Claudia's Friend Read online

“Oh, poor Shea,” said Mary Anne.

  “Poor Shea is right,” I agreed. “But what can we do about it?”

  “We just started this tutoring stuff,” Kristy said. “We need to give that a chance. We can’t expect results overnight.”

  “True,” I said.

  Then, just like on Wednesday, I heard a knock at the door, and a moment later I was taking an envelope out of Janine’s hand.

  “I found this attached to the front door when I got home,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “Certainly.”

  As Janine left, I held the envelope up.

  Just as before, the letters “BSC” were written on the envelope. I ripped the envelope open and a plain sheet of white paper with typewritten words on it fell out: YOU ARE THE BEST.

  “The best what?” said Stacey, who is always precise.

  “It’s another note from a secret admirer!” Mary Anne’s eyes were shining.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” said Kristy. “Don’t forget, we’ve been sent secret notes before, and they weren’t from secret admirers.”

  “They didn’t sound as genuinely nice, though,” said Mary Anne. “I mean, these don’t sound fake. Do they?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Dawn.

  “Although they are kind of, well, short,” said Mallory. “I mean, if I were going to write a note to someone I secretly admired, I’d be more elegant.”

  “And specific,” Jessi said. “We don’t even know who this is addressed to.”

  “We do know it arrived at about the same time of day as the last one, in the same way,” Kristy said.

  “Do you think someone is watching the house?” I asked. “I was the last one here and I didn’t see anybody lurking around or anything. Of course, I wasn’t looking, either.”

  Stacey examined the note. “No clues here,” she said. “It could be from a typewriter or a printer … Claud, what about Janine? These notes aren’t from her, are they?”

  I thought for a minute. “Nah. It’s not something Janine would do. For one thing, she’d use bigger words, probably. And for another, if this is a joke of some kind, it’s not her style.”

  “I vote it’s a secret admirer, just dying to ask one of us to the dance,” said Dawn.

  “Second,” said Jessi, grinning.

  “All in favor say ‘aye,’ ” Kristy added. When we all shouted “aye” she announced, “The ‘ayes’ have it!”

  After that the phone got busy and we spent the rest of the meeting booking appointments and talking about nothing in particular. When the meeting broke up, Stacey, who was staying for dinner and then to tutor me, watched me put the note away in my jewelry box.

  “Evidence,” I explained.

  “Right,” said Stacey.

  No matter how much junk food I eat, I’m usually hungry, but that night at dinner, I wasn’t as hungry as I thought I would be. Could the thought of the tutoring session ahead possibly be affecting my appetite? I ate some more mashed potatoes and thought it over. No, not possible. After all, it was a tutoring session with my best friend.

  Still I didn’t want seconds. When dinner was over, Janine started clearing the table (it was her turn).

  “We can’t study in the kitchen,” I said quickly, in case Stacey had any ideas. “Janine’s going to be putting stuff away and cleaning up after dinner.”

  “No problem,” said Stacey. “I had a chance to talk to Janine and she suggested we use her room. It will be less distracting than yours.”

  “Janine, you are a rat,” I muttered, but not loudly enough for Stacey to hear as I followed her to my room to get my books and then to Janine’s room.

  Talk about no distractions! My room is the original creative mess: paintings and posters on the wall, art supplies everywhere, hats and jewelry I’ve made hanging on an old brass coat tree in the corner, lots of color — and I do know where (almost) everything is, in spite of how it looks.

  Janine’s room is precise. Perfectly organized. She keeps her shoes in a line in the closet, and her clothes in order by color and item. She cleans her room every Saturday morning. I don’t bother with those things.

  Now, sitting on the floor with Stacey, my back against the foot of Janine’s bed, I started getting distracted by all that clean, empty space. If it were art, would it be called the absence of form? Or have something to do with negative space?

  “Claudia,” said Stacey warningly.

  “Okay. Let’s get started,” I said. Resolutely, I picked up my English notebook.

  “Look,” I said, pulling the flash cards out of the back pocket of the notebook.

  “Nice,” said Stacey. “But did you learn the words?”

  I was a little disappointed by Stacey’s unenthusiastic response to my beautiful flash cards, but I reminded myself that it wasn’t important here.

  “Yes,” I said. “You want to go over them?”

  “Of course,” replied Stacey. “Then we’ll add new ones.”

  So we worked through the flash cards and I got all but one right. “Good,” said Stacey when we were through. (She still didn’t say anything about how great the flash cards looked.) “Work on ‘peculiar,’ though, okay?” (That was the word I’d missed.)

  “Okay,” I replied crossly.

  Stacey, who is usually quick to pick up on my moods, didn’t register this at all. She was too busy turning into Mrs. Hall.

  We worked on sentence construction. We worked on changing words to nouns, adverbs, and verbs. We worked on about a thousand vocabulary words and I made some new flash cards.

  “Want to decorate these now?” I asked hopefully as I finished copying the last one. “We could go to my room and work on them.”

  With a frown, Stacey shook her head. “This is serious, Claud. Don’t forget it. Look, here, I have something for you.”

  My feelings, which had been turning, well, negative, abruptly grew warm and positive again. Stacey had gotten me a surprise, to cheer me up and to cheer me on.

  Stacey handed me a black and white marbled notebook.

  At first I was puzzled. Then I realized it was probably for sketching in. I used them sometimes in school. (Okay, I admit I use them during non-art classes, because they don’t look so much like official sketchbooks). It was nice of Stacey to try and cheer me up, I thought, feeling guilty about my cranky thoughts. “Thanks, Stace. What a neat surprise. I’m sure I’ll be able to use this.”

  “I know you will,” said Stacey, sounding more school-teachery than ever.

  Uh-oh, I thought.

  “It’s for your journal.”

  “My journal? I don’t keep a journal.”

  “You do now. Look, Claudia, it’s the best way to practice all this stuff we’ve been reviewing. You use it in actual sentences and paragraphs, real writing — either by writing stories or by keeping a diary.”

  “Oh,” I said weakly.

  “So you’re going to keep a journal. You may write anything you want in it. Then I’ll read it and correct your spelling, punctuation, and so forth.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said. And if I sounded sarcastic, it was because I meant to.

  Again, Stacey didn’t even seem to notice. “Well,” she said. “That about covers it.”

  In a daze I helped Stacey gather everything up and carry it back to my room.

  “Why don’t you get started on that journal?” suggested Stacey. “You don’t need to walk me to the door.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “We’ll have another session this weekend. See you then.”

  “Not if I see you first,” I muttered as Stacey left.

  Keep a journal! Stacey correcting my private thoughts and words! Telling me what to do! Totally humorless and a pain — that’s what Anastasia McGill was becoming.

  I’d keep a journal all right. I’d give Stacey a real eyeful. Only it would be a secret journal.

  I pulled out an old sketch book, only this one didn’t have lined paper. It was on
ly partly used. I flipped past the sketches, wrote the date and time at the top of the first piece of blank paper, and began my secret journal.

  And underneath that I drew a caricature of Stacey as a pointed-nosed schoolteacher holding a ruler. After that it was easy to open the real journal and write:

  And you know what, I looked up every single word (except Rodowsky and Shea and Stacey). I wasn’t going to let Stacey catch me in a single mistake if I could help it.

  Kristy’s Krushers are always ready to play ball, and that morning was not an exception. Everyone turned out, plus, of course, Skylar. At one and a half, Skylar is a little too young to play ball, even with the Krushers, but she’s not too little to enjoy being outside with everybody and wandering into the middle of things if she isn’t watched closely.

  It was an unusually hot day. Most of the Krushers had shed their sweatshirts almost immediately and Kristy, who is always prepared, had made them smear sunscreen on their noses and arms. She put sunscreen on Skylar, too, who didn’t like it much. “No! No! Go! Go!” she kept saying.

  “Okay,” said Kristy, holding Skylar’s hand as she addressed the Krushers. Skylar, who isn’t always steady on her feet, kept swaying back and forth and pulling Kristy off balance. Kristy had to keep leaning back and forth as she talked.

  “Okay,” she said again. “We’re going to practice throwing the ball to each other and tagging people out. I’m going to put some of you in positions around the field and the rest of you are going to run the bases and get tagged out.”

  Claire Pike, who is prone to throwing tantrums, pushed her lower lip out and said, “No fair. I don’t want to be tagged out.”

  “You might not be,” said Kristy. “We’re practicing. We’re practicing trying to tag the runner out and the runner is practicing trying not to get tagged out. And we’ll all take turns.”

  It took a little while to organize everybody. Kristy, in a very cowardly way, put Claire in right field first instead of letting her be a runner. She kept Claire in close (since Claire is only five and can’t throw the ball far), and put James Hobart behind her for backup. But once everyone was in position, she thought practice was going to go smoothly.

  “Good, good!” she shouted as Buddy Barrett caught a grounder and threw it to third base, forcing Matt Braddock to retreat to the safety of second base. “That’s called cutting off the runner. With no runner on first, and no chance of getting the runner to first out, that’s exactly what you do. And good base-running, Matt!” She held up her hands and signed “good” so Matt could see her. Matt, who is deaf, waved and then turned to his sister Haley, who was watching from the sidelines. Her hands flew as she translated what Kristy had just said.

  “Okay, let’s try that a few more times….”

  Kristy dipped to the left as Skylar tugged on her hand. “Wah,” said Skylar.

  “Thirsty, Skylar? Okay, let’s go get a drink of water.” She and Skylar walked to the water fountain by the dugout and Kristy lifted Skylar up for a drink, thinking how funny it was that Skylar would want to drink out of the park fountain when she was so afraid of the big fountain in the entry hall of her own house (well, mansion, really), that the Kormans couldn’t even turn it on. But before Kristy could press the button to turn the water on, Skylar beat her to it. She pressed the button hard.

  Water shot out of the fountain, splashing them both.

  “Waaaaah,” screamed Skylar, twisting away so hard that Kristy stumbled backward, crashed into a fence, and slid to the ground.

  “Ooof,” said Kristy. The fall had knocked the wind out of her.

  But not out of Skylar. She took a deep breath and screamed even louder.

  “It’s … okay … Skylar … see?” Kristy gasped, getting her breath back. “Just … a little water …”

  “Noooo,” screamed Skylar.

  Play on the field stopped. Everyone turned to see what was causing the screaming.

  “Play … ON,” shouted Kristy. (Her breath had come back.)

  Obediently the Krushers kept playing. But it took Kristy a long time to persuade Skylar to stop crying. And she had to walk the long way around the water fountain to get back to the field.

  Kristy propped Skylar on her hip and surveyed the field.

  “Time to put some new fielders and runners in,” she announced and switched everybody around.

  “Let’s try getting people out at first base,” said Kristy. “This is the situation. No one on first, batter up. She hits the ball and runs to first. What do you do?”

  “Catch the ball and tag her out!” said Jackie Rodowsky.

  “Or if the ball was a fly ball she’d be out anyway,” said Bill Korman.

  “Or you can throw the ball to first base,” said Linny Papadakis. “Or touch first base while you’re holding the ball.”

  “Excellent. One hundred percent right,” said Kristy. “So let’s do it. I’m going to hit the ball and Jackie is going to run to first base. Positions, everyone.”

  Kristy put Skylar in her stroller, fished around in the bag attached to the stroller, and came up with a banana.

  “Here, Skylar. Want a banana?”

  “Nana,” said Skylar. Kristy peeled the banana and gave it to Skylar. Skylar waved the banana triumphantly back and forth. Then she squeezed it in her fist and began licking the banana that oozed out between her fingers. Messy, but effective, Kristy figured. She buckled Skylar into her stroller, wheeled the stroller into the dugout behind the fence, set the brake, and went back to hit for the Krushers.

  Kristy hit a gentle looping ball just to the left of first base.

  Jackie began to run madly toward the plate.

  The ball dipped down, down, down. It just missed the tip of Melody Korman’s outstretched glove.

  It landed on Jackie’s head.

  “Oh, no!” cried Kristy. Still holding the bat, she hurried toward Jackie.

  Jackie didn’t even slow down. He jumped on first base with both feet and said, “I made it, I made it!”

  That was when Kristy realized he hadn’t even felt the ball through his batting helmet.

  “Are you okay, Jackie?” she asked.

  He looked puzzled. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re out,” said Linny.

  “No, I’m not,” said Jackie.

  “You are, too,” said Linny.

  “Why?”

  “Linny’s right,” said Kristy. “If the ball touches you while you are running the bases, you are out.”

  “Then why don’t we just throw the ball at people?” asked Melody.

  “Because it has to be an accident,” said Kristy desperately. “Jackie, are you sure you’re okay?”

  “The ball didn’t touch me!” Jackie was indignant.

  Kristy hid a smile. “I’m afraid it did, Jackie. It landed on your batting helmet.”

  Jackie thought it over, then said, “Oh.” He grinned. “Can we try again?”

  “Sure. Practice makes perfect. Places everyone!” Kristy headed back to home plate.

  Just then a horrible shriek came from Skylar. “TAT! TAT!”

  Kristy had been keeping an eye on Skylar, of course, and she knew there was no cat around. (Skylar is terrified of cats.) She trotted toward Skylar, saying as soothingly as she could, “There are no cats, Skylar.” She laid the bat down next to the stroller. “It’s okay.”

  “TAT!” shrieked Skylar, deafening Kristy in one ear.

  She pointed and Kristy straightened up and turned to see a woman standing near the third base line holding a small black dog.

  “That’s a dog,” said Kristy.

  “Tat!” insisted Skylar, but she sounded a little less certain.

  The woman, who was standing close enough to Kristy and Skylar to hear the conversation, looked amused.

  “He really is a dog,” she called. “A schipperke. His name is Skipper.” She leaned over and put the dog down. He was wearing a red collar with a matching leash. Seeing his bright black button eyes, Kristy t
hought he looked more like a fox than a cat.

  The dog grinned a dog grin and bounced happily up on his hind legs, watching the baseball being thrown back and forth on the field. “Arrf. Arrf, arrf, arrf,” he barked.

  “See, Skylar, his name is Skipper and he’s a dog,” said Kristy.

  Skylar looked wary but less frightened. “Tat?” she asked softly.

  “Arf,” said Skipper.

  “Dog,” said Kristy.

  “Dok,” said Skylar.

  “Yes,” Kristy agreed, relieved.

  Skylar leaned forward and stared, suddenly fascinated.

  “Are you okay, now, Skylar?” asked Kristy. “You want to get out of your stroller and come with me?”

  Skylar ignored her. So Kristy returned to what was left of practice. It didn’t last much longer, and the rest of it went pretty smoothly.

  After practice, Kristy walked the Kormans home (they live across the street from Kristy), pushing Skylar’s stroller and listening to Bill and Melody talk. Skylar was asleep, worn out by the attack of the water fountain and the sneakiness of a dog disguised as a cat.

  Practice had made Kristy think about Bart’s Bashers, and in particular about Bart. Kristy will tell you that she is not ready for boys and all that stuff, but she does like Bart, who is the coach of the Krushers’ rival team.

  From thinking about Bart it was only a short jump to thinking about the notes that had arrived at the Baby-sitters Club meetings that week. The more Kristy thought about it, the more certain she was that Bart had sent the notes to her. “The best,” for example. That sounded like something Bart would say. It was high praise from the coach of a softball team, and just the sort of phrase a coach would use. And besides, that’s how Kristy and Bart’s more-than-just-friendship had started in the first place — with anonymous notes Bart had sent Kristy.

  Bart had to be the note-sender, Kristy concluded. It was his way of leading up to an invitation to the Spring Dance.

  Mrs. Korman returned a short time after Kristy and Bill and Melody and Skylar reached home. But Kristy had had enough time to think up a plan. So the moment she left the Kormans’ she hurried across the street to her house and got dressed up.

  Not in a dress, of course. But she put on a jean skirt and her favorite turtleneck, tights to match, and loafers. She even pulled her hair back in a hairband.