Claudia's Friend Read online

  Checking herself in the hall mirror, she made a face. “Oh, lord,” she breathed. Still, it was worth it for Bart. After all, look at the trouble he was going to with those notes.

  When Kristy reached Bart’s house, he was shooting baskets at the hoop attached to the side of the garage.

  “Kristy, hey!” Bart waved to her to join him. She stood by him as he looped a shot toward the basket. It bounced once on the rim and went in.

  “You’re the best,” said Kristy, giving Bart a Significant Look.

  Bart grinned. “I wouldn’t say that. Here, you want to play? How about twenty-one?”

  “You are nice,” Kristy tried again.

  Bart looked a little puzzled. “I guess,” he said. “You want to go first?”

  Then he noticed what Kristy was wearing. “Hey! Are you going someplace special? Why are you all dressed up?”

  Kristy felt her face turning red. “I just felt like it, I guess.”

  “Can you play dressed like that?” asked Bart. Then he added hastily, “I mean, it looks good and everything, but …”

  “I can play,” said Kristy quickly. She picked up the ball and began to dribble it.

  After the game, which Kristy almost won, Bart said, “I guess you can play basketball dressed like that. Want to play another game?”

  “Thanks, but I have to get home for lunch. See ya.”

  “Later,” said Bart. “Good game.”

  “You, too,” replied Kristy.

  She hurried home and changed into her regular clothes before joining her family for lunch. She was embarrassed by what had happened, even if Bart hadn’t seemed to notice much. Also, she was no closer to finding out who was sending the BSC notes.

  Time can go pretty fast even if you’re not having fun. It was Monday afternoon again (already), one week since I’d gotten the bad news about English, one week closer to the English test, and less than a week since my best friend had turned into the tutor monster.

  And despite the tutoring, I still had the uneasy feeling I was going to flunk the test. Fail. Underachieve to the max.

  I tried to try to think things through calmly. Claudia, I told myself, take a deep breath and imagine the worst thing that could happen. Fear of the unknown and the imagined is worse than fear of the known, right? (I mean, look at all those horror movies about something lurking in the lake, woods, camp, or haunted house.)

  So I took a deep breath and visualized: me, sitting in the resource room, surrounded by people who hated being there as much as I did and who, no doubt just like me, would also be on all kinds of probation, like no baby-sitting club until their grades improved, no going out with their friends, no going to the mall, no art, no leaving their rooms, allowed to eat only bread and water and possibly green vegetables….

  Okay, so I was exaggerating a little bit. Unfortunately, visualizing the worst did not make me feel any better.

  Then I remembered my journals. Maybe writing some of my fears down would help. If I could put them on paper, maybe I could put them out of my mind. Sometimes that worked for a drawing or a painting. Only you know what? I’m never quite satisfied. I always finish a piece and think, I can do better than that. I know I can. I guess that’s why I keep trying.

  I pulled out my journals and flipped open the official one. Each entry was neatly dated. And pretty short. I mean, how much can you write about the weather, what you ate for lunch at school, what you gossiped about at the BSC meetings, what you wore to school, and that kind of thing. Yawn. Big double yawn. But no way was I going to write real stuff down and let Stacey read it and act like the Evil Alien Teacher and put red marks and corrections all over it.

  Besides, looking up practically every single word in the dictionary was a real pain.

  I made a quick entry in the Official Journal:

  Good. That was done with. I snuck a look at the clock. I had time before the meeting to write in my other journal, too.

  I left the real journal on my desk with all my other books and pulled the other one out from the bottom of my desk drawer.

  I wrote the date and time at the top, thought for a second, and then started writing.

  Hastily I closed my diary and stuck it in the drawer. Then I checked the clock. Wow. Whoever it was had arrived way early.

  The door opened and my heart sank. It was Stacey. She smiled and held up her English book. “I knew you weren’t sitting today, and I didn’t have a job either, so I decided to come over early for a little extra tutoring.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I managed to say. But I was thinking, How pushy. She could have at least asked me if I wanted to study.

  “No problem,” said Stacey. “Come on, get your stuff and let’s go to the kitchen.”

  “But the meeting! I mean, do we have enough time?”

  “Plenty of time if you hurry up. Get everything together and I’ll meet you downstairs.” Stacey looked at her watch. “You have three minutes.”

  Well, I didn’t need three minutes. I slammed everything together as loudly as I could before Stacey was halfway down the hall. And I dropped all my stuff pretty loudly on the kitchen table when I got there.

  “Come on, Claudia,” said Stacey impatiently. “Get it together. Let me see your journal.”

  I handed her the journal and plopped down in the chair across the table from her. Stacey flipped it open, picked up a pencil (and it was red) and began to read.

  I felt a smug expression forming on my face. Let her find any mistakes! Nearly every word was dictionary approved.

  “Hmm,” said Stacey. She read quickly through the journal, flipped back to the beginning — and began to write all over it in red!

  I watched in disbelief. Then I said, “Hey.”

  “Hmm?” said Stacey again, busily red-lining away.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Correcting your mistakes, Claud, what do you think?”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, like ‘it’s.’ ”

  “What about it? I mean, ‘its’?” I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “Look,” said Stacey. She held the journal so I could see it. “It has an apostrophe in it.”

  “That is only for possessive stuff,” I said triumphantly. “Like if you said, ‘Claudia’s journal.’ Look, I’ll show you.”

  But before I could find the section in my English book, Stacey shook her head in a really maddening, smugly superior way. “Nope. That rule doesn’t apply to the possessive of ‘its.’ You only use an apostrophe when you want to shorten ‘it is.’ Think of the apostrophe as replacing the ‘i’ in ‘is.’ ”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard! It’s inconsistent. How am I supposed to learn to spell anything if they keep changing the rules?”

  “It’s not a hard rule to remember,” said Stacey impatiently. She bent her head over my journal and her hand flew across the pages, making notes and circles and x’s.

  When she was finished, my perfect journal looked like it was the victim of a notebook murder.

  I was steaming. And thinking about a little tutor murder, frankly.

  It was a good thing the front door slammed when it did.

  I looked at my watch (surprisingly enough, Stacey hadn’t made me take it off to prevent it from distracting me) and said, “Five twenty-nine. That must be Kristy.”

  “Okay. We can stop,” said Stacey.

  “Thanks,” I muttered sarcastically.

  Soon everybody was assembled in my room, the phone was ringing, Mary Anne was scheduling appointments for all of us (except me) and I was drowning my troubles in a dark chocolate Snickers bar.

  At 5:45 Dawn checked her watch. Then she looked at me. “Where’s Janine?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t know. She has a meeting at school or something. I think.”

  “Well, I’m going to go check your front door.” Dawn stood up and dashed downstairs. A minute later she returned, a white envelope held triumphantly aloft in her hand.
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  “Another note!” said Kristy.

  “Oooh,” said Mary Anne, clasping her hands together.

  “Just like the others,” announced Dawn. “Same envelope and” (she opened the envelope and unfolded the piece of paper) “same kind of paper.”

  “What does it say?” asked Mallory.

  “ ‘You are the greatest,’ ” read Dawn.

  “I knew it,” said Stacey.

  “Knew what?” I snapped. It was the first time during the meeting that I’d spoken to her.

  “That it’s from Sam, of course. I’m positive it’s from Sam.”

  “You really think so?” asked Jessi. “Why?”

  Before Stacey could answer, I exploded. “For you? From Sam? Give me a break! Who died and left you the only person on earth who could get a note from someone?”

  “What?” said Stacey.

  “Oh, that’s right. You are the greatest. It’s — let me spell that for you, such a simple rule, really, I-t-, apostrophe for the letter i, s — it’s obvious to all of us that you are the greatest one here. So it must be for you.”

  By the time I’d finished, Stacey’s face was the color of her correcting pencil. And she exploded right back at me: “Well, excuse me, Claudia Kishi! Excuse me for trying to help you! Excuse me for expecting you to want to work on passing English. Excuse me for being your friend!”

  “You’re excused,” I replied. “So why don’t you just go!” I got up and marched to the door of my room and flung it open.

  Stacey didn’t say another word. She just grabbed her backpack and stormed out.

  Everyone else sat there like life-sized soft sculptures, in various poses that could be labeled everything from “shock” (Mary Anne) to “amazement” (Kristy).

  The phone rang. Kristy looked at it, frowned at it, then picked it up. “Baby-sitters Club,” she said.

  I stared stonily out my window as Kristy and Mary Anne arranged one more job for the day.

  Then I looked at my watch. Very pointedly.

  Kristy checked hers. “Six o’clock. This meeting is officially adjourned.”

  Murmuring polite good-byes, everybody walked quietly out the door.

  “Good-bye,” I said as the door shut behind Mallory, who was the last to leave.

  I reached in my drawer, pulled out my secret journal, picked up my pen, and really let Stacey have it.

  It was raining. Which about matched my mood. But a good baby-sitter doesn’t take her moods to work, so I tried to put mine to one side and concentrate on the Rodowskys.

  Actually, I didn’t really have to concentrate on Jackie and Archie. They’d hung around for a little while, making suggestions about snacks and snacktime (the snacks they suggested were only possible by driving to the mall and hitting the Ben & Jerry’s), while trying to decide if it was ever going to stop raining so they could go outside.

  After asking me for the tenth time if I thought the rain would stop (and after my answering that I didn’t know when, but I hoped soon), Jackie grabbed Archie by the sleeve and dragged him off to play in the rec room. So all I had to do was listen for any ominous crashes.

  Shea, who looked like I felt as he sat in an armchair by the window, his elbow on one arm of the chair and his chin in his hand, staring out at the rain, finally heaved an enormous sigh. “Well, I better go start my homework,” he said. “It’ll probably take about ten hours, since I’m so stupid.”

  I almost said cheerfully, “Oh, Shea, you’re not stupid. You just …” etc, etc, etc. But I didn’t. Possibly my bad mood acted like kind of a truth serum.

  Anyway, instead of joining the chorus of people telling Shea how smart he was (despite what must have seemed like proof to the contrary) I sighed myself. Deeply.

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “Not that you are stupid. I don’t believe that is true. And I don’t believe I am stupid, either. But it takes me hours to do my homework, too. Unless I just decide to skip it.”

  “I wish I could skip it,” Shea answered. “But people keep checking up on me.” He glanced at me, looking a little suspicious, and a little puzzled. “Anyway, it should take you hours to do your homework. You’re in eighth grade. I’m only in fourth.”

  “Not true,” I answered. “No matter what grade you’re in, it is not supposed to take you mega-hours to do your homework. At least, I don’t think it is.” I paused for a minute, then said, “You know, Shea, I should have told you this before, the last time I was here with you guys … I’m having a terrible time in school. If I don’t pass my next English test, I might even fail English. And that means I’ll have to go to the resource room. Back to it, I mean. I’ve been there before.”

  Shea turned away from the window and stared at me. “Really?”

  “Yup. People are always telling me I’m smart and I should do well in school and I should try harder. But it just doesn’t work that way. I’m good in some things, but school isn’t one of them. Ask me about other things, such as art. I’m excellent in those subjects.”

  “Me, too. I mean, I’m a pretty good athlete.”

  “Good? You’re great. I’ve seen you playing ball with Jackie and Archie.”

  Shea thought about that for a minute. Then he smiled a little. “Yeah, I am pretty good,” he said.

  “I wish I could do my English homework like you play baseball,” I told him. “Then this test would be a snap. And I wouldn’t have to spend all my free time being tutored for it, either.”

  “You have a tutor?” Shea’s voice rose in surprise. He looked around, but Jackie and Archie were nowhere to be seen. Shea lowered his voice. “I hate having a tutor. The one I have at school is so cheerful. He always says ‘good’ even when my work isn’t.”

  “My tutor,” I said, “never says ‘good.’ She just bosses me around. It’s a real pain. She’s even making me keep a journal and she corrects all the mistakes and spelling in it.”

  “You have trouble spelling?”

  “You better believe it,” I said fervently.

  “Me, too! Hey, Claudia?”

  “Hey, Shea, what?”

  “Would you — could you help me with my homework today? Not all of it, but maybe my spelling?”

  I couldn’t believe it. Someone was asking me, Claudia Lynn Kishi, for help with spelling. But I stayed calm. Outwardly. “Okay. I could do that. But,” I added as Shea and I went to find his books, “only if I can see the words. Otherwise, I probably won’t know how to spell them!”

  And Shea actually laughed.

  We got Shea’s spelling lists and settled down in the living room. “How do you want to do this?” I asked.

  “You say the word and I’ll write it down. Then we check to see if I spelled it right.”

  Shea handed me the list. Slowly we worked our way down it. I have to confess, I was surprised. First, I thought the words were pretty hard, especially for a fourth-grader. Second, I could spell a lot of them anyway — I even remembered some of them from looking them up nineteen million times for my official journal. Third, Shea was good. Very slow, though. He’d learned some new rules for spelling, and often he would just write a letter down and stare at it, before putting it into a word, but he got a lot of those words right.

  “Peace,” I said, reaching the last word. “Like in ‘peace and quiet.’ ”

  P wrote Shea, only he wrote it backwards. I almost said something. But I didn’t. “P points toward the end,” Shea muttered. He erased the P and wrote it facing the other way. Then he wrote the rest of the word very carefully, very slowly.

  And exactly right.

  “Shea, that’s great!” I cried. Then I paused, a little embarrassed. “Um, how did you know it was spelled ‘e-a-c-e’?”

  Shea understood what I meant. “You mean the ‘e’ coming before the ‘a’?”

  “Uh-huh. Is that a rule, too?”

  “Nope.” Shea grinned mischievously. “But you know what? It almost always does, so I just always put it down that way. I’m usually righ
t.”

  I was really impressed that he’d taken the time to figure that out. And that he’d been able to.

  “What about ‘piece’ like in ‘a piece of cake’?”

  Shea quoted, “ ‘I’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c.’ Only I’m never sure if an ‘i’ is even supposed to be in the word. It would make more sense to spell it p-e-c-e.”

  “True. Listen,” I said impulsively, “would you help me with my spelling?”

  “You mean I get to be the teacher?”

  “Yes.” I handed Shea a magazine. “Pick some words out and help me learn to spell them.”

  Shea looked at the magazine I’d chosen. Seventeen. “How about Sports Illustrated, instead?” he suggested.

  “You can choose your magazines, I get to choose mine,” I declared.

  “Oh, all right,” said Shea, grinning. He opened the magazine. “Peach,” he said.

  “Peach?” I repeated.

  “It’s the color of a nail polish,” explained Shea.

  “Oh,” I said. “P …” I looked at Shea. I thought about using two ‘e’s. I remembered Shea’s rule. “E-a.”

  I stopped. Shea nodded.

  “T-c-h,” I muttered. No. That didn’t sound right.

  “Think of other words that sound like it,” suggested Shea.

  “Reach,” I said. “Teach.”

  “Beach,” said Shea.

  “Beach? I know how to spell beach,” I said.

  “Peach?” asked Shea.

  “The same!” I said triumphantly. “P-e-a-c-h.”

  “Yes!” Shea dropped the magazine and pumped both fists in the air as if I’d just hit a home run.

  After that I hardly noticed the rain, or the relative p-e-a-c-e at Jackie and Archie’s end of the house. And by the time they’d returned to the den to make some more snack suggestions (it really was snacktime by now), I’d started feeling a little better about my creative spelling abilities. Shea had been a huge help.

  When Mrs. Rodowsky came home, Shea had finished his homework. We met her in the front hall, like before, but the vibes between Shea and me were a lot better.