“Come to order,” I said listlessly. I said it so listlessly that nobody heard me and I had to repeat myself. It was pathetic. I tapped a pencil on the edge of Claudia’s desk and wished I had a gavel.
It was a gloomy day, gloomy outside and gloomy inside. Nobody felt like having a meeting of the Baby-sitters Club. Dawn and I were depressed. Claudia was mad because she’d flunked a spelling test. Mary Anne was upset because her kitten, Tigger, had worms. And Stacey was upset because she had a doctor’s appointment coming up and she hates doctor’s appointments.
“We’re in order,” said Mary Anne. “Sort of.”
“Any club business?” I asked.
My friends shook their heads.
“Boy, what a lousy, stinky, rotten day,” I commented.
“Yeah,” agreed the others.
“Have I told you about the Snob family?” I asked. “Amanda and Max?”
“You mean the Delaneys?” said Mary Anne, frowning down at the client list in our record book.
“I mean the Snobs,” I said pointedly. “You guys, those kids are terrors. They make Jenny Prezzioso look like Little Miss Muffet.”
“You’re kidding. What’d they do?” asked Claudia. (Claudia once unexpectedly sat for some terrors herself — Jamie Newton’s cousins — and she hasn’t gotten over the experience. Stories about other terrors are always of special interest to her.)
“They are spoiled rotten,” I told her. “They’re demanding, they’re rude, and they’re snobby. We’re watching TV, right? And at the commercial Amanda says to me, ‘Get me a Coke.’ Just like that. ‘Get me a Coke.’ No please or anything. And so I say, ‘What do you say?’ You know, like I always say to David Michael and Karen and Andrew. And she gives me this look and says, ‘I say, “Get me a Coke.”’ Can you believe her nerve? Then Max says, ‘Get me one, too.’ So I do, but Amanda says, ‘Where’s the ice?’ and I get ice and then Max doesn’t want it. Then later they order me to put the empty glasses in the dishwasher and to answer the phone. Which I would have done anyway. But you don’t expect an eight-year-old and a six-year-old to order you around.”
“Why did you let them?” asked Stacey.
“Because … I don’t know. I mean, what would you have done? They’re new clients. We have to be nice to them. We don’t want Mrs. Snob coming home and hearing the little Snobs saying, ‘Oh, that Kristy is so mean. She makes us say please and thank you and get our own Cokes.’ Besides, I can’t force them to do anything they don’t want to do.”
Stacey laughed. “No, but there are ways to get around those kids. Believe me. You don’t have to —”
Ring, ring.
Stacey interrupted herself to answer the phone. “Hello, Baby-sitters Club…. Oh, hi, Mrs. Delaney.”
“Mrs. Delaney?” I whispered. I made a gagging sound and pretended to choke. Stacey turned away so she wouldn’t have to look at me.
“Next Tuesday?” she was saying. “Both kids. Okay…. Okay…. I’ll call you right back.” She hung up the phone and turned around. “Kristy, don’t do that!” she exclaimed, giggling. “You almost made me laugh. And I almost called Mrs. Delaney ‘Mrs. Snob’!”
We all laughed then and felt a little better. Claudia, the junk-food addict, found a bag of Gummi Bears stashed inside her pillowcase and passed them around to those of us who’ll eat candy (herself, Mary Anne, and me). Then she found some M&M’s and passed those around, too.
Mary Anne was looking at our appointment calendar. “Three of us are free on Tuesday,” she reported.
I wrinkled up my nose. I certainly didn’t want to sit for the Delaneys again.
“It’s you, Stacey, and Dawn,” Mary Anne went on.
I noticed that Dawn looked as unenthusiastic as I felt.
“Can I go?” asked Stacey.
“Can you?!” I replied. “Be my guest. You can be the Delaneys’ permanent baby-sitter, for all I care.”
“Great,” replied Stacey. “Because I know just how to handle the Snobs.”
Once again she was interrupted by the ringing phone. We took a couple of jobs then and called Mrs. Delaney back, and when we were done, we’d forgotten all about Stacey’s plans, whatever they were.
“You know,” I said, leaning back in the director’s chair and yawning, “there might be another snob-related problem. Not with the Snobs, but with the snobby girls I told you about. Shannon and Tiffany and their friends.”
“Is Shannon the one who was mean to Louie?” asked Mary Anne, who has a soft spot in her heart for animals.
“Yes,” I replied. “And the thing is, I didn’t know it at first, but I guess she baby-sits in the neighborhood, too. I know she sits for the Papadakises anyway. And the other day she accused me of pushing her out of her sitting jobs.”
“Oops,” said Claudia.
“Right,” I replied.
“Well, she can’t be the only baby-sitter in the neighborhood,” Dawn countered. “I mean, look at us. You started this club so there would be enough sitters to go around.”
“That’s true,” I said slowly.
We were sitting silently, the five of us mulling this problem over, when all of a sudden Dawn began to cry. The rest of us looked at each other with our eyebrows raised. Not only is Dawn not a crier, but, well, what was she crying about?
“Dawn?” Mary Anne ventured. She and Dawn were sitting on Claudia’s bed, and Mary Anne scrunched over until she was right next to her. “Dawn, what’s the matter?” she asked worriedly.
At first Dawn just shook her head. She couldn’t talk. Then she opened the club notebook and pointed to the account she’d written of sitting for her brother.
“Oh, you’re upset about Jeff?” asked Mary Anne.
Dawn nodded, sniffling.
Mary Anne and I filled Claudia and Stacey in on the news, in case they hadn’t gotten around to reading the notebook. Then, when Dawn had control of her voice, she added that her mother had had a long talk with her father, and that her father, for some reason, hadn’t seemed crazy about the possibility of Jeff’s living with him.
“I don’t know,” Dawn said, (only, with her stuffed nose, it sounded like “I dote dough”). “I don’t know which is worse, the thought that Jeff hates living with Mom and me and wants to leave us, or the thought that maybe Dad doesn’t want him. And,” she went on, “if Dad doesn’t want him, I assume he wouldn’t want me, either. Not that I’d like to move back to California. It’s just that it’s awful to think your father doesn’t want you.”
“Tell me about it,” I said bitterly. My parents’ divorce hadn’t exactly been friendly, and my dad never writes or calls my brothers and me. I don’t think he cares about us at all. “But, Dawn, are you sure he doesn’t want you and Jeff?” I asked. “Maybe he’s just enjoying being a bachelor again. I mean, first he was a family man, then he probably got used to living without you and Jeff and your mom, and now he’s just, I don’t know, unsettled by the thought of another change.”
“You know,” said Dawn, brightening, “maybe you’re right. I mean, he didn’t say, ‘I don’t want Jeff.’ He said something about having to change his work hours, and needing to get a housekeeper. Stuff like that.”
We all agreed that Mr. Schafer was probably an okay dad who’d just been taken by surprise by the ten-thirty phone call. The meeting ended then, and I went home feeling subdued. I had problems, we all had problems. At the moment, Dawn’s were the biggest. (They were certainly bigger than Tigger’s worms.) Although I knew our problems would work out eventually, I realized that, as a group, we were kind of under the weather.
Charlie parked the car in the garage and we went inside. We found Watson home early, starting dinner. In the living room, Sam was helping David Michael with a tricky subtraction problem. Boo-Boo watched them from an armchair. Maybe because he’s a cat, or maybe just because he’s Boo-Boo, he always seems to watch people suspiciously, as if, right now, my brothers weren’t doing math, they were plotting ways to torture Boo-Boo.
/> “Louie!” I called. “Louie! Where are you, boy?”
“Woof!”
Louie’s woof came from Watson’s library. I wandered in that direction and found him curled up on an Oriental rug.
“Hey, David Michael!” I yelled. “Did you feed Louie?”
“I put his food out and called him to dinner but he wouldn’t come,” he replied.
“Okay!” I knelt next to Louie. “Don’t you want supper?” I asked him.
Louie’s head was resting on one of his front paws. In order to look at me, he raised his eyes, but he didn’t move his head.
“Come on, it’s supper time,” I told him, trying to sound excited about it. “Time for doggie treats. Maybe David Michael will let you have a people cracker later. Remember how much you liked the one in the shape of the vet?”
“Mmm-mm,” whimpered Louie.
“Come on, I know you’re hungry. All you have to do is stand up and walk into the kitchen…. Come on.”
I stood up, urging Louie to get up, too. He staggered to his feet — and I mean staggered. He got his front legs up first and tried to raise his hindquarters, but his left front paw collapsed and he fell stiffly. Finally I picked him up around his middle and held him in place until all four legs were steady. Louie and I started toward the kitchen. But we hadn’t even left the library when Louie jerked to a stop, squatted, and had an accident on one of Watson’s Oriental carpets.
“Louie!” I scolded. “Mo-om! … Watson, is Mom home yet?”
“Kristy, what’s wrong?” called Sam. He and David Michael came running.
“What’s wrong? That is what’s wrong.” Louie was getting painfully to his feet, and I pointed to the mess on the carpet.
“Louie!” David Michael cried. “How could you do that? He’s never done that,” he said to Sam and me. “Never.”
“Oh, he did it all the time when he was a puppy,” replied Sam mildly. “I’ll go get some paper towels.”
Louie knew he’d done something wrong and he slunk out of the library with his tail between his legs.
“Bad, bad dog!” exclaimed David Michael, shaking his finger at Louie. “You’re not a puppy now.” But then he bent down to hug him. “Louie, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t think you could help yourself. Could he, Kristy?”
I shook my head. “No, he couldn’t.”
David Michael looked at me from around Louie’s furry neck. “He’s really sick, isn’t he?” he asked.
I nodded. Then I turned away before my brother could see me cry.
Tuesday
Okay, so I sat for the Snobs today, and no big deal. You just have to know how to handle them. You have to know a little psychology. And I happen to. Know psychology, that is. I read this magazine article called “Getting What You Want: Dealing With Difficult People the Easy Way.” It’s kind of hard to explain what you’re supposed to do, so I’ll just give you some examples of how I dealt with the Snobs. And you’ll see that they can be tamed. Plus, I found that once you have tamed them, they’re pretty nice little kids.
By the way, my parents have a book called The Taming of the Shrew. I think it might be a play. Now I could write a play called The Taming of the Snobs! …
Well, we were all pretty impressed with Stacey and her psychology. Especially since her job at the Snobs’ started out as badly as mine had, maybe even worse. This time, when Mrs. McGill had dropped Stacey off at the Delaneys’, Mrs. Delaney took Stacey upstairs to the little Snobs’ playroom. Amanda and Max, looking gorgeous and immaculate, of course, were standing in the middle of the messiest room Stacey had ever seen. It was even messier than the way the Barretts’ house used to look when Dawn first began baby-sitting for the impossible three. There were toys everywhere, and not just big toys, but Tinker Toys, Matchbox cars, and Legos, all mixed in with stuffed animals, board games, dolls, dress-up clothes, you name it. It was toy soup. And Mrs. Delaney asked Stacey, Amanda, and Max to clean it up before they did anything else.
“Well,” said Stacey when Mrs. Delaney had left, “let’s get this room in shape. Then we can go outside.”
“If you want to go outside, then clean it yourself,” said Amanda. “We like it messy.” She stood back, folded her arms, and glared at Stacey. Max imitated her.
Stacey was prepared for something like this. She pretended to gaze around the room. Then she said seriously, “You know, you’re right. I like a really messy room. In fact, I don’t think this room is messy enough. Look at this. A whole set of Lincoln Logs. They’re not even on the floor.” Stacey poured the Lincoln Logs into the toy soup.
“Hey!” cried Amanda. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Yeah! What are you doing?” added Max.
“You said you like a messy room,” Stacey replied. “Well, I do, too.” She picked up a stack of construction paper and let it start floating to the floor, piece by piece.
“Quit messing up our room!” shouted Amanda. She held her arms stiffly at her sides and stamped her foot.
“Why?” demanded Stacey, pausing long enough to let the remainder of the paper settle into the toy soup. Then she began scattering puzzle pieces.
“Because,” said Max. “That’s why.”
“I thought you liked a good mess,” Stacey went on.
“We do,” Amanda began, then hesitated. “But not … not this good a mess. Cut it out!”
“I’m just trying to help you guys out,” Stacey told her.
“No! I mean … we want it clean.” Amanda scrambled around, picking up the paper.
“Whoops! You forgot these doll clothes,” said Stacey. She dumped out a box of Barbie dresses. Max grabbed them up and shoved them back in the box. “CUT IT OUT!” he screeched.
Before Stacey knew it, the Snobs were cleaning up the room. After a while, Stacey pitched in, but neither Amanda nor Max said a word about it. They just kept glancing at her warily.
When the room was as neat as a pin, the Snobs stood in the doorway to admire their work. Stacey thought they looked pretty proud of themselves, but she knew better than to praise them. After all, they’d been tricked, and they probably knew it.
“Boy, am I thirsty,” said Max. “Get me some milk, Stacey.”
“Milk?” repeated Stacey. “Okay. And I guess while I’m at it, I’ll get some orange juice, some Hawaiian Punch, maybe some iced tea —”
“No, no,” Max interrupted her. “Um, that’s okay. I’ll just get it myself.”
“Yeah, we’ll get the milk ourselves,” added Amanda.
“I’ll join you,” said Stacey, and followed them downstairs.
Max got a carton of milk out of the Snobs’ space-age refrigerator. Stacey watched Amanda take two glasses out of a cabinet, think better of it, and remove a third for Stacey.
Then Max held the carton out to Stacey. “Pour,” he commanded, and Stacey knew he was testing her.
“Okay,” said Stacey. But instead of taking the milk carton from Max, she opened a cupboard and began removing glasses and setting them on the table.
“Now what are you doing?” asked Amanda.
“Well, Max just said, ‘pour.’ He didn’t say how much he wanted. I thought I’d better be prepared.”
“Oh, never mind.” Amanda took the carton crossly from Max and filled two glasses with milk. She hesitated. Then, “Do you want some?” she asked Stacey.
“Yes, please. Half a glass will be fine.”
Amanda poured half a glass for Stacey and pushed it across the table to her. The three of them sat down and drank in silence. It wasn’t long before Max knocked into his glass, sloshing milk over the sides.
He stared at the puddle on the table. “Wipe it up, Stacey,” he commanded.
“Could you finish spilling it first, please?”
“Huh?” said Amanda and Max at the same time.
“Finish spilling it first. You’ve only spilled some of it. I don’t want to have to stand up and get the sponge now if I’m just going
to have to get it again in a few minutes. And by the way, since you like me to clean things up for you so much, you ought to know that I’ll be happy to give you a bath later. I’m sure you’ll want me to clean you up, as well as everything else.”
“That just shows how much you know,” said Max, pouting. “I don’t want you to give me a bath. I don’t want you to clean up anything for me. I’ll clean up my own messes. So there.”
“Suit yourself,” Stacey replied as Max mopped up the spill.
Max not only wiped up the mess, he brushed a few crumbs from the table, carried the sponge and the crumbs back to the sink, dropped the crumbs down the drain, and rinsed the sponge out before returning to the table.
“Thank you,” said Stacey.
“You’re welcome,” replied Max.
“Stacey? What would happen if I asked you to get us some cookies?” ventured Amanda.
“Well, if you said, ‘Stacey, could you please get out the Oreo cookies,’ I would probably do it, especially if I thought you were going to thank me when I put them on the table. But if you just said, ‘Stacey, get us the cookies,’ then I would give you every kind of cookie I could find, because I wouldn’t be sure what you meant, and I wouldn’t want to have to jump up and get anything else for a person who never says please or thank you.”
Amanda nodded thoughtfully.
“Aside from which,” added Stacey, “I would feel very, very sorry that you are eight years old and unable to get cookies yourself.”
Amanda nodded again. Stacey thought she saw Max hide a smile. Then he said, “I can clean up myself.”
“I know,” replied Stacey. “I’m glad to see that.” She smiled at Max, then turned to Amanda. “Do you want some cookies?”
“No,” said Amanda. “I just wanted to find out what would happen if I asked for them.”
Stacey certainly hadn’t expected that from the Snobs, but Amanda didn’t seem to be acting snide or rude. In fact, she looked quite serious.