“Kristy,” Linny said, “we want to have a fashion show for Myrtle and Noodle.”
“You’re going to dress up a turtle?” I replied. “Don’t you think that’s going to be kind of hard? Besides, where are you going to find turtle-size clothes?”
“Well, that’s one of our problems,” said Linny. “The other one is that we can’t find Noodle. And we do have clothes for him. He fits into Sari’s old baby clothes.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah. For my pet show last summer, he wore this little sundress and a bonnet and two pairs of socks.”
I giggled. “Maybe Noodle was embarrassed and now he’s hiding so you won’t be able to do that to him again.”
“Maybe …” said Linny doubtfully, not seeing anything funny about that.
My eyes drifted across the yard and over a low stone wall in search of Noodle. They landed in the yard next door — on one of the girls I had noticed at the bus stop. She looked like a short version of Shannon. She was sitting in the sun filing her nails and listening to a tape deck.
I nudged Linny. “Hey,” I whispered, pointing to the girl. “Who’s that?”
Linny looked across the yard. “That’s Tiffany Kilbourne.”
“Tiffany,” I repeated. “She must be Shannon’s sister.”
“Yeah,” said Linny. “She is. You know what? Sometimes Shannon baby-sits for us.”
“She does?” I asked in surprise. “Do you like her?”
“Sure. She’s neat.”
“You know,” I said, “I don’t know too many people around here. Tell me who your neighbors are.”
“Okay.” Linny plopped to the ground, and I joined him. Not far away, Hannie was playing “This Little Piggy” with Sari.
“Shannon and Tiffany have another sister, Maria. She’s eight, like me. They all go to Stoneybrook Day School. But Hannie and I go to Stoneybrook Academy.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. So does Karen. She and Hannie are in the same class.”
“Yeah,” agreed Linny with a smile. I could tell he was proud that I’d given him the responsibility of telling me about the neighborhood.
“Next door to the Kilbournes,” he went on, pointing to the yard two houses away, “are the Delaneys. And they are —”
“Awful,” Hannie supplied. She’d stopped wiggling Sari’s toes and was listening to Linny and me.
“Really?” I asked. I’d met Amanda. She hadn’t seemed too bad. “How are they awful?”
“Well, there are two of them,” said Linny.
“Amanda and Max,” Hannie added, making a horrible face.
“They’re our ages.” Linny pointed to himself and Hannie. “Amanda’s eight and Max is six.”
“But we never, ever play with them,” said Hannie. “Because they are mean and nasty and spoiled. And bossy. Mostly bossy.”
“Wow,” I exclaimed. I’d never heard Hannie get so worked up. I was about to ask them some more about the Delaneys when Shannon Kilbourne came out of her house and joined Tiffany in the yard. I know she’d seen me, but she pretended she hadn’t. At first. After a few minutes, though, she began to stare at me.
How rude.
“Come on, you guys. Let’s go inside,” I said. “Maybe Noodle’s there. We better find him.”
Since Linny and Hannie are endlessly agreeable, they followed me into the house. I carried Sari on my hip.
“Noooo-dle!” Hannie called.
“Noooo-dle!” Linny called.
“Noooo-noo!” Sari called.
We hadn’t gotten farther than the living room when the phone rang. “I’ll get it,” I said. “You guys keep looking for Noodle.”
I ran into the kitchen and picked up the phone. “Hello, Papadakis residence.”
“Hello? Is that you, Kristy?”
The voice was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. “Yes. This is Kristy…. Who’s this?”
“It’s Shannon Kilbourne next door. Listen, there’s smoke coming out of the upstairs windows at the Papadakises’. The house is on fire!”
I felt my stomach turn to ice. My knees buckled. This was the one thing I feared most when I was baby-sitting. A fire. But I had to stay calm. Don’t panic, I told myself.
“Call the fire department!” I yelled at Shannon. Then I slammed down the phone and raced into the living room. I was hoping desperately that I would find all three kids together where I had left them.
But the only one there was Sari, sucking on one of her fingers. I scooped her up. From the other end of the house, I could hear Linny and Hannie calling for Noodle. I raced through the living room, a hallway, the library, and onto the sunporch. Thank goodness. There they were.
“Hannie, Linny,” I said breathlessly, “I want you to pay very close attention to me. The house is on fire. We have to get out. There’s no time to try to take stuff with us. Is there a way off the sunporch?”
“No,” replied Linny. “It’s not a real porch.”
“We have to get Myrtle and Noodle!” Hannie cried, already sounding panicked.
“We can’t,” I told her, pushing her and Linny ahead of me into the library. “Now go straight to the front door. But don’t run. You might fall.”
The kids obeyed. On the way to the door, though, we passed Myrtle’s box and in one swift movement, Linny stooped down, picked up the turtle, and kept on going. I didn’t say anything.
As soon as we were out the front door, I cried, “Now you can run! Go right to the sidewalk, but don’t run into the street.”
Hannie and Linny ran, their legs pumping up and down. Myrtle was clutched between Linny’s hands. Halfway across the lawn I dared to look back at the house. That’s funny, I thought. I couldn’t see even a wisp of smoke. I stopped. I sniffed the air. I didn’t smell smoke, either. The house looked fine.
“Linny! Hannie! Stay where you are!” I called to them. They were standing on the sidewalk. Hannie was crying.
I was trying to decide whether it would be safe to approach the house with Sari in my arms, when I heard loud laughter from the Kilbournes’ house. Shannon was in her front yard, doubled over. “Fake out! Fake out! Made you look!” she screeched.
I put Sari down and marched over to her. “Are you saying there’s no fire?” I asked.
Shannon was laughing too hard to answer me.
So I stuck my tongue out at her and stomped away. I felt like a fool.
I calmed Hannie and Linny down, and then we found Noodle (who’d been napping under a bed). By then, Mrs. Papadakis was due home, so we never did hold the pet fashion show.
Of course, I had to tell Mrs. P. what had happened, since the false alarm was all Hannie and Linny could talk about. Mrs. P. became very angry, put her hands on her hips, and said, “I’ll have to have a talk with Shannon before she sits again.” But I didn’t feel much better about the situation. All I wanted to do was get back at Shannon. The question was how?
The idea came to me early that evening, and I have absolutely no idea where it came from. One moment, I didn’t know what to do about Shannon Louisa Kilbourne. The next moment, this great idea was in my head.
I got out a phone book, found the number of a diaper service, and dialed it.
“Mr. Stork’s Diapers,” said a pleasant-sounding man.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m sorry to be calling so late, but this is sort of an emergency. My mom is sick, so we’re going to need diaper service for my baby sister for about two weeks, starting tomorrow morning, if possible.”
“Of course,” replied the man. “Name please?”
“Shannon Kilbourne.”
“Address?”
I gave the man the Kilbornes’ address. When I went to bed that night, I was smiling.
And the next morning, I was delighted with what I saw from one of the guest bedrooms at the front of our house. It was the Mr. Stork truck. It pulled into the Kilbournes’ driveway, and even from across the street I could hear bells jangling out “Rock-a-Bye, Baby.?
?? Then a man dressed as a stork dumped a huge package of diapers on the Kilbournes’ front steps and drove off.
I was nearly hysterical.
Gotcha, Shannon! I thought.
Thursday
I baby-sat for Myriah and Gabbie this afternoon, and we had a little trouble. See, Mrs. Perkins is getting ready for the new baby. She’s fixing up the room that used to be David Michael’s. (You should see it, you guys. David Michael would die. There are bunny rabbits and alphabet letters everywhere!) Mrs. Perkins is also sorting through Myriah and Gabbie’s baby toys and baby clothes. Myriah and Gabbie are excited and they’ve been helping out, but Gabbie is so excited that she doesn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t be. So when Jamie Newton came over to play, he started to tell Gabbie how he felt about his sister. Poor Gabbie just didn’t understand at all….
Mary Anne loves to sit for the Perkinses now that she’s gotten used to the fact that they live in my old house. Lucky for her such a nice family moved in. Even luckier that a new baby is on the way. Mary Anne is really excited. I know she’s helped Mrs. Perkins paint the room and pick out curtain material — although the baby isn’t due for several more months.
She’s excited, and Myriah and Gabbie are, too. What the Perkins girls didn’t realize was that not everybody would share their feelings.
As soon as Mrs. Perkins left on that Thursday, Jamie Newton came over to play. Myriah took him by the hand and said, “Come look at the baby’s room. It is so, so beautiful. Mommy and Gabbie and I have been working very hard.” She pulled Jamie up to the tiny room that used to belong to David Michael. Mary Anne and Gabbie followed.
“Oh, it looks great now!” Mary Anne exclaimed as they stood in the doorway. “You finished painting it.”
“And one curtain is up, but Mommy’s still hemming the other one.”
“I didn’t help my mommy with Lucy’s room,” said Jamie.
“How come?” asked Gabbie.
Jamie shrugged. “Just because.”
“Well, we’re helping,” said Gabbie.
“You’ve been working hard,” said Mary Anne, stepping inside the room.
“Look in the drawers,” Myriah said to Mary Anne, “and you’ll see what we did.”
Mary Anne opened the drawers of the bureau to find piles of neatly folded sleepers and undershirts and jumpsuits.
“We washed everything that was in the box in the attic,” Myriah told her. “And I folded all those clothes.”
“Boy, I guess you’re almost ready for this baby.”
“Almost,” agreed Myriah, “except for one important thing.”
“What?” asked Mary Anne.
“We need a name for the baby. You want to hear the names Mommy and Daddy like? They like Sarah or Randi-with-an-‘i’ for a girl, or John Eric or Randy-with-a-‘y’ for a boy. But they haven’t decided.”
“What do you like?” I asked.
“I like Laurie for a girl, but I can’t think of any good boys’ names.”
“I want to name it Beth,” spoke up Gabbie.
“Laurie and Beth are both very pretty names,” said Mary Anne. She glanced at Jamie. He was scowling.
“You know what I wanted to name my baby? I wanted to name her Stupid-head.”
“Stupid-head!” cried Gabbie. She looked crushed. “Nah-nah and a boo-boo. That is so, so mean.”
“It is not,” said Jamie. “I’m going home.”
Gabbie marched out of the room. “I’m going to take a nap,” she called crossly to Mary Anne.
“Wow,” said Mary Anne to Myriah. “Gabbie sounds really mad.”
“She must be upset about what Jamie said. We love our baby, even thought it isn’t here yet.”
“I’m glad you feel that way,” said Mary Anne.
“How can Jamie be so mean?”
“I don’t think he’s being mean. He was jealous when Lucy was born. He used to be the baby of the family. Then everything changed for him. I think he felt a little scared.”
“Now Gabbie feels bad,” said Myriah.
“I know,” agreed Mary Anne.
Myriah looked thoughtful. “Let’s do something nice to make her feel better.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Mary Anne. “Like what?”
“I’m not sure.”
Myriah and Mary Anne sat down on the floor of the baby’s room.
“What are some things Gabbie likes to do?” Mary Anne asked.
“She likes to color.”
“What’s something special that she can’t do every day?”
“Go on rides at Disney World.”
“Not that special. Something we could do this afternoon.”
“I know!” said Myriah. “She likes tea parties. She likes to give tea parties for her dolls, but sometimes it’s a big pain because she wants to get dressed up first, and dress her dolls and teddies, too.”
“Well, let’s have a tea party, then!” exclaimed Mary Anne. “I’ll go downstairs and set it all up. We’ll have juice and cookies. You and Gabbie get dressed up, and then dress up the dolls and animals…. I don’t think Gabbie’s really taking a nap, do you?”
“No way,” replied Myriah.
So Mary Anne ran downstairs and found Gabbie’s tea set in the playroom. She set eight places around the kitchen table. Then she put a cookie at every place, and filled the tiny teacups with Hawaiian Punch. She folded napkins and even grabbed a vase of flowers from the living room and put them in the middle of the table.
“Myriah! Gabbie!” she called from the bottom of the stairs. “Tea time!”
“We’re not ready yet!” Myriah called back. Mary Anne ran upstairs to see what was going on. In Gabbie’s room she found Myriah wearing a pink party dress with white tights and shiny Mary Jane shoes. But Gabbie had had a different idea about getting dressed up. She was wearing one of her mother’s slips, a necktie belonging to her father, a feather boa, a straw hat, sunglasses, and snow boots.
“How do I look?” she asked.
Mary Anne glanced at Myriah who shrugged.
“Lovely,” Mary Anne told her.
“I’m all dressed up,” she announced.
“I see. Are your dolls ready?” It was hard to tell. One of them was wearing sunglasses. Another was wearing a bathing cap.
“Yes,” replied Gabbie, “but the bears aren’t.”
“Show us how to dress the bears,” said Mary Anne. “Myriah and I will help you.”
Gabbie instructed them to put undershirts and socks on the three bears, and then they carried the dolls and bears down to the kitchen, and sat them around the table.
“This is beautiful,” said Gabbie, looking at the tea party and trying to sound grown-up.
“It is too, too diveen,” added Myriah.
Mary Anne giggled.
She and the girls drank their tiny cups of punch and ate their cookies. Then they drank the bears’ and the dolls’ punch and ate some of their cookies, too.
“Did you like the party?” Mary Anne asked Gabbie when it was over.
Gabbie nodded. “I loved it. It was too, too diveen.”
Mary Anne smiled. The crisis was over.
Linny and Hannie were right. The Delaney children are awful. They are nasty and bossy and everything Hannie said they are. I know because I baby-sat for them. Mrs. Delaney called the Baby-sitters Club, and of course my friends urged me to take the job since it’s in my neighborhood.
I arrived at the Delaneys’ after school on a Friday. (What a way to start the weekend.) Their house is the opposite of the Papadakises’ or Watson’s (I mean, mine). Last year, one of my spelling words was “ostentatious.” (I’m a good speller.) And that’s what the Delaneys’ house was. Ostentatious. It was showy and show-offy and ornate. Guess what was in their front hall — a fountain. No kidding. There was this golden fish standing on its tail, fins spread, with water spouting out of its mouth and running into a little pool surrounding it.
Guess what’s in our front hall — two cha
irs and a mirror.
Guess what’s in the Papadakises’ front hall — two chairs and Myrtle’s box.
In the Delaneys’ gigantic backyard are two tennis courts. In their library and living room are gilt-framed portraits and Oriental rugs, and the kitchen looks like a space control center with gadgets and buttons and appliances everywhere. I hope I never have to give the Delaney kids a meal. I wouldn’t even be able to figure out how to toast a slice of bread. (I think the Delaneys’ have a part-time cook, though.)
But I could have handled all this stuff okay. It was the children I couldn’t take.
For starters, they weren’t even interested in meeting me. Their mother answered the door, gave me instructions and phone numbers, and put on her coat, and still I hadn’t seen the children.
“Where are Amanda and Max?” I finally asked.
“Oh, of course,” said Mrs. Delaney, sort of breathlessly. “I suppose I ought to introduce you.”
She led me into a room that I guessed was the family room, but it sure didn’t look like ours. Our family room is always on the messy side — a newspaper strewn around, Louie lounging on the couch, Watson’s cat, Boo-Boo, asleep on the television set, maybe a coloring book or some homework left out.
This room was not only tidy, it was clean. And it was all white. White shag rug, white leather couch, even white lacquer tables and a white TV set. Priscilla (fluffy and white, of course) sleeping daintily in a white wicker cat bed, looking as if somebody, maybe the director of a play, had posed her just so, to be the perfect complement to the perfect room.
Posed on the couch were two perfect (looking) children. Amanda, the eight-year-old I’d met with Shannon, her Mary Janes polished, her blond hair parted evenly and held in place with a big blue bow, sat primly on one side. She was wearing a blue corduroy jumper over a white blouse. Her jumper matched her hair ribbon exactly. Next to her was Max, the six-year-old, a blond-haired, blue-eyed angel of a boy, dressed in corduroy pants, an unwrinkled alligator shirt, and docksiders.
“Children,” said Mrs. Delaney, “this is Kristy. She’s going to baby-sit for you this afternoon. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. You do what Kristy tells you, all right?”