Dawn's Wicked Stepsister

  Claudia, our VP, is the only one of us who has a phone in her room and her own personal phone number. This is great because it means we don’t have to use a phone belonging to one of our parents — particularly while they might want to be using it. So we let Claud be VP, since we use her room and tie up her phone three times a week. Not to mention, eat her junk food.

  The secretary of the club is Mary Anne, and boy is she good at it. I think she originally got the job because she has the tidiest handwriting of any of us. But she also turned out to be very organized, and thank goodness for that. Poor Mary Anne has the most complicated job of all. She’s in charge of the club record book. That’s where we keep track of all important information — our clients, their names and addresses, the money we earn, and most important, our sitting appointments. Mary Anne schedules everything on the appointment pages. In order to do this, she has to keep careful records, and also know, for instance, when Claud will be at an art class or Jessi at a ballet lesson or Mal at the orthodontist for her braces. Mary Anne has not made a single scheduling mistake.

  Stacey is the treasurer, and she loves her job. For starters, she’s a math whiz. She can empty out the money in our treasury (a manila envelope) and tell us how much is there practically just by looking at it. And she can add and subtract numbers in her head almost as fast as a computer could do it. (Well, I’m exaggerating a little, but she’s a lot faster than any other club member.) Stacey’s job is to collect club dues from us at every Monday meeting, to let us know if the treasury money is getting low, and to dole out money as we need it: to help pay Claud’s monthly phone bill; to pay Charlie for driving Kristy to and from meetings, since she lives so far away now; to buy new things for the Kid-Kits; and to pay for an occasional sleepover or pizza party or something fun for the club! Stacey loves collecting money and hates parting with it. She keeps track of it in the record book and notes how we spend it.

  I am the club’s alternate officer, which is sort of like being a substitute teacher. It means I could take over the job of any other member who might have to miss a meeting. While Stacey was back in New York for that short time, I became the treasurer, but I was glad to give up the job when she returned. I’m not nearly as good at math as she is, and besides, everyone gets crabby when they have to pay their weekly dues. Even Kristy. I would much rather be the alternate officer. I get to do different jobs that way. I like the variety. But guess which job I’ve never been able to try — Kristy’s. She has not missed one meeting. I’m dying to be president-for-a-day.

  Jessi and Mal don’t have actual jobs. “Junior Officer” means that they’re allowed to baby-sit only after school and on weekend days. Their parents won’t let them sit at night unless they’re sitting for their own brothers and sisters. But believe me, two daytime-only club members are a big help. They free the rest of us up for nighttime jobs.

  That’s it for us BSC members. I guess the only other thing you need to know is that apart from the record book, Kristy makes us keep a club notebook. The notebook is more like a diary or journal. Each of us is responsible for writing up every single job we take, and then we’re supposed to read the past week’s entries to see what went on when our friends were sitting. Only Kristy and Mal actually like writing in the book, but we all admit that reading it is helpful. We see how our friends handled baby-sitting problems, and keep up with what’s going on with the families we sit for regularly. It’s always best to go to a job prepared — to know if a child is suddenly having nightmares or has developed a food allergy, anything like that.

  * * *

  Okay. So it was Monday and Claud’s clock had hit five-thirty.

  “Order!” called Kristy, relishing being in charge.

  The rest of us sat up a little straighter. As usual, Jessi and Mal were on the floor. This time they were leaning against Claud’s bed. They’d been putting sparkly stickers on their fingernails. Claud and Mary Anne and I were sitting in a row on Claudia’s bed, and Stacey was sitting backwards in Claud’s desk chair, resting her chin on the top rung. Sometimes I sit in the desk chair and Stacey sits on the bed. We trade off.

  “Come to order,” said Kristy again, just for good measure. She was sitting in Claud’s director’s chair, wearing a visor. A pencil was stuck over one ear, and the club notebook in her hand. “Okay, treasurer. Collect the dues.”

  Stacey gleefully got out the treasury envelope, while the rest of us groaned as we parted with our hard-earned money.

  Then the phone began to ring and Mary Anne started lining up jobs for us. When we hit a lull, Claud said, “I’m hungry. Is anyone else?”

  “I’m starved,” replied Kristy.

  Claudia found a bag of pretzels in her closet and passed them around. No one was surprised when Stacey didn’t take any because her doctor has told her to be stricter than usual about between-meal snacks, even nonsugary ones. But we were sort of surprised when Mal passed them up.

  “I don’t feel too good,” she confessed. She’d been quiet during the meeting.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Jessi, alarmed. And then, just like a mother, she put her hand to Mallory’s forehead. “Hey, I think you’ve got a fever!” she exclaimed.

  “Really?” said Mal weakly.

  “Change places with me,” Mary Anne spoke up. “You’ll be more comfortable on the bed.”

  But Kristy said, “I think you should go home, Mal. You look terrible.”

  So Mal did go home. It was the first time any of us had left a meeting sick. We weren’t worried, though. How sick could Mal be? She was able to ride her bicycle home.

  As it turned out, Mal was sicker than we’d guessed. By Wednesday she’d come down with … the chicken pox! Can you believe it? She’s had the dreaded disease once before, but she’d caught it again, which is unusual.

  “I bet she got it from Jamie and Lucy Newton,” said Stacey at our Wednesday meeting. “They had it recently. And I think Mal sat for them just before their spots came out. They would have been contagious then.”

  “Well, we have a minor emergency on our hands,” said Mary Anne. She had opened the record book and was studying the appointment pages. “Mal’s got three jobs lined up during the next week or so. We better replace her on all of them. Who knows how long she’ll be out of commission.”

  “When are the jobs?” asked Kristy.

  Mary Anne told her. The second and third jobs, it turned out, were easy to fill because only one other BSC member was available on each of those days. The first job presented a problem, though. It was at the Perkinses’ house.

  “Guess who’s free that day,” said Mary Anne in an odd voice.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “You and I.”

  “Oh.” I knew my voice had sounded odd, too.

  Usually when more than one of us is available to take a job, us BSC members are really nice about saying things like, “You go ahead and sit for Charlotte, Stacey. We know she’s your favorite kid.” Or, “You take it, Claud. You haven’t had too many jobs lately.”

  But neither Mary Anne nor I said anything like that. We just looked at each other. Finally Mary Anne said, “I’d like the job.”

  “So would I,” I replied honestly. Mary Anne didn’t know it, but I was saving up to buy her a “now-we’re-sisters” present. She had surprised me with one on the day of our parents’ wedding, so now I wanted to get her one. I needed the extra money.

  “But I,” said Mary Anne, “am the one who had to move away from my old house. I used to live next door to the Perkinses and sit for them all the time. So I think I should get the job.”

  I glanced around the room. My friends looked surprised, as they always do when Mary Anne decides to stick up for herself. Kristy even looked a little pleased. She likes to see Mary Anne come out of her shell.

  “Excuse me,” I said, not sounding apologetic at all, “but I really would like that job. And I have just as much right to it as you have.”

  “Me, too.” Mary Anne narrowed her eye
s at me.

  I narrowed mine back.

  “You know,” began Mary Anne, “I don’t think my skirt looks so great on you, after all. It’s a little … tight.”

  Everyone gasped.

  “Are you implying that I’m fat?” I exclaimed, which was ridiculous, because I’m pretty thin.

  “You said it, not me.”

  Our argument could have gone on quite awhile longer, but Kristy suddenly banged her fist down on Claudia’s desk. The pencil cup rattled and we all jumped. Stacey jumped the highest, since she was sitting in the desk chair and got the brunt of the noise.

  “Order!” cried Kristy. “This is extremely unprofessional, unbusinesslike behavior. As president, I won’t stand for it. None of you other members should either. Now let’s get this thing settled.”

  Kristy was practically roaring, but when the phone rang just then, she picked it up calmly and said sweetly, “Hello, Baby-sitters Club. How may we help you?”

  The caller was Mrs. Newton, needing a sitter for Jamie and Lucy, and also wanting to apologize for Mal’s catching the chicken pox again. “If I’d had any idea,” she said to Kristy, “I’d never have asked Mallory to sit that day. But I didn’t know that the kids had been exposed.”

  “Oh, please don’t worry,” said Kristy fervently. “These things happen when you’re in our business. Besides, you’re one of our best customers.”

  Kristy listened to Mrs. Newton for a few more moments. Then she said, “Okay, Mary Anne will check our schedule and I’ll call you right back.” She hung up. “The Newtons need a sitter for next Friday night until about eleven o’clock,” she told Mary Anne. “Who’s free? And if it’s you and Dawn, I don’t even want to know about it.”

  Mary Anne glowered. “No,” she said after she’d checked, “it’s you and Stacey.”

  “You take it, Stace,” said Kristy immediately. “You live much closer. It’ll be easier. I’d have to ask Charlie or Mr. Newton to drive me.”

  “Thanks,” replied Stacey casually.

  Kristy turned to Dawn and me. “You see how easy that was?” she said, as if she’d just taken some medicine to prove that it could go down easily. Without waiting for an answer, she called Mrs. Newton to tell her who’d be sitting. Then she looked at my stepsister and me again. “All right,” she said, “now which one of you is going to take the job with the Perkinses?”

  “I am,” said Mary Anne.

  “I am,” I said.

  Kristy sighed. She looked at us as if we were two kindergartners fighting over something on the playground. “Okay, if you’re going to act immature,” she began, “we’ll solve this the way Mom solves problems between David Michael and Karen. You two can draw straws.”

  I made a face, but what could I say? Mary Anne and I were being childish.

  Besides, Kristy is the president.

  Kristy took a piece of paper off of Claud’s desk and tore it into two small strips. She made one longer than the other. Then she mixed them up and held them in one hand so that the tops were even.

  “All right, Mary Anne, Dawn — each of you draw a straw. Whoever gets the longer one gets the job at the Perkinses’.”

  “Who draws first?” said Mary Anne immediately.

  Kristy’s patience was fading. “Dawn,” she said testily. “You’re drawing in alphabetical order according to first names.”

  I gloated at Mary Anne. Then I chose one of the pieces of paper.

  Mary Anne took the other.

  Hers was longer than mine.

  “I got the job!” she cried. She gleefully made a change in the record book and then phoned Mrs. Perkins to let her know about the change.

  I sat and stared at Claudia’s bedspread. Was this fair? Was it? No, it was not. First Mary Anne caught my mother’s bouquet at the wedding. Now she got the sitting job. Maybe sisters — excuse me, stepsisters — were not all they were cracked up to be.

  “Have fun at the job,” I said sarcastically to Mary Anne. “I hope the girls are monsters.”

  Mary Anne just smiled at me. The Perkins girls are never monsters.

  * * *

  Two nights later — Friday night — Mary Anne came home from the Perkinses’. It was about nine-thirty. I was lying on my bed, eating a granola bar and reading a book called Ghosts: Fact and Fantasy. I didn’t even look up when Mary Anne entered our room.

  “Hi,” she said, after a few moments. She sat carefully on the edge of her bed.

  “Hi,” I replied. I still didn’t look up.

  “How’s the book?”

  “Fine.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Aren’t you going to ask how the Perkinses are?”

  Mary Anne had me there. If she’d said, “Aren’t you going to ask how my job went?” I would have said, “No.” But I like Myriah, Gabbie, and Laura — a lot. So I said, “Okay. How are the Perkinses?”

  “Great, as usual. We really had fun.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Don’t you want to know what the girls did?”

  Well, of course I wanted to know. “What did they do?” I asked.

  “All right. Laura slept most of the time.” (Laura is just a baby.) “But Gabbie was rehearsing for a play she’s going to be in at her preschool. It’s called The Three Piggy Opera.” (I couldn’t help smiling.) “And guess what Myriah wanted to do?”

  “What?” I asked. I admit it. I was hooked. I almost didn’t care that Mary Anne had gotten the job and I hadn’t.

  “She wanted to write letters to famous people.”

  “You’re kidding! … Can she write yet?” (Myriah is still in kindergarten.)

  “Well, sort of. She can write her name, of course, and ‘love’ and a few other words. But she needed a lot of help. She wanted to write to the president to tell him she’d lost a tooth. And then she wanted to write to — get this — Cam Geary to tell him he’s her favorite star.”

  Mary Anne and I were both laughing by then. See, the funny thing is, Cam Geary is Mary Anne’s favorite star. I had put my book down, sat up, and was facing Mary Anne on her bed.

  “What did the letters say?” I asked.

  Mary Anne smiled. “The first one went: ‘Dear Mr. President, I have lost a tooth. It was a bottom tooth. I put it under my pillow and the Tooth Fairy came. She left me a prize. I just thought you would want to know. Love, Myriah. P.S. Keep up the good work.’ ”

  “Oh, that is so cute!” I exclaimed. “Myriah is such a great kid.”

  “So’s Gabbie,” replied Mary Anne. “You should have heard her singing. She was rehearsing really hard.”

  “How about the letter to Cam Geary?” I asked.

  “Oh, that one went: ‘Dear Cam, Hi! How are you? My name is Myriah and I am your favorite fan.’ ”

  “Your favorite fan?” I repeated.

  “I think she meant ‘biggest.’ Anyway, then she went on: ‘I like your TV show very much. If you’re ever in Stoneybrook, come visit me. I live on Bradford Court. I’d be happy to give you some cookies. Love, Myriah.’ ”

  Well, leave it to the Perkins girls. Mary Anne and I were friends again. No, I think we were sisters again. How could we help it, after sharing a story like that one?

  When we went to sleep that night we both said, “ ’Night, sis.”

  I guess if I were eleven, a baby-sitter myself, and not feeling well, I wouldn’t have been a terrific sitting charge, either, so maybe it’s understandable that Mallory did not give Claudia an easy time that afternoon. (Claud told us about her experience later that day at our meeting.)

  For one thing, Mal was in an odd position. She was half baby-sitter (even though she was confined to her bedroom) and half baby-sittee. Mrs. Pike needed a sitter desperately (I’ll tell you why in a minute), but even though Claud had already had the chicken pox, Mrs. Pike didn’t want her going too close to Mal because now we knew that it was possible to get the pox again. Therefore, Claud had to take care of Mal as best she could witho
ut going in her room. However, with so many other Pike kids around, Mal was considered an extra baby-sitter, just in case of an emergency.

  Anyway, Adam, Byron, and Jordan (the triplets) had not been feeling well lately. They’d been coughing, sounded congested in their chests, and had been very tired. So Mrs. Pike decided a trip to the doctor was in order. Claud was left in charge of Vanessa, Nicky, Margo, Claire, and the itchy, crabby Mallory. (By the way, Claire is five, Margo is seven, Nicky is eight, and Vanessa is nine.)

  “Let’s play doctor’s office!” said Claire as soon as Mrs. Pike and the triplets had left. With so much sickness in her house, no wonder she wanted to do that. “Okay,” agreed Margo instantly.

  But Nicky and Vanessa were harder to convince. In the end, Claud said, she thinks they only gave in because it was raining, and anyway, if they’d said no, their little sisters would just have begged them nonstop.

  “Oh, goody!” sang Claire when everyone had agreed to play. “Now look, you silly-billy-goo-goos. The whole rec room is the doctor’s office. No, wait. It’s the emergency room. No, a hospital. A hospital, okay? Oh, and here comes the ambulance. Right now! There’s an emergency!”

  Claudia could see the others getting into the spirit of the game.

  “Ooh-eee-ooh,” wailed Nicky helpfully.

  “Make way for the ambulance!” cried Claire.

  “I’ll be the special emergency-room doctor,” said Vanessa. “Hey, wait a sec. We need props.” She dug around in a bin of toys and came up with a stethoscope for herself, plus a nurse’s cap, a rolled-up bandage, a gigantic fake syringe, and a doctor’s kit. She handed the nurse’s cap to Nicky.

  “Here, you be the nurse,” she said. “I’m the doctor.”

  “No way!” exclaimed Nicky. “Doctors are boys and nurses are girls.”

  “Oh, that is so old-fashioned,” said Vanessa. “There are lots of women doctors today. You know that very well. Doctor Dellenkamp is a woman.”

  “Well, I am not going to be a boy nurse,” replied Nicky. He handed the cap to Margo. “I’m going to be the ambulance driver.”