Kristy and the Worst Kid Ever Read online

  It was, Mary Anne reflected, about the only thing of any use she’d found in the barn. Nothing in either the barn or the attic had been right for the auction. Many of the things in the barn belonged there, like the old harnesses hanging on the wall. And who would bid on old harnesses? Some of the other things in the attic — like the rickety love seat — were things that Mary Anne’s dad and Dawn’s mom were planning on refinishing and using in their farmhouse. And the old clothes were really ancient.

  Although you never knew when old clothes were going to come in handy, thought Mary Anne, looking at the motley crew of painters at work on the playhouse. All three Musketeers were dressed in a hodgepodge of their oldest clothes, with an equally hodgepodge collection of hats. They’d just started to paint the playhouse, having at last agreed on pink with purple trim for the outside, and blue for the inside.

  Karen was the first to say anything to Lou. “Hey!” she called. “Hey, Lou!”

  Nancy joined in, but Hannie just kept on painting.

  Lou, who had taken up position near the game of catch, finally looked over at the girls.

  “We’re painters,” sang Karen. “Come paint the house!”

  Lou shook her head vehemently. “Pink? No!”

  “I like pink!” said Karen.

  To Mary Anne’s surprise, Lou unfolded her arms, and walked to the playhouse. (Today she was wearing her overalls under an enormous old sweater. The sweater had been patched at the elbows, and had definitely seen better days. Mary Anne wondered if maybe it had been Lou’s brother’s sweater, or maybe even her father’s.)

  “What’s wrong with pink?” asked Karen.

  “It’s a dumb color,” said Lou, and before Karen could say anything else she went on. “Why don’t you build a fort? Or a clubhouse? A private clubhouse. No one allowed unless you want them.”

  Hannie spoke up without breaking her painting stride. “Pink is not dumb and this is a private playhouse.”

  There was a little silence as the four girls stood there, Nancy and Karen with their paintbrushes lowered, staring at Lou, who was staring back at them, Hannie still painting ferociously.

  “You could use the purple paint,” offered Nancy. “Or the blue paint inside.”

  “It’s a Victorian playhouse,” said Karen. “We mixed the blue and the pink to make purple —”

  “Lavender,” said Nancy.

  “— and we have exactly just enough blue left for the inside.”

  “Good luck,” said Lou (not like she meant it, thought Mary Anne, who was sort of in shock at this more outgoing, if not necessarily more friendly version of Lou). She watched Lou return to the game of catch. The ball sailed over David Michael’s head and Lou reached up, snagged it, and tossed it back to Linny. After that, she seemed to be automatically included in the game.

  Mary Anne picked up a tree branch that Emily Michelle pointed to, and put it in the wagon. Filling the wagon with found objects reminded her of the auction. A list of some of the items had already been posted on the main bulletin board at SMS and it was depressing, in a way. One student’s parents had donated dinner for two at their French restaurant. Another student, whose parents ran a sporting goods store, had donated an expensive new baseball glove. And although Cokie, the queen of rude, and her crowd hadn’t said what they were donating, they were dropping obnoxious hints about how impressive their donations would be.

  I wish I hadn’t done such a good job of clearing stuff out when I moved to Dawn’s, thought Mary Anne. Then she thought of the stuff she had thrown away — one-eyed stuffed animals and old magazines with pictures of Cam Geary in them (okay, so she had cut out the pictures and saved them) and the little girl clothes her father had once made her wear. She knew she couldn’t have donated those to the auction anyway.

  Still, she had to come up with something to donate. But what?

  Just then, Emily stopped to fill up her milk bottle with acorns.

  Lou winged the ball back to David Michael and it zoomed into his glove with a smack.

  “Oww!” said David Michael.

  “Pretty good,” said Linny.

  “We could go down to the playground and really practice,” said Lou.

  “Can’t,” said David Michael.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because we have to stay here with Mary Anne today.”

  “Why?” asked Lou.

  “It’s the rule,” said David Michael.

  “Well it’s dumb.” Lou said.

  Emily Michelle emptied the acorns into the wagon and laughed delightedly at the noise they made. She bent over and began to refill her bottle.

  “Rules!” Lou scooped up a grounder, and Mary Anne made a mental note to mention her softball skills the next time she saw Kristy. “They treat you guys like babies.”

  David Michael looked mutinous, but he didn’t say anything. Yet.

  “I don’t believe it,” Lou pressed on. She was looking at David Michael, but her words seemed, if anything, aimed more at Linny. “It’s like being in jail, all the rules the Papadakises have.”

  “It is not,” said Linny. He fumbled the ball, then got a grip on it and threw it to David Michael. Only it flew over David Michael’s head again.

  David Michael ran after it and Lou said, “Who ever heard of coming straight home after school? And having to sit down at meals with everybody? And nothing to eat between times. Starvation city!”

  “We just can’t have candy and stuff,” said Linny.

  “Yeah, well I hate vegetables, so I’m starving.”

  By now, David Michael had returned holding the ball, but he didn’t throw it. “What else do they make you do?” he asked, oblivious to the darkening look on Linny’s face.

  Uh-oh, thought Mary Anne. Aloud she said, “Come on, Emily Michelle, let’s pull your wagon over here.” They began to edge toward the game of catch.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Papadakis make us tell them where we’re going,” said Lou.

  “Wow,” said David Michael. (Although of course we have the exact same rule at our house.)

  “And I have to show them my homework. To prove that I did it! My fath — I’ve never had to do that.”

  “Wow,” said David Michael again. “We don’t even have to do that. Just if we need help.”

  “But you have to do your homework, David Michael,” said Mary Anne, who by now was close enough to intervene.

  “Linny has to show it to his parents,” said Lou. The tone of her voice hadn’t changed. It was still as flat and gravely as ever. But her words were having plenty of impact.

  “So?” said Linny.

  “Too bad, Linny,” said Lou. “Too bad your own family doesn’t trust you, Linny.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “The rules don’t mean Linny’s family doesn’t trust him. They mean his family cares,” said Mary Anne.

  Abruptly, Lou took the ball out of David Michael’s hands. “Come on, let’s go to the playground. This is dumb.” She charged toward the street.

  Linny and David Michael started after her.

  “Whoa!” said Mary Anne.

  David Michael slowed down. But Linny and Lou didn’t.

  “Hey!” called Mary Anne. She strode after them, her temper starting to get the better of her. But she was also thinking, What if they don’t stop? What am I going to do? It was a baby-sitting nightmare, losing complete control of one of your charges. Or, in this case, two.

  “LINNY!” shouted Mary Anne.

  Now as you know, Mary Anne is quiet and shy. She never shouts.

  Maybe that’s why Linny stopped in his tracks.

  But Lou kept going.

  Mary Anne broke into a furious run and caught Lou by the arm.

  “Hold it right there!” she ordered.

  Lou yanked against Mary Anne’s grip. She was strong.

  Mary Anne yanked back — only she didn’t yank Lou back toward my house. She yanked her in the direction of the street.

  “If you
don’t want to stay and play in the backyard with us, I’ll be glad to walk you back to the Papadakises!”

  Lou tried once again to yank free. Mary Anne kept walking.

  “Wait,” said Lou.

  “Why should I listen to you?” asked Mary Anne. “You didn’t listen to me.”

  “Can’t you take a joke?”

  “I’m not laughing,” said Mary Anne. She slowed down a little.

  “It was just a joke,” said Lou. “Okay?”

  Mary Anne stopped and turned to face Lou. Lou met her eyes defiantly. She didn’t look the least bit sorry.

  But then, maybe an apology was too much to expect.

  “You want to go back with the other kids? And stay in the yard?” asked Mary Anne.

  Lou shrugged.

  “Is that yes, Lou?”

  Lou shrugged again, then said, “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Fine,” said Mary Anne. She turned around and saw Linny and David Michael. Lou tried to pull free again, but Mary Anne held on until they’d returned to the game of catch.

  “Play ball,” ordered Mary Anne.

  Without a word, the kids spread out across the yard. Lou pitched the ball to David Michael and they started playing again.

  David Michael looked guilty. Linny looked cross.

  But Lou looked pleased somehow.

  Mary Anne had felt sorry for Lou. But seeing her expression now, she was finding it hard to feel sorry for Louisa McNally. In fact, she was finding it hard to like anything about her.

  “That’s everybody,” I said as Mallory and Jessi hurried through the door of Claudia’s room. I pulled my green visor down and intoned, “This meeting of the Baby-sitters Club will officially come to order.”

  “Order?” teased Jessi. “I’d like some pizza.”

  “How about some pizza puffs?” asked Claudia. She pulled out the bottom drawer of her dresser and reached into the back. “I think I have some in here …”

  “Pizza puffs? Yeccch,” Dawn said.

  “Mmmph.” Claudia yanked at something. She pulled out a bag, but it wasn’t pizza puffs.

  “Marshmallows,” Dawn noted.

  Claudia gave the bag an experimental squeeze. “They’re still soft. If we had some graham crackers and some Hershey’s bars, we could make s’mores.”

  “You forgot the campfire, Claud,” Stacey pointed out. She was drinking a diet Coke.

  “Have a Fig Newton,” suggested Mary Anne, holding out the half-empty bag of Fig Newtons Claudia had unearthed earlier.

  Claudia made a face. “I don’t understand it,” she said. “I know I had some good stuff around here somewhere.”

  Dawn said, “Fig Newtons are good. They’re healthier than a lot of other snacks that have sugar and things like that in them.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Claudia mournfully. “What happened to all my good stuff?”

  Just then the phone rang. I picked it up. “Baby-sitters Club.” I took down some information, then said, “We’ll call you back, Mrs. Barrett.” As I hung up, Mary Anne, her pen poised over the club notebook, said, “Wow. Mrs. Barrett. She called during a meeting.”

  We understood what Mary Anne meant. Mrs. Barrett is nice but she is disorganized — organizationally different, you might say — which meant, among other things, that she often forgot to call during meetings, but usually called afterwards, or on the wrong day, or something. Of course, we always tried to arrange sitters for her kids, anyway.

  I nodded and said, “She needs a sitter for Buddy, Suzi, and Marnie this Friday afternoon.”

  “I have a class officers meeting after school,” said Mal quickly. I couldn’t help but smile, not only because Mal had been so sure she wouldn’t win the election when she ran for secretary of the class, but also because she’s taken care of the three Barrett kids before and, while she likes them, she’s had her problems with them. Not for nothing had Dawn once dubbed the Barrett kids the Impossible Three.

  “I’m scheduled for the Rodowskys that night,” said Claudia.

  Mary Anne studied the book and then said, “What about you, Jessi? It’s an afternoon job.”

  “Okay. Great.” Jessi grinned.

  Business was brisk for the next few minutes, but we finally called every client back.

  When things slowed down, Mary Anne suddenly said, “Speaking of ideas, has anybody thought about the auction?”

  Claudia groaned. “I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

  “You’re creative, Claud. You should be thinking about it,” said Dawn.

  “Somehow, I don’t think my artwork is going to be a hot auction item,” said Claudia. “Although someday of course, even my childhood scribblings will be enormously valuable.”

  Stacey grinned. “I’m saving everything you’ve ever made for me, just in case.”

  “What about art lessons?” suggested Claudia. “I could give art lessons.”

  “I could give ballet lessons,” said Jessi.

  I leaned back and stared up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “I wonder what Cokie Mason and her friends are donating?”

  A little silence followed. Then Stacey said, “When you think of some of the stunts Cokie’s pulled in the past …”

  “Mean lessons?” said Mary Anne. Then she said, “Oops,” and clapped her hand over her mouth. Which just goes to show how absolutely disgusting Cokie and her friends are, because Mary Anne never, ever says anything nasty about anybody, even if she deserves it. But then, Cokie mega-deserves it, in light of some of the nasty things she’s done to Mary Anne in the past (attempted boyfriend theft, for one thing).

  Dawn, who had been inspecting the contents label on the bag of marshmallows with a little frown on her face, pointed out, “You know, whatever Cokie and company donate, no matter how fabulous, it is for a good cause. So really, the better the prize, the more money for our computer lab.”

  “True,” said Mary Anne.

  “Agreed.” I lowered my head and looked around the room. “So what extra-fabulous prizes can we come up with?”

  Of course, the phone rang again. We made arrangements for a sitting job with the Papadakises (me, in two weeks).

  “How is Lou doing?” asked Stacey.

  “It’s hard to say,” I hedged. “What do you think, Mary Anne?”

  “It is hard to say,” agreed Mary Anne thoughtfully. “At first, you know, I felt sorry for her. And I still do. But … well, she’s a lot tougher than I thought. It’s probably a good thing, though. It kept her going through some pretty hard times.”

  Stacey said, “The Papadakises are great, and I think Lou is lucky to have them for a foster family, but from Lou’s point of view, things are probably still pretty tough.”

  “Is she as bad as you used to think the Impossible Three were?” asked Mal.

  “Uh-oh,” said Dawn. “The poor Barretts. Famous all over Stoneybrook for being baaad.”

  “Famous!” I exclaimed. The idea I’d had in the lunchroom the day the auction was announced suddenly exploded in my brain. “That’s it! Famous! Famous people!”

  “Who?” said Claudia. “The Barretts?”

  “No. Not the Barretts. The auction. Famous people.” I took a deep breath and said, more calmly, “What about getting things from famous people — you know, like your autographed picture of Cam Geary, Mary Anne — and donating those to the auction!”

  “Wow, Kristy, that’s a great idea!” Mary Anne’s eyes shone. Then she hesitated. “But couldn’t anybody write to a famous person and get their autographed photograph?”

  “Not exactly a photograph. Like something really personal.”

  “A guitar pick from the group Smash!” cried Jessi.

  “Jazzy Prince’s shirt,” said Mal. “Or the blanket worn by a horse that won a Kentucky Derby.” We paused, and Mal added, grinning, “Well, maybe something a famous horse used wouldn’t work quite so well …”

  “First we have to write a letter,” I said. “We have to decide what we want to s
ay, and explain what we want the donation for. And we have to decide who we want to write to.”

  Blushing, Mal said, “I could help write the letter. You know, since I like writing.”

  “Great, Mal. We could work on that together,” I replied.

  “I’ll find out who to write to,” volunteered Stacey. “You know, like the celebrity’s agent, or whoever.”

  Claudia nodded. “Me, too.”

  “So who are we going to write to?” asked Jessi. She wiggled her eyebrows at Mary Anne. “Besides Cam Geary, I mean.”

  “Derek Masters,” suggested Stacey.

  Mary Anne pulled out a piece of paper. “I’ll write this down.”

  I looked at my watch. It was about two seconds to six o’clock.

  “This meeting of the Baby-sitters Club is officially —”

  The phone rang one last time. It was Mrs. Prezzioso.

  “Why don’t you take her, Mary Anne?” suggested Dawn, after I’d told Mrs. Prezzioso we’d call her back.

  “I’d like to,” said Mary Anne, her pen poised above the record book. “That is, if no one else …?”

  Everyone nodded hastily, so Mary Anne carefully wrote down her name and the time and date, while I called Mrs. Prezzioso to let her know Mary Anne was confirmed as her sitter.

  “Jenny and Andrea are cute,” said Mary Anne.

  “Jenny’s a little fussbudget, though,” I said. “Her mother keeps her so neat. Like a doll. I wonder if Andrea will be the same way?”

  “Well, Andrea did win first place in the stroller division of the baby parade,” Jessi pointed out.

  “If I had to be that neat all the time, I’d probably grow up to be messy, just to be different,” said Dawn philosophically.

  “Raised like a Prezzioso, turned into a Barrett,” Claudia intoned.

  I thought of Lou, and said, “I wonder what makes Lou like she is? She’s always pushing the limits.”

  “I felt that way, too, when I sat with her the other day,” said Mary Anne. “She was always testing me.”

  “She’s a daredevil, for sure,” I agreed. “Yesterday she took Linny’s bike, which is way too big for her anyway, and rode it down the hill at the playground without any hands.”