Jessi and the Troublemaker

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Letter from Ann M. Martin

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  Scrapbook

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “I like the snow,” I said.

  Mallory Pike, who was walking beside me, didn’t answer. She rubbed one mittened hand across the front of her glasses.

  “I mean, it’s so beautiful. And think of all the great ballets with snow in them.”

  “I wish my glasses had little windshield wipers,” answered Mallory. “Then I might agree with you.” She paused. “What ballets?”

  “Oh … well, The Nutcracker, for one.” I did a sort of pirouette on the sidewalk — and slipped.

  “Hey,” said Mallory, catching my arm. We laughed. Then she added, “It is pretty. I just wish it would stick.”

  “I don’t think it’s cold enough,” I said with regret.

  “Well, I’m officially complaining here. If it is going to be winter, it should act like winter. It should snow and stick.”

  In case you just pirouetted into the middle of all this (if you know what I mean), I should explain.

  I’m Jessi. Jessi Ramsey. I’m in sixth grade at Stoneybrook Middle School, also known as SMS, in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. Mallory Pike is my best friend, and also a fellow member of the Baby-sitters Club (also known as the BSC and more about that later). Being in SMS together and being members of the BSC are just two of the things that Mallory and I share. Walking home from school, and horse stories, especially stories by Marguerite Henry, are some of the other things we have in common, which is part of the reason we are best friends.

  Liking snow and wishing for a real snowstorm might be counted in the things we have in common, too.

  But not dancing. In case you hadn’t guessed, I want to be a ballet dancer someday. I take special lessons and I get up every morning at 5:29 A.M. to practice. My family’s even set up a practice area in the basement for me, and they drive me back and forth to Stamford to study at the Stamford Ballet School.

  Mallory, on the other hand, hates anything athletic except maybe archery. She wants to be a children’s book writer and illustrator. Maybe, I tell her, one day she’ll write a book about a ballet dancer and use me as the model for the illustrations. Maybe, she tells me, one day I’ll be so famous that I won’t be the model — maybe the whole book will be about me. And then we’ll both be famous.

  That would be cool.

  But meanwhile, walking home with Mallory (and finishing another day of school) was pretty excellently cool, too.

  “You want to come in?” I asked when we reached my house. “See if we can make some hot chocolate?”

  Mallory shook her head and wiped her mitten across her glasses again. “I wish I could, but I have to get home. Mom’s taking Byron, Adam, and Jordan to the dentist this afternoon. I’m going to keep an eye on things while she’s gone.”

  Keeping an eye on things was putting it mildly. That’s another way Mallory and I are different: I come from a fairly standard sized family and she comes from a huge one. She has seven brothers and sisters, and three of her brothers — the ones who were going to the dentist — are identical triplets. Having helped Mal baby-sit for all her brothers and sisters, I know what chaos it can be.

  I know it gets to Mal, too, sometimes. But it also makes her an incredibly calm babysitter. Among them, her four brothers have thought up just about every way of getting into trouble, intentionally or not, that seems possible. Almost nothing rattles Mallory now, at least in the baby-sitting department.

  “I’ll call you later,” added Mallory. She waved good-bye and headed for home.

  I hurried up the driveway (but no pirouetting!) and into the kitchen. “I’m hommmme!” I called out.

  A massive rattling and clanging met my ears, like a doorbell gone berserk. Or a couple of empty trash cans doing a trash-can dance.

  Sure enough, my baby brother Squirt was sitting on the kitchen floor, banging on an assortment of pots and pans with a metal spoon and various lids. He was wearing a saucepan on his head.

  I burst out laughing. “Mr. John Philip Ramsey, Junior, you are super cute,” I said.

  Squirt didn’t understand all I was saying, but he knew it was good. He smiled a baby-toothed smile at me, which made him look even cuter, and dropped a lid into a frying pan.

  “La la la la BANG!” he said.

  Aunt Cecelia looked up from the kitchen counter, where she had opened a book.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked. “Are you cooking something special? Are you making dinner tonight?”

  “I’m thinking,” she said.

  “What about?”

  Aunt Cecelia made a note on a piece of paper on the counter next to her and said, “You’ll see soon enough. You aren’t tracking snow and mud into the house, are you? Take your shoes off.”

  I hid a smile. That was just like Aunt Cecelia. When she’d first moved in with us to help take care of us after my mom went back to work full-time in advertising (my father already had a full-time job outside the house, but Mama had stopped when I was born), I’d had a real problem with her. I thought she was way too strict and old-fashioned. But I’ve gotten used to her ways and she’s gotten used to mine, and mostly we get along pretty well now.

  And Squirt loves her.

  I took my shoes off and put them by the kitchen door. I hung my coat on the coat rack on the wall above the shoes. Just then, my eight-year-old sister Becca wandered into the kitchen.

  “Hi, Jessi,” she said.

  Squirt did something really loud and creative with his pots-and-pans drum set and Becca covered her ears. “That’s nice, Squirt!” she practically shouted.

  “Enough nice,” said Aunt Cecelia. She bent and scooped Squirt up and pretended to hold him upside down. Squirt shrieked happily.

  Becca and I knew what to do. We scooped up Squirt’s pots and pans and put them out of sight. When Aunt Cecelia set him back down, he looked around for a moment, sort of puzzled, then set off at a high-speed crawl across the floor toward the door leading to the hall.

  Aunt Cecelia wrote something else down on the piece of paper, folded it up, and put it in her pocket. “I’ve got to go do some errands for a little while, Jessi. So I’m going to leave you in charge, okay?”

  “No problem,” I said.

  “Gogo,” said Squirt. “Gogo!”

  He wanted to be in his wheelie walker. It was a sort of baby-powered baby stroller. When you put Squirt in it, he could zoom around the house on his own without falling. Actually, Squirt (the nurses gave him that nickname when he was born because he was the smallest baby at the hospital, only five pounds, eight ounces) is growing pretty fast now and has learned to walk pretty well. He really doesn’t need his baby walker. But he still loves it. We have to keep a close eye on him when he’s zooming, though. He likes to zoom into things. He likes the noise it makes. No surprise, huh?

  A few minutes later, Aunt Cecelia was out the door and Squirt was bumping up and down the hallway (we’d closed all the doors so he couldn’t make any sneak attacks on empty rooms when we weren’t looking).

  “I’ve been thinking of adding a couple of new things to my Kid-Kit,” I told Becca. “Got any id
eas?” (My sister’s name is Rebecca, by the way. All three of the kids in my family have nicknames: I’m Jessica, obviously, and you know Squirt’s real name, which he’ll grow into, eventually.)

  Becca’s eyes lit up. Even though she’s my sister and knows everything that goes into the Kid-Kit (since some of it is her old stuff) she still thinks it’s special. Plus, Becca likes to help people. She’s even a member of an after-school club at Stoneybrook Elementary called the Kids-Can-Do-Anything Club, or the Kids Club for short. As you might have guessed, it’s a club for kids in which they think up ways to help out in the community, such as running toy drives or writing letters to kids in the hospital.

  The Kid-Kit is not a community activity, of course. It’s a baby-sitting aid. Our BSC president, Kristy Thomas, thought of it (just one of her many brilliant but typically Kristy ideas, and more about her later, too). Everyone in the BSC has her own Kid-Kit, filled with games and toys and books and puzzles, new things that we buy out of our baby-sitting dues as well as some of our old stuff. We take the kits with us on baby-sitting jobs and the kids love them. They don’t care if some of the books have already been read, or the puzzles have been used. To them, the stuff is new, because they’ve never seen it before. Plus have you ever noticed how kids really like to play with other kids’ toys? Something about the grass being greener on the other side of the fence, maybe.

  Anyway, it was time to add some new oomph to the old Kid-Kit. Mine is a little different from the others. It has a sort of “office” theme, which means that in addition to a puzzle and one or two books (right now I have one about animals and animal jobs), the kit is filled with magic markers, pens, erasers, colored pencils, red, white, and blue paper clips, blunt scissors, tape, a memo pad, rubber bands, stickers, animal stamps, writing paper, and envelopes.

  “I’ll go get the Kid-Kit. I know where it is,” said Becca and jumped up. She returned with the box and put it on the table. We opened it and looked inside.

  “This puzzle has got to go,” I said. It was a puzzle of the United States. “It’s missing two pieces — two whole states.”

  Becca giggled. “Which ones?”

  “Texas,” I said. “And Kansas.”

  “Kansas is an easy one,” said Becca. “That’s too bad. It’s square and it fits right in.”

  “I know.”

  “I have a puzzle of a butterfly. I’ve done it lots and lots,” Becca said. “Maybe you can put that in the Kid-Kit.”

  “That would be great!” I said. “What about a new book?”

  “An office book?” asked Becca.

  I nodded. “Or something about working.” We both thought hard and then Becca said slowly, “I have a book that I was saving for Squirt, but you could use it now for a little while.”

  “What is it?”

  “Bea and Mr. Jones,” said Becca. “Amy Schwartz wrote it and drew the pictures.”

  “Great idea, Becca.” And it was, too. Bea and Mr. Jones is a picture book about a kindergartner who swaps places with her father. It’s really funny and clever.

  Becca went looking for the butterfly puzzle and the book. We were reading the book together (Squirt zoomed in and zoomed out again, intent on banging into as many things as possible) and laughing aloud when the doorbell rang.

  I headed for the door, stepping over Squirt, who was still zooming (although a little less energetically). Standing on the stoop were Charlotte Johanssen, Becca’s best friend, and Danielle Roberts, another friend of theirs. Charlotte’s not only Becca’s best friend, but she’s one of the kids the BSC members sit for. Danielle and her family weren’t BSC clients at first, but I had gotten to know her through the Kids Club, when I volunteered to help out once while one of the regular sponsors was away.

  Hiding a smile, I said, “Who are you? What do you want?” Charlotte and Danielle giggled.

  “Charlotte! Danielle!” Becca cried, coming out into the hall.

  “You know these guys?” I asked Becca and they all started to laugh.

  I stepped back and motioned them in, reminding them to take off their boots and hang up their coats (Aunt Cecelia would have been proud of me).

  “Could we go down into your ballet room?” asked Charlotte before she’d even taken her coat off.

  I was surprised. Charlotte is eight-going-on-nine. (If you ask her how old she is, she usually says “almost nine.” Have you ever noticed how kids will do that? Even if they just had a birthday they’ll tell you they’re “almost” the next year older.) She hates sports as much as Mallory does. Not that ballet is a sport, but it does involve physical activity.

  “Sure,” I said, surprised.

  “Great,” said Danielle, giving me her super-special Danielle smile. She finished taking off her boots.

  Danielle took off her wool cap and stuffed it into the pocket of her coat, and Charlotte finished taking off her winter gear and hanging up her coat.

  “You, ah, want some company?” I asked.

  A furious exchange of eye signals went on among Becca, Char, and Danielle. Then Becca said, “No. I mean, if that’s okay with you. We’ll be very careful.”

  “You do that,” I said. “No ripping the barre out of the wall.”

  Just then Squirt zoomed past us and through the kitchen door.

  “Squirt!” Becca and I said at the same time.

  We dashed down the hall and into the kitchen just in time to see Squirt crash his walker into the kitchen cabinet. The cabinet door popped open and the pots and pans fell out.

  For a moment, Squirt looked pleased. Then he started to cry.

  “You guys go on,” I said. “I think it’s time Squirt had a little nap.”

  I lifted Squirt up and rested him on my hip, wiping the tears off his cheeks. “What’s the matter, maestro?” I said. “You’re tired of your pots-and-pans band?”

  “No,” said Squirt (his new favorite word for everything). He made a little whimpering sound, but he didn’t really sound committed to it. Bouncing him gently on my hip, I carried him upstairs to his bedroom and put him down for a nap. I found his copy of Goodnight Moon, sat next to him, and began to read.

  Squirt sniffled for a little while, but I kept one hand on his foot (except when I turned the pages) and sort of rocked him in time to the words. After awhile, the sniffling stopped. And just as I finished the book for the second time, I heard a tiny little baby snore.

  Okay, call me a doting sister. I stood by his crib and admired him for a while.

  When I got back downstairs, Aunt Cecelia was coming in the kitchen door.

  “Where is everybody?” she asked.

  “Hi,” I said. “Squirt’s asleep, Becca is in the basement with Char and Danielle, and I’m about to go do some homework.”

  “Good,” said Aunt Cecelia. I grinned and went to my room to work on my math problems.

  By the time I’d finished and headed back downstairs to check things out, Mama and Daddy had both gotten home from work. Daddy was chopping carrots in the kitchen while Aunt Cecelia stirred something in a pot on the stove. Mama was sitting at the kitchen table with her feet up on a chair, reading aloud from a gardening catalogue.

  “Roses in the middle of winter.” Aunt Cecelia shook her head.

  Mama grinned. “You’ve just got to believe, Cecelia. Listen to this one: ‘A lovely old fashioned rose with strong, sweet fragrance, this floribunda …’ Hi, honey, how was school?” Mama reached out and pulled me over to give me a kiss on the cheek.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Dinner in half an hour,” said Daddy.

  “Can I help?” I asked.

  “Time those two downstairs were getting home for their own dinners,” said Aunt Cecelia.

  “I’ll go tell them,” I said.

  I headed for the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped.

  Becca, Char, and Danielle were sitting in front of the mirror by the barre writing furiously on pieces of paper. As I watched, Becca held up what she had written so it
was reflected in the mirror. Char and Danielle leaned forward and squinted. “B … billy,” Char read aloud. “Billy Dobson is … etuc?”

  “Etuc? What’s etuc?” asked Danielle.

  “Nooo! Cute,” said Becca. The three girls fell backward, shrieking and giggling.

  “Now let’s write it in mirror writing,” said Char.

  I cleared my throat.

  Becca quickly covered up her piece of paper. “Hi, Jessi,” she said.

  “Practicing ballet?” I asked.

  “Ah, resting,” said Danielle quickly.

  “It’s time for you guys to head home. Almost dinner time.”

  They jumped up, gathering pieces of paper covered with all kinds of backward writing that was readable when held up to a mirror, and hurried upstairs.

  “See you tomorrow,” said Becca, waving good-bye at the door.

  “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the cutest boy of all?” I teased Becca gently.

  Becca ducked her head and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. Then a dimple appeared in her cheek. “Billy Dobson,” she said and raced back up the hall to the kitchen.

  “Don’t run in the house,” I heard Aunt Cecelia say.

  Poking her head back out of the kitchen door, Becca said, “He’s etuc!”

  “Etuc yourself, Becca Ramsey,” I said, grinning as I went to help my family finish getting ready for dinner. “Very etuc!”

  The next day, you couldn’t tell snow had ever fallen from the beautiful blue skies of Stoneybrook. Okay, so it was a little cold. But the sun was shining — and I got every math problem right on my homework, which made it shine even brighter. Naturally, I was in a pretty good mood by the time I showed up for the BSC meeting at Claudia’s house.

  I was a little late because I’d just come from my dance class in Stamford. Claudia had left the front door unlocked (as usual) for the club members, and I pushed it open and hurried to her room.

  From her throne (really, it’s just a director’s chair) Kristy Thomas, BSC president, idea-master, and strict timekeeper, gave me a Look as I walked into the room.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I just got out of ballet class.”

  With a welcoming smile, Mallory scooted over and made room for me on the floor in front of Claudia’s bed.