Baby-Sitters' Winter Vacation Read online

  “Where are you from?” Pierre asked me as we panted our way to the ski lift.

  “Stoneybrook, Connecticut,” I answered. “My whole school is here. I’m in eighth grade.”

  “I’m in eighth, too,” said Pierre. “My class is here for the week. We’re from Dixville Falls. That’s upstate. Almost in Canada.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Canada. Are you French Canadian? I mean, is your family French Canadian?”

  “Nope. We’re French French. My parents grew up in Paris, but right after they got married, they moved to the States. I’ve always lived in Vermont. I barely speak French, and I take Italian in school. I am a real embarrassment to my parents.”

  I laughed. “Do you speak any French?”

  “Chevrolet coupé.”

  That time I laughed so hard I nearly fell over. Ski boots tip you forward, and it is not easy to laugh all tipped over on skis in slippery snow.

  Pierre caught me by the arm and kept me upright. “Come on,” he said. “It’s our turn.”

  We were at the head of the line for the ski lift, and we let ourselves be scooped up and carried to the top of the trail. Then we skied down together. Or sort of together, since neither of us is great. At least we didn’t crash into each other at the bottom.

  Much as I wanted to make another run with Pierre, I knew that it was time for me to check on Ms. Halliday and the kids. I explained to Pierre what I had to do, and then I set off for the snowbunny group. When I reached it, I found fifteen exuberant children, most of whom were sure they were just about ready to enter the next Winter Olympics.

  “How’s everything going?” I asked Ms. Halliday.

  “Oh, just fine,” she replied. “The kids are great. So enthusiastic.”

  “No problems?”

  “Nope. The instructor’s great, too.”

  “Okay. Do you mind if I go back to the trails? I want to, um, practice some more.”

  “Go ahead. We’re doing fine here.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Halliday!” I called as I made my way back to the ski lift. All I could think about as I struggled along was Pierre.

  Pierre D’Amboise. The name alone made me feel ultrasophisticated, almost continental. I pictured Pierre’s sparkling eyes, his brown hair with the streaks of blond in it. (Had he been out in the sun recently? On some faraway island, perhaps?) Then I remembered his voice. It was changing, acquiring that deepness.

  I thought over the other boys I’ve known — the boys at school, the boys I’d met at the Sea City beach. And I decided that Pierre was the nicest, the most fun, and — if things went my way — probably my first meaningful crush. Any past crushes suddenly didn’t count.

  Here is the thing about dances: I hate them. Well, no, that’s not quite true. It’s more like I’m afraid of them. Actually, it’s more like I’m afraid of dancing and of boys. See, I don’t know how to dance. And I hardly ever spend time with boys except my brothers and boys that I baby-sit for, and they don’t count. Not in the Game of Boys.

  When the vice-principal made that announcement I thought I was going to faint right in the middle of the dining hall. Before he had even finished speaking I had grown so pale that Jessi had leaned over, put her hand on my arm, and exclaimed in a loud whisper, “Mal! Are you okay?”

  I swallowed a couple of times. “Yes. I’ll be fine,” I replied, but my voice came out sounding choked up.

  “Are you sure?” asked Jessi. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” I whispered.

  Oh, no. A dance. A dance. I couldn’t think of worse news. Well, a blizzard might be worse. Getting snowed into a building with Alan “Show-off” Gray would definitely be worse. But an all-school dance was right up there on the list of things I did not want.

  Right away I began to think of ways to get out of going. Maybe the dance wasn’t mandatory. If it wasn’t, I could hide out somewhere and write in my journal or read. If it was, well … maybe I could pretend to be sick. Come to think of it, I probably wouldn’t have to do much pretending. Just thinking of the dance made me pretty sick.

  I looked around our breakfast table. There were the sixteen children. Pinky’s bandage had been removed, and her foot was better, although not as strong as the doctor had hoped, so he had said she could walk on her foot, but couldn’t go skiing or skating until the next day. And Miss Weber and Mr. Dougherty were back. Miss Weber’s arm was in a cast and sling, and Mr. Dougherty’s ribs were taped up. You couldn’t see that, of course. The only sign of his injuries was the slow, painful way in which he walked. Neither teacher was in tip-top shape.

  Scattered among the children were Ms. Halliday and my friends. I noticed that Mary Anne was sitting as far from Ms. Halliday as she could get. Across from me was Jessi. We needed to talk about our snow sculpture, since the contest was that afternoon. Before we’d left Stoneybrook, Jessi had been gung-ho over the project. (We had planned to sculpt a pair of ballet slippers with feet in them.) Now, every time I mentioned the contest, Jessi began to talk about things like frostbite and her toes and her dancing career. Further down the table, Claudia and Stacey were having a heavy conference about something, and Dawn was trying to get Pinky to finish her breakfast.

  Kristy, sitting near the middle of the table next to Ms. Halliday, stood up and tapped her knife on her glass of orange juice.

  “Attention!” she called. “Can I have your attention?”

  The dining hall quieted down — but not enough, so Kristy handed the knife to Ms. Halliday, who tapped for her, while Kristy stood up on her chair.

  “ATTENTION!” she called.

  Since it was the second announcement of the meal, no one was too eager to stop talking.

  But when Kristy finally yelled, “ATTENTION, PLEASE!” the room grew silent. “Thank you,” said Kristy. “I want to announce that the ice-skating contest will be held this morning. It will begin at ten-thirty. If you want to participate, please show up at the pond about fifteen minutes early. The snow-sculpture contest will be held in the afternoon. Please arrive by two-fifteen so we can start at two-thirty. The contest will take place on the lawn in front of the lodge. One last thing. The skiing events will be held on Friday. Remember that you can take free lessons from the instructors here. If you don’t want lessons, then practice, practice, practice, okay?”

  “Okay!” replied a few kids.

  Kristy sat down, looking flushed. She certainly was taking her job seriously.

  “Well,” Jessi said to me, “what are you going to do this morning?”

  “I’m not sure. What are you going to do?”

  “Work on the talent sh — Oh, that reminds me. I’ve got to make an announcement, too.”

  As you can probably guess, it took even longer for Jessi to get everyone’s attention than it had taken Kristy. In fact, Ms. Halliday had to blow her gym whistle to make us quiet down. At last Jessi, who stood on her chair like Kristy in order to be heard, said, “Sorry to interrupt you again, but I want to announce that auditions for the talent show will be held in the grand ballroom this afternoon as soon as the snow-sculpture contest is over. If you want to be in the show but don’t know what to do, come to the auditions anyway, because I have some ideas. Thank you.”

  Jessi sat down. The vice-principal stood up. “I would like to announce,” he said, “that there will be no further announcements.”

  Everyone cheered. And then people began to leave the dining hall. I was on my own for the morning. Jessi had her work to do. Kristy, Claudia, and Dawn were going to be in the ice-skating contest, Mary Anne was busy moping and working on her project, and Stacey seemed to be in an awful rush to get somewhere. Where? I wondered.

  Then I remembered my own project. I tore up to our dorm, slipped my journal out of its hiding place under my mattress, and took it down to the common room to write about the events of the morning.

  This was my journal project: I planned to work hard on my writing, since I want to become an author one day. A big place with a lot of new p
eople and activities was perfect for honing my observational skills. I planned to play Harriet from Harriet the Spy, just like I’d done when my friends and I went on this cruise to the Bahamas and then traveled to Disney World. Only I intended to be a better spy than Harriet. For one thing, I was not going to get caught. For another, I was going to be such a keen observer that my journal would be filled only with the truth. I would never, ever read something into a situation that wasn’t really there.

  For awhile, I just sat in the common room and wrote about my feelings and reactions to what had gone on so far that morning. I started off with:

  Then I began observing what was going on in the common room:

  When I got bored with the common room, I decided to try some hard-core spying. I carried my notebook into the dining hall. It was empty of people (of course), and so big that my footsteps echoed, so I had to tiptoe. Cautiously, I approached the kitchen. Swinging double doors lead into it and one door was propped open. I peeped around it and saw several of the cook’s helpers preparing lunch. Then I saw the cook himself. He’s this old guy with not much hair, a stubbly beard, and one top tooth missing. Up until now I’d thought he’d seemed really nice. But when I peeked in at him, this is what was going on:

  I fled back to the common room, where Pinky, Joey, Ginnie, and Bryce were playing a silly board game called Operation. Ginnie and Joey were yelling at Pinky and she was having a temper tantrum. I have a feeling Pinky isn’t too popular.

  By this time I had to go to the bathroom. I used the ladies’ room downstairs, and who should I see in there, but Ms. Halliday. And she was crying:

  Boy, was my journal ever juicy. I would have to find a better hiding place for it than under my mattress. At home, too. If my little brothers or sisters ever found this, they would read things that are far too mature for them.

  When we woke up on Wednesday it was still snowing — not hard, just enough to make Kristy crazy.

  “How can we hold the sculpture contest this afternoon?” she cried. “The snow will just keep covering up everyone’s work. It’ll be a disaster.”

  “Why don’t you wait until this afternoon to decide whether to call off the contest?” Ms. Halliday suggested at breakfast. “It’s barely snowing, Kristy. I think you should announce the contest anyway. If you have to call it off — and I doubt you will — you can announce the change in schedule at lunchtime. Right now, the snow seems to be letting up.”

  So Kristy made her announcements. As soon as breakfast was over, she and Claud and I got our skates and headed for the pond so that we could practice before the contest began. We found pretty many other kids there, too. I’m no great skater, but I’m not bad. I practiced skating fast, skating backward, and making figure eights. That’s about the best I can do.

  There were to be three parts to the contest. The first part was speed. Each person on each team would be clocked to see how fast he or she could skate fifty yards. It was the skating version of the fifty-yard dash. The team with the fastest skater would earn one point. Next was a sort of relay race. The teams would divide in two, half of each team standing on one side of the pond, the other halves across from them. Then we were given ten minutes in which to see how many times the members of each team could carry a baton back and forth across the ice. If everyone on a team went once before the time was up, they just started over. That’s why it didn’t matter whether the Red and the Blue Teams were evenly represented. Again, the team that made the most trips across the pond earned a point. The tiebreaker event (if it was needed) was a sort of obstacle course. Ten members from each team were selected to do the following: skate backward to the middle of the pond, execute a figure eight, then continue to the opposite side, skating in and out of a row of coffee cans. The team that finished first won a point, and the team that earned two out of three points was the overall winner of the competition.

  Kristy got things rolling promptly at ten-thirty.

  “All right, teams,” she said, facing the kids who had gathered. (Thirty-one Red Team members and twenty-eight Blue Team members were there.) “Our first event is speed skating. Every one of you may participate.”

  Kristy went on to explain the rules. Then she organized us into two long lines, handed a stopwatch to Mr. Cheney, the scorekeeper, and took her place at the head of the line of Blue Team members. Rick Chow stood at the head of the Red Team line. Mr. Cheney tossed a coin, and our team, the Blue Team, won the right to go first.

  So Kristy sailed across the ice to the flag that had been placed fifty yards out on the pond. For someone short, she sure is fast. She made excellent time. Then Rick Chow took his turn. He was not as fast as Kristy.

  You might think that watching fifty-nine kids skate out to a flag one at a time would get boring after awhile, but it didn’t. We just kept cheering and cheering. And each time someone would beat the best score, Mr. Cheney would call out the new time. It was pretty exciting.

  I waited nervously for my turn, my heart pumping, and the adrenaline flowing through my body. I concentrated so hard on that flag across the ice that Mr. Cheney had to say, “Take your mark, get set, go!” three times before I heard him. Then I went whizzing off — and halfway to the flag I hit a bump on the ice, tripped, and fell. I knew I had to get up and keep going, so I did. I also knew I had just contributed the slowest time so far to our team.

  I was right.

  But our team won anyway. This girl named Andrea Kirkland had the fastest time.

  As we were gearing up for the relay race, Kristy thumped me on the back, said not to worry, and wished me better luck in the next event. I felt relieved — until I saw two seventh-graders from the other team pointing at me and laughing.

  I ignored them. Mom says I’m like a duck in a storm. Insults roll right off my back like raindrops off a duck’s feathers. I geared myself up for the relay race, giving myself a silent pep talk.

  The race began. The cheering was loud and constant since the skaters on both teams kept going and going at the same time. When Paul Friedman finally slapped the baton into my hand — I dropped it! My mittens were so fat and clumsy. But I picked it right up and skated out across the ice. This time I don’t know how I fell, but I did. One second I was skating along, the next second I was on my hands and knees. It took me awhile to get up and find the baton. I lost a lot of time for my team.

  And the Red Team won. Now we would have to hold the tiebreaker event.

  “Teams!” Kristy cried, standing in front of us participants. “Get ready for the tiebreaker. I want each team captain — that’s you and me, Rick —”

  (“Duh,” said Rick under his breath.)

  “— to select ten kids to participate in this, the final event.”

  We divided into teams and Kristy looked over the kids on our team. Then she carefully selected ten people.

  I was not one of them.

  I watched the tiebreaker silently, unable to cheer. I just didn’t have any cheers in me. When our team finally lost the ice-skating competition, two kids actually came up to me and said sarcastically, “Nice going, Dawn.”

  My cheeks began to burn. Why were they insulting me? Anyone could fall … twice … and drop the baton.

  I was about to go back to our dorm for awhile when Kristy announced practice for the snowball fight. Considering what had happened when I tried to ice-skate, I decided I better not miss a practice. So I went.

  The mock fight took place at the edge of some woods not far from the skating pond. The first thing that happened when it began was that Alan Gray hit me in the face with a snowball and then stuffed another one down the back of my ski jacket.

  “Ha, ha!” he sang. “Ha, ha. Ha, ha-ha, ha, ha!”

  I can’t stand when people do that. Furthermore, a bunch of other kids had seen what Alan had done. They were laughing, too. I was surrounded by ha-has. I needed to escape. So I simply left the fight. Since there was still some time before lunch, I decided to get a pair of boots and skis and take a couple of runs down t
he mountain to clear my head and drive away some of the anger I could feel building up.

  I’m a pretty good skier (yes, you can ski in California, plus Dad took us to Vail, Colorado, a couple of times), so I headed for the intermediate trails, expecting to go on the advanced ones later that afternoon.

  But I didn’t get any further than the ski lift. I fell trying to get on it. (Most people, if they’re going to fall, fall getting off.) The kids in line behind me snickered.

  Okay. Enough was enough. Usually I don’t care what anyone says or thinks about me, but one too many people had laughed at me that morning. In a huff, I returned the boots, skis, and poles, and marched back to the lodge. I stomped into the common room and right over to Mary Anne, who was writing in that book for Logan.

  “Well, congratulate me,” I said.

  Mary Anne looked up, blinking her eyes. “Huh?”

  “Congratulate me.”

  “For what?”

  “For walking from the ski rental office to the lodge without falling down.”

  Mary Anne paused. At last she said, “I’m not — Did you have a bad morning or something?”

  “Yes, I had a bad morning.” I flumped into an armchair next to Mary Anne.

  “What happened?”

  I gave Mary Anne the grisly details — from falling on the ice to falling off the ski lift. I waited expectantly for the sympathy to come pouring out, since Mary Anne is the most sensitive, caring person I know, and also, with a little luck, will be my future stepsister.

  But the words that came out of Mary Anne’s mouth were, “Do you have any idea how far Aruba is from Hooksett Crossing?”

  My jaw must have dropped because Mary Anne immediately said, “What? What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” I exploded. “I’m sitting here pouring out my heart to you — which, by the way, I don’t do very often — and all you can think of is your precious Logan. Have you thought of anything or anyone else since we left Stoneybrook?”