Mary Anne and the Playground Fight

  “Maybe it’s a good thing I might be staying here,” Mallory joked. “I’ll probably have a better chance.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Kristy snapped. “If anyone has a better chance, it will be the older members of the BSC.”

  “How would you know?” Jessi asked.

  “I just think that given the choice, Mrs. Simon would probably want to hire eighth-graders over sixth-graders.”

  “Well, excuse me,” muttered Mal.

  “You don’t seem to think we’re too young to baby-sit,” Jessi pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Mallory added, sounding angry, “if you think we’re such babies, why did you invite us into your club in the first place?”

  Kristy shrugged. “I don’t think you’re too young, but Mrs. Simon might.”

  “Maybe it would be better to let Mrs. Simon decide without second-guessing her,” Stacey suggested.

  “I’m not trying to second-guess Mrs. Simon,” Kristy snapped. “Geez, you guys, what is this?”

  “Well, I, for one, don’t particularly like the way you’re talking to us,” Claudia said.

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” Kristy answered gruffly. “Does anyone have any other business to bring up?”

  No one did.

  I was relieved when Kristy said the meeting was adjourned.

  * * *

  Later that night, I was in my room, working on my application. I planned to write a rough draft before I went to sleep, so I would have plenty of time to think about what I had said and maybe rewrite it. (I’m very organized that way.) So far I had filled out boring information such as my name, date of birth, address, and phone number. In the section asking about previous counseling experience, I wrote a short essay about my work at a circus camp. In the section covering previous work with children, I wrote a long essay about the BSC and my role in it. Then I came to the part where I got stuck:

  I had to indicate whether I was available for the whole summer.

  I walked around the room. I petted Tigger. Then I sat down at my desk again.

  I checked the box that said “yes.”

  I would be available the entire summer. I was not going to Europe. I wanted to stay in Stoneybrook with Dawn. And that was final.

  After that awful Monday meeting, Stacey, Kristy, and Claudia lost no time lining up garden-care jobs. And they enlisted Dawn and me to help. For all they knew, I was still going to Europe.

  On Tuesday, Dawn and I mowed two lawns and weeded four flower beds. Logan worked an extra shift at the Rosebud Café and also mowed lawns. On Wednesday, Dawn and I each were going to baby-sitting jobs before our afternoon BSC meeting. (Now that school was over, there were plenty of sitting jobs during the day.)

  I was glad we were so busy. It kept us from having to talk about the playground jobs, which were making everyone tense and competitive. On Tuesday, when I asked Claudia if she’d finished her application, she didn’t even answer me. And when I suggested to Kristy that we might want to read each other’s application essays, she became very annoyed. “No way, Mary Anne,” she had said. “This has to be our own work.”

  Kristy’s answer had made me mad. Did she think I was going to steal her ideas? I just find it helpful to talk things over with her. Usually Kristy likes doing that too. But not for these jobs. And if that was the way she wanted to be, fine. Kristy is so competitive.

  * * *

  “Hey, Dawn, wake up,” I said, grinning at her from the doorway of her bedroom. It was after nine o’clock on Wednesday morning, and she had a baby-sitting job in less than two hours. (At least Dawn and I weren’t mad at each other.)

  “Yeah,” Jeff said. He was in Dawn’s doorway too. “You sure don’t live up to your name.” (This is a joke Jeff makes a lot.)

  Dawn threw a pillow at her brother.

  “Kristy just called,” I reported as I sat down on Dawn’s bed. “She thought it would be fun if we all went to Pizza Express after the meeting.”

  “Really?” Dawn sounded surprised. “Can we afford it? I mean, aren’t you guys supposed to be saving money for Europe?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. (I hadn’t told Dawn about my plans to stay in Stoneybrook. I wanted to break the news to Kristy first.) “I asked Kristy about that too, and she said she thought it would be fun for us, and we could plan the fund-raiser over dinner.”

  “That’s true,” Dawn agreed. “Besides, it might be a good way to relieve all this tension about the playground jobs.”

  I nodded. I knew just what Dawn meant.

  “What’s so tense about working on a playground?” Jeff wanted to know.

  “Getting the job,” Dawn answered. “A lot of people are applying.”

  “I sure hope there aren’t a lot of people applying to be campers,” Jeff said as he bounded out of the room. “Dawn, you know, breakfast is ready and it’s one of your favorites — organic whole wheat waffles with strawberries.”

  “Yum,” said Dawn, getting out of bed.

  * * *

  That was the morning. The afternoon brought Victoria.

  “Mary Anne, are you leaving already? But you’ve only just arrived,” Victoria was grumbling.

  Actually I had “only just arrived” two hours earlier. Since then, Victoria and I had watched one Star Trek rerun, played Scrabble, and taken a walk in the rose garden behind her house.

  “If I don’t leave now, Vicki, I’ll be late for the BSC meeting.”

  “Oh, bother. I mean, oh give me a break. You spend more time at your meetings than you do with me.”

  I decided this was not the time to tell Victoria that if it weren’t for those “meetings,” we would never have met each other in the first place. “You know how Kristy is if anyone is late,” I said as I grabbed my bag and started to walk with Victoria down the long hallway that eventually led to the front door.

  That made Victoria giggle — a little. “Well, at least I’ll be seeing you in London. I can’t wait for you to see my house.”

  “Uh, right,” I muttered. (I know, I know. I should have told Victoria I wasn’t going on the trip, but I didn’t want to cause a scene just when I was leaving.)

  “See you soon,” was all I said as I stooped down to kiss her good-bye.

  “ ’Bye, Mary Anne. Come visit me tomorrow.”

  Victoria stood in her doorway, waving to me, until I was out of sight. I waved back until I was around the corner. Then I bolted to Kristy’s house, so I could get a ride across town to the meeting.

  When Kristy, Abby, and I walked into Claudia’s room, Stacey and Dawn were sprawled on Claudia’s bed, while Mallory and Jessi sat on the floor.

  “Where’s Claudia?” I asked.

  “In the bathroom,” Jessi answered. Kristy walked over to Claudia’s computer to look at something. When I saw what it was, I couldn’t help looking closely also. Claudia’s playground application was on the screen.

  “Look.” Kristy pointed to the part of the application that asked about availability. Claudia had written that if she gets the playground job, she wouldn’t go to Europe.

  “That’s the perfect answer,” Kristy congratulated Claudia when she returned to the room.

  “What?” said Claudia.

  “Your answer about being available for the playground job,” Kristy explained, pointing at the computer. “It’s perfect because it doesn’t tie you down. I mean, if you get the job, you can still ask later if you can go on the trip.”

  Claudia looked puzzled. “Kristy, I just wrote the truth. If I get the playground job, I’m not going to Europe.”

  “What?” Kristy couldn’t believe it.

  “Claudia!” Stacey gasped.

  “I like what Claudia did. It’s honest,” I couldn’t help putting in. “You can’t say you’re available for a job all summer when you’re planning to leave for a week.”

  “Mary Anne?” Kristy turned to me with her hands on her hips. “Are you planning to ditch the trip if you get a playground job?”

  I started to cry ?
?? just a little. I couldn’t help it.

  “I’ve decided to stay home even if I don’t get a playground job. I want to spend more time with Dawn,” I admitted.

  “I thought you might feel that way,” Kristy said. She glared at me. I knew she was disappointed. As for Dawn — well, she just looked thrilled. At least that made me feel better.

  “This meeting will come to order,” Kristy growled. I looked at the clock. It was 5:35 P.M., one of the first times in BSC history we had ever started late. This led to one of the worst meetings I can remember. It was even worse than the past meeting, and that’s saying a lot. No one was hungry, not even Claudia, who listlessly unwrapped a Ring-Ding and then just stared at it.

  We fielded at least ten baby-sitting calls, which was good, but we argued about who was going to take the assignments.

  “I think the people going to London and Paris should get priority,” Kristy insisted. “After all, we’re the ones who need to raise money for plane fare and travel expenses.”

  “Not fair,” Dawn said. “We all need money in the summer.”

  It turned out that Abby, Stacey, and Kristy were free most often, and they received seven out of the ten assignments. Claudia and Dawn weren’t happy about this.

  We did move on to Pizza Express at six o’clock as planned. But by then, Dawn and Kristy were barely speaking, and the rest of us were in bad moods.

  It didn’t help that we couldn’t agree on what to order. We had planned on splitting an extra-large pizza to save money.

  “I won’t eat sausage and pepperoni,” Dawn was saying.

  “We know,” Kristy snapped. “You can just order vegetables for your side of the pizza and let us eat our meat in peace.”

  “Don’t forget, I’m allergic to tomatoes and cheese,” Abby reminded us. “So I can’t have pizza at all.”

  We ended up ordering separate meals.

  The only time anyone cheered up was when Mallory announced that her brothers were cleaning out their rooms just for us, and that they had plenty of stuffed animals they wanted to give away. “They’re even parting with Snowball, that big husky.”

  “That’s generous,” Abby remarked. “Snowball will sell. I’d buy him myself, but he’d probably make me sneeze.”

  That was the one time all evening that anyone laughed. It must have broken the tension a little, because we were then able to settle down and plan our fund-raiser, even though we were still mad at each other.

  Here are some things we decided about the fund-raiser:

  1) We were going to hold it outside, weather permitting, in Dawn’s and my backyard. If it rained, we could always move it to the barn, which meant, of course, that Dawn and I would have to clean the barn to get things ready, just in case. We would also have to ask Dad’s and Sharon’s permission.

  2) Claudia was going to make all the fliers and signs to distribute around the neighborhood.

  3) We would advertise the sale in the Stoneybrook News, our local paper. (Kristy said she would take care of that.)

  4) Abby and Kristy were going to pick up donations around town. (Charlie would probably agree to drive them.)

  5) We would hold the fund-raiser the following Sunday. All of us would be there to help arrange and sell the merchandise.

  “We’re going to have plenty of stuffed animals to sell,” Abby said with confidence.

  “Yeah. And plenty of grumpy baby-sitters selling them,” Dawn muttered under her breath.

  “I won’t. NO! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME DO THAT!”

  Stacey could hear Victoria shouting before she even rang the Kents’ doorbell.

  “Hullo, miss. This way, please,” the butler said as he opened the door and led Stacey upstairs to the playroom. Several cardboard boxes, half filled with books and toys, were scattered around the room.

  “NO. AND I REPEAT, NO! I’M NOT GOING TO HELP YOU PACK WHEN I DON’T EVEN WANT TO MOVE!” Victoria shouted at Miss Rutherford, who was placing a pile of comic books in one of the boxes. “NO ONE EVER ASKS ME WHAT I WANT TO DO.”

  “Vicki? Hello,” Stacey calmly interrupted.

  Victoria turned around.

  “Hello, Stacey. Why are you whispering?”

  “Because you’re shouting.”

  The butler actually grinned as he walked out of the room.

  “Please pardon our appearance,” Miss Rutherford apologized, waving her hand over the boxes. “We’ve been packing and packing.”

  Victoria, flushed from yelling, scowled at her nanny.

  “Now, Victoria, it’s not my fault we’re moving,” Miss Rutherford, highly attuned to such scowls, said.

  Victoria only scowled again as she plopped herself down on the sofa, where she sat with her arms folded across her chest.

  “Vicki, Mary Anne told you I was coming today, didn’t she?” asked Stacey.

  “Yes,” Victoria muttered. “She said she was helping Dawn clean out the barn for your stuffed animal sale.”

  Stacey nodded. “Right.”

  “We certainly have plenty of stuffed animals and other toys to donate to your sale,” Miss Rutherford said, gesturing to a corner of the room where a huge blue-and-white stuffed rabbit sat with an armload of smaller animals in its lap.

  “Mary Anne spends more time with Dawn than she does with me,” Victoria remarked. She had stopped shouting.

  “Well, she hasn’t seen Dawn in a long time,” Stacey pointed out, even though she sensed that no explanation would appease Victoria in her current mood.

  “But I’m the one moving, in case you haven’t noticed,” Victoria said crossly. “Mary Anne can see Dawn all summer. I’m leaving at the end of June.”

  “I know,” Stacey replied patiently. “But Dawn is Mary Anne’s sister.”

  Victoria stared at Stacey in sulky silence.

  “I’ll just leave you two alone,” Miss Rutherford said, aiming a sympathetic look at Stacey. “I have some packing to do downstairs.”

  “I don’t know why I even bothered to make friends in America if I only have to leave them,” Victoria grumbled. “I hate all this moving. It doesn’t seem fair that I have to move whenever my parents do.”

  “Your parents do move a lot,” Stacey agreed, sitting on the sofa beside Victoria.

  “And no one ever asks me where I want to live — ever.” Victoria stood up and kicked over her Statue of Liberty wastebasket.

  “Did you visit the Statue of Liberty recently?” Stacey asked, to change the subject.

  “Miss Rutherford and I went,” Victoria replied sullenly, “with Mary Anne, when Mary Anne was willing to do things with me. You know — before Dawn came.”

  Stacey sighed and watched the wastebasket roll around the playroom. “Vicki, why don’t we go outside? It’s a beautiful day, and you won’t have to look at all these boxes.”

  “I don’t want to go outside.”

  “What about a game? Checkers or Monopoly?” (Monopoly is one of Victoria’s favorites.)

  “NO! Besides, they’re packed.”

  Stacey stood up and looked in one of the boxes that held toys and books. She pulled out an atlas. “Can you show me where you live in England?” she asked.

  At that, Victoria perked up a little. She not only showed Stacey where her house was, in a small town north of London, but she told her how to get to the Tower of London, the British Museum, and London’s biggest department stores.

  “You absolutely have to go to Harrod’s,” Victoria was saying. “It’s not as big as Macy’s, but it has divine things. You know, the coolest stuff.”

  “I’ll try to get there,” said Stacey. “You know how much I love to shop.”

  Victoria actually grinned. “I guess the only good thing about leaving is that you’re all coming to visit me next month. I can’t wait to show London to Mary Anne.”

  Stacey looked puzzled. “But Mary Anne isn’t going to London.”

  “What?” Victoria looked stricken, then angry. “I thought she was. Why isn’t she going?”
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  “She, well, she wants to stay in Stoneybrook with Dawn. Dawn isn’t going to London either,” Stacey answered lamely. She now realized she shouldn’t have said anything about Mary Anne’s plans.

  “NO!” Victoria screamed. “I WANT MARY ANNE TO VISIT ME!” She stamped her foot.

  “But Victoria —”

  “And why didn’t Mary Anne tell me herself? Doesn’t she care about me at all?”

  “Of course she does. You mean a lot to her.”

  “Well, it doesn’t seem as though I do.” Victoria’s eyes were flashing. “Now that I’m moving, she just doesn’t care. She doesn’t even visit. She doesn’t care about anyone but Dawn.”

  “Victoria —” Stacey was at a loss for words.

  “Well,” Victoria humphed as she folded her arms across her chest, “if that’s how she’s going to act, I don’t want her for a friend anymore. And you can tell her that.”

  By now, tears were streaming down Victoria’s face. And she was still very, very angry when Stacey left an hour later.

  As soon as she arrived home, Stacey called me.

  “Mary Anne, you won’t believe what I’ve done,” she began.

  Before I could say anything, Stacey told me the story of her afternoon with Victoria. “I’m so sorry, Mary Anne. I had no idea Victoria thought you were going on the trip,” she finished.

  “It’s not your fault. I should have told Victoria myself the last time I saw her. I guess I just didn’t want to give her more bad news when she was already so upset about moving.”

  “I understand. It’s just that Victoria is so angry right now. And telling her this news didn’t help.”

  “I’ll visit her first thing tomorrow,” I said.

  After Stacey and I hung up, I felt awful. I had no idea how much my going to London had meant to Victoria.

  * * *

  I was very nervous when I arrived at the Kents’ mansion on Friday morning. Would Victoria speak to me? Would we be able to have a decent conversation? Would she forgive me?

  I gulped and tried to collect myself before I rang the bell.

  Miss Rutherford opened the door. “Oh, hello, Mary Anne.”

  “Hi. Is Victoria home?”