Baby-Sitters Club 031 Page 5

  Like, when she's over at the house, sometimes I feel I'm being squeezed." "Squeezed?" "It's hard to explain. I just can't always be myself around her. And she takes up space. I mean, she doesn't really take up much, of course. 'Cause she's not fat." (I smiled.) "It's more like ..." "Emotional space?" I supplied. I was thinking of the Arnold girls, Marilyn and Carolyn, whom the club sits for sometimes. They're identical twins, but they're two very different people, with different interests, different taste, and different friends. And recently they hadn't been getting along. It turned out that they needed separate bedrooms to go with their separate lives. They needed emotional space in order to be friends. At least, that was how I thought of the problem.

  "Emotional space?" Jeff repeated. "Yeah, I guess that describes it." My real brother and I talked awhile longer, but finally we had to get off the phone. Mom is nice about letting us call each other and I didn't want to take advantage of that. Besides, I'd noticed that Richard scrutinized our phone bill. I mean every little detail.

  After Jeff and I hung up I wandered into my room. I read for awhile. Then I decided to go to bed early, so 1 called good night to Mom and Richard, turned off my light, and fell into a deep sleep.

  I'm not sure how much later it happened, but the next thing I knew, I was awake - unhappily. The light was on in our room and Mary Anne was moving around, putting on her nightgown and calling, "Tigger! Tigger?" If she was trying to whisper, she wasn't doing a very good job.

  "Mrrumphh," I said, rolling onto my stomach and putting the pillow over my head.

  "Oh, Dawn. Sorry. Did I wake you?" asked Mary Anne.

  "No, no. I was going to get up anyway. It's time for my next feeding." Mary Anne giggled.

  I peeked out from under the pillow. "Can you turn the light off? It's killing my eyes." "Sure." Mary Anne hit the light, then fumbled over to her bed. "Dawn?" she said. "The dance was fun. Everyone missed you." "Really?" "Of course. You should have come anyway. Logan would have danced with you. Besides, half the kids there arrived without dates. It didn't matter." I was beginning to feel better. Also, more awake. "So what went on?" I asked. "Did anything happen?" "Let's see. Alan Gray was doing that thing where he puts M&Ms in his eyes, and he did it so often that Kristy got mad at him and they had a fight." "I thought Kristy invited Bart Taylor to the dance," I said.

  "She did. Alan just wanted to drive her crazy by hanging around her and looking like Little Orphan Annie. He succeeded, too." Mary Anne told me about the rest of the dance then - who had had fun, who hadn't, what everyone had worn.

  I began to think of her as my sister again, instead of my stepsister. I was very confused. How could we get along so well half the time and be mad at each other the rest of the time? Was this what having a sister was all about?

  Chapter 9.

  The most unusual thing about Vanessa' s accident, Stacey pointed out, was that she had one at all. Vanessa is the Pike poet (or maybe I should say poetess). She is not an athletic person. Her favorite activity is sitting somewhere (in private, if possible, which is difficult at her house), and writing her poetry. She's got volumes of it.

  But on the day that Stacey sat for the Pikes, Vanessa decided she needed some exercise.

  "I want to keep my strength up," she told Stacey, "so that I don't catch the triplets' pneumonia or Mallory's chicken pox." "I don't blame you," replied Stacey.

  I might add here that Stacey was wearing a surgeon's mask that afternoon. It wasn't her idea (it was Mrs. Pike's and her mother's), but Stacey had gone along with it willingly. She didn't want to catch pneumonia or get the pox back, either, and she'd been assured that she wouldn't if she wore the mask, at least while she was indoors. Also, the weather was beautiful, and Mrs. Pike had told Stacey that she could watch Vanessa, Margo, and Claire outside for part of the time, as long as she left the back door open so she could hear Mal, the triplets, or Nicky if they needed anything.

  Stacey had earmarked this particular job as an easy one, with five of the eight Pikes laid up.

  Boy, was she wrong.

  Mr. and Mrs. Pike needed a sitter because they had had tickets for ages to some tennis match in Stamford. The tickets were expensive and the Pikes didn't want to miss the game; otherwise they might have stayed at home with their ailing family. But they are tennis nuts, so off they went.

  As soon as they had left, Stacey, her mask in place, stood at the bottom of the steps and yelled upstairs, "Anybody need anything?" "Ginger ale," replied Mal.

  "Water," replied Byron.

  "A Popsicle," replied Adam.

  "More Kleenex," replied Jordan.

  "My dinosaurs," replied a fifth voice. That was Nicky on the couch in the living room. He sounded bored to death.

  Stacey sighed. Then she got to work. When she had assembled the ginger ale, water, Popsicle, and Kleenex on a tray, she sent the things upstairs with Vanessa, who returned with Nicky's dinosaurs and handed them to him.

  Possibly sensing that she might become an errand girl for the afternoon, it was at this point that Vanessa said something about needing exercise and then added, "I think I'll go outside and ride my bike, okay, Stacey?" "Okay," Stacey answered. "Be careful. And if you're going to leave the neighborhood, let me know." (A good baby-sitter keeps careful track of her charges at all times.) "I will." Vanessa left quickly.

  "Claire? Margo?" Stacey called then, realizing that she hadn't seen them since she'd arrived about fifteen minutes earlier.

  "Down here!" called Margo from the rec room. "We're playing hospital." Again? thought Stacey, as she went downstairs.

  "Hi, Stacey-silly-billy-goo-goo!" cried Claire. "You know what? This game isn't easy with only two people. I have to be the ambulance driver, the doctor, and the X-ray person." "And I'm the patient, the nurse, and the worried mother," added Margo.

  "You're the patient and a nurse?" said Stacey, smiling. "That must be tough." "It is. But someone's got to do it." "Now, Margo," said Claire, who usually directed these games, "there's a terrible fire, okay? And you got caught in it. In your car. And your car blew up." Gosh, thought Stacey. Playing hospital sure had changed. When she was little, all she and her friends ever did when they played hospital was catch colds or fall down. Maybe once in awhile one of them would get appendicitis. But that was the worst that would happen.

  Stacey let Claire and Margo play a little longer. Then she said, "Don't you want to go outside, you guys? It's such a nice day. If you played outside you could use the wagon for an ambulance." (And I could take off this stupid mask, she thought.) The girls thought that over. At last Claire said, "Let's go!" "Great," said Stacey. "Let me just see if anyone upstairs needs anything. Then I'll be right out. You go ahead." Claire and Margo ran out the back door and Stacey called up to the ailing Pikes, "Anyone need anything?" She braced herself for the replies. But all she got was a chorus of "No, thanks!" Surprised, she went outside.

  For awhile, Stacey just sat on the patio and watched the game of hospital continue. She took off the surgeon's mask. The girls battled a flood, a tornado, and a plane crash. Each time, the wonderful doctor at the hospital saved the terribly sick or wounded patient.

  Claire was in the middle of saving Margo's life yet again when Vanessa came hurtling up the driveway on her bicycle. She was riding too fast and Stacey knew it. For that reason, Stacey was already on her feet when Vanessa tried to put on her brakes at the end of the driveway and skidded into a nearby cherry tree instead.

  "Ow, ow, ow!" she cried.

  Stacey reached her in two seconds. "Oh, Vanessa," she said. "Wow. What a fall. Okay, don't move too fast. Did you hit your head?" Vanessa sat up slowly. "No," she said, shaking it, "but my elbow hurts. So does my ankle." "Doctor Claire to the rescue!" cried Claire, as she and Margo raced to the scene of the accident.

  "Hold on, Claire," said Stacey gently. "This is a real accident. I need to take a good look at our patient. Okay, I see which elbow you hurt, Vanessa. It's pretty scraped up." "I think I scraped it on that gravel," she said
, pointing.

  Stacey examined the wound. "There's still some gravel in it," she announced. "Now, which ankle hurts?" "My left one," replied Vanessa.

  "It looks okay," said Stacey. "Try to stand on it." Vanessa struggled to her feet, but immediately fell down again, clutching her ankle. "That hurts!" she exclaimed, gasping.

  "Okay," said Stacey calmly. "I think you better see your doctor." "Goody!" cried Claire. "Well, here I am." "No, I mean the real one," said Stacey. "Margo, can you help make your sister comfortable? I've got to make a few phone calls." Stacey dashed inside. She called Claudia, who wasn't at home. Next she tried me. "Hi, Dawn? Oh, thank goodness you're there. Can you come over to the Pikes' right away? Vanessa had an accident. . . . Great." Then Stacey hung up and called her mother. "Can you drive us to the doctor's office?" she asked when she explained what had happened.

  "Of course," replied her mother immediately.

  Mrs. McGill and I arrived at the Pikes' at the same time. Stacey, her mom, and I loaded Vanessa into the back of the McGills' station wagon. Then I stood in the driveway with Claire and Margo, and the three of us watched as the car backed down the driveway.

  "There goes the ambulance," murmured Margo.

  And Claire added, "Ooh-eee-ooh. . . . See you later, Vanessa-silly-billy-goo-goo." Meanwhile, Stacey's mother sped toward the doctor's office.

  "Faster! Faster!" Stacey kept crying.

  "Honey," her mother replied, "this isn't an emergency, luckily. And I don't want to get a speeding ticket." "I'm okay," spoke up Vanessa. "Gosh, I wonder which doctor I'll see. There are three of them in the group, but only one is around on Saturdays." The doctor on duty was Dr. Dellenkamp, whom Vanessa likes a lot. Even when she had to work a little to get the gravel out of Vanessa's wound, and when she sprayed it with antiseptic, and again when she wrapped an ace bandage around Vanessa's sprained ankle, Vanessa just said, "Ow!" Stacey stayed with her the whole time while her mother sat in the waiting room. "I should stay with her, Mom," Stacey had told Mrs. McGill. "I'm the baby-sitter." Stacey, her mother, and Vanessa returned to the Pikes' about fifteen minutes before Mr. and Mrs. Pike got back. There was just enough time for me to leave and for Stacey to settle Vanessa on the other couch in the livingroom with Nicky.

  "Thanks, Dawn!" Stacey called as I left. "I owe you one." "No problem!" I called back.

  When the Pikes pulled into their driveway, Claire greeted them. "Guess what," she said before they'd even gotten out of their car. "Vanessa fell off her bike and Stacey took her to the hospital in an ambulance and Vanessa's ankle is broken!" No wonder the Pikes were in a panic when they dashed into the living room. They ran to Vanessa, where they saw an ordinary ace bandage, not a cast, on her ankle. Vanessa was drinking a ginger ale and looking pretty jolly.

  "I sprained it," she said, almost proudly. "I can't even walk on it. I got crutches, see?" Vanessa pointed to the crutches, which Stacey had propped up against one end of the couch.

  "I see," said Mrs. Pike wearily, "but I don't believe it. Six ailing children. What's going to happen next?" "Nothing," said Mr. Pike firmly. "Absolutely nothing." "Doctor Dellenkamp said you could call her if you have any questions," Stacey told the Pikes, who had thanked her several times for her quick thinking and for handling a tough situation so well.

  "Okay," they replied. "We'll phone the doctor right away." Then Mr. Pike called upstairs, "How's everybody doing? Does anyone need anything?" "Something new to read, Dad," said Mal.

  "Cookies," said Jordan.

  "Grapes," said Adam.

  "A sandwich," said Byron.

  "My sanity," said Mrs. Pike.

  Chapter 10.

  Monday. Five-thirty. My friends and I were gathering for another meeting of the Babysitters Club. We started arriving around five-fifteen.

  Surprisingly, I had been the first to reach BSC headquarters. I was even there before Claudia. She had a sitting job with Jamie and Lucy Newton. It was running a little overtime. In the old days, if I had arrived and Claudia hadn't been there, I probably would have chatted with Mimi, Claudia's grandmother. I had liked our chats. But Mimi was gone now.

  Janine, Claudia's sister, told me to wait in Claud's bedroom, so I did, thumbing through the notebook to see what had happened in the last week. I wondered what Mary Anne and Kristy were up to. They'd gone to Kristy's house after school, something that didn't happen very often but worked out nicely on club meeting days if neither of them had a sitting job.

  "Hi, Dawn!" I jumped at the voice. "Oh, Claud. You scared me. I was off in outer space." "Well, land your vehicle," she replied. "I'm here now." "How are the Newtons?" I asked.

  "Fine, except Lucy has a cold." "Isn't anyone well around here?" "You and I are," Claudia pointed out.

  "Oh, yeah. I guess I was thinking of the Pikes." Jessi arrived then and settled herself on the floor. "Gosh, I miss Mal," she said. "We haven't even been able to talk on the phone much. And I can't go visit her because Squirt hasn't had the chicken pox yet and Mama doesn't want him to get them when he's so young. I don't see how he could catch them from me if I don't have them, but Mama is being extra careful." We sympathized with Jessi while the others arrived (except for Mal, of course). I watched Mary Anne and Kristy come in. They'd been giggling on the way upstairs, but they stopped when they entered BSC headquarters. They headed for their usual spots.

  "Hi," I said to Mary Anne as she flopped down on the bed.

  "Hi." Mary Anne barely looked at me.

  I was about to ask her if she and Kristy had had fun, when Kristy tapped her pencil on the arm of the director's chair. Then she stuck the pencil over one ear. "Please come to order," she said loudly. "Treasurer?" Stacey stood up and opened the treasury envelope. "Dues day!" she announced.

  "Oh," we all groaned. But we obediently reached for our money.

  Stacey collected it and then dropped her own dues in. "Money, money, money," she said with a sigh.

  I glanced at Mary Anne, almost laughing. Mary Anne couldn't help smiling back, but she looked as if the effort pained her.

  "Anybody need money for anything?" asked Kristy. "It sounds as if we're loaded." Stacey made a face. If she had her way, the treasury would just keep growing fatter and fatter and fatter. . . .

  "I could use another drawing pad for my Kid-Kit," said Jessi.

  "Well, I hate to admit it, but I need another box of watercolors," said Stacey. "Charlotte is turning into an artist. She paints almost as much as she reads, these days." "Hey, guess what I noticed when Charlie was dropping us off here this afternoon," spoke up Mary Anne, but at that moment, the phone rang.

  "First job call of the week!" cried Kristy. "I just love the first call. It's sort of an adventure. Who'll be on the other end? What - " Then Kristy realized she better answer the phone. "Hello, Baby-sitters club," she said.

  Kristy listened for awhile, and then Mary Anne set up a job for Stacey with Nina and Eleanor Marshall.

  "All right, so guess what I noticed," said Mary Anne as soon as the business had been taken care of.

  "What?" said everybody but Kristy. I figured she knew already, and I wondered why I felt so left out, since no one else knew.

  "The 'For Sale' sign is down in front of my old house." "You're kidding!" exclaimed Claudia, jumping up to look out her window. "It was there this morning. . . . Yup, it's gone." "Something must have happened today," I said. "I guess we'll hear all about it at dinner tonight. Right, sis?" Mary Anne paused. "Right," she said finally.

  "Are you having trouble selling your house?" Stacey asked Mary Anne.

  "I don't know," she replied. "I mean, I guess if it's up for sale for a long time, then Dad will consider that trouble. But it hasn't been up too long yet. I'm dying to find out what happened today." "Maybe a family full of cute guys will move in," said Claudia.

  Kristy made a face. "How about a family full of kids?" "Don't we have enough kids to sit for now?" I asked.

  "We can never have too many," said Mary Anne shortly.

&nb
sp; "I was just kidding," I told her.

  "Oh." We stopped our discussion then to take a series of phone calls. We lined up jobs with the Rodowskys and with Charlotte Johanssen. The third call was for a job with Jenny Prezzioso.

  Both Mary Anne and I were free.

  Uh-oh, here we go again, I thought.

  But Mary Anne just said sweetly to me, "You take it, Dawn." I looked at her in surprise. Had Kristy had a talk with her that afternoon?

  "Me? You're going to let me take it?" I exclaimed.

  "Sure." Mary Anne penciled my name into the book.

  "Wait a sec," I said slowly. "You're just letting me have the job because you don't like taking care of Jenny, right?" (Jenny is a real brat. Mary Anne is actually more tolerant of her than the rest of us are, but she had sat for Jenny twice recently, and even Mary Anne has her limits.) "No, I'm - " Mary Anne began to protest. But we all knew that whatever she was about to say would be a big, fat lie.

  I watched Mary Anne's face closely. Was she trying to hide a smile?

  "You are the worst liar!" I exclaimed.

  "I know!" Mary Anne began to laugh.

  Everyone else laughed, too. The tension seemed to break between my sister and me.

  "Are you sure you want to give up a perfectly good job?" I asked.

  "With Jenny? Are you kidding, sis? Of course I do." More laughter. I began to relax.

  The phone rang twice. Once it was Kristy's brother Sam saying, "Is this Al-Jon's Pizza? I'd like two large pies with everything." We know enough now to ignore any weird call we get. It's always Sam. He's an incurable joker.

  "GOOD-BYE . . . SAM!" yelled Kristy when Sam had finished giving his pizza order.

  "Jessi?" spoke up Stacey.

  "Yeah?" Jessi looked sort of alone on the floor, but I knew it was very possible to look alone and not feel alone, or to be with a whole group of people and feel like no one is alive except you. I suspected that Jessi felt fine.