Mary Anne and the Great Romance Read online

  When he heard about a girls’ club, he made a face.

  “How about going over to the Pikes’?” Jessi signed (speaking at the same time, of course, so that Carolyn wouldn’t be left out of the conversation). “Mal’s there sitting for Nicky, Vanessa, and Claire.”

  Haley and Carolyn looked at each other and grinned. Jessi knew they were thinking of talking to Vanessa about their club.

  Matt grinned, too. He’s become friends with the Pike boys and would be happy to see Nicky.

  So Jessi called Mallory and they agreed that the kids could play together.

  When Jessi and her charges arrived at the Pikes’ they were greeted at the door by an exuberant Claire. “Let’s play Sardines! Let’s play Sardines!” she cried, jumping up and down.

  Haley didn’t know the sign for “sardine,” so she finger spelled it to Matt. Then Claire and Vanessa had to explain what Sardines is, and a lot more signing went on. In the end, the girls seemed to have forgotten about the club. Sardines sounded much more interesting.

  Have you ever played that game? If not, this is how it goes: It’s a version of Hide-and-Seek, only you have one hider and all the other players are seekers. When a seeker finds the hider, he doesn’t just win that round of the game, he hides with him. The next person to find the hiders hides with them, too, and so on until one seeker is left. That seeker is the loser and starts out the next round of the game as the hider. The tricky thing when you’re the hider is finding a big enough hiding place in which to fit a whole lot of other people.

  Jessi and Mal took the kids into the backyard. You can play Sardines indoors, but ever since the triplets broke a chair playing the game one rainy day, Mrs. Pike has said the game must be played outdoors. The kids didn’t mind. It’s easier to find big hiding places in the yard.

  “Okay,” said Haley, signing at the same time. “We’ll say ‘eeny-meeny-miny-moe’ to see who’ll hide first.”

  “Meeny-miny-mony-moo?” repeated Claire, and everyone giggled.

  “No,” said Haley. “Eeny-meeny-miny-moe. Here. Everyone stand in a circle and put one hand out. Mal or Jessi, will one of you come help us?”

  Jessi stood in the middle of the circle.

  “You know what to do?” asked Haley.

  “Sure,” said Jessi, and she recited, “Eeny-meeny-miny-moe. Catch a tiger by the toe. If he hollers let him go. Eeny-meeny-miny-moe!” As she recited, she went around the circle of kids, touching each of their hands in turn. When she got to that final moe, she was touching Vanessa, so Vanessa became the first hider.

  “Okay,” began Vanessa. “You guys all have to stand on the patio facing the house and close your eyes. Jessi will count to a hundred. Then you can start looking for me.”

  This was a good arrangement since Claire can’t count to a hundred yet, and it would eliminate any “speed-counting.”

  So Matt, Haley, Carolyn, Nicky, and Claire stood on the patio with their eyes closed while Jessi counted. Vanessa knew exactly where she wanted to hide, and it was a good choice, too — under the low branches of a pine tree. She made a dash for the tree, huddled herself against the trunk, and was well hidden before Jessi had even reached twenty. When Jessi finally called out, “One hundred!” she added, “Okay, open your eyes, you guys,” and tapped Matt on the shoulder so he’d know the searching had begun.

  Jessi got the feeling right away that the pine tree was a favorite hiding spot of Vanessa’s, because Nicky and Claire made a beeline for it. But they managed to creep in without the others seeing them.

  Haley, Matt, and Carolyn searched the yard high and low.

  Not a sound came from the pine tree.

  Matt looked under an overturned wheelbarrow.

  Haley climbed up and looked in the Pikes’ tree fort.

  Carolyn peered behind the toolshed.

  “Where are they?” Haley finally exclaimed — and Jessi and Mal heard a giggle from under the pine tree. It was Claire. She just couldn’t help herself. Unfortunately, Haley heard the giggle and made a dash for the pine tree. Matt saw her and followed.

  So Carolyn was left alone. That meant she was the next hider, and she chose the tree fort. Once again Claire’s giggles gave the spot away when she found Carolyn.

  “I think Claire should have to be the next hider, just for giggling,” announced Nicky, when the kids had gathered in the yard again.

  “I should not!” exclaimed Claire.

  “Should too.”

  “Should not.”

  “Should too — monkey-breath.”

  For a moment, Claire looked as if she were going to cry. But then her giggles erupted again. Nicky laughed, too, and so did the others, even Matt, once Haley had finger spelled “monkey-breath” to him.

  Matt was the next hider and he found a wonderful spot beneath the overturned wheelbarrow. Nobody could see a speck of him. Also, nobody else could hide in there with him. Matt realized this too late when Claire discovered him. She made a huge racket and everyone saw her and came running.

  No one would confess to being the last to have seen her.

  “It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!” everyone kept saying.

  Then Nicky said that he was thirsty, so Mallory brought a pitcher of ice water and a stack of paper cups out to the back patio. Sardines was over. Claire drank her water and wandered over to the swing set. Nicky and Matt decided to hold batting practice. (They’re members of Kristy’s Krushers.) And Carolyn, Haley, and Vanessa sat on the patio with Jessi and Mal.

  “Where’s Marilyn?” Mal asked Carolyn.

  Carolyn shrugged. “At home, I guess. She never plays with me anymore.”

  “I guess you’ve got your friends now and Marilyn’s got hers,” said Jessi.

  Carolyn made a face. “Marilyn doesn’t have any friends. She’s too bossy.”

  “What about Gozzie Kunka?” asked Mal, who’d heard about her from Dawn and me.

  “Who?!” exclaimed Haley.

  “Gozzie Kunka. The foreign girl. The one who’s new at your school.”

  “I never heard of anyone named Gozzie Kunka,” said Haley, frowning.

  “Me neither,” said Vanessa.

  “I have,” said Carolyn. “I wouldn’t exactly call her Marilyn’s friend, but Marilyn’s been talking about her a lot. She says she’s been all around the world. Gozzie’s father is with the government, only now they’ve settled down.”

  “You’d think a fancy family like that would settle down in Washington, D.C., or New York or some other big city,” said Jessi. “Not in Stoneybrook, Connecticut.”

  The girls looked at each other and shrugged. Then Carolyn, Vanessa, and Haley decided to talk about their club. Half an hour later, Jessi took Matt, Haley, and Carolyn back to the Braddocks’. The kids waved good-bye to each other, a sign everyone understands.

  As they left the Pikes’ yard, Carolyn looked at Jessi and said, “Boy, will Daddy be proud of me when he finds out I’m learning sign language. Marilyn doesn’t know a single sign, but I’m going to learn lots from Haley and Matt. I bet Marilyn will be jealous…. Really jealous.”

  “Rain, rain, go away, and never come back another day,” sang Marilyn Arnold.

  “That’s not how the song goes,” Carolyn informed her. “It’s, Rain, rain, go away. Come again some other day.”

  “I know. Sheesh. I was just thinking how nice it would be if the sun shone all the time. And the flowers were always blooming and —”

  “That couldn’t happen,” said Carolyn, the science expert. “Flowers can’t bloom all the time, especially if it never rains. And if it never rained, we’d run out of water. We wouldn’t have any to drink or to take baths in, and everything would dry up and we’d all be dead.”

  “Would not.”

  “Would too.”

  “Would not.”

  “WOULD TOO!”

  “WOULD NOT!!”

  “Girls, enough!” I finally cried. I was baby-sitting at the Arnolds’ house, and it was indeed a rainy day. I
hadn’t interrupted the girls’ argument until now, because I’d been hoping they would work things out for themselves. But apparently they weren’t going to.

  “Well, Marilyn’s being a pest,” complained Carolyn, who was sitting on the floor of the Arnolds’ rec room, taking things out of my Kid-Kit, one by one.

  “I am not.” Marilyn turned away from the window where she’d been gazing out at the rain that had been falling steadily all day. “I just want to go outside. We were stuck indoors all day at school, even during recess.”

  “Yeah, but we got to play Seven-Up in our classrooms,” said Carolyn.

  “That’s a dumb game.”

  “You’re a dumb person.”

  “You guys!” I cried. “What has gotten into you?”

  “Nothing,” they both said sullenly.

  “Well, come on over here. Take a look in the Kid-Kit. There was a sale at Bellair’s, and all us baby-sitters went to it and got some great new stuff. Here’s a kaleidoscope. See? You can make neat patterns by looking through it.” I held the kaleidoscope up to one eye and said, “Right now, I see a thousand Carolyns moving around.”

  “Great,” muttered Marilyn.

  “And I got some modeling clay,” I went on. “Oh, and well, this didn’t come from the store, but it’s a board game. It’s called ‘Mary Anne’s Game of School.’ You roll the dice and have to do things like take extra gym or go to the principal’s office or — here, if you land on this square, you get straight A’s and you can move ahead ten whole spaces. The object of the game is to make it from September all the way around the board to June. The first person to do that is the winner.” I was very proud of my game, in case you couldn’t tell. It was the first game I’d invented, and I thought that any kid who was old enough to go to elementary school would like it. I had even found big buttons to use as playing pieces and I had carefully lettered a stack of cards that said things like, “Forgot gym suit. Move back one space.” Or, “Teacher makes a mistake and you correct him. Move ahead two spaces.”

  Just as I’d hoped, the twins were intrigued by the game. They even seemed to forget about their argument and we set the game up on the floor. The twins sat across from each other, though; they wouldn’t sit next to each other.

  “Carolyn’ll cheat if she can see my cards,” said Marilyn.

  “Marilyn’ll cheat right back,” said Carolyn.

  (And I had thought they were through fighting.)

  “Okay, how do we start?” asked Marilyn.

  “We roll the dice to see who goes first,” I replied.

  The twins grabbed for the dice. Then they looked at me warily.

  “Who gets to roll first?” asked Carolyn.

  “Does it matter?” I replied.

  “Yes, because I want to roll first,” said Carolyn.

  “So do I,” said her sister.

  I solved that problem. “I’ll roll first,” I said. “The person on my left — that’s you, Carolyn — will go next.”

  “No fair!” cried Marilyn.

  “Yes, it is. In most games, the players take their turns going clockwise. That’s to the left.”

  Marilyn pouted and wasn’t happy until she realized she’d rolled the highest number and would get to start the game. We played calmly for about ten minutes. Carolyn was winning, but Marilyn was taking it well. All was peaceful until Marilyn landed in the square Carolyn was in. When that happened she had to draw a card. It said, “Caught talking in class. The first person on the space moves back ten spaces.”

  “Ten spaces!” screeched Carolyn. “Marilyn, you — you have monkey-breath.”

  Marilyn’s face turned an interesting shade of purple, but all she said was, “I’m through with this game. I’m going to my room.”

  “It’s not your room, it’s our room,” Carolyn spat out, “and I want to go to it.”

  “Well, you can’t, because I’m going. I said so first.”

  Carolyn paused. Then she murmured, “I hate sharing a room with you.”

  “I don’t know why,” replied Marilyn. “You’re hardly ever there. You’re hardly ever home. It might as well be my room.”

  “Well, it isn’t.”

  You’re probably wondering why I wasn’t saying anything. It was because I was too surprised. I’d never heard the twins argue this badly before. They used to be nuisances to baby-sitters. They used to play tricks and confuse people, but they were always in on things together — even when they wanted desperately to be considered individuals. This was something new.

  Then, before I could stop them, Marilyn and Carolyn (practically in the same breath) shouted, “I’m going to my room!”

  They made a dash for the stairs, reached them at the same time, and struggled up them side by side, elbowing each other all the way.

  At last I came to my senses. “Watch out, you two. Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

  “I don’t care!” the twins said together, as I dashed up the stairs after them. I was right on their heels, which was a good thing, because Carolyn reached their bedroom just a few steps ahead of Marilyn and tried to close the door in her face. Since I’m taller than the girls, I thrust my hands above Marilyn’s head and held the door open.

  Carolyn stomped to her bed and flopped onto it.

  Marilyn stomped to her bed and flopped onto it.

  Both of them faced the wall.

  “Now listen, you guys,” I said. “I need to know what’s going on.”

  “Nothing,” they replied for the second time that day.

  “This is not ‘nothing,’” I told them. “I want the truth.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Marilyn said, “Carolyn’s always going off and leaving me alone. She never plays with me anymore.”

  “Marilyn is always invading on me,” Carolyn replied. “Or she used to. She never left me alone. And she bossed my friends around. So I stopped letting her come places with me.”

  (Both girls were still talking to the walls.)

  “Besides,” Marilyn went on, “Mommy likes Carolyn better because she has so many friends and she’s so smart.”

  “And,” said Carolyn, “Daddy likes Marilyn better because she can play the piano and she gets to be in recitals and last week she won an award.”

  I sighed. “You know what?” I said to the girls. “You are two different people now. You have different friends. You can’t expect everyone to treat you the same anymore. Besides, your parents still love you both as much as ever.”

  Slowly Marilyn and Carolyn turned around. They looked at each other, but they didn’t have the big emotional scene I’d been hoping for. I wanted them to hop off their beds, meet in the middle of their room, hug, cry, and apologize.

  Instead, Marilyn said, “Well, if I’m so different from Carolyn, then I don’t want her sharing my room.”

  Before Carolyn could even say, “It isn’t your room, it’s ours,” which I knew she was going to do, Marilyn had marched to her desk, opened a drawer, and taken out a roll of masking tape. Then she stepped over to the window, which was in the middle of the room, placed the end of the tape on the exact center of the window, and ran the tape down the sill to the floor and across the rug to the opposite wall.

  “There,” she said. “This half is mine. That half is yours. No crossing the line, get it?”

  I stood in the doorway and waited to see what would happen.

  Carolyn smiled. “Got it. But how are you going to leave the room? The door’s on my side of the tape. You’re stuck in here.”

  Marilyn blushed, embarrassed. But then her face brightened. “I think you’ve got a bigger problem,” she said. “The closet is on my side of the tape. You’ll have to wear the clothes you’ve got on for the rest of your life.”

  I almost smiled. That would be a tragedy for Carolyn, since she’d become so fashion conscious. It would kill her to wear the same clothes two days in a row, let alone the rest of her life.

  “Okay, talk it out,” I told the girls, leani
ng against the door jamb with my arms crossed. “You’re old enough to figure out a compromise.”

  “No,” said Marilyn.

  “No,” said Carolyn.

  “No?” I repeated.

  “I’m not talking to her,” they said at the same time, each pointing to the other. Then they turned their backs and faced the walls again.

  I was aghast. I’d always wanted a brother or a sister, especially a sister. And I’d thought it would be extra nice to have a twin sister. I had pictured ourselves sharing clothes, and talking late into the night (since we’d be happily sharing a room, of course). When we were younger we’d talk about imaginary things and what might be hiding under our beds. When we were older we’d talk about movies and our friends. When we were even older, we’d talk about boys and our parents.

  Why, I wondered, couldn’t Marilyn and Carolyn get along?

  I stopped my wondering quickly, though. Mrs. Arnold would be home soon and I didn’t want her to see the masking-tape divider down the center of the room. I asked Marilyn please to take it down.

  She did — grumpily.

  Once again I left two angry girls behind when I went home.

  I was so excited! It was the night of Dawn’s mother’s birthday dinner. Everything was planned, and Dad and Dawn and I sure hoped the surprise (actually surprises) would go off without any problems.

  Mrs. Schafer’s actual birthday was the next day, so she hadn’t minded when this business associate of hers (who’s also a friend of Dad’s) had called and asked her out to dinner to discuss some work stuff. He said he would make a reservation in his name for two people at seven o’clock at Chez Maurice. Then he called and he did make a reservation, only it was for four people. Dad planned to drive Dawn and me to the restaurant (Dawn having told her mom that she was going to eat dinner with us again, which was not technically a lie), so that we would arrive by 6:45. Then Dad would say to the maitre d’, “Hi, we’re part of the Humboldt party. We’re a little early. But could we be seated now anyway?”

  Then when Mrs. Schafer arrived, she’d say, “Hi, I’m with the Humboldt party,” and the maitre d’ would lead her to our table! Mr. Humboldt would never show up, of course.