Dawn's Wicked Stepsister

  Then Mr. Pike called upstairs, “How’s everybody doing? Does anyone need anything?”

  “Something new to read, Dad,” said Mal.

  “Cookies,” said Jordan.

  “Grapes,” said Adam.

  “A sandwich,” said Byron.

  “My sanity,” said Mrs. Pike.

  Monday. Five-thirty. My friends and I were gathering for another meeting of the Baby-sitters Club. We started arriving around five-fifteen.

  Surprisingly, I had been the first to reach BSC headquarters. I was even there before Claudia. She had a sitting job with Jamie and Lucy Newton. It was running a little overtime. In the old days, if I had arrived and Claudia hadn’t been there, I probably would have chatted with Mimi, Claudia’s grandmother. I had liked our chats. But Mimi was gone now.

  Janine, Claudia’s sister, told me to wait in Claud’s bedroom, so I did, thumbing through the notebook to see what had happened in the last week. I wondered what Mary Anne and Kristy were up to. They’d gone to Kristy’s house after school, something that didn’t happen very often but worked out nicely on club meeting days if neither of them had a sitting job.

  “Hi, Dawn!”

  I jumped at the voice. “Oh, Claud. You scared me. I was off in outer space.”

  “Well, land your vehicle,” she replied. “I’m here now.”

  “How are the Newtons?” I asked.

  “Fine, except Lucy has a cold.”

  “Isn’t anyone well around here?”

  “You and I are,” Claudia pointed out.

  “Oh, yeah. I guess I was thinking of the Pikes.”

  Jessi arrived then and settled herself on the floor. “Gosh, I miss Mal,” she said. “We haven’t even been able to talk on the phone much. And I can’t go visit her because Squirt hasn’t had the chicken pox yet and Mama doesn’t want him to get them when he’s so young. I don’t see how he could catch them from me if I don’t have them, but Mama is being extra careful.”

  We sympathized with Jessi while the others arrived (except for Mal, of course). I watched Mary Anne and Kristy come in. They’d been giggling on the way upstairs, but they stopped when they entered BSC headquarters. They headed for their usual spots.

  “Hi,” I said to Mary Anne as she flopped down on the bed.

  “Hi.” Mary Anne barely looked at me.

  I was about to ask her if she and Kristy had had fun, when Kristy tapped her pencil on the arm of the director’s chair. Then she stuck the pencil over one ear. “Please come to order,” she said loudly. “Treasurer?”

  Stacey stood up and opened the treasury envelope. “Dues day!” she announced.

  “Oh,” we all groaned. But we obediently reached for our money.

  Stacey collected it and then dropped her own dues in. “Money, money, money,” she said with a sigh.

  I glanced at Mary Anne, almost laughing. Mary Anne couldn’t help smiling back, but she looked as if the effort pained her.

  “Anybody need money for anything?” asked Kristy. “It sounds as if we’re loaded.”

  Stacey made a face. If she had her way, the treasury would just keep growing fatter and fatter and fatter….

  “I could use another drawing pad for my Kid-Kit,” said Jessi.

  “Well, I hate to admit it, but I need another box of watercolors,” said Stacey. “Charlotte is turning into an artist. She paints almost as much as she reads, these days.”

  “Hey, guess what I noticed when Charlie was dropping us off here this afternoon,” spoke up Mary Anne, but at that moment, the phone rang.

  “First job call of the week!” cried Kristy. “I just love the first call. It’s sort of an adventure. Who’ll be on the other end? What —” Then Kristy realized she better answer the phone. “Hello, Baby-sitters club,” she said.

  Kristy listened for awhile, and then Mary Anne set up a job for Stacey with Nina and Eleanor Marshall.

  “All right, so guess what I noticed,” said Mary Anne as soon as the business had been taken care of.

  “What?” said everybody but Kristy. I figured she knew already, and I wondered why I felt so left out, since no one else knew.

  “The ‘For Sale’ sign is down in front of my old house.”

  “You’re kidding!” exclaimed Claudia, jumping up to look out her window. “It was there this morning…. Yup, it’s gone.”

  “Something must have happened today,” I said. “I guess we’ll hear all about it at dinner tonight. Right, sis?”

  Mary Anne paused. “Right,” she said finally.

  “Are you having trouble selling your house?” Stacey asked Mary Anne.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I mean, I guess if it’s up for sale for a long time, then Dad will consider that trouble. But it hasn’t been up too long yet. I’m dying to find out what happened today.”

  “Maybe a family full of cute guys will move in,” said Claudia.

  Kristy made a face. “How about a family full of kids?”

  “Don’t we have enough kids to sit for now?” I asked.

  “We can never have too many,” said Mary Anne shortly.

  “I was just kidding,” I told her.

  “Oh.”

  We stopped our discussion then to take a series of phone calls. We lined up jobs with the Rodowskys and with Charlotte Johanssen. The third call was for a job with Jenny Prezzioso.

  Both Mary Anne and I were free.

  Uh-oh, here we go again, I thought.

  But Mary Anne just said sweetly to me, “You take it, Dawn.”

  I looked at her in surprise. Had Kristy had a talk with her that afternoon?

  “Me? You’re going to let me take it?” I exclaimed.

  “Sure.” Mary Anne penciled my name into the book.

  “Wait a sec,” I said slowly. “You’re just letting me have the job because you don’t like taking care of Jenny, right?” (Jenny is a real brat. Mary Anne is actually more tolerant of her than the rest of us are, but she had sat for Jenny twice recently, and even Mary Anne has her limits.)

  “No, I’m —” Mary Anne began to protest. But we all knew that whatever she was about to say would be a big, fat lie.

  I watched Mary Anne’s face closely. Was she trying to hide a smile?

  “You are the worst liar!” I exclaimed.

  “I know!” Mary Anne began to laugh.

  Everyone else laughed, too. The tension seemed to break between my sister and me.

  “Are you sure you want to give up a perfectly good job?” I asked.

  “With Jenny? Are you kidding, sis? Of course I do.”

  More laughter. I began to relax.

  The phone rang twice. Once it was Kristy’s brother Sam saying, “Is this Al-Jon’s Pizza? I’d like two large pies with everything.” We know enough now to ignore any weird call we get. It’s always Sam. He’s an incurable joker.

  “GOOD-BYE … SAM!” yelled Kristy when Sam had finished giving his pizza order.

  “Jessi?” spoke up Stacey.

  “Yeah?” Jessi looked sort of alone on the floor, but I knew it was very possible to look alone and not feel alone, or to be with a whole group of people and feel like no one is alive except you. I suspected that Jessi felt fine.

  “Have you spoken to Mal lately?” asked Stacey.

  “Last night. And guess what. Now Claire and Margo aren’t feeling too good.”

  “Well, that’s it,” said Stacey.

  “That’s what?” Kristy wanted to know.

  “That’s all eight kids. They’re all sick. Just what Mrs. Pike was afraid of. What’s wrong with Claire and Margo?” Stacey asked Jessi. “The triplets’ pneumonia?”

  “Mal didn’t think so,” Jessi answered. “She said they sounded more as if they just had colds.”

  “Let’s hope so, for Mr. and Mrs. Pike’s sakes,” I said.

  “Claire and Margo weren’t even going to stay home from school today,” added Jessi.

  “I guess that’s something,” said Stacey. “I used to
make my mother crazy when I stayed home sick … me. One person. Can you imagine waiting on six sick kids? Well, Nicky and Vanessa aren’t actually sick, but still … ”

  The meeting was almost over. The numbers on Claud’s digital clock were creeping toward six. At 5:59, since we weren’t on a job call, Mary Anne felt it was safe to ask Kristy a nonbusiness question.

  “What are you doing next Sunday?” she wanted to know.

  “Nothing. Why? Are you free?”

  Mary Anne nodded.

  “You want to come over? Better yet, come for dinner on Saturday and spend the night. I’m sure it’ll be okay with Mom. Karen and Andrew will be there, and our house will be so crazy no one will notice another person.”

  “Great!” replied Mary Anne. “Thanks! I’m there.”

  I should have been happy, considering how I’d been complaining about the weekends and being with Mary Anne. I knew that. But I wasn’t happy. Not one bit. I felt left out, which I knew was silly. If Mary Anne and I hadn’t been sisters Kristy probably wouldn’t have asked me, either. But that wasn’t the problem. What was bothering me was that Mary Anne had started this. She had asked if Kristy was free. Maybe she didn’t like the weekends any better than I did. And if that were true, what did it say about us? I was beginning to wonder if we were meant to be sisters at all.

  Even though I was hurt, I made a special effort to be nice to Mary Anne that night. And she seemed like her regular old self. On our way home, she teased me about the job with Jenny. Later, when I grew quiet, she asked, “Is anything wrong?”

  “Oh, no. I’m fine,” I said quickly. “Looking forward to sitting for Jenny.”

  Mary Anne giggled.

  We were riding our bicycles through what was left of the late afternoon sun. Soon it would be dark.

  “Have you spoken to Jeff lately?” asked Mary Anne.

  I smiled. Mary Anne knows that talking to Jeff usually cheers me up. “Yeah. He’s fine.” I paused. Should I tell Mary Anne about Dad’s girlfriend? Yes, I decided. She was my best friend and my sister. She should know about things like that. “Um, my dad’s got a girlfriend who’s over at the house all the time. At least, that was what Jeff said.”

  “Does Jeff like her?” Mary Anne wanted to know.

  “Mmm…. ” I frowned. “It was hard to tell. I think he’s trying to like her.”

  Mary Anne accepted that.

  We reached our house, put our bicycles in the barn, and ran inside. All during dinner that evening I was nice to Mary Anne. She was nice back. Maybe we were getting along better after all.

  I hoped so.

  Mary Anne remembered to ask her father about their old house, but all Richard said was, “The real estate broker told me she thought she had a buyer for the house, but she didn’t give me any more details.”

  Pretty boring.

  When dinner was over and the kitchen had been cleaned up (in jiffy time, thanks to Richard’s help), Mary Anne and I headed upstairs to do our homework.

  “What have you got?” Mary Anne asked as we settled down at our desks. They were right next to each other.

  I made a face. “Math and science,” I replied. “And a little English.”

  “And I’ve got math and science, too, plus French. I am really going to have to concentrate,” added Mary Anne. “This math is hard.”

  “Definitely,” I agreed.

  We opened our books and worked silently. When it had taken fifteen minutes for me to solve the first problem, and Mary Anne had solved three, I realized I wasn’t concentrating very well. The room was too quiet. I needed some music to help me pay attention.

  I reached over and turned on my radio. I keep it tuned to WSTO, the local station, all year long in case of a surprise school closing. WSTO usually doesn’t have very good music, though, so I steeled myself for a polka festival or something. Instead, I found the WSTO Fifties Festival.

  “Oh, great!” I exclaimed. “I don’t believe it. WSTO never has good music like this…. What is this song? … Oh, it’s Buddy Holly — I think.”

  Mary Anne tossed me a funny look, but I was so caught up in the music that I barely paid attention to her. I listened to the end of the song, the music turned down low, and to the beginning of the next one before I went back to work. The music did the trick. I solved four problems quickly and I knew they were right.

  But … “Dawn?” spoke up Mary Anne in the middle of an Elvis Presley song.

  “Yeah?”

  “Could you please turn that off?”

  “Why? Don’t you like the music?”

  “No. I mean — no, it’s not that. I just can’t concentrate.”

  I sighed. I turned the radio lower, but not off.

  We worked for about five more minutes before Mary Anne said tensely, “Dawn, I really need you to turn that off. I can’t think unless I have silence.”

  Without a word I switched the radio off.

  “Thank you,” said Mary Anne.

  “You’re welcome,” I replied. (But not really, I thought.)

  We worked for another five minutes — until I realized something. I wasn’t working. I needed the music. I don’t always need music, but that night I did.

  I turned the radio back on.

  “Dawn!” exclaimed Mary Anne.

  “What?”

  “The radio. I just told you I can’t work with that noise.”

  “And tonight I can’t work without it.”

  “Can’t you please turn it off?”

  “No. Go in the guest room and work there if it bothers you so much.”

  “Me? Go in the guest room?”

  “Yeah. Nothing in there is going to bite you.” And then I added, “The secret passage is in here.”

  Mary Anne bristled. “I’m not afraid of that stupid passage. Besides, being afraid doesn’t have anything to do with anything. The point is, you’re throwing me out of our room.”

  “I am not throwing you out!” I cried.

  “Well, you were the one who wanted me to share your room so badly. And now you’re telling me to do my homework in another room!”

  “Just for tonight!” I shouted.

  “But my desk is in here — where you insisted it be.”

  “You went along with it.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s not my fault your desk is in here. And it’s not my fault you can’t concentrate without absolute silence.”

  “I am —” Mary Anne was exploding when we both saw Tigger jump off of her bed and streak out of the room.

  I don’t know about Mary Anne, but that was when I realized just how loud our fighting had become. And wouldn’t you know, about three seconds later Mom and Richard ran into our room.

  “All right,” said Richard, “what’s going on in here?”

  He and Mom were standing just inside the doorway, looking from me to Mary Anne and back again. They were waiting for an answer.

  Mary Anne pointed to me. “She is being too noisy,” she told her father. “I can’t concentrate on my homework.”

  I pointed at Mary Anne. “She wants total silence,” I told my mother. “I can’t concentrate on my homework that way.”

  “What kind of noise are you making?” Mom asked me.

  “I’ve just got the radio on. WSTO is having a Fifties Festival.”

  “I’d go work in the guest room, but my desk is in here,” said Mary Anne pointedly.

  “Wait a second,” said Mom. “Nobody should have to leave.”

  “Well, someone’s going to have to,” I replied.

  Mom’s face immediately took on that “Now-listen-to-me-young-lady” look.

  “Now listen to me, young lady,” she said. (I knew it! She was mad, all right. I don’t get called “young lady” very often.) “I don’t want to hear any talking back.”

  “Mom, I —”

  “All right, wait a second,” Richard broke in. “This is getting us nowhere. Let’s start at the beginning. Sharon and I need to hear the whole
story. Dawn, will you please tell your side?”

  I smirked. Mary Anne’s father wanted to hear my side first, not his own daughter’s.

  “Okay,” I said. “We both have a lot of homework tonight, right?” I gave Mary Anne a chance to talk, hoping that would make me look good.

  “Right,” she said sulkily.

  “And we both agreed that we need to concentrate, right?” I was being awfully fair.

  “Right.”

  “Okay. We started working and I couldn’t get the math. The room was too quiet. So I turned on the radio to help me concentrate. And right away I could work better. Only the next thing I knew, Mary Anne was fighting with me.”

  “I was not!” she cried.

  “Never mind,” said her father. “Okay, now tell us your side from the beginning, Mary Anne.”

  Mary Anne drew in her breath. “It was just like Dawn said. Only the radio was driving me crazy. I need quiet to work in.”

  “Couldn’t you give in just a little?” Richard asked Mary Anne. “Try something new. I don’t think you’re being fair to Dawn.”

  And I couldn’t believe that Richard was speaking. Richard, King of the Rules. Richard, who used to make Mary Anne wear her hair in braids, who wouldn’t let her talk on the phone after dinner or ride her bike downtown. The King of the Rules was telling Mary Anne to give in a little, and was taking my side. What a surprise!

  But I had another surprise coming, because just then Mom said, “Richard, don’t be tough on Mary Anne. If she needs silence for her homework then she needs silence. Don’t expect her to change. Besides, I don’t think the girls should be working and listening to music at the same time.”

  What? It sounded almost as if my mom were making a rule. Worse than that, though, Mom was taking Mary Anne’s side.

  I challenged her. “So? What are you guys going to do about this? I want music and Mary Anne doesn’t. What are you going to do?” I glanced at Mary Anne. Darn her. She was just sitting there crying. Now she would get attention and sympathy from Mom and Richard.

  Wrong again. She only got it from Mom. The room was divided into camps. Mom and Mary Anne versus Richard and me. We were even standing on different sides, facing each other.

  “The easy solution to this,” said Richard, “is for the girls to do their homework in separate rooms.”