“We’re bringing out some toast for the hamburgers in a minute,” said Miss Rutherford.
“Toast?” David Michael stared at the hamburger on his plate.
“What about English muffins?” Linny asked.
“There’s nothing English about English muffins,” Miss Rutherford informed him with a slight sniff. “Forks and other utensils are over there.” Miss Rutherford pointed to a long table on one side of the large porch.
The table also held pots of relish, mustard, and ketchup, and bowls of potato salad, green salad, potato chips, and pretzels. Sparkling crystal glasses and iced pitchers of lemonade and Coca-Cola were on another table, along with paper cups and napkins for the younger kids.
“Are you sure this is Coca-Cola?” Mallory eyed the pitcher suspiciously.
“Positive,” Abby answered. “I just asked Miss Rutherford.”
“Sugar for your lemonade, miss?” asked the butler as he placed a bowl filled with sugar cubes and a pair of silver tongs next to her.
“Uh, yes,” Abby said. When the butler just stood there, she decided he was waiting for her to serve herself. It took her awhile to get used to the tongs, but she managed it.
“Well done,” the butler complimented her.
Abby looked around, worried that some of the kids would break their glasses or spill their drinks, but the Kents did not seem to be bothered by this. Everyone was on their best behavior. Except the BSC members.
Kristy refused to take the plate of chicken Miss Rutherford asked me to hand her.
Claudia would not answer when Abby asked her where the bathroom was.
Stacey told Claudia she was acting like a baby in front of Karen, Hannie, and David Michael, who all thought that was so funny that they called Claudia a baby during the rest of the party.
The low point came when the servers brought out dessert: chocolate fudge cake, lemon tarts, and several flavors of ice cream. Miss Rutherford asked Kristy, Claudia, Dawn, and Abby to help serve the little kids their ice cream. Kristy and Claudia grabbed the ice cream scoops, and Dawn and Abby stood next to them, handing out bowls of ice cream. No one seemed to notice that we weren’t getting along until Charlotte and Karen both asked for strawberry ice cream. Claudia rested her scoop on top of the carton, ready to fill their order, when Kristy snatched the carton away.
“You’re too slow,” she complained to Claudia. “All the ice cream will have melted by the time you get around to scooping it out.”
Claudia threw the scoop on the table. “Kristy, you are way out of line,” she said loudly.
Miss Rutherford stared at Kristy and Claudia, dumbfounded. Charlotte and Karen looked shocked, their eyes like saucers. Luckily, Victoria and most of the other kids were outside, watching the magic act. But the few kids in line for ice cream did not know what to say or do.
“I’m very sorry,” Kristy said to Miss Rutherford. “I get impatient sometimes.”
“I’m sorry too,” Claudia said to the kids in line. “I didn’t mean to lose my temper.”
After that unpleasant episode, the club members cooled off and there were no more scenes.
I had never seen Victoria’s parents so relaxed. They talked to all the guests, and they gave Abby and Kristy their address in England and directions for getting to their home. Abby and Victoria especially had seemed to bond during the party.
“We’re delighted you’ll be able to visit Victoria,” Lady Kent said to Abby. “She is so looking forward to it.”
“We are too,” said Abby after she swallowed the last bite of a bite-size sandwich. “Great food,” she added.
The Kents smiled. “We tried to have real American food at this party. Victoria insisted,” said Sir Charles.
When the guests began to leave, Dawn asked to use the Kents’ phone. “I’m going to check the message tape at home,” she told Abby and me. “I’m waiting for the Wilders to call me back about a baby-sitting job tonight.”
We nodded. We were busy talking to Karen and Victoria about their new pirate game.
I was eating a cucumber sandwich when Dawn returned, very excited. “Mrs. Simon called,” she reported. “The counselors have been chosen!”
“We need to talk,” Kristy said from her director’s chair after she had called the BSC meeting to order.
“We do,” Claudia agreed. She waved a bag of tortilla chips in the air. But no one was hungry. We had all eaten plenty at Victoria’s party earlier that afternoon.
By now, we knew who had been chosen to be counselors.
Dawn, Claudia, Logan, and I had gotten jobs. (I was so relieved.) Stacey, Kristy, and Abby were rejected, but since they had said on their applications that they were going on the trip to Europe, we were pretty sure that must have been a deciding factor. Which just goes to show that Kristy and Stacey weren’t fooling anybody when they downplayed the trip during the interviews.
Mrs. Simon had called each of us. And she had told Kristy, Stacey, and Abby that if they had not been going to Europe, it would have been much harder to decide who to pick as counselors.
Naturally, Kristy, Abby, and Stacey were not too thrilled. They had really wanted to be counselors. But they had had good talks with Mrs. Simon. And they were beginning to see that it would have been hard for the camp to lose half their counselors for a week.
“First of all, I want to apologize for some of the things I said to Claudia and Mary Anne,” Kristy continued. “I didn’t mean to lose my temper like that after the interviews, but I couldn’t understand why you guys were harping on the trip so much. Now that I’ve thought about it, I see how you felt.” Kristy turned her visor around on her head. “After all, you both decided not to go if you got the jobs. And I, well, I guess I wanted it both ways.”
“Me too,” said Stacey.
“That’s okay,” said Claudia. “But did you really mean what you said about me having no confidence?”
Kristy shook her head. “I think you sometimes don’t have a lot of confidence when it comes to schoolwork. But you’re pretty confident about most other things.”
“As you should be,” Stacey added, pointing to a gorgeous watercolor Claudia had painted of Victoria’s rose garden.
“Oh, that,” said Claudia. “I’m planning to give it to Vicki as a going-away present — a reminder of her home in the States.”
“Do you forgive me, Mary Anne?” Kristy asked. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I know you were only coming to Claudia’s defense.”
“I do,” I said solemnly.
“Guys, you’re so formal,” Mallory said.
“I apologize to you guys too,” Kristy went on, turning to Jessi and Mal, who were on the floor, leaning against Claudia’s bed. “I didn’t mean to be so short with you.”
“It’s okay,” said Mallory, shrugging. “I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure.”
“Yeah,” Jessi agreed. “But you didn’t really think we were too young to be counselors, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” Kristy assured them.
“I’m sorry I called you a bully, Kristy,” Claudia said.
“Well, I admit, I can be pretty opinionated sometimes,” Kristy replied.
Stacey apologized to Claudia for calling her a baby. Claudia apologized for acting like one. “I was just so tense about the interview,” she explained.
“We all were,” Stacey pointed out.
“I’ll say,” Kristy added. “You know, we shouldn’t let something small like this get in the way of our club — or our friendships — ever again.”
“Agreed,” Dawn said.
“Should we vote on this?” Mallory joked.
We laughed. After all, we had a lot to be happy about. Great summer jobs. A great summer trip. And our great summer was just beginning!
* * *
Dear Reader,
In Mary Anne and the Playground Fight, the members of the Baby-sitters Club find themselves in an unusual situation. While they’re good about sharing the jobs they get at
club meetings, they’re now fiercely competing for a limited number of jobs that they all want badly. Competition can be difficult, especially when friends are competing against one another. You may find yourself competing against a friend in sports, in school, in contests, or, like the members of the BSC, for a job. An important thing to remember when you’re competing against a friend is that both your friendship and the competition are important, so it’s your responsibility to do your best, honestly. You’re not being fair to your friend if you don’t do your best in order to let her win. And you’re not being fair to anyone if, like Kristy, you don’t play by the rules. Try keeping things out in the open. If you and a friend are competing against each other, talk about it. Tell each other what you’re afraid of, and what you hope for. Then go for it. Mary Anne and her friends might have had an easier time if they had been honest with themselves and with one another from the beginning.
Happy reading,
* * *
The author gratefully acknowledges
Diane Molleson
for her 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 © 1998 by Ann M. Martin
Cover art by Hodges Soileau
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
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All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First edition, June 1998
e-ISBN 978-0-545-87451-9
Ann M. Martin, Mary Anne and the Playground Fight
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