Claudia and the Perfect Boy Read online

  Mary Anne and her father went to live with the Schafers in their old (1790) farmhouse. It’s a great house (not average at all) that even has a secret passage which runs from Dawn’s bedroom out to the barn in the back. The house was part of the underground railway which helped slaves escape from the South to the North.

  Becoming a new family wasn’t as easy as Dawn and Mary Anne had expected. For instance, there was a problem with food. Dawn and her mother only eat healthy things such as tofu and bean sprouts, and absolutely no meat. I can’t imagine life without junk food, fast food hamburgers, and french fries. But the mere thought of any of that stuff would make Dawn want to hurl. Mary Anne and her father eat normal food so it was hard putting meals together at first. Now they’ve adjusted to each other and, despite their rough times, are happy to be a family. (I know Mary Anne misses Dawn like crazy. She took Dawn’s leaving hard, although, since she’s so understanding, she’s trying to understand how much Dawn missed her father and brother.)

  My friend Stacey McGill has had more than her share of adjustments to make, too. She moved here to Stoneybrook from New York City in the seventh grade. She’s much more sophisticated and grown-up than any of us. (I know my friends think I’m sort of sophisticated, too, but if you ask me, I’m nothing like Stacey.) Anyway, Stacey has huge blue eyes, and blonde permed hair. Like me, she adores clothing and has a great sense of style. Unlike me, she’s a good student, especially in math where she’s a whiz.

  Stacey keeps such an upbeat attitude that you’d never guess how many tough things she’s had to deal with. Tough thing number one: her health. Stacey has a very serious form of diabetes, which is a disease in which her body can’t properly regulate the amount of sugar in her system. If she doesn’t watch her diet (absolutely no sugar or junk food) and give herself insulin injections every day, she could go into a coma. I admire how disciplined she is in sticking to all this and how she doesn’t let it get her down.

  Tough thing number two: the number of times she’s had to move. First she moved to Stoneybrook, which wasn’t easy since she missed New York City and her friends there. Then, once she’d made new friends here (us) her father’s company transferred him back to New York. By then, Stacey wasn’t thrilled to return because she’d come to think of Stoneybrook as her home. She didn’t have any choice about it, though, so back she went. Once she was in Manhattan, something else happened which leads me to Stacey’s third tough thing.

  Tough thing number three: Stacey’s parents’ divorce. Stacey had to decide whether to stay in the city with her father or come back here with her mother. Luckily for us, she came back here.

  Another BSC member who made a difficult move is Jessi. Just like Stacey, she moved here because her father’s job changed. I suppose all moves are difficult, although I wouldn’t really know since I’ve lived here on Bradford Court for all eternity. For Jessi, moving was particularly hard because it gave Jessi her first real experience with prejudice. Her old neighborhood had been pretty integrated, but Stoneybrook is mostly white. Some of the neighbors weren’t thrilled when a black family moved to the neighborhood, and they made their feelings known.

  Not long ago, I encountered a family who didn’t want me to sit for their kids because I’m Japanese-American. It really shocked and hurt me, especially since I’d never experienced anything like that before. So I can imagine how awful Jessi and her family must have felt. The Ramseys aren’t quitters, though, and they hung in there. Now things are much better, and the Ramseys — Jessi’s mom and dad, her baby brother Squirt and eight-year-old sister Becca, and her aunt Cecelia — have made some good friends and neighbors.

  Jessi is pretty remarkable. Sometimes she reminds me of a deer with her thick lashes and dark eyes, her long legs and graceful movements. Of course she’s not a deer, but she is a ballet dancer, and a talented one. She studies regularly at a ballet school in Stamford and has already performed in several professional productions.

  Jessi’s best friend is Mal Pike. Mal is the oldest of the eight Pike children which may be why she’s so good with kids. She has a great imagination, too. She wants to be a children’s book writer and illustrator. I think she’ll be great at it. She even looks like my idea of an author with her glasses, brownish red curly hair that tumbles where it wants to go, and her serious expression (which she wears until she breaks out into a great smile). Mal’s snappy sense of humor is something I also imagine an author having. It’s easy for me to imagine Mal’s photo on the back of a book jacket. (Her braces don’t quite fit the author picture, but they’ll be gone by the time she publishes her first book.)

  Recently Mal had a case of mononucleosis which left her so rundown that her parents have temporarily forbidden her to participate in any after-school activities, including the BSC. With Mal out sick and Dawn in California, we were really having a hard time covering all our jobs. Thank goodness Shannon agreed to come to meetings.

  I should tell you a little about Shannon, although I don’t know as much about her as I do the others. She’s on the short side with blue eyes and curly, blonde hair. I suppose she must be wealthy since she lives in Kristy’s new neighborhood where all the houses are gigantic, but she’s not snobby. She has a good sense of humor and she must be smart since she’s in her school’s honor society. (She doesn’t go to Stoneybrook Middle School like the rest of us.) Shannon is the oldest in her family and has two sisters, which means she’s used to being around kids.

  Oh, one more thing. I should tell you how the club works. As you know, we meet each week at a regular time and take phone calls. Mary Anne is the club secretary and her job is to keep a record book with everyone’s schedule in it. My art lessons, Mal’s orthodontist appointments, and Jessi’s ballet classes are all in there. That way Mary Anne knows who is free to take the baby-sitting jobs that come in. Mary Anne is great at it. She keeps us organized. She also records information about our clients in the book. All their names, addresses, and phone numbers are there as well as the kids’ fears, food allergies, or other important information.

  We do much more than just take phone calls, though. For instance, at this meeting, Stacey was reminding us about club dues on Monday. No one ever wants to part with her money, but Stacey is the treasurer so it’s her job to collect the dues and then decide how we’ll spend it. Each month, part of the money goes toward my phone bill. (I’m vice president since we use my room and my phone.) Some of the money pays Charlie Thomas to drive Kristy here (and now Shannon, too). From time to time we also restock our Kid-Kits. Each of us has a Kid-Kit, which is a box full of small toys, coloring books, storybooks, and things like that. It was Kristy’s idea to bring these kits with us on jobs, and kids love them.

  Stacey works hard to keep track of how our dues are spent, but since she’s such a whiz with numbers she does it well. So well, in fact, that once in a while there’s money left over to do something fun like have a sleepover or go to the movies.

  The other thing we do at meetings is read or write in our club notebook, which was another great Kristy idea. (At this meeting Jessi was busy writing about her last job with the Papadakis kids.) In the notebook we record everything about our baby-sitting jobs (and everyone complains about my spelling!). It’s a pain to do, but it’s a great reference when you’re going to a new job or need to know what’s going on with the regular clients.

  Just so you know, when Shannon replaced Dawn she became the alternate officer, which means she has to learn everyone’s job in case anyone is out sick or on vacation, although Mal and Jessi don’t have special responsibilities as junior members.

  With all the things we have to do at each meeting the time zooms by. And today the phone kept ringing and ringing. Just as Jessi handed the club notebook to me, the phone rang with a call from one of our regular customers, Mrs. Barrett.

  “I’ll see who’s available and call you right back, Mrs. Barrett,” said Kristy, which is the usual way we handle jobs. She hung up and looked at Mary Anne. “Mrs. Barrett n
eeds a sitter for this Tuesday at three-thirty. It will just be Suzi and Buddy. She’s taking the baby.”

  Mary Anne opened the record book to Tuesday’s schedule and studied it. “Why is she taking Marnie?” she asked.

  “Marnie has an appointment with the allergist,” Kristy told her. “Apparently she’s been coughing and sniffling a lot.”

  “Maybe it’s just a cold,” Shannon suggested.

  “Mrs. Barrett said it’s lasting too long and Marnie’s eyes are watering a lot,” Kristy replied. “This is her second visit to the allergist. The last time she took Buddy and Suzi with her to the doctor, they got too fidgety and wild in the waiting room, so she wants to leave them at home.”

  “I don’t blame her,” said Stacey, laughing. “I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a waiting room with those two.”

  “They’re good kids, though,” added Jessi.

  “You sound like Dawn,” I said with a smile. Dawn knew the Barrett kids best, and often volunteered to sit for them. But even she named them the Impossible Three at first.

  “Claudia, you and I are the only two available that day,” Mary Anne said.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not,” I told her. “I have a history test on Wednesday, and if I don’t do well, I’m doomed.”

  “Mary Anne, you take it, then,” Kristy jumped in anxiously. My grades are important to Kristy, since my parents have threatened to make me quit the BSC if it took too much time from my studies.

  Mary Anne rolled her eyes at Kristy. ”I was going to take it,” she said, writing her name into the book. “You know,” she added thoughtfully, “I was thinking. Isn’t Marnie allergic to chocolate?”

  Each of us looked to the other to see if anyone remembered. No one did, so Mary Anne flipped to the back of the record book to check. “Yup,” she said, “she’s allergic to chocolate.”

  “Mrs. Barrett wouldn’t forget that, though, would she?” Shannon asked.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Kristy. “She can be awfully scatterbrained.” (Which was true.)

  “She’s much better these days,” Mary Anne said. “I think she’s trying to impress Franklin.”

  Franklin is Mrs. Barrett’s new boyfriend. (Mrs. Barrett is divorced from Mr. Barrett.) The idea of older women, especially mothers, having boyfriends always seems just a little odd to me — although I know it’s not. I mean, can you imagine? Scatterbrained and old (she was at least thirty as far as I could tell), Mrs. Barrett with her three wild kids had a boyfriend, and I didn’t.

  But if she’d found Franklin (and Kristy’s mom had found Watson, and Dawn’s mom had found Mr. Spier) then someone had to be out there for me. The trick was finding him.

  “Claud,” Stacey said thoughtfully as she lay on a sleeping bag on my bedroom floor late that same night.

  “Hmmm?” I replied absently. I was stretched across my bed and the two of us were paging through a stack of fashion magazines. I expected her to ask me if I thought a certain hairstyle in a magazine would look good on her, or if I liked a pair of jeans.

  “What were you writing about when I came in this afternoon?”

  I looked up from the story about a girl and her boyfriend which I was reading in Seventeen. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I guess because you don’t ever keep secrets from me, so I’m worried. Is everything all right?”

  I smiled at her. Stacey is a great friend. ”It’s no big secret,” I said. “I was making a list of qualities I would want in the perfect boyfriend.”

  Stacey looked relieved. “Oh. I thought it was some horrible problem.”

  “No. But sometimes it seems like one.”

  “What does?”

  “Not having a boyfriend,” I admitted. “I mean, you and Mary Anne are so lucky to have found boyfriends.” Not long ago, Stacey started going out with this really cool guy at school named Robert.

  “Robert is great,” Stacey said dreamily. “But don’t worry, Claud. You’ll find someone, too.”

  “Well, why haven’t I?” I demanded. “Even Kristy has Bart. Sort of.”

  Stacey rolled onto her side and rested her cheek on her hand. “Do you know what I think your problem is?”

  “I’m fatally unattractive to the opposite sex.”

  “Claudia!” Stacey wailed. “You are extremely attractive, and maybe that’s your problem.”

  “What is?” I asked doubtfully. “That I’m too attractive? Give me a break!”

  “No, I’m not kidding,” Stacey insisted. “I think a lot of guys might be intimidated by you. You’re so pretty, and you’re so much more mature than most of the boys. I don’t think they would have the nerve to ask you out.”

  “So, what do I do?”

  Propping her chin on her hand, Stacey narrowed her eyes in thought. “You need to let guys know you’re looking for someone, but not just any guy. Someone who’s the right guy for you.”

  “That sounds fine, but how do I accomplish this feat of mental telepathy? For that matter, how do I even find this guy?”

  “I don’t know,” Stacey admitted. “Can I see your list?”

  “All right.” I dug under my bed for the stationery. “Tell me if you think it’s dumb,” I said, handing Stacey the list.

  With a serious expression, Stacey read over the list. “A good talker and a good listener,” she said.

  “You are,” I pointed out.

  Stacey smiled for a moment and then frowned. “But a lot of people aren’t. They seem to do either one or the other.”

  “What about Robert?”

  “He talks a little more than he listens,” she said. “But he comes pretty close to being in the middle. So, I suppose you can get both from people.” She continued reading. “This guy sounds pretty wonderful,” she commented when she was done.

  “Shouldn’t I want someone wonderful?” I asked.

  Stacey sat up and thought about that. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, you should. I think you’re absolutely right to set high standards. So many girls settle on any old guy just so they can have a boyfriend. I don’t understand how they can do that. Your guy will come along.”

  “Yeah, probably when I’m about fifty,” I said glumly.

  “Well, if that’s how long it takes then that’s how long it takes.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I told her. “You have Robert right now.”

  “That’s true,” she agreed. She sighed deeply and so did I. Then we went back to our magazines. I had just reached the part in the story where the girl couldn’t choose between two different great guys (lucky her) when Stacey sat up straight. “Look at this!” she said excitedly. “This might be the answer to your problems!”

  “What is it?” I asked. She handed me her magazine open to a section which was full of small boxed-off sections. On the top was the word “Personals” and in the boxes were little advertisements sent in by the magazine readers. I read one of them out loud. “Gorgeous, intelligent, accomplished, blonde woman, thirtyish, seeks attractive, non-smoking man in same age range for theater, long walks, and possibly marriage. Must be successful, independent, and humorous.”

  “It sounds like she’s looking for the same guy you are,” Stacey commented.

  “No way. I don’t want someone thirtyish,” I said. “And if this woman is so wonderful why does she have to advertise for a date?”

  “You’re so wonderful and you’re looking,” Stacey replied. “Maybe this woman is shy and doesn’t meet a lot of men. Or she has to stay home and take care of her ancient father or … or …”

  “Or she has the personality of Homer Simpson,” I suggested.

  “Not necessarily. Look at how many ads are in this magazine. This is just another way to meet people, like a do-it-yourself dating service.”

  I read some more personals to myself. Someone named Bob wanted to wish his wife a happy anniversary. (I don’t know why he couldn’t have just done that at home with a card.) A woman named Annette wanted to locate her old colleg
e roommate, Trudie. (That I could understand.) A guy named Dave wanted to hear from anyone who collected and might want to swap old comic books. But most of the ads were placed by people looking for a date.

  Some of the people sounded as if they had a good sense of humor. One said: “A little bald, short, and shy — at least you know that I don’t lie. Hope to meet Ms. Perfect, you. But Ms. Pretty Good will do, too. Send letter to Vernon.”

  Most of the people sounded too good to be true. They described themselves with words like beautiful, amazing, and incredible. “This sounds like the place where egomaniacs write in to meet other egomaniacs,” I said to Stacey.

  “I suppose nobody answers ads for people who are just okay,” Stacey said.

  “I guess. I wonder if anyone will answer the ad from ‘A Little Bald,’ ” I said, showing her the ad. “He sounds sweet.”

  “Yes, he does, but would you answer his ad?”

  “No,” I admitted. “He’s not exactly what I’m looking for.”

  “Well, there you go. That’s why everyone writes all this great stuff about themselves. Everyone is looking for someone who is perfect. This guy is probably the nicest person in here, but he won’t get a lot of replies.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a little young to be going out with a bald guy,” I argued, even though I knew what she meant.

  Stacey made a face at me and returned to the ads. “I’m trying to see if anyone in here would be good for you,” she said as she read.

  “Stacey! I’m not looking for some old guy!”

  “I know that,” Stacey replied. “I just thought someone young might have written in — but everyone in here seems to be old.”

  “Too bad the SMS Express doesn’t have a personals column,” I said. (I was talking about our school newspaper.) “Maybe Mr. Perfect is right in our school.”

  Stacey put down her magazine. Her blue eyes looked even wider and bigger than usual. “That’s a great idea! Why don’t you start a personals column? It would be a terrific addition to the paper and you could use it to find your Mr. Perfect.”