The Baby-Sitters Club #109: Mary Anne to the Rescue (Baby-Sitters Club, The) Page 6

  “My parents aren’t my teammates, Mary Anne.”

  “I know! But the point is, if you don’t fight back for something you want, you lose.”

  Logan laughed. “I never thought I’d hear you say something like that.”

  “They’re your words, Logan,” I grumbled. “You told them to me. Maybe you should try to live by them.”

  I could not believe I had said that. It had just slipped out of my mouth.

  I hate being crabby. I hate arguing. But boy, was I angry. And not only at Logan. Mostly I was angry at Mr. Bruno. How could he be so insensitive? Didn’t he see how awful his son was feeling?

  I could feel tears rushing into my eyes. I tried to choke them back. I sounded like a vacuum cleaner that had just sucked up a stuffed animal.

  “Don’t worry,” Logan said, putting his arm around me.

  That did it. My cheeks became water slides. “I’ll just miss you, that’s all,” I said.

  “Look, maybe it won’t work out. Maybe Dad’ll be happy if I just go to this camp. Maybe he’ll miss me so much, he’ll give up the idea of prep school.”

  Logan was smiling. I knew he meant that last remark as a joke.

  Somehow, though, I did not find it funny.

  * * *

  I did not want to be in Bellair’s. The fresh-cut flowers, the smell of colognes, the lights, the bright displays — they were all disturbing my gloom.

  Logan fished a wrinkled-up piece of legal paper out of his pants pocket. “Mom wrote out this list of stuff.”

  I took the paper. Maybe if I shifted into shopping mode, I would forget my problems. Smoothing the list out, I began reading: “ ‘Short-sleeve button-down shirt, tank top, utility shorts, bug spray, sunglasses, white socks …’ ”

  We went straight to the young men’s section. The first thing I saw was a display of gorgeous plaid shirts.

  “How about madras?” I asked.

  “I’m not supposed to bring a bed to camp,” Logan said.

  “Madras, not mattress! It’s a kind of plaid design on cotton.” I gestured toward the shirts.

  “Nice.” Logan sounded about as excited as if I’d discovered a crate full of cauliflower.

  I began rummaging through the piles. “Maybe a nice blue-green pattern …”

  I found a pretty shirt and turned around. Logan was gone.

  “Logan?” I called out. “Logan?”

  I looked around the nearest corner into the cross aisle. No Logan.

  The smell of chocolate wafted by me on a gust of air-conditioning. I glanced toward the source of the smell, to my left. A sign pointed around a corner, saying UNCLE CHIP’S COOKIE KITCHEN.

  I followed. Logan was standing with a small crowd of people around a young woman carrying a tray of chocolate-chip cookie samples.

  “Hi, foo fum —” Logan swallowed a mouthful of cookie and tried again: “Try some! They’re free.”

  The woman turned politely toward me. “Thank you,” I said, taking a small sample. “Uh, Logan …”

  Logan grabbed another fistful. “I know, I know. We’re supposed to shop.”

  As we headed back to the men’s department, Logan peered at the list. “ ‘Utility knife’?”

  “ ‘Shorts,’ ” I corrected him. “Utility shorts. What are they?”

  Logan shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  I spotted a man in a Bellair’s uniform who was tidying a stack of pants. “Excuse me,” I asked. “What are utility shorts?”

  “You may want to try junior misses on the second floor,” the man answered.

  “No, it’s for him —”

  I turned toward Logan. Gone again.

  “Excuse me.”

  Groan. The guard must have thought I’d lost my mind.

  This time I found Logan looking at the Swiss Army knives.

  “These are cool,” he said.

  “Not on the list,” I reminded him.

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Before we were finished, we’d looked at dirt bikes, video games, football equipment, and paperback books. Plus we visited Stacey’s mom, who works in the Bellair’s buying department. And for good measure, we made a couple more stops at the kitchen of Uncle Chip.

  We trudged out of the store, carrying two huge Bellair’s bags. I was exhausted.

  I was also looking forward to that lunch Mrs. Bruno had offered us.

  “Rosebud Café?” Logan asked.

  “As fast as we can,” I said.

  A couple of other restaurants are closer to Bellair’s, but the Rosebud is a special place. Logan works there as a busboy, and all the restaurant personnel are always friendly to us.

  We were sweaty and hot by the time we arrived, but the air-conditioning was on full blast, and it felt wonderful. The place was almost empty, and a great tune was playing on the jukebox.

  Terry Dutton, one of the other busboys, was clearing our favorite table by the window. He broke into a grin when he saw us. “Heyyyy, guys, in for a farewell lunch?”

  Farewell lunch. The words hit me like a hammer.

  “Uh, it’s not farewell, Terry,” Logan said, slipping into a seat.

  “You mean, you talked your old man out of it?” Terry asked.

  Carlos Nuñez, one of the waiters, was rushing by on the way to the kitchen. “You’re not leaving after all?”

  “Well, no,” Logan said. “I mean, it’s still only June —”

  “Hey, Mr. Fee!” Carlos called out. “Bruno’s staying in town!”

  “Wait!” Logan protested, “I didn’t say that —”

  But Carlos was barging into the kitchen. And Mr. Fee, the owner of the Rosebud, was approaching us with a big grin. “We-e-ell, that’s good news!” he said. “I gave away most of your hours, but I’m sure we can —”

  “Uh, sorry, Mr. Fee, but I am going away,” Logan blurted out. “Just not for a few weeks, that’s all.”

  Mr. Fee looked at him curiously. “Oh. Well, if you should change your mind …” His voice trailed off as he walked away.

  Terry wiped off the glass tabletop and handed us two menus. “A few weeks, huh? Bummer.”

  My feelings exactly.

  Maybe this was a farewell lunch.

  “Do you know what you want?” Logan asked.

  “Yeah, I want you to talk to your dad!”

  No, I didn’t say those words. I just thought them. As hard as I could. In Logan’s direction.

  I’m surprised they didn’t burn a hole through the menu.

  “I cannot wait to be a victim!” Dawn exclaimed. “I was born to be a victim.”

  “Dawn, you’re sick,” said Claudia.

  “Seriously,” Dawn continued. “I can scream great. It’s an art, you know. A friend of my stepmother’s in L.A. screams professionally. The TV and movie studios hire her for disaster scenes.”

  “What a great way to make a living,” Stacey said.

  “Do you have to go to college for that?” Logan asked.

  “Totally, totally sick,” Claudia remarked.

  It was Saturday, and we were heading for Stoneybrook Boulevard, where the First Annual Stoneybrook Safety Weekend festivities were about to begin. The organizers had been working really hard at it. Shelley had even postponed Friday’s class to Tuesday.

  Dawn, as you can tell, was pretty thrilled about the Disaster Drill. I was not. Pretending to be a victim was about the last thing I wanted to do.

  I’d had enough of being the real thing.

  “Don’t you think this is a little weird?” I asked. “A make-believe accident where a bunch of kids pretend to be injured?”

  “It’s a demonstration,” Stacey said. “I mean, if you saw a video on first aid, and someone was setting a broken bone or doing mouth-to-mouth, you’d be watching actors, right? So this is just like that, only live.”

  “I shall use my ahhhcting skills,” Jessi said in a dramatic voice. “Gadzooks, methinks my leg bone breaketh!”

  “Give her the hook!” Claudia shoute
d.

  “Well, I’m not going to do it,” Mallory declared. “I’ll just watch.”

  “Me, neither,” Stacey agreed. “A Disaster Drill? It reminds me of the dentist.”

  “Hey, where’s your team spirit?” Claudia asked. “Shelley needs us. What’s the big deal? You lie on the street, cry out for help —”

  “Lovely,” Stacey said. “Lying in all those germs in the hot sun and ruining my new summer outfit?”

  “I’ll do just about anything,” Logan said, “but I refuse to be beheaded.”

  I poked him in the ribs.

  We jabbered away until we reached Stoneybrook Boulevard. There, three entire blocks had been cordoned off.

  Police officers were erecting barricades along the curbs. Emergency medical technicians in white uniforms scurried around, shouting instructions through bullhorns. A few old cars were lined up, single file, at the end of the second block. One by one, the drivers moved forward according to the shouted directions. The first one drove slowly up a curb and stopped just short of a light pole.

  “Cool,” Jessi said. “They’re choreographing an accident.”

  A small crowd had begun to form. I spotted Kristy and her brothers among them, and we joined them.

  “Hi,” I said. “Where’s Abby?”

  “She didn’t want to come,” Kristy said, “when she found out it was going to be a car accident.”

  I felt a knot in my stomach. Poor Abby. The memories of her dad’s crash were still so strong.

  I was distracted by the sight of Shelley, running toward us in the middle of the commotion, holding a clipboard. “Oh, good, our first victims are here early!”

  “Uh, Shelley?” Stacey spoke up. “We don’t all have to do this, do we?”

  “Of course not,” Shelley replied. “We just need, oh, five or six victims so that the EMTs can demonstrate their techniques. Everything will be done slowly. Someone will be narrating each step. You’ll be actors. We’ll even have a little makeup and fake blood to spice things up a bit.”

  Gulp. Fake blood? I did not like the sound of this. Not at all.

  Shelley scanned a sheet of paper on her clipboard. “Let’s see … I’ll need a head-trauma victim, a heavy bleeder, a broken leg, a fainter, two victims in the car, front and backseats —”

  “And a paaaartridge in a peaaaar treeee!”

  The singing voice of Alan Gray was unmistakable. Like fingernails scratching a blackboard.

  “Maybe Alan can be beheaded,” Logan said.

  Alan shrugged. “Cool.”

  “It wouldn’t change anything,” Kristy muttered.

  Shelley looked at her watch. “Okay, we have some time. It’s eleven forty-five, and the predisaster festivities start at noon. The various departments are setting up booths. The police station is having an open house. The EMTs are giving demonstrations of their equipment. And some of the local stores have provided refreshments at the end of the second block. The Disaster Drill itself won’t begin until one o’clock. So let me assign volunteers first, and then you can browse around.”

  “Does the head-trauma victim scream?” Dawn asked.

  “Maybe not,” Shelley replied. “The broken leg might.”

  “Sign me up,” Dawn said.

  Shelley chuckled. “So eager. I like that. Now, how about the heavy bleeder?”

  “How about a vampire to clean it up, nyah-hah-hah!” Alan said.

  “Ah, Alan!” Shelley said. “The bleeder is a perfect role for you! Very dramatic.”

  Alan turned green. “I was kidding! I’m not going to lie in a pool of blood. Yuck!”

  “Any other volunteers?” Shelley asked.

  Silence.

  Dawn gave an exasperated sigh. “Come on, Mary Anne,” she muttered.

  “Ohhhh, no,” I said. “Uh-uh. Nope.”

  “It’s only make-believe,” Dawn whispered.

  “I know that! But —”

  “It’s kind of the starring role,” Claudia said. “People will have tears in their eyes.”

  “Then why don’t you do it?” I asked.

  “I want to be the fainter,” Claudia replied.

  “Nobody?” Shelley asked, glancing my way.

  I tried to shrink back into the crowd.

  “Mary Anne will do it!” Dawn blurted out. “Right?”

  I was flabbergasted. “Me? I —”

  “Great!” Shelley said, scribbling on the pad. “How about the passengers?”

  “I — I —” I sputtered.

  “Only one job per person, Mary Anne,” Shelley reprimanded me.

  “I’ll be a passenger!” Kristy called out.

  “Me, too!” Alan volunteered.

  “I changed my mind!” Kristy shot back.

  I stood there, totally ignored, my jaw practically scraping the ground.

  Heavy bleeder? No way. At that point, I was better suited for shock victim.

  I was in a daze. I couldn’t believe that Dawn — Dawn Schafer, my stepsister, who was supposed to love me — had betrayed me like this. Yes, I told that to her (in much nicer words). Her reaction? “You’ll be a star, Mary Anne!”

  I tried to talk to Logan about it, too. He kept saying it was no big deal.

  It’s no big deal. I kept repeating that to myself. Everybody was saying it. I needed to be brave. I needed to get over my fears. This wasn’t real blood. It wasn’t a real accident.

  I was a nervous wreck. During the “predisaster festivities” I just wandered among the booths. Aimlessly. I’m sure I said hi to a few people, but I don’t recall the details.

  Finally I decided I could not do it. I elbowed my way through the crowd toward Shelley. As I approached, she looked at her watch.

  “Shelley —” I began.

  “Thanks for reminding me, Mary Anne!” Shelley said excitedly. “Ben, here’s our bleeder! Her name is Mary Anne. Would you prepare her, please?”

  A young guy in an emergency-medical-technician uniform bounded over to me with a big smile. He was carrying an apron and a bucket of thick red liquid. “You’re going to love this,” he said.

  Ben brought me out to the street. We stopped near a car that had been parked diagonally across the road, as if it had just skidded to a stop.

  “This is water, corn starch, and food coloring,” he said. “This apron will wrap around you, but you don’t really need it. The stuff’ll come out easily in the wash. We scrubbed the pavement this morning, too.”

  “Uh-huh,” I squeaked.

  He had this eager, boy-isn’t-this-fun? look on his face as he dumped the contents of the bucket onto the street.

  It did look like blood. My stomach knotted right up.

  “I have to … lie in this?”

  He nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll put some on you, too, if you want. Make it look realistic.”

  Be brave, Mary Anne.

  I gritted my teeth, put on the apron, and lay down. The liquid felt warm and icky. I thought I was going to lose my breakfast. “Uh, don’t pour any more,” I said.

  “Okay,” Ben said, turning away. “Good luck.”

  I could see the crowd collecting behind the police barricades. Alan and Kristy were being led to one of the cars. Claudia was sitting on the road, waiting for her signal to faint. Logan, who was going to be the head-trauma victim, was deep in conversation with a nurse.

  As Dawn walked past me with an EMT, she was beaming. “Looks great!” she exclaimed.

  Me? I felt like a fool. People were staring. Jamie Newton, a four-year-old BSC charge, saw me and burst into tears.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Shelley announced, “the Stoneybrook emergency services personnel present a mock Disaster Drill, featuring the students of my first-aid class!”

  A smattering of applause rang out.

  The demonstration began with Claudia the fainter. They had to determine how badly hurt she was. Then they had to rouse her and check her vital signs.

  My attention started to fly away. I was hot. The fake blo
od was starting to dry up. And it smelled.

  I thought they’d never get to me. When they did, one of the EMT workers who handled me was shaking. She applied a tourniquet way too tightly. She was dripping sweat onto my face. And she almost dropped me off the stretcher.

  Now people were laughing — laughing! I was slowly slipping from humiliation to pure fury.

  When they finally loaded me into the back of an ambulance, a huge cheer went up.

  I didn’t care one bit.

  The EMTs congratulated me, and I politely thanked them. Inside, though, I was steaming. I took off my apron and let it drop to the floor. As I climbed out of the ambulance, I felt grimy, dirty, and sticky. Dawn was waiting for me, smiling brightly.

  “You see?” she said. “Wasn’t that fun?”

  I couldn’t even look her in the eye. “As a matter of fact,” I said, storming away, “it was one of the worst days of my life.”

  Whack!

  I slammed my bedroom door. I didn’t care if I broke the doorjamb.

  I was mad.

  Not to mention hideous. In front of my bedroom mirror, for the first time all day, I could see what I looked like.

  My hair was tangled. My left cheek had a smudge mark from the street. My shirt collar was ripped. And my forearms were caked with dried fake blood.

  I have never felt so dirty and disgusting in my life.

  This was what the people in the crowd had seen?

  No wonder they were laughing at me.

  Why did I let myself do it?

  You didn’t, I reminded myself. If Dawn hadn’t volunteered me, I would have been a nice, clean, normal spectator.

  Tigger, who had been curled up on my bed, was now on all fours, staring at me.

  Some people say animals do not have facial expressions. Well, they are so wrong. You should have been Tigger’s face. He looked horrified.

  “I know, Tiggy, it’s awful,” I said. “But it’s fake. And it’s all Dawn’s fault.”

  Tigger curled around my ankles and began licking a few flecks of the red stuff off my socks.

  I had to change clothes and wash up before Sharon and Dad came home. I grabbed a bathrobe out of my closet.

  Knock-knock-knock!

  “Mary Anne, are you okay?” came Dawn’s voice from the other side of the door.

  I swung the door open and faced her. “Does this look okay?”