Claudia and the New Girl Read online

  When Dawn rang the Perkinses’ bell it was answered by the gallumphing feet of Chewbacca, their big black Labrador retriever.

  “Chewy! Chewy!” she could hear Mrs. Perkins saying. Then she heard a little scuffle. “Dawn?” Mrs. Perkins called.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” Dawn replied.

  “Let yourself in, okay? I’m going to put Chewy in the backyard.”

  “Okay!” Dawn opened the front door and stood listening. Apart from the sounds of Mrs. Perkins taking Chewbacca outside, she couldn’t hear a thing. Where were Myriah and Gabbie? Usually they race to answer the door if one of us baby-sitters is coming over.

  When Mrs. Perkins returned, she put a finger to her lips and whispered, “I want to show you something. Follow me.”

  Dawn followed Mrs. Perkins upstairs and into the girls’ bathroom. Mrs. Perkins gestured for her to peek inside.

  Dawn did. Seated on the (closed) toilet, she saw Gabbie, who’s almost three, holding a mirror and carefully applying a streak of green eye shadow in a long line from one eye, across her nose, to her other eye. She looked like a cavewoman.

  Myriah, who’s six, was standing on a step-stool, leaning over the sink to the mirror on the medicine cabinet, and smearing on purplish lipstick.

  Strewn around them — on the floor, on the back of the toilet, and all around the sink — were cotton balls, Q-tips, hair curlers, and dribs and drabs of leftover makeup, such as the ends of lipsticks, almost empty pots of blusher, and drying tubes of mascara. And seated carefully in a line on the floor were the girls’ dolls and teddy bears.

  Myriah glanced up and saw her mother and Dawn in the mirror. “Hi!” she called excitedly.

  “Hi, Dawn Schafer!” added Gabbie, who calls almost everyone by both first and last name.

  “We’re having a beauty parlor!” exclaimed Myriah. She put down her lipstick and jumped off the stool. “These are our customers,” she said, pointing to the dolls and bears.

  “Our customers,” echoed Gabbie.

  “And now we’re fixing ourselves up,” said Myriah. “I’m doing my makeup first.”

  “Girls, I’m going to leave now,” Mrs. Perkins interrupted. She turned to Dawn. “I’ve got another checkup.” (Mrs. Perkins is expecting a baby.) “The obstetrician’s number is on the refrigerator. I have some errands to run afterward, so I probably won’t be home until five o’clock. You know where everything is, right?”

  Dawn nodded.

  “Any questions?” asked Mrs. Perkins.

  “Well,” said Dawn, looking around the messy bathroom, “is it really okay for the girls to play with all this stuff?”

  “Oh, yes. Don’t worry about it. I give them the ends of all my makeup. Don’t worry about cleaning up, either. We’ll do that tonight or tomorrow. They’ve got a good game going.”

  Dawn grinned. Mrs. Perkins is great. What a nice mommy. We know this one mommy — Jenny Prezzioso’s — who gets hysterical at the very thought of a mess or a little dirt.

  After Mrs. Perkins left, Myriah introduced Dawn to some of the “customers” in the beauty parlor. First she held up a bear whose plastic snout was covered with lipstick and who was wearing a shower cap.

  “This is Mrs. Xerox,” she said. “She’s having her hair permed.”

  “I put her lipstick on,” spoke up Gabbie. She had finished her own makeup job and looked at Dawn solemnly from garish eyes. Lipstick, red and pink, stretched from ear to ear. She held up the hand mirror again. “Don’t I look pretty? I’m a lovely lady.”

  “And this,” Myriah went on, holding up a baby doll, “is Mrs. Refrigerator. She just needed an eye job…. Oh! I better do my eyes!” Myriah jumped up on the stool again and began collecting tubes of mascara and eyeliner.

  The phone rang.

  “Can I get it?” cried Gabbie. She leaped off the toilet, spilling a lapful of hair curlers.

  “Better let me,” said Dawn. “I’ll be right back. You guys keep … keep up the good work.” She dashed into Mr. and Mrs. Perkins’ bedroom and picked up the phone, which was ringing for the third time.

  “Hello, Perkins residence,” she said.

  “Dawn?” asked a disgruntled voice.

  “Yes. Jeff? Is that you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s up? Are you at home?”

  “Not exactly. I’m kind of at school. Using the teachers’ phone. And I’m kind of in trouble.”

  “What do you mean, ‘kind of in trouble’?”

  “Oh, all right. I am in trouble. And Ms. Besser wanted me to call Mom. She won’t let me go home until she talks to her. Only I called Mom’s office and they said she went to a meeting somewhere in Stamford. So then I remembered you said you were sitting at the Perkinses’ and I looked up their number. What should I do now, Dawn?”

  “Okay,” Dawn said, trying not to get upset, “let’s start at the beginning. Why are you in trouble with Ms. Besser?”

  “I threw an eraser across the room. You know, a big blackboard eraser.”

  “Gosh, that doesn’t sound so bad. I mean, you shouldn’t have done it, but — are you sure that’s all you did?”

  “It was sort of the third time I threw it across the room. And it knocked over Simon Beal’s tile mosaic. And the mosaic broke. And one of the tiles cut Lynn Perone’s leg…. “Jeff’s voice was fading into nothingness.

  “Oh, Jeff,” was all Dawn could say. She paused, thinking. “You’re sure you can’t get in touch with Mom?”

  “They said she isn’t coming back to the office today. She’s going to be in Stamford until five o’clock.”

  “Well,” said Dawn slowly, “I guess I could come to school myself. Maybe I can talk to Ms. Besser or something. I can’t let you sit there all afternoon.”

  “Oh, that’d be great.”

  “All right. But, Jeff, I want you to know I’m not happy about this. I’m baby-sitting. I’ll have to bring Myriah and Gabbie with me.”

  “Okay,” replied Jeff, but he didn’t say he was sorry.

  Dawn returned to the bathroom. “You guys,” she said, “I’m really sorry, but we have to close up your beauty parlor for awhile. We’ve got to go over to your school, Myriah.”

  “We do?” Myriah looked awed. At her age, going to school after hours is kind of like sneaking into an amusement park when it’s been closed for the night.

  Dawn tried to explain why they had to go, while figuring out the fastest way to get the girls there.

  “But let’s not close the beauty parlor,” said Myriah. “Let’s take it with us.”

  “Whatever,” replied Dawn, who just wanted to get going fast.

  “Goody!” cried Myriah and Gabbie, scooping up makeup and curlers and supplies.

  Dawn hustled the girls and their junk downstairs. She didn’t have time to wash their faces. She just loaded them and their things into Myriah’s red wagon and ran them over to the elementary school in what must have been a wagon-pulling record.

  When she reached the front door, she wasn’t sure what to do with the wagon, so she pulled the girls right inside and down the hall to Jeff’s fifth-grade classroom. She found him sitting sullenly at his desk, while Ms. Besser worked quietly at hers.

  “Um, excuse me,” said Dawn.

  Ms. Besser and Jeff both looked up in surprise at the sight of Myriah and Gabbie in the wagon with their lipstick-smeared faces.

  “I’m Dawn Schafer, Jeff’s sister.” Dawn explained why she had come instead of her mother.

  “And I,” spoke up Myriah, “am Miss Esmerelda. I run a beauty salon. This is my assistant,” she added, climbing out of the wagon and pointing to Gabbie.

  “I am Miss Gabbie,” said Gabbie.

  “Would you like a makeover?” Myriah asked Ms. Besser.

  “Oh … not today, Miss, um —”

  “Esmerelda,” supplied Myriah. She turned to Jeff. “Would you like a makeover? From our traveling beauty parlor?”

  “No way,” replied Jeff, turning red.


  “I would like a makeover,” Gabbie told her sister.

  “Oh, good,” said Myriah, and got to work.

  Ms. Besser led Dawn into the hall. “I’m very concerned about your brother,” she said. “He’s gone beyond just being a nuisance or a disturbance in class. If Lynn’s cut had been any worse, she would have needed stitches. I wanted to talk to your mother in person. I think we have a serious problem.”

  “I’m really sorry we can’t reach her,” said Dawn.

  “So am I,” Ms. Besser replied.

  “I can have her call you tomorrow. Or even at home tonight. Maybe she could set up a conference with you or something.”

  Ms. Besser nodded. “At the very least. All right. Please do have her call me tonight. I’ll give you my home number.” She paused. Then she added, “Thank you for taking the trouble to come over here. I can see that it wasn’t very convenient for you. You seem quite responsible.”

  Dawn wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so finally she just said “Thank you.” A few minutes later she left the school with her brother and the Perkins girls. Jeff immediately headed angrily for home. He had barely spoken to his sister. By the time Dawn and the traveling beauty parlor reached the Perkins house it was 5:15.

  Mrs. Perkins met them at the front door. “Where were you?” she asked anxiously.

  “I’m really sorry,” said Dawn. “I should have left a note.” She told Mrs. Perkins what had happened, and apologized six or seven times. Luckily, Mrs. Perkins was forgiving and understanding.

  Later, as Dawn pedaled her bike home, she wondered how often she’d have to bail Jeff out of trouble. She flew over a little hump in the road just then, and as she did, pictured herself in a roller coaster, just beginning to pick up speed. Mom, she thought, I have a feeling you and I are in for a bumpy ride.

  “I am an artist and my craft is calling,” said Ashley earnestly.

  “Calling what?” I replied.

  “Calling me. Like the call of the wild.”

  It was lunchtime, and Ashley and I were sitting by ourselves again. We had this conversation going, only (and this was so stupid) I didn’t know what we were talking about. It’s pretty pathetic to be one of the persons in a two-person conversation and not following the drift of things at all.

  I glanced across the cafeteria at the Baby-sitters Club’s table and sneaked a peak at Kristy, Stacey, Mary Anne, and Dawn. The usual lunchtime things seemed to be going on. Dawn was eating what looked like homemade fruit salad. Kristy was holding up a noodle from the hot lunch and saying something about it which was making Mary Anne turn green. Stacey was rolling her eyes.

  I smiled to myself. Kristy always gets gross at lunch and we always give her a hard time about it, but right now I was missing her disgusting comments.

  I kind of hoped that one of my friends would look over at me and smile or wave, but none of them did.

  I was sitting with Ashley because it was getting to the point where, if I didn’t choose a subject for my sculpture and start working right away, I’d have to withdraw from the show. Here’s what had led up to Ashley’s saying, “I am an artist and my craft is calling”:

  “Ashley, we really better get to work on our sculptures.” (That was me, of course, since, what with baby-sitting and pottery and everything else I do, I’m more pressed for time than Ashley is.)

  “Well, I’ve reached a decision,” said Ashley.

  “What?” I asked excitedly.

  “I’m going to sculpt an inanimate object. I think maybe you should, too.”

  “You’re going to sculpt a what?” (Why is it that when I’m with Ashley, the word that gets the most use is what? But Ashley never seems to mind explaining things to me.)

  “An inanimate object,” Ashley repeated. “Something not alive.”

  “You want us to sculpt dead things?” I asked in horror. I was imagining ghouls and corpses and mummies.

  “Oh, no. I just mean I want to sculpt objects that aren’t living. Look at us. We’re surrounded by inanimate objects — books, pencils, tables, chairs, trays. They’re all inanimate.”

  “But,” I said skeptically, “I’ve hardly ever seen sculptures of, um, un-alive things. Aren’t most sculptures of people or animals? I mean, except for abstract sculptures. That’s what Ms. Baehr says sculpting is all about — capturing the spirit of something alive in something that doesn’t move, like clay or stone…. don’t know, Ashley. Are you sure we want to go out on a limb like that? Why don’t we stick to the more usual stuff?”

  And that was when Ashley had said her craft was calling and I’d gotten some good mileage out of the word what.

  “Come downtown with me after school today,” she said finally. “We’ll go right into the field. I’m sure we’ll be inspired.”

  “What field?” I replied.

  “I mean the real world.”

  “Oh. Well, all right.” The “real world” sounded very exciting. Going into the field was probably something only true artists did. A smile spread across my face. We were going to be pioneers, sculpting pioneers. Ashley and I would try techniques other sculptors had never thought about. I looked across the table at Ashley’s serious, eager face. “Great idea,” I added. “It’ll be exciting. Plus, then we can get to work right away…. Oh, but I have another club meeting this afternoon, so I have to be home by five-thirty.”

  “Sure. No problem,” replied Ashley tightly.

  Just as going to the watercolor exhibit with Ashley had been an eye-opening experience, so was simply walking around downtown Stoneybrook with her. Maybe because she was new to town, or maybe because she was such a talented artist, Ashley noticed all sorts of things that had never seemed particularly noticeable to me before. And she saw things in them that I never saw. Well, never saw first. After Ashley pointed them out to me, I saw them.

  As soon as we reached Stoneybrook’s main street, Ashley grabbed my arm.

  “What, what?” I cried, getting double use of the word.

  “Look at that!” said Ashley, pointing.

  “What?”

  “That.”

  “That fire hydrant?”

  “Yes. Look at the way it’s shaped. It’s … almost noble. It’s little and squat, but it’s sitting up straight and square, like a jockey on a prizewinning steed.”

  “Wow,” I said, letting out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

  “That just might be my subject,” said Ashley thoughtfully, nodding her head.

  “For your sculpture?” I repeated incredulously. “But why would you sculpt it? What’s so special about an old fire hydrant?”

  “That it’s little but noble. I’d try to bring out those qualities when I sculpt it. I think that the secret of sculpting inanimate objects is making them look animated.”

  The word “what” was on the tip of my tongue, but I bit it back. When I thought about it, I understood what Ashley meant. I just couldn’t see any way to do it.

  “Come on, let’s see what else there is.”

  Now, over the years I have scoured Stoneybrook in search of a new pair of shoes, in search of a certain kind of blue-jean jacket, in search of school supplies, and once in search of Mary Anne’s reading glasses. But this was the first time I’d scoured the town exclaiming over hubcaps and litter baskets and streetlamps. I did sort of get into the spirit of things, though.

  “Oh!” cried Ashley. “Look at that traffic light!” Ashley sounded more excited that afternoon than I’d ever heard her. It was amazing what art did to her.

  “Yeah,” I replied. And (I swear I don’t know where this came from) I added, “Think of the power it holds. It controls the traffic. It can make people late. It can prevent accidents. It’s a little box doing an awfully big job.”

  “Yeah!” said Ashley admiringly. She paused, then added thoughtfully, “Maybe that’s your subject.”

  “Maybe,” I replied uncertainly.

  We walked on.

  “Look at the gum wrapper,” said Ash
ley.

  “Look at that squashed soda can,” I said.

  By the time we sat down in Renwick’s for a snack, all I could say was, “Look at that straw!” and “Look at that dish rag!” Stuff like that. Until I checked my watch. Then I cried, “Look at the time!”

  “What time is it?” asked Ashley.

  “Five-ten. I’m going to be late for another meeting. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to leave.”

  “But, Claudia, we haven’t made any definite decisions. We have to go back and look at the fire hydrant and the stoplight again.”

  “I have to go to the meeting. The club is important to me. We started that club. We made it work. It’s a business. And besides, the other club members are my friends.”

  Ashley blinked. “But I’m your friend, too … am I not?” she said, sounding like my genius sister, Janine. (I have this older sister who’s a genius. Not just smart, like Ashley, but a true and honest genius. How is it that I always end up hanging around people who know enough to say things like “am I not” instead of “aren’t I”?)

  “Yes,” I replied slowly. “You’re my friend.”

  Ashley gave me a tiny smile. I began to feel bad. Maybe I was really important to her. I wasn’t sure. I was pretty sure I was her only friend, though. I had four good friends, but so far, Ashley only had me. Besides, this was art. What Ashley and I were doing was important — and it was something I could do only with Ashley, not with any of my other friends.

  “You know,” I said, “that meeting isn’t urgent or anything. We really should go back and look at the fire hydrant and stoplight again. Why don’t you wait for our food while I call Dawn and tell her I won’t be able to make the meeting. I’ll be right back.”

  I stood in the phone booth by the front door of Renwick’s and dialed Dawn’s number, hoping fervently that she was at home and not out babysitting. I breathed a sigh of relief when she answered the phone herself.