Claudia and the Recipe for Danger Read online

  Mary Anne had a hand in reigniting that fire. It just so happened that Sharon Schafer brought two kids with her from California, Dawn and her younger brother Jeff. Dawn and Mary Anne became immediate best friends, discovered that their parents used to date, fixed them up again, and ended up as stepsisters (to make a long story short). Dawn is a BSC member, too, naturally. She’s the alternate officer, which means she can fill in for any other officer who can’t make it to a meeting. For example, she filled in for Stacey when Stacey was out of the club.

  Dawn is cool. She has long, long pale blonde hair, eyes so blue they look like swimming pools, a clear, clear complexion that must be due partly to her extremely healthy eating habits (tofu and veggies — ugh!), and an attitude that’s totally laid back. To me, Dawn will always look as if she belongs on a beach. Her charm on my bracelet? No question. A pair of sunglasses.

  Dawn has learned to love Stoneybrook, but her brother Jeff never did adjust to life on the East Coast. He ended up going back to California to live with his dad. And not long ago, Dawn realized she missed them both so much that she needed to go out there for an extended visit. She’s back with us now, but I can tell she’s already homesick again for California and the people she loves out there. Plus, she just had some pretty bad news about the mother of her best friend in California, and I know it’s hard for Dawn to feel so far away.

  When I think of split-up lives, I also think of Stacey. Her parents are divorced, and her dad lives in Manhattan, where Stacey grew up. (Her charm would definitely be a miniature Empire State Building.) She visits him as often as possible (always managing to slip into Bloomingdale’s or have her long blonde hair permed while she’s in the city), but I know she misses having her family together.

  Stacey’s life is also split up because she’s pulled in different directions by us, her friends in the BSC, and by her boyfriend Robert Brewster. Remember when I mentioned that she had been temporarily kicked out of the club? Well, that was because she became overly involved with Robert and his friends and she blew off her BSC friends — and responsibilities. We know she’s crazy about Robert, but if she wants to be a part of this club she needs to put in time with us, too.

  Things can’t be easy for Stacey, but I think she’s beginning to learn how to balance the parts of her life. Stacey’s already mastered one tricky balancing act, and I really admire her for it. She’s a diabetic, which means that her body can’t manage sugar properly. She has to take extra good care of herself — give herself insulin injections every day and also watch what she eats. (That’s why I made her those fruit-juice-sweetened carrot bars.)

  Stacey is treasurer of the BSC and, math whiz that she is, she does a great job of it. She keeps track of every dollar we earn, and also collects dues every Monday, which go toward things such as my phone bill and Kristy’s transportation costs (which is a fancy way of saying that we buy gas for her brother Charlie, who drives her to meetings).

  I know Stacey’s happy to be back in the BSC, but she’s a little nervous about it, too. She’s on probation, and I think everyone, especially Kristy, is watching her closely to make sure she “behaves.”

  Okay. Everybody I’ve told you about so far is thirteen and in the eighth grade. But two members of the BSC are eleven and in the sixth grade. They are Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike, and they happen to be best friends. They’re junior officers, which means they can’t baby-sit at night unless it’s for their own siblings.

  Jessi’s charm on the BSC bracelet would be a toe shoe. She’s an amazing ballet dancer, and I bet she’ll be internationally famous when she’s older. Jessi has other interests beside dancing, though; like Mal, she loves horses and loves to read. (Naturally, she and Mal like horse stories best.) And she loves her family: her parents, her aunt Cecelia, her little sister Becca, and her baby brother Squirt. (His real name is John Philip Ramsey, Jr., but I have a feeling he’ll be Squirt when he’s ninety!) The Ramseys are African American, and they didn’t receive the greatest reception when they moved to Stoneybrook not long ago. But now they’re as much a part of the community as anyone else.

  Mal’s family is a community all by itself! She has seven younger brothers and sisters, which is one reason she’s a great baby-sitter. She’s looked after Adam, Jordan, Byron (they’re triplets), Vanessa, Nicky, Margo, and Claire for as long as she can remember. Mal’s charm on the BSC bracelet? Let’s see. How about a pencil, to represent her future career as a writer and illustrator of children’s books? I can’t wait to see her picture on a book jacket. Mal’s going to be a knockout one day when she grows into her looks. For now, she hates her reddish-brown hair, braces, and glasses with a passion.

  Remember those two associate members I mentioned? They help out when we’re way busy, and their names are Logan Bruno and Shannon Kilbourne. Logan is Mary Anne’s steady boyfriend and he’s a great guy. I think a soccer ball would make a good charm for Logan, since he’s great at sports. And Shannon is a smart, friendly girl from Kristy’s neighborhood. (She gave the Thomases their puppy, and they named it after her.)

  I was busy trying to think of a charm for Shannon (maybe those sad-and-happy masks, to symbolize her being in the drama club?) when I heard the phone ring. I grabbed it. “Hello, Baby-sitters Club,” I said. I listened while the caller explained what he wanted, told him I’d call him back, and turned to my friends. I had exciting news.

  “That was somebody from the Mrs. Goode’s baking contest,” I said. “His name’s Marty Nisson, and check this out! He wants to know if we could run an on-site day-care center to take care of contestants’ kids during the days of the contest. The contest is going to be held in the high school gym, and we’d be in the faculty lounge. He says we were ‘highly recommended’!”

  “Of course!” said Kristy.

  “Let’s do it!” said Mal and Jessi.

  “Sounds like fun,” said Stacey. “I know Mr. Johanssen wants to enter, and I’m sure he’d appreciate having a place for Charlotte to stay in.”

  “Same with Mrs. Newton,” I said. “She told me she’s planning to enter.”

  Mary Anne checked the record book. “I think we could handle it,” she said. “Even though I want to be in the contest, and so does Claudia.”

  Our meeting was almost over, so I called Marty Nisson back and told him we’d be glad to handle the day care for the contest. By then it was six, so Kristy declared the meeting adjourned, but nobody seemed ready to leave the room. Mary Anne and I pored over the flyer I had brought home, checking out all the rules and regulations for the Battle of the Bakers, while Kristy, Stacey, Mal, Jessi, and Dawn started talking excitedly about the day-care center. August was shaping up to be an interesting month.

  I threw down one Chocolate Lover’s magazine, picked up another, and started to flip through it. “Hey, check this out,” I said, taking a closer look at a full-page color picture of one of the most beautiful cakes I’d ever seen. It was covered in white chocolate icing and trimmed with cascades of flowers in all shades of purple and pink, with this lacy golden stuff on top. I read the caption and discovered that the golden stuff was spun sugar. “What a gorgeous cake,” I said, sighing. “No way the judges could ignore something like that.”

  It was Thursday, over a week after the BSC meeting at which we’d first discussed the Battle of the Bakers. The contest was to start on Saturday, so there wasn’t too much time left for deciding on a recipe.

  Mary Anne put down The Fannie Farmer Cookbook she was leafing through and looked over my shoulder. “It’s pretty, Claud,” she said, “but don’t you think it looks a little hard to make?” She pointed to the caption below a picture, on the opposite page, of a tall, skinny man in a tall, puffy white hat. “ ‘Master Chef Pierre Fontainbleu, creator of this recipe, reveals every secret in his ten-day process,’ ” she read.

  “Ten days!” said Shea Rodowsky, who had been sitting quietly at my desk, looking through a stack of Gourmet magazines. “No way. We don’t even have ten hours. We have to c
ome up with a recipe we can make in one morning.”

  “Shea’s right,” Mary Anne said. “Let’s keep looking. I’m sure we can figure out something that will be quick and delicious.” She glanced at me. “And beautiful,” she added quickly.

  I sighed. I knew Mary Anne and Shea were right, but somehow it was hard for me to give up my dream of baking some outrageously gorgeous creation, one that would knock the judges’ eyes out. After all, I’m an artist, not a chef.

  Mary Anne patted my hand. “Come on, Claud,” she said. “We’re a team, remember? We can do it if we all work together.”

  I smiled at her. “You’re right, Mary Anne. Soon we’ll be splitting up that prize money. We are a team!”

  We had turned into a team only recently, so I was just becoming used to the idea. But I knew it was a good one. We’d have a much better chance if we worked together. I knew I was lucky to have Mary Anne, who does happen to know her way around a kitchen, and Shea, who’s great with figures and measurements, on my team.

  Mary Anne and I had agreed to be a team after Wednesday’s BSC meeting, when we realized that we didn’t want to compete against each other. The rule of the baking contest said that teams could consist of no more than three members each, but at that point we thought the two of us could manage just fine.

  On Thursday, Logan decided to enter. He’s a good cook, and he can be very competitive, so a cooking contest sounded great to him. He promised his little sister Kerry that she could be on his team, too, and he tried to talk Mary Anne into joining them, but she didn’t want to abandon me. (She doesn’t mind competing against Logan — in fact, they were recently on opposing teams for this zoo project we worked on for school.)

  Then, on Friday, it turned out that Austin Bentley, who goes to SMS with us, was looking for a team to join. He ended up on Logan’s team. Later, when Mrs. Rodowsky, one of our regular clients, announced she would enter the contest, her nine-year-old son Shea decided he wanted to be in it, too. She called the BSC on Monday to ask if we had a place for him.

  I was happy to have Shea on my team, since he and I are old pals. Shea’s dyslexic, and has trouble in school just like I do, except that he happens to have a natural talent for math. We’ve learned a lot from each other.

  Mary Anne and I invited Shea to join our team, so the BSC teams were set with three members each.

  I knew another team in the contest. Cokie Mason was on it, along with her friends Grace Blume and Mari Drabek. The three of them go to SMS, but they are not exactly friends of ours. Cokie is the worst. She gives me a pain. For some reason (jealousy, maybe?) she has always been out to ruin the BSC. She’s constantly plotting and planning, hoping to trip us up whenever she can. (Not to mention that she once went so far as to try to steal Logan away from Mary Anne.)

  Mary Anne and I ran into Cokie on Tuesday, when we were at the supermarket checking out prices on basic ingredients such as flour, sugar, baking powder, and baking chocolate. Cokie was fingering a package of butterscotch chips when she spotted us.

  “Shopping for the contest?” she asked, with that little Cokie sneer. “I don’t know why you’re bothering.”

  “We’re bothering because we’re going to win!” I said, narrowing my eyes at her. Mary Anne touched me on the shoulder, a signal to stay cool.

  Cokie gave a snort. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Like you have a chance. Listen, I’ll give you a little tip right now. My team has a secret weapon, and nobody, I mean nobody, is going to beat us when it comes to impressing the judges.” She folded her arms and gave us a smug look.

  I started to say something, but Mary Anne grabbed me by the elbow and steered me away from Cokie. “Look, Claudia,” she said. “What an excellent price on slivered almonds!”

  When we were far enough away from Cokie, I hissed, “What do you think their secret weapon is?” I have to admit that I was dying of curiosity, even though I’d never let Cokie have the pleasure of knowing that.

  “I doubt there is one,” said Mary Anne. “She’s just trying to psych us out.”

  Mary Anne was wrong. Cokie’s team did have a secret weapon. But we didn’t find out what it was until the next day, when my BSC friends and I went to the high school to meet with Marty Nisson and talk about the day-care center.

  Marty turned out to be a college intern and a pretty nice guy. He was tall, with wavy black hair and wire-rimmed glasses — cute, but way too old for me and not really my type anyway. He seemed ultra-organized, and as he showed us the faculty lounge he explained what he would need from the BSC.

  “The contest runs all day for both days over the next two weekends,” he said. “We want to provide child care during both the adults’ and kids’ competitions. There’ll be a lot more kids for you to watch in the morning, during the adult matches, but we think parents might want day care available in the afternoon, too, in case they need to go shopping for ingredients. Also, some of the out-of-towners may want to tour Stoneybrook. Anyway, we’ll need sitters from eight to probably about five each day. It would be nice to have at least three or four of you here in the morning, though more would be fine, and maybe two of you in the afternoon. We’ll pay you a flat fee for the four days, and you can split that however you want.”

  “Sounds fine,” said Kristy.

  Mary Anne was making notes in the record book, which she’d brought along.

  “Also,” added Marty, “I’ll need one of you to help out as a Cake Cop during the afternoon competitions.”

  “Cake Cop?” I repeated, giggling. “What’s that for, to give tickets to people who steal icing or something?”

  Marty looked dead serious. “Nope,” he said. “It’s somebody who helps me make sure that no rules are broken, and that nobody tries to cheat. This contest is pretty important to some people, and we want to make sure it’s run right. For example, if any adult was caught helping a younger baker, that baker or team would be disqualified.”

  “Oh,” I said. I wasn’t giggling anymore.

  “I’d love to be a Cake Cop,” Kristy said. “I can be available whenever you need me.”

  “Great,” said Marty. “Now, how about if I show you the setup in the gym?” He led us down the hall.

  I’ve been in the SHS gym before, but it had never looked like this. Ten gleaming white stove-and-counter combinations were set up in two rows of five each, with shoulder-high dividers between them. A judge’s table had been set up under one of the basketball hoops. Marty was in the midst of explaining that extra sinks had been installed in the locker rooms when I spotted Grace Blume. She and some other people were wandering around the gym, scoping out the equipment.

  “Grace,” I said, catching up to her a few minutes later as soon as we’d finished with Marty, “where’s Cokie?”

  “She’s home,” said Grace miserably. “With a terrible case of bronchitis. She’s coughing all over the place, and her mom says she can’t be in the contest.”

  “Oh, too bad,” I said, trying to sound sincere even though I was grinning inside. “What about that secret weapon I heard about? I guess if Cokie’s out, the secret weapon’s gone, too.”

  “Oh, no,” said Grace. “We still have that.”

  “You do?” I asked. I’d been so sure the secret weapon was all in Cokie’s head.

  “Yeah,” said Grace. “It’s Mari. Mari Drabek. Don’t you know her dad’s the dessert chef at Chez Maurice? He taught her everything he knows. She’s been baking since she was five years old.” Grace gave me a smug grin.

  My face fell, and I couldn’t think of a thing to say. “Um, well, good luck!” I finally squeaked out. Then I ran off to find Mary Anne and give her the bad news.

  Fortunately, Mary Anne wasn’t as worried as I was, and she calmed me down. But now, in my room with Shea, flipping through magazines in a desperate search for ideas with the contest only two days away, even Mary Anne was starting to lose her cool.

  “Okay,” I said finally, putting down the last issue of Chocolate Lover’s
. “Let’s not panic. After all, we don’t have to worry about recipes for each day of the contest. All we have to do today is figure out one recipe, for the first day. If that one works out, we’ll keep using it. If not, we’ll try another.”

  That was the way the contest worked: it was up to the contestants to decide whether it was best to keep perfecting one recipe or to go on to others as the contest moved from the preliminaries, which would be held over the first three days, to the finals, when the five best teams or individuals would have one last chance to impress the judges. All we had to do for now was hang in through the preliminaries — and I thought I knew how to do it.

  “I’m going to design a great-looking cake,” I said firmly. “Something really fancy. I know it’ll keep us in the contest.”

  “And I’ll help figure out how to put it together,” said Shea.

  “Okay,” said Mary Anne doubtfully. “You two work on that. But I’m going to try to find this old dessert recipe of my mother’s. Something in this cookbook just reminded me of a recipe my dad used to tell me about, and I bet if I can figure it out it’ll be a winner.”

  Mary Anne sounded sure of herself, and sort of mysterious. I decided she’d clue me and Shea in when she was ready, but until then we’d have to go along with my plan. Besides, if I could really make the cake I was dreaming about, we wouldn’t have a thing to worry about.

  “Jackie! Get down, please. NOW!”

  Jackie Rodowsky (Shea’s little brother) is a very cute, seven-year-old redhead who is known to the members of the BSC as the Walking Disaster. We adore him, but we’re also very aware of the fact that wherever Jackie goes, chaos follows. He’s totally accident-prone, and any breakable objects near him seem to have a habit of hurling themselves to the floor. Plus, he can’t seem to resist climbing up, over, and on top of any structure he comes across. Which was what he was doing at that moment. Which was why Kristy was calling to him.