Dawn and Too Many Sitters

  But still, I had to agree with her. If I didn’t tell Jeff, things would only go from bad to worse.

  “Thanks, Mary Anne,” I said.

  Clomp-clomp-clomp-clomp-clomp. Jeff pounded up the stairs, then stuck his head in my room. “Are you two going to be yakking all night? Because if you are, I’m sleeping downstairs.”

  “Wherever you go,” I said, “the moment you’re falling asleep, we are going to stand over you and talk about dresses and boyfriends and makeup.”

  “EEEEEWWWWWWW!” Jeff went screaming into the bathroom.

  Mary Anne and I exchanged a smile.

  “I’ll tell him in the morning,” I whispered.

  “Okay,” Mary Anne whispered back. Yawning, she stood up. “Good night.”

  “ ’Night,” I replied. “And Mary Anne?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You could never be too boring or say too many mean things. You’re my one and only sister and I love you.”

  Just seeing Mary Anne’s eyes turn red and watery made me start to cry. We fell into each other’s arms and blubbered away.

  “Ohhhh, gross!” Jeff cried, as he lumbered by again.

  * * *

  The next morning I prepared notes. Not exactly a speech, but a list of things I was going to say to Jeff. It looked like this:

  I planned to tell him after breakfast. I had just awakened and dressed when I heard a knock at the door.

  “Come in.”

  “Hi,” Jeff said. “Knock knock.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Me,” he said with an exaggerated deadpan expression. “Were you expecting a knock-knock joke?”

  As he walked into the room, I noticed my notecard was on my makeup table. I glanced at it, quickly slid it under a hand mirror, then sat on my bed.

  “Have a seat, Jeff,” I replied. “I need to tell you something.”

  Jeff sat beside me, looking kind of uncomfortable. “I need to tell you something, too.”

  “Jeff …” I began. “Um …”

  My stomach was doing handsprings. I had instant second thoughts. Maybe if we fired the other BITs but kept Jeff. Maybe …

  “Are you going to ask me about a job?” he interrupted.

  “Huh?”

  “Because if you are, I don’t think I want to do it.”

  “Well, I wasn’t exactly —”

  “Good. JAB and I, well, we like baby-sitting and all. It’s been kind of fun. But we don’t want to do it anymore.”

  I must have been gaping at him, because he gave me a funny look. “Are you okay? I mean, you’re not mad at me, are you?”

  “No.”

  “We’ve been talking about it for a while. It takes too much time. And we like to do other stuff better — you know, Rollerblading, baseball, fun things.”

  “I see.”

  “I meant to tell you last night, but you and Mary Anne were just about boring my socks off. It’s okay, right? I mean, we don’t have to, like, call up Kristy and go to a meeting and make a pledge or whatever?”

  “No, that’s okay, Jeff. I’ll tell her.”

  “You sure you’re not mad at me?”

  “No. I’ll survive.”

  “Cool. Last one to breakfast is a rotten prune.”

  I tore out of the door and down the stairs. But Jeff beat me by a mile.

  You know what? That morning, I did not mind being a rotten prune at all.

  “Step rrriiiight up!” Kristy called through a bullhorn. “On the center stage, I, Krazy Kristy, will perform a magic show for kids of all ages! Come see tricks that will startle the senses and astound the mind!”

  Kristy was wearing oversized purple glasses (where she got them, I don’t know). She was also wearing a loud, striped shirt with mismatched suspenders, and a pair of antennae.

  I love Kristy. Who else on earth would make a total fool of herself, just to help some friends raise money?

  Yes, it was the Fourth of July. The Official BSC Fourth of July Pre-Fireworks Festival was under way. Half of Stoneybrook seemed to be there. The day had been pretty hot and humid, but right now a cool breeze was blowing over Brenner Field. People were spreading out blankets, opening picnic baskets, playing Frisbee, stretching out to enjoy the mild rays of the late-afternoon sun.

  “To my right, Crafty Claudia and Masterful Mallory will paint faces in red-white-and-blue motifs, perfect for today’s festivities!” Kristy continued. “To my left, Dazzling Dawn and Spectacular Stacey will conduct death-defying relay races, in the spirit of our nation’s independence. And you little ones will not want to miss Jumping Jessi and her fife-and-drum marching band! All for reasonable rates. And if you’re hungry, or you forgot to bring a flag, head right for our snack and souvenir stand!”

  The concessionaires, by the way, were Merry Mary Anne and Laugh-a-lot Logan. (Hey, don’t blame me. I didn’t make up the names.)

  Even though I was helping with the relay races, I had my eye on the goodies table. We’d spent all day preparing. (Well, almost all day. Four of us managed to squeeze in a car wash in the morning, while the rest of us did some lawn mowing.) From about noon on, Mary Anne, Logan, Jessi, and I had slaved in our kitchen. We’d made muffins, breads, and cookies. Logan also brought over some bottles of the Bruno family’s famous homemade barbecue sauce, which he and his dad had made.

  We put price tags on all of it. Then Richard drove us to the field and helped us set it up on two folding tables.

  Jessi had convinced her parents to order some cheap stuff from her mom’s catalog: little American flags, red-white-and-blue pinwheels, and stars-and-stripes-motif sunglasses. The Ramseys had charged the whole amount and agreed we could pay them back after the festival.

  Jessi was a little worried about that. To be honest with you, so was I. I mean, I sure wouldn’t want to buy that junky future plastic-waste.

  Judging from the kids who were flocking around the table, not too many people agreed with me.

  But Jessi was too busy with her event to notice.

  “I want to play the flute!” Jenny Prezzioso was shouting.

  “No!” screamed Madeleine DeWitt. “I play the flute. You play the drums!”

  “Easy, girls,” Jessi said. “I have two flutes. Someone else can play the drums.”

  “Me! Me! Me! Me!” squealed Marnie Barrett.

  Remember all Mary Anne’s junk we’d found? Well, we also came across some old, battered musical instruments. The flutes and toy trumpet were in pretty good shape, and a torn drum was easily repaired with packing tape.

  We’d also made a few extra drums out of empty cans, which the kids had to bang with their hands. (The Founding Fathers didn’t play bongos, but hey, this was pretend.)

  “Okay, who wants eye patches and bandannas?” Jordan Pike called out.

  “MEEEEEEEE!”

  As Jordan handed them out, Jessi held up a small cassette player and pressed play. A brass band blared out a march.

  You should have seen the kids tramping around the field, banging and blowing on their instruments. They were absolutely adorable.

  By the way, Jordan wasn’t the only BIT helping out. Byron and Adam were Kristy’s magic show assistants. Jeff was with Stacey, tying bandannas around kids’ legs for a three-legged race.

  I handed out eggs and spoons to a group of nine kids. I divided them into teams of three, then lined them up behind three large sticks I’d set down in a grassy area behind the goodies table. “Okay, one behind the other, tallest to smallest. I’ll give the first person an egg in a spoon.” I pointed to a tree in the distance. “You run to that tree and back, making sure not to drop the egg. Then you relay the spoon to the next person, who does the same thing. If you drop it, you go back to the beginning. Three drops and your team forfeits. The first team to make it with all three members wins.”

  Team one was Claire, Margo, and Vanessa Pike. Team two: Jake, Laurel, and Patsy Kuhn. Team three: Buddy Barrett and Lindsey and Taylor DeWitt.

  Claire Pike w
as licking her lips. “Mmmm, I looove eggies!”

  “This one’s for running with, not eating,” said her teammate Margo.

  “What if the egg breaks?” Jake Kuhn asked.

  “They’re hard-boiled,” I said. “And we have more. So … on your marks … get set … go!”

  How did they do? Well, Jake never made it to the tree. He dropped his egg three times, forfeited for his team, and went crying to his mom for another fifty cents to play again. The Pikes were doing great, until Claire disappeared behind the tree and started eating her egg. The DeWitts won, but only after we discovered that one of the eggs was raw (it splattered on Taylor’s sneaker).

  In the face-painting corner, Claudia and Mallory had their hands full. The kids of Stoneybrook were lining up to transform into glittery superheroes with star-spangled faces. One girl, Livi Becker, was beaming in anticipation.

  Alicia Gianelli had a half-blue, half-red face with a huge red and white star over the middle. Her brother Bobby looked like Spider-Man (I know, how patriotic). Six-year-old Matthew Hobart was walking around with a smudgy, red-scarred face.

  When he showed up at the relay line, I asked, “Who are you, Frankenstein’s monster?”

  “No, a Rebellutionary War hero, silly,” he replied.

  His older brother, James, burst out laughing. “It’s ‘Revolutionary War,’ and you don’t even know anything about it!”

  “Do, too! That’s where they invented fireworks!”

  “AAAAAAAGUHHHHH!”

  We all looked over to see Claudia and Mallory trying to comfort Ryan DeWitt, who was dissolving into tears.

  Jeff was helping set up the relay lines, so I quickly scooted over and asked what had happened.

  Claudia was wiping Ryan’s teary face with cold cream. “He wanted to be a scary monster, and I guess I went overboard.”

  “He freaked out when we held up the mirror,” Mallory explained.

  “Get it off get it off!” yelled Ryan.

  Suddenly a loud voice boomed out from the area of Kristy’s magic show: “I know how to do that!”

  Nine-year-old Linny Papadakis was standing in the audience of kids. His hands were on his hips.

  Kristy was glaring at him as she shuffled a deck of cards on a small table. “Linny, who’s the magician, you or me?”

  “I saw you looking at the back of the card!” Linny bellowed. “They’re marked. I have that same magic set. This is a rip-off!”

  “Linny, if you don’t sit down —”

  “I’ll show you! Give me the cards!”

  “I shall now perform the magic trick of making Linny Papadakis disappear,” Kristy announced. “For this, I’ll need my assistants Byron and Adam.”

  Byron and Adam began walking toward Linny, glaring, in their best bodyguard imitations.

  Linny took the hint. He sat right down. “Uh, what’s your next trick?”

  I never found the answer to that. My egg-and-spooners were becoming impatient.

  The darkness crept in sooner than I expected. I didn’t realize night had fallen until I began hearing explosions.

  Ryan and Marnie burst out crying and had to be scooped up by their parents. My relay race broke up in midstride as kids headed to their blankets. One of Stacey’s three-legged pairs hopped away, complete with tied-up legs, falling all over themselves and giggling.

  Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, Mary Anne, Logan, Jessi, Mallory, and I collapsed in front of the goodies table.

  Well, the ex-goodies table. It was completely empty, except for a few flags. When the fireworks began, we picked them up and waved them in the air.

  Except for Stacey. As the explosions bathed our faces in speckly light, she counted out our money.

  How did we do? Well, for starters, we were able to pay back the Ramseys with a nice profit left over.

  Even better, we doubled the money we’d already saved up.

  Who needed fireworks? That was the best news of all.

  “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Jessi said.

  “Jessi was totally useless,” Mallory continued.

  Jessi glowered at her. “Thanks a lot.”

  “You know what I mean,” Mal said. “It was as if we had five sitters yesterday — me, Jess, and the triplets. Byron was actually playing hide-and-seek with Claire. He pretended to be surprised when he found her, and didn’t tease her for hiding in plain sight.”

  “Adam made sandwiches for his sisters,” Jessi added.

  “And he didn’t sprinkle ants on them or bite into them,” Mallory said.

  “Jordan volunteered to play catch with Nicky and Vanessa.”

  “Will wonders never cease?” Abby remarked.

  “Sounds like we won’t be needing two BSC members at the Pikes’ anymore,” Mary Anne said.

  “It’s that BIT training,” Kristy said. “I told you it would work.”

  “Oh?” Abby gave her a Look. “That wasn’t the way I heard it. Uh, Mary Anne, would you please play back the transcript of that meeting?”

  Kristy threw a Snickers wrapper at her.

  It was Wednesday. Our meeting was under way and we were celebrating. Claudia had gone out and bought Snickers, tortilla chips, and soda to celebrate our fabulous news.

  With two days to go to the payment deadline, we had reached our goal. All the washed cars, cleaned houses, mowed lawns, and sat-for kids had paid off. The Fourth of July festivities had put us over the hump.

  We had ticket money. We had spending money. We had junk food money for about four meetings.

  On Friday, we were going to SMS to present our checks to Mr. Kingbridge. After that, there were just eight more days until we left for Hawaii.

  I was determined not to wash another car. My lawn-mowing days were over.

  What was I going to do? Well, I had ten daily emergency appointments with the sun. My California tan was fading, and I refused to set foot on those Hawaiian beaches looking like Casper the Friendly Ghost.

  Rrrrring!

  “Aloha, Baby-sitters Club!” Claudia chirped into the receiver.

  Abby nearly spit out her chips laughing.

  “When? July twenty-fifth? I’ll have to call you back, Mrs. Wilder. Thanks.”

  She hung up and tapped her chin, pretending to be in deep thought. “Hmmm, will we by any chance be catching rays in Waikiki that day, Mary Anne?”

  “Yes, Claudia,” Mary Anne replied.

  Claudia grinned at Kristy. “Goodness, I guess that job is for one of you poor non-travelers.”

  “Be nice, Claudia,” Stacey warned her.

  Kristy sighed. “No respect.”

  “You and Mal are both free in the afternoon, Kristy,” Mary Anne said.

  “Go ahead, Mallory,” Kristy said grumpily. “I’ll be busy crying over spilled coconut milk.”

  “Awwwwww,” said Claudia and Abby.

  Kristy tried to look angry, but I could see the sides of her mouth turning upward. (After all, she was going to Hawaii in August.)

  Claudia quickly called back Mrs. Wilder and set up the job.

  While she did that, Abby poured out eight cups of cola (artificially sweetened, for Stacey’s sake) and passed them around.

  “A toast!” she announced. “To all of us, travelers and non, for an incredible beginning of the summer.”

  “Yyyyyyes!” said Kristy, raising her cup.

  “To Dawn, for spending the summer with us,” Mary Anne added. “In Stoneybrook and Hawaii.”

  “Hear hear!” Jessi cried out.

  “And there there!” Abby said.

  Before anyone could down a glass, I called out, “I have to add one more!”

  Kristy smiled. “Aw, that’s okay, Dawn.”

  “To my brother, Jeff, and the BITs: future … uh, well, competent baby-sitters!”

  We all drank to that.

  Yes, even Kristy.

  * * *

  Dear Reader,

  Lots of kids write to me asking if they are old enough to start baby-sitting. Th
at’s a difficult question, because the answer depends on so many things. It depends on how much experience you’ve had with other kids, and how prepared you are to baby-sit. And it depends on the age of the kids you’ll be sitting for. For example, if you’re ten, like the Pike triplets and Jeff Schafer, you are probably not going to get a job sitting for a nine-year-old! Also, you need to be prepared to baby-sit for kids of any age. Before you start sitting, I suggest taking a first aid class, an infant care class, or a sitting class such as the one offered by the Red Cross. If you are younger and you think you’re ready to sit, a good way to start is by going along on a job with a more experienced sitter or taking a job as a parent’s helper, where you watch the kids while a parent is at home. One of the best places to get experience is in your home, taking care of your younger brothers and sisters, just like Jessi and Mallory did. Whatever you do, remember that sitting is a big job and a lot of responsibility. The Pikes and Jeff tried it, and decided they weren’t ready for it yet. They’ll probably try again in a couple of years.

  Happy baby-sitting!

  * * *

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Peter Lerangis

  for his help in

  preparing this manuscript.

  About the Author

  ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.

  There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.

  Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.

  Copyright © 1996 by Ann M. Martin

  Cover art by Hodges Soileau