. You know how zooey they get before a holiday. Then they would bring their cards to the party, and the guests would have to open the cards and figure out who they were from.”
“Cool!” said Dawn. “They disguise their names.”
“And we could call the party a Valentine Masquerade,” added Kristy.
“The party guests will have to be old enough to read,” said Claudia thoughtfully. “Maybe the party should be for kids who are six and older.”
“Oh, please make the cut-off age five,” said Mallory, moaning. “If Claire is the only one in my family who can’t come to the party, we will hear about it for the rest of our days.”
“Who says your family is invited?” asked Kristy, but we knew she was teasing. Then she added, “Okay, the party will be for kids five and up.”
“Great,” the rest of us agreed.
The phone had rung then, so we weren’t able to discuss party plans any further, but that was all right. We figured deciding on the theme was the hardest part of party planning, and that other things — games and refreshments — would be easy to plan later on. The only thing we needed to do right away (or at least soon) was send out invitations.
“I’ll take care of that,” said Claudia. “I’ll draw something really cute. Then I’ll ask Mom to copy it on the machine at the library.” (Mrs. Kishi is the head librarian at our public library.)
However, by Saturday, Claud had not gotten around to the invitations, although she kept saying she was going to. Personally, I think this was for the best. Now don’t get me wrong. Claud is one of my best friends and I love her. But she is a horrible speller. If Claud had made the invitations, they probably would have read: ITS A HALIDAY! COME CELABRAT VANENTINS DAY WITH THE BSC. Or something like that.
The point is that when I showed up at the Pikes’ on Saturday to baby-sit with Mallory, there were still no invitations for our party. (Oh, in case you’re wondering, my friends and I usually do not baby-sit in pairs, but Mr. and Mrs. Pike insist on hiring two sitters when they need someone to watch over all seven of their younger kids. Mallory and I would be in charge that Saturday afternoon.)
All morning, rain had fallen. And it showed no sign of letting up. “The kids are going to be wired,” I said to my mother, as I headed out our back door. “They’ve probably been cooped up for hours.”
Mom smiled at me. “You’ll think of something,” she said brightly. (My mother is the reason I do not have much of a self-confidence problem.)
“Thanks,” I said. “See you at dinnertime!”
I dashed across our yard. My house sits directly behind Mallory’s. Our back windows face each other, and our yards meet just beyond one of the Pikes’ flower beds.
Holding my umbrella low, I made a beeline for the Pike patio and let myself in the door of the rec room.
“Hello?” I called.
“Stacey?” replied Mallory. She was upstairs somewhere. She ran down to me.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“Mom and Dad are in the living room. They’re getting ready to leave.”
“But where are the kids?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I don’t?” Uh-oh. “The house is awfully quiet,” I said tentatively.
Mallory nodded. “The kids are upstairs in the bathroom. They’re doing water experiments in the tub. Well, except for Nicky.”
“Do they have permission?”
“Yes. Unfortunately.”
“Where’s Nicky?”
“Around somewhere. He’s been sort of quiet today.”
Hmm.
A few minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. Pike left. Mallory and I ventured upstairs and peeked in the bathroom. The tub was full of water, homemade boats, and sponges, but the kids were just sitting around. They looked as if they were out of ideas. Maybe they would let me empty the tub.
They did. While the water was gurgling down the drain, Mallory said, “So. What are you guys going to do this afternoon?”
The reply was six sets of shoulders shrugging.
“It’s too bad it isn’t closer to Valentine’s Day,” said Mal. “You could start making your cards.”
“Well,” said Vanessa, “maybe we could get a head start.”
“Wait, I’ve got a better idea!” I exclaimed. “How would you guys like to make the invitations for the Valentine Masquerade?”
“For your party?” said Margo.
Mallory brightened. “Sure!” she said. “We have construction paper and glue and stuff. You guys make the cards, and Stacey and I will write the party information on them. How does that sound?”
Mal received a variety of replies, ranging from “Very fun!” (Claire) to “Gnarly, man!” (Adam, who was kidding). However, Nicky, who had wandered into the bathroom, said nothing.
So Mal and I covered the kitchen table with newspapers, put out supplies, and let the kids go to it. We were busily giving out directions when, for some reason, I decided to take a head count.
Someone was missing.
“Where’s Nicky?” I asked Mal.
>
“I don’t know. Is he gone already? He’s been so weird today.”
“I’ll go find him,” I said. I checked the rec room and the bathroom. No Nicky. So I approached the boys’ bedroom. The door was closed.
I knocked. “Nicky?” I called. “It’s me, Stacey.”
“Don’t come in!” he shouted.
“Why not? What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, let me see. Can I please come in?”
“No, I’m busy.”
“Hey, Nicky. What’s the matter? Are you in trouble?”
“No.”
“Nicky, I’m getting worried. Do I need to call your parents?”
“No!” This time his “no” sounded slightly frantic. “Don’t call them!”
“Then let me —” (Suddenly the door flew open.) “— come in,” I finished. I stepped into the room. “What are you doing in here by yourself?”
“You have to promise you won’t tell,” Nicky answered, closing the door.
“Okay … I won’t tell.”
Nicky pointed to an elaborate but half-finished valentine on his desk. He had obviously been working diligently on it.
“That’s beautiful!” I exclaimed softly. “Who’s it for?”
“It’s for my, um, secret friend.”
“Your secret friend?”
Nicky nodded. “She’s a girl. She’s younger than me. She’s only in second grade.”
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“I’m not telling!” Nicky cried impatiently. “And don’t you tell anyone about this. I don’t want my brothers to find out. They would never stop teasing me if they did.”
“Okay. I said I’d keep your secret and I meant it. I’ll leave now. I bet if you work really hard, you can finish the card before your brothers come back upstairs.”
Nicky breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Stacey,” he said.