Jessi's Baby-Sitter Read online

  Things at the Schafer/Spier home got off to a troubled start after the wedding. Dawn and Mary Anne were friends, but they weren’t prepared to be stepsisters. And Dawn and her mom are as different from Mary Anne and her dad as night and day. They have varying ideas on everything from meals to housecleaning. But they’re overcoming things. I think that deep down, Dawn and Mary Anne are happy to be stepsisters.

  Let’s see. The two remaining BSC members are Claudia Kishi, club vice-president, and Stacey McGill, club treasurer. Claudia and Stacey are best friends and also have their similarities and differences. (I guess all best friends do.) Both Claudia and Stacey are pretty fresh themselves. They are the most sophisticated of all us members. None of us usually comes right out and says that, but we all know it’s true.

  Claudia comes from a regular family. It’s like mine, I guess. She lives with her parents and her older sister, Janine. Janine, however, is a genius in the true sense of the word (she has this amazingly high I.Q.), while Claudia, who’s smart, is a terrible student. She simply doesn’t like school. (Oh, and she’s an awful speller.) What she does like is art, and is she ever talented. Claud can sculpt, paint, draw, you name it. She even makes wild jewelry to go with her wild clothes. Claud wears things my mother won’t even let me look at in stores — short, short skirts and tight black pants and off-the-shoulder sweatshirts. Also, she can think of a thousand ways to wear her hair, which is long, silky, and jet-black. Claud is Japanese-American and very exotic-looking. She’s also fun. She loves to read Nancy Drew mysteries and eat junk food, but her parents don’t approve of either habit. Does that deter Claudia? No. She just hides the books and food all around her room. Once, I dropped a pencil on her floor and it rolled under an armchair. I reached down to pick it up, and my hand closed over a Planters Peanut Bar! Claud likes boys and goes out on dates and to school dances, but she doesn’t have one special boyfriend yet. Here’s one sad thing about Claudia. Her grandmother Mimi used to live with her family. I think Claudia was closer to Mimi than to anyone else in the world. Then Mimi got sick and died. That was a hard time for all of us, but especially for Claud.

  And now we come to Stacey. Stacey shares Claudia’s sense of fashion and, if this is possible, she’s even more sophisticated than Claud. Her mother lets her perm her hair, she has pierced ears (well, so do all of us, except for Kristy and Mary Anne), and her clothes are even more cool than Claudia’s. I think. Actually, maybe they’re about even on the coolness scale.

  But there’s one thing about Stacey that none of us can top: she grew up in New York City. Big, thrilling, exciting New York City, the shopping capital of the world. How did Stacey wind up in Stoneybrook? Well, the company Mr. McGill works for transferred his job to Stamford, so Stacey and her parents settled in Stoneybrook. (Stacey is an only child.) Then, after they’d been here about a year, Mr. McGill was transferred back to New York. (When they left, they sold their house — to my family!) Anyway, that was when the trouble started. Mr. and Mrs. McGill began having problems. Finally, they separated. Mrs. McGill wanted to move back here, while Mr. McGill stayed in the city. It was a tough decision, but Stacey finally chose to live with her mom in Stoneybrook. (Boy, were we glad to have her back.) So Stacey’s life might seem glamorous, but it hasn’t been easy. Especially when you consider that on top of everything else, Stacey has a disease called diabetes. She has to stay on a strict no-sweets diet and give herself (oh, ew) daily injections of something called insulin. All in all, though, Stacey copes pretty well, even when she isn’t feeling too great. And she’s a very good friend to all of us.

  * * *

  The phone rang then, and it jolted me out of my daydream. I jumped off my bed. I hadn’t begun my homework. I hadn’t practiced at my barre in the basement, either. Even so, I hoped the phone call was from Mallory. Homework or not, practice or not, all I wanted to do was pour out the story of Aunt Cecelia to my best friend.

  “’Bye, Mama!” I called. “I’m going to Claudia’s for the meeting. I’ll be back in time for dinner!”

  “Have fun, sweetie,” my mother replied.

  I dashed into our garage, hopped on my bike, and rode toward Claud’s house, hurrying. It is never a good idea to be late for a meeting. Kristy feels it is her presidential duty to run the BSC meetings in as official a manner as possible. So I pedaled along quickly.

  On the way I thought about how nice it was to have Mama at home. I’d never thought about it before; I guess because there was no reason to think of her not being there. Even when she began to job-hunt, I didn’t think what it would be like to have two working parents. It didn’t seem real enough.

  But now that Mama would soon not be at home, I spent a good deal of time appreciating having her around. It was nice to return from school and find her in the den, paying bills; or on the phone, doing volunteer work; or best of all, in the kitchen, baking cookies with Squirt at her heels. Soon all that would be over. I’d come home to … Aunt Cecelia. (I always imagined scary music playing when I thought of her name.) And when I left for a club meeting, I would have to call good-bye to … Aunt Cecelia.

  My own baby-sitter.

  I pulled into Claud’s driveway and parked my bicycle by a lamppost. Then I let myself into the Kishis’ house. There’s no point in ringing the bell, because both Mr. and Mrs. Kishi work, and Janine often isn’t at home, so us club members just run upstairs instead of making Claudia come downstairs when we know perfectly well where to go.

  “Hi!” I said when I entered Claud’s room.

  Claudia, Kristy, and Dawn were there, in their usual places. I took my usual place.

  “Hi, Jessi!” my friends replied.

  Claud and Dawn were sitting on Claud’s bed, leaning against the wall. Kristy was perched in the director’s chair, which she has claimed as her own — the president’s throne. She was wearing a visor, and a pencil was stuck over one ear.

  I sat on the floor. We were waiting for Mallory, Stacey, and Mary Anne. While we waited, I only half listened to the others, who were talking loudly. I couldn’t help thinking about Aunt Cecelia, about how Mama and Daddy had gotten me a baby-sitter. And then I began to think about our own sitting club.

  This is how the BSC got started. It all began more than a year ago, when Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Stacey were new seventh-grade students at SMS. I still lived in New Jersey then, Dawn still lived in California, and Mal was a lowly fifth-grader at Stoneybrook Elementary. She wasn’t even a sitter yet.

  Anyway, back then, Kristy lived across the street from Claud, and Mary Anne lived next door to her. The three of them had grown up together and all liked to baby-sit, but they did their sitting on their own. Then one day Kristy’s mom (who was just beginning to date Watson Brewer) needed a sitter for David Michael, who was only six. No one was available — not Kristy, not Sam or Charlie, not any of the sitters Mrs. Thomas had phoned. It was while Kristy was watching her mother make all those telephone calls that she got what was probably the most brilliant idea of her life. Wouldn’t it be easy if her mom could make just one call and reach a lot of sitters at once? Of course it would!

  So she told Claudia and Mary Anne about her idea for a sitting business, and they formed the Baby-sitters Club. They asked Stacey to join, too. She and Claud were already getting to be friends, and the girls thought that four sitters would be better than three. That was the start of the BSC.

  The club did well from the beginning, thanks partly to all the advertising the girls did and partly to the fact that they were (and still are) excellent sitters, so people asked them back after they’d done a good job. Soon the BSC business was booming, and when Dawn moved to town, they asked her to join. Everything went smoothly until Stacey had to move back to New York. By then, a year had gone by, the original club members were in eighth grade, and Mal had joined them at SMS as a sixth-grader. She was old enough to sit (and she certainly had plenty of experience with young children), so they asked both Mal and me to replace Stacey. Then, of course, Stac
ey moved back here (I felt guilty that she couldn’t move into her old house, since we were living in it), and she settled into the club routine again. We have seven members now, and Kristy says that’s enough. I think she’s right. Claud’s bedroom is getting crowded.

  How does the club run? Well, we meet three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons from 5:30 until 6:00. People know that we meet then and they call us to line up sitters. They also know to call us at Claudia’s, whose bedroom is BSC headquarters.

  Kristy, as I mentioned, is our president. Her job is to conduct meetings, solve problems, get good ideas, and generally keep things running smoothly. These are two of Kristy’s ideas: Kid-Kits, and the club notebook. Kid-Kits are terrific. Kristy suggested that we each get a cardboard carton, decorate it, and fill it with things kids like to play with — our old books, games, and toys, plus stickers, coloring books, and art materials. We sometimes take the Kid-Kits with us when we baby-sit, and children love them. This is good for business, because when our charges are happy, then their parents are happy, and then the parents ask us to sit again.

  The club notebook is a good idea, too, but not nearly as much fun. In it, each of us has to write up every single job we go on. I think that’s a royal pain, but I have to admit it’s helpful. See, once a week we’re supposed to read the notebook to see what happened while our friends were sitting, and often I find out how they solved tough sitting situations, or learn about a problem a kid is having whom I’ll be sitting for soon.

  Claudia is the vice-president because we’re always using (or eating) her things. Three times a week we take over her room. We tie up her phone and we eat her junk food. Claud is pretty good-natured about this. In fact, I think she likes having us come over.

  The job of the secretary, Mary Anne, is a big one. Mary Anne is in charge of the club record book (not the notebook), in which she keeps track of our clients, their addresses and phone numbers, and the rates they pay. More importantly, she schedules every single one of our sitting jobs. She has to keep track of all our other activities and appointments, such as my ballet lessons, Mal’s orthodontist appointments, and Kristy’s softball practices. I do not think Mary Anne has ever made a mistake.

  Stacey is our treasurer. She’s good with numbers. It’s her job to keep a record of the money we earn (just for our interest), to collect dues from each of us every Monday, to preside over the treasury, and to dole out money when it’s needed — to help Claudia pay for her phone bill, to replace items in the Kid-Kits that get used up, such as crayons, and to shell out for a club pizza party or slumber party every now and then. The funny thing is, Stacey loves collecting money — having it — but hates parting with it, even though it isn’t her own. Nothing pleases her more than the sight of a fat treasury envelope.

  Dawn is our alternate officer. That means that if one of us has to miss a meeting, Dawn can take over that person’s job. She’s sort of like an understudy in a play. She has to know how to handle the treasury, schedule appointments, etc.

  Then there are Mal and me. As junior officers, we take on a lot of the afternoon sitting jobs. This is mostly because we aren’t allowed to sit at night yet unless we’re sitting for our own brothers and sisters. But it does free the other girls up for night-time jobs, so all in all we’re important club members, too.

  Believe it or not, there are a couple of other club members whom I haven’t described yet. This is because they are associate members and don’t come to meetings. They are our backups. They’re responsible sitters we can call on if a job comes up that none of us seven regular members can take, which does happen sometimes. Our associate members are Shannon Kilbourne, a friend of Kristy’s, and … Logan Bruno, Mary Anne’s boyfriend!

  * * *

  “Ahem,” said Kristy loudly.

  I looked up guiltily. Boy, had I been day-dreaming. The rest of the BSC members had arrived and Kristy was starting the meeting. She took roll. Then Stacey collected our dues, gleefully exclaiming over the contents of the treasury and beaming when no one said they needed any money. After that, we waited for job calls to come in.

  The first was from Mrs. Rodowsky. She and her husband have three boys — Shea, Jackie, and Archie. Jackie, the seven-year-old, is a walking disaster, completely accident-prone, but we love him.

  I got the job.

  When the phone didn’t ring again for awhile, we began talking.

  “When’s your aunt coming, Jessi?” Stacey wanted to know. (By then, practically the whole world knew my aunt was moving in.)

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I mean, Aunt Cecelia isn’t even sure. She still has to hire movers, sell some of her furniture, things like that.” I paused. Then, “Ohhh,” I moaned. “Why does she have to come? There must be some other solution to this problem. Perhaps my parents could hire a jailer.”

  Kristy giggled. But then she said, “Really, Jessi. How bad could having your aunt move in actually be? Nannie moved in with my family, and it’s been great. We love having her around.”

  “And Mimi lived with us for as long as I can remember,” added Claud. “You know how I felt about her. She was like another mother.”

  I knew. And I knew that Nannie was wonderful, too.

  But Aunt Cecelia would not be wonderful, and my friends wouldn’t understand that until they personally saw Aunt Cecelia in action.

  I raced directly to the Rodowskys’ from school. Mrs. Rodowsky needed me by three-thirty so that she could drive Shea to his music lesson and little Archie to his soccer lesson. (Can you imagine a bunch of four-year-olds playing soccer? It must be quite a sight.)

  As I pedaled along, I remembered telling Mama that morning that I would be going directly to a sitting job after school. I knew she wouldn’t worry about me. But, I thought, would things be different when Aunt Cecelia was in charge? Would she let me go places without checking in after school? Would she remember my afternoon plans when I told them to her over breakfast in the morning?

  Aunt Cecelia is an old prune.

  I arrived at the Rodowskys’ right on time, parked my bike, and rang their front doorbell.

  I heard running footsteps inside, then a whoosh, a crash, and a cry of, “Oh, darn, darn. Oh … bullfrogs!”

  I giggled. I knew that was Jackie.

  “Jackie!” I called. “It’s me, Jessi. Are you okay?”

  Jackie opened the door, looking sheepish. “I was running to answer the bell and I slipped on the rug and fell on my bottom.”

  I smiled, shaking my head. Then I let myself in and helped Jackie straighten out the rug.

  “Jessi?” called Mrs. Rodowsky. “Is that you?”

  “Yes!” I replied. (I hoped she didn’t think I had slipped on the rug.)

  Mrs. Rodowsky was in a rush.

  “Archie!” she exclaimed. “You’re supposed to be in your soccer uniform. And, Shea, where are your piano books?”

  The house was in turmoil for about five minutes — Jackie added to it by somehow getting his foot stuck in one of his old rain boots — but finally Mrs. R. and the boys were backing hurriedly down the driveway. I was left with Jackie and the rain boot.

  “I know I can get this off your foot,” I told him.

  “But what if you can’t?” whimpered Jackie.

  “Jackie,” I said, “have you ever heard of someone who got a boot stuck on his foot and never got it off?”

  “No,” replied Jackie, as I braced myself against a wall and pulled.

  “I wonder,” said Jackie, trying not to slide forward. “You know, boots are sometimes called galoshes. Is one boot called a galosh?”

  “I haven’t the faintest — Oof! Well, there you go, Jackie. The boot’s off. You’re free.”

  “Thanks,” he said gratefully.

  Jackie wandered around the playroom, looking bored.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have any homework?”

  “Nope. Well,
not really. We’re just supposed to think about whether we want to enter the science fair at school.”

  “Do you?” I asked him.

  “Me?” squeaked Jackie. “Are you kidding? I have bad luck. I would never enter a contest…. Even though I think it would be fun to make a volcano.”

  “Fun to do what?” I repeated.

  “Make a volcano. I saw that on The Brady Bunch once. You can build a model of a volcano, but it really works. I mean, lava really comes pouring out. That would be great. Lava everywhere.”

  The thought of “lava everywhere” made me sort of queasy. Even so, I said, “Jackie, you ought to make a volcano for the science fair! It would be a great project. Everyone else would probably just have, you know, things like leaf collections, or bugs in jars, but you would build a volcano that would erupt. You’d win for sure.”

  Jackie looked skeptical. “I don’t know,” he said. “I bet some kids would do really, really, really good projects. I’m not very smart in science. Besides, like I said, I have bad luck. I can’t show a project to judges and an audience. Things never go right for me. Something bad would happen.”

  “Jackie. That’s no way to talk. You have to have confidence in yourself. A volcano — a spewing, dripping, running volcano — is a really terrific project. The kids would love it. More important, so would the teachers and judges.”

  “I don’t know,” said Jackie slowly.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “This’ll be great. Let’s go to the library right now and see what kind of information we can find on volcanoes and how to make them. I’ll leave a note for your mom in case she comes home early.”

  I didn’t give Jackie a chance to say no. I just handed him his jacket, wrote the note, put on my own jacket, and marched Jackie to the public library. He barely said a word as we walked along.