Dawn's Wicked Stepsister

  “I’m wearing my pink dress,” said Claudia. “The short one. And my earrings that look like globes. Oh, and a necklace I made from candy.”

  “You had candy in your room and you didn’t eat it?” I said.

  Everyone laughed. And Claud’s clock turned to six.

  Good. Time to go. We could get off the subject of the dance. I hated the fact that no boy had asked me to go. (But I had to admit that I was looking forward to an evening at home without Mary Anne.)

  * * *

  That night, as soon as dinner was over, Mary Anne ran upstairs. “Help me find something to wear!” she called over her shoulder.

  Oh, yuck. That was like rubbing salt in a wound. I felt bad enough that I hadn’t been invited to the dance. But if helping Mary Anne would speed things along and get her out of the house faster, then I would do it.

  I followed her to our room.

  “I am so glad to be going to this dance,” said Mary Anne.

  Was she gloating — or just glad to leave the house for awhile? If I were Mary Anne, I wouldn’t have minded leaving. I was certainly looking forward to my evening alone. (Well, Mom and Richard would be home, but I planned to stay upstairs and just read and veg out and enjoy the peace.)

  “You’re lucky to be going, especially with Logan,” I said.

  Mary Anne smiled. “Yeah. And I want to look my best for him. Now let’s see. The last time we went to a dance I wore my green jumpsuit…. Hey, could I borrow that really short, flared skirt of yours? The blue one with the black waistband? I could wear my baggy white shirt with it.”

  Anything, anything.

  Mary Anne got dressed. She looked at herself in the mirror for ages. “When you have a boyfriend,” she told me, “you want to look good for him.”

  “Maybe you do,” I said, “but I would rather find a guy I could be a slob around.”

  “You probably picked that up from your mom,” said Mary Anne.

  I really don’t think she intended that as an insult. She said it while she was frantically taking stuff out of one purse and putting it in another. She was just trying to make conversation and she couldn’t wait to get out of the house — I think.

  I didn’t blame her. The house didn’t feel like ours yet. It still seemed like Mom’s and mine. Mary Anne and her dad and Tigger just happened to live in it, too. Mary Anne must have felt like a guest in a hotel. So I tried to forgive her for the comments and for bragging about Logan.

  I did not think, though, that it was necessary for her to call, as she and her father were heading out the door, “Just try to enjoy the evening, Dawn. Don’t think of yourself as someone who can’t get a date, okay? It isn’t healthy.”

  Well, that did it. I marched upstairs to the phone in Mom’s and Richard’s room and called Jeff in California. It was eight o’clock here, which meant it was five o’clock there. Jeff might be home.

  Ring … ring … ri —

  Someone picked up the phone. An unfamiliar woman’s voice said, “Hello, Schafer residence.”

  I knew it wasn’t Dad’s housekeeper.

  “Is — is Jeff there?” I asked. Maybe I’d dialed the wrong number.

  “Hold on a sec,” said the woman.

  A few moments later I heard Jeff say, “Hello?”

  “Hi, Jeff!” I replied excitedly. “It’s me, Dawn.”

  “Hi!” Jeff sounded as excited as I felt. It’s funny, but we’ve grown closer since he moved back to California.

  “Who answered the phone just now?” I asked. “Did Dad get a new housekeeper?”

  “Just a sec,” said Jeff. There was a long pause. At last he said in a soft, muffled voice. “That was Carol, Dad’s new girlfriend. I had to wait for her to leave the room.”

  “What’s she doing over there?” I wanted to know.

  “She’s going to have dinner with us. She’s here a lot.”

  “Do you like her?”

  I just knew that at the other end of the three thousand miles of telephone wires my brother was shrugging. “She’s okay, I guess.”

  “Do you think Dad really likes her?”

  “Yeah … I do. But I don’t think they’re going to get married or anything.”

  “How come?”

  “Because Carol keeps saying, ‘I’ll never marry anyone.’ ” (Jeff was speaking in a high, squeaky voice, and I giggled.) “She says, ‘The last thing I want is to have the responsibility of a family.’ But you’d never know that from all the time she spends with Dad and me. Anyway, how are you? How are things going with Mary Anne and her father?”

  “You mean Mary Anne and ‘sir’?”

  Jeff laughed. “I couldn’t help that. He’s so stiff and formal.”

  “Tidy, too,” I added. I told my brother about the sock drawer, and Jeff laughed again. “You know what I like about you?” I said.

  “My good looks?” replied Jeff.

  “Apart from your looks.”

  “What?”

  “You’re dependable. And predictable. I used to think Mary Anne was, too, but now I’m not so sure.” And then something dawned on me. “That must be because you’re my real brother but Mary Anne is only my stepsister.” I told Jeff about some of the things Mary Anne had said and done recently. “I never would have expected her to brag about Logan the way she did tonight,” I finished up.

  “You know what?” said Jeff. “That reminded me of something. I’ve never talked about this with anyone, but I know it’s true: when she’s around —” (I knew Jeff meant Carol) “— I act different than when she isn’t. Like, when she’s over at the house, sometimes I feel I’m being squeezed.”

  “Squeezed?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I just can’t always be myself around her. And she takes up space. I mean, she doesn’t really take up much, of course. ‘Cause she’s not fat.” (I smiled.) “It’s more like … ”

  “Emotional space?” I supplied. I was thinking of the Arnold girls, Marilyn and Carolyn, whom the club sits for sometimes. They’re identical twins, but they’re two very different people, with different interests, different taste, and different friends. And recently they hadn’t been getting along. It turned out that they needed separate bedrooms to go with their separate lives. They needed emotional space in order to be friends. At least, that was how I thought of the problem.

  “Emotional space?” Jeff repeated. “Yeah, I guess that describes it.”

  My real brother and I talked awhile longer, but finally we had to get off the phone. Mom is nice about letting us call each other and I didn’t want to take advantage of that. Besides, I’d noticed that Richard scrutinized our phone bill. I mean every little detail.

  After Jeff and I hung up I wandered into my room. I read for awhile. Then I decided to go to bed early, so I called good night to Mom and Richard, turned off my light, and fell into a deep sleep.

  I’m not sure how much later it happened, but the next thing I knew, I was awake — unhappily. The light was on in our room and Mary Anne was moving around, putting on her nightgown and calling, “Tigger! Tigger?” If she was trying to whisper, she wasn’t doing a very good job.

  “Mrrumphh,” I said, rolling onto my stomach and putting the pillow over my head.

  “Oh, Dawn. Sorry. Did I wake you?” asked Mary Anne.

  “No, no. I was going to get up anyway. It’s time for my next feeding.”

  Mary Anne giggled.

  I peeked out from under the pillow. “Can you turn the light off? It’s killing my eyes.”

  “Sure.” Mary Anne hit the light, then fumbled over to her bed. “Dawn?” she said. “The dance was fun. Everyone missed you.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. You should have come anyway. Logan would have danced with you. Besides, half the kids there arrived without dates. It didn’t matter.”

  I was beginning to feel better. Also, more awake. “So what went on?” I asked. “Did anything happen?”

  “Let’s see. Alan Gray was doing that thing
where he puts M&Ms in his eyes, and he did it so often that Kristy got mad at him and they had a fight.”

  “I thought Kristy invited Bart Taylor to the dance,” I said.

  “She did. Alan just wanted to drive her crazy by hanging around her and looking like Little Orphan Annie. He succeeded, too.”

  Mary Anne told me about the rest of the dance then — who had had fun, who hadn’t, what everyone had worn.

  I began to think of her as my sister again, instead of my stepsister. I was very confused. How could we get along so well half the time and be mad at each other the rest of the time? Was this what having a sister was all about?

  The most unusual thing about Vanessa’s accident, Stacey pointed out, was that she had one at all. Vanessa is the Pike poet (or maybe I should say poetess). She is not an athletic person. Her favorite activity is sitting somewhere (in private, if possible, which is difficult at her house), and writing her poetry. She’s got volumes of it.

  But on the day that Stacey sat for the Pikes, Vanessa decided she needed some exercise.

  “I want to keep my strength up,” she told Stacey, “so that I don’t catch the triplets’ pneumonia or Mallory’s chicken pox.”

  “I don’t blame you,” replied Stacey.

  I might add here that Stacey was wearing a surgeon’s mask that afternoon. It wasn’t her idea (it was Mrs. Pike’s and her mother’s), but Stacey had gone along with it willingly. She didn’t want to catch pneumonia or get the pox back, either, and she’d been assured that she wouldn’t if she wore the mask, at least while she was indoors. Also, the weather was beautiful, and Mrs. Pike had told Stacey that she could watch Vanessa, Margo, and Claire outside for part of the time, as long as she left the back door open so she could hear Mal, the triplets, or Nicky if they needed anything.

  Stacey had earmarked this particular job as an easy one, with five of the eight Pikes laid up.

  Boy, was she wrong.

  Mr. and Mrs. Pike needed a sitter because they had had tickets for ages to some tennis match in Stamford. The tickets were expensive and the Pikes didn’t want to miss the game; otherwise they might have stayed at home with their ailing family. But they are tennis nuts, so off they went.

  As soon as they had left, Stacey, her mask in place, stood at the bottom of the steps and yelled upstairs, “Anybody need anything?”

  “Ginger ale,” replied Mal.

  “Water,” replied Byron.

  “A Popsicle,” replied Adam.

  “More Kleenex,” replied Jordan.

  “My dinosaurs,” replied a fifth voice. That was Nicky on the couch in the living room. He sounded bored to death.

  Stacey sighed. Then she got to work. When she had assembled the ginger ale, water, Popsicle, and Kleenex on a tray, she sent the things upstairs with Vanessa, who returned with Nicky’s dinosaurs and handed them to him.

  Possibly sensing that she might become an errand girl for the afternoon, it was at this point that Vanessa said something about needing exercise and then added, “I think I’ll go outside and ride my bike, okay, Stacey?”

  “Okay,” Stacey answered. “Be careful. And if you’re going to leave the neighborhood, let me know.” (A good baby-sitter keeps careful track of her charges at all times.)

  “I will.” Vanessa left quickly.

  “Claire? Margo?” Stacey called then, realizing that she hadn’t seen them since she’d arrived about fifteen minutes earlier.

  “Down here!” called Margo from the rec room. “We’re playing hospital.”

  Again? thought Stacey, as she went downstairs.

  “Hi, Stacey-silly-billy-goo-goo!” cried Claire. “You know what? This game isn’t easy with only two people. I have to be the ambulance driver, the doctor, and the X-ray person.”

  “And I’m the patient, the nurse, and the worried mother,” added Margo.

  “You’re the patient and a nurse?” said Stacey, smiling. “That must be tough.”

  “It is. But someone’s got to do it.”

  “Now, Margo,” said Claire, who usually directed these games, “there’s a terrible fire, okay? And you got caught in it. In your car. And your car blew up.”

  Gosh, thought Stacey. Playing hospital sure had changed. When she was little, all she and her friends ever did when they played hospital was catch colds or fall down. Maybe once in awhile one of them would get appendicitis. But that was the worst that would happen.

  Stacey let Claire and Margo play a little longer. Then she said, “Don’t you want to go outside, you guys? It’s such a nice day. If you played outside you could use the wagon for an ambulance.” (And I could take off this stupid mask, she thought.)

  The girls thought that over. At last Claire said, “Let’s go!”

  “Great,” said Stacey. “Let me just see if anyone upstairs needs anything. Then I’ll be right out. You go ahead.”

  Claire and Margo ran out the back door and Stacey called up to the ailing Pikes, “Anyone need anything?”

  She braced herself for the replies. But all she got was a chorus of “No, thanks!” Surprised, she went outside.

  For awhile, Stacey just sat on the patio and watched the game of hospital continue. She took off the surgeon’s mask. The girls battled a flood, a tornado, and a plane crash. Each time, the wonderful doctor at the hospital saved the terribly sick or wounded patient.

  Claire was in the middle of saving Margo’s life yet again when Vanessa came hurtling up the driveway on her bicycle. She was riding too fast and Stacey knew it. For that reason, Stacey was already on her feet when Vanessa tried to put on her brakes at the end of the driveway and skidded into a nearby cherry tree instead.

  “Ow, ow, ow!” she cried.

  Stacey reached her in two seconds. “Oh, Vanessa,” she said. “Wow. What a fall. Okay, don’t move too fast. Did you hit your head?”

  Vanessa sat up slowly. “No,” she said, shaking it, “but my elbow hurts. So does my ankle.”

  “Doctor Claire to the rescue!” cried Claire, as she and Margo raced to the scene of the accident.

  “Hold on, Claire,” said Stacey gently. “This is a real accident. I need to take a good look at our patient. Okay, I see which elbow you hurt, Vanessa. It’s pretty scraped up.”

  “I think I scraped it on that gravel,” she said, pointing.

  Stacey examined the wound. “There’s still some gravel in it,” she announced. “Now, which ankle hurts?”

  “My left one,” replied Vanessa.

  “It looks okay,” said Stacey. “Try to stand on it.”

  Vanessa struggled to her feet, but immediately fell down again, clutching her ankle. “That hurts!” she exclaimed, gasping.

  “Okay,” said Stacey calmly. “I think you better see your doctor.”

  “Goody!” cried Claire. “Well, here I am.”

  “No, I mean the real one,” said Stacey. “Margo, can you help make your sister comfortable? I’ve got to make a few phone calls.”

  Stacey dashed inside. She called Claudia, who wasn’t at home. Next she tried me. “Hi, Dawn? Oh, thank goodness you’re there. Can you come over to the Pikes’ right away? Vanessa had an accident…. Great.” Then Stacey hung up and called her mother. “Can you drive us to the doctor’s office?” she asked when she explained what had happened.

  “Of course,” replied her mother immediately.

  Mrs. McGill and I arrived at the Pikes’ at the same time. Stacey, her mom, and I loaded Vanessa into the back of the McGills’ station wagon. Then I stood in the driveway with Claire and Margo, and the three of us watched as the car backed down the driveway.

  “There goes the ambulance,” murmured Margo.

  And Claire added, “Ooh-eee-ooh…. See you later, Vanessa-silly-billy-goo-goo.”

  Meanwhile, Stacey’s mother sped toward the doctor’s office.

  “Faster! Faster!” Stacey kept crying.

  “Honey,” her mother replied, “this isn’t an emergency, luckily. And I don’t want to get a speeding
ticket.”

  “I’m okay,” spoke up Vanessa. “Gosh, I wonder which doctor I’ll see. There are three of them in the group, but only one is around on Saturdays.”

  The doctor on duty was Dr. Dellenkamp, whom Vanessa likes a lot. Even when she had to work a little to get the gravel out of Vanessa’s wound, and when she sprayed it with antiseptic, and again when she wrapped an ace bandage around Vanessa’s sprained ankle, Vanessa just said, “Ow!”

  Stacey stayed with her the whole time while her mother sat in the waiting room. “I should stay with her, Mom,” Stacey had told Mrs. McGill. “I’m the baby-sitter.”

  * * *

  Stacey, her mother, and Vanessa returned to the Pikes’ about fifteen minutes before Mr. and Mrs. Pike got back. There was just enough time for me to leave and for Stacey to settle Vanessa on the other couch in the living room with Nicky.

  “Thanks, Dawn!” Stacey called as I left. “I owe you one.”

  “No problem!” I called back.

  When the Pikes pulled into their driveway, Claire greeted them. “Guess what,” she said before they’d even gotten out of their car. “Vanessa fell off her bike and Stacey took her to the hospital in an ambulance and Vanessa’s ankle is broken!”

  No wonder the Pikes were in a panic when they dashed into the living room. They ran to Vanessa, where they saw an ordinary ace bandage, not a cast, on her ankle. Vanessa was drinking a ginger ale and looking pretty jolly.

  “I sprained it,” she said, almost proudly. “I can’t even walk on it. I got crutches, see?” Vanessa pointed to the crutches, which Stacey had propped up against one end of the couch.

  “I see,” said Mrs. Pike wearily, “but I don’t believe it. Six ailing children. What’s going to happen next?”

  “Nothing,” said Mr. Pike firmly. “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Doctor Dellenkamp said you could call her if you have any questions,” Stacey told the Pikes, who had thanked her several times for her quick thinking and for handling a tough situation so well.

  “Okay,” they replied. “We’ll phone the doctor right away.”