Claudia and the New Girl Read online

  “You’d better choose soon, Claud, and then get cracking,” said Ms. Baehr kindly. “But I like the hand. Why not enter it?”

  “I — I want to make a statement, too,” I said with a sidelong glance at Ashley.

  Ashley smiled. I knew she was pleased that I was listening to her, my mentor.

  But Ms. Baehr sighed. “Okay, Claud.” She straightened up and walked over to Fiona McRae’s table.

  “Hey, I’m proud of you!” Ashley said to me, speaking softly so Ms. Baehr wouldn’t hear.

  “Really?” I replied, glowing.

  “Yes. And — well, I never got to tell you the idea I had this morning. We got interrupted by your, um, friends. My idea is that if you don’t want to sculpt an inanimate object, you could make a statement by sculpting a concept.”

  “What?” (There was that word again. Thank goodness someone had invented it.)

  “You know, sculpt ‘love’ or ‘peace’ or ‘brotherhood.’”

  “I …” I had absolutely no idea how to do that and no idea what to say to Ashley.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I don’t mind if you use my idea. Really.”

  “Well, I … um, I don’t know what to say. Um … I’m speechless.”

  Ashley laughed. “I think you should try it. Anyone who can see power in a stoplight ought to be able to come up with a great visual representation of a concept.”

  I cleared my throat. “Oh, right. How — how would you sculpt ‘love’?”

  “With gentle curves and tender feelings.”

  Well, that was no help.

  “Hmm,” I said. “I’ll think about it.” I turned back to my hand. What I really needed to think about was how to tell Ashley that I wasn’t going to sculpt a nonliving thing or an idea. I just couldn’t do either one. The problem was how to tell her without looking too stupid.

  “Hey, Claud?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you want to come over to my house sometime? I could show you some of the sculptures I’m working on at home. And also the studio my parents are having fixed up for me. It’s on the top floor of our house, where the best light is. I’ll be able to paint and draw and sculpt there. A whole room for my work.”

  “Gosh, that’s great!” I exclaimed. “Sure I’ll come. I’d love to see everything.”

  My doubts were replaced with excitement. Ashley, a great artist, liked me and valued me and trusted me. What else could you want in a friend?

  All right, so how many meetings do you plan to miss, Ms. Artist? How many shopping dates do you plan to skip out on? And what does “friend” mean to you, anyway? To me, it means somebody who keeps up her half of certain bargains, who keeps in touch with you — calls you from time to time and eats lunch with you. And who doesn’t LIE or BREAK DATES. It means somebody who doesn’t forget her old friends just because someone new comes along, whether that someone is a girl, or a boy as gorgeous as Max Morrison.

  I don’t feel that you’re my friend anymore. Or that you want me for yours.

  Boy, does Stacey know how to bring tears to a person’s eyes. Maybe if I’d read her entry sooner, things among us club members wouldn’t have gotten just as bad as they did. But not only had I been missing meetings, I hadn’t kept up with our club notebook.

  Furthermore, I had done something terrible to Stacey. I hadn’t meant to, exactly. But it had happened. At the end of school one day, Stacey asked me to go to the mall with her. I told her I couldn’t because I had to catch up on some English assignments. That was true. I was really (really) planning to go to the library. But on the way there I ran into Ashley, who invited me to her house. Since I needed to discuss my sculpture subject with her, I went. I forgot all about Stacey. I forgot so completely, in fact, that when I called Dawn to tell her I’d have to miss that afternoon’s meeting, I also told her why.

  That was my big mistake. (Well, one of them.)

  Let me tell you, I didn’t feel good about missing club meetings and spending so little time with my friends. But I felt great having a mentor who liked my work so much and thought I was smart and kept telling me how much artistic potential I had. When you’re a C-student who has to go to the Resource Room, “potential” is a word you don’t hear a lot, unless someone, usually a teacher or guidance counselor or one of your parents, says, “It’s really a shame. I don’t see why her grades aren’t better. She does have potential….”

  But I’m getting way off the subject. I wanted to tell you about the next meeting of the Baby-sitters Club — the next one I missed, that is. It started, as usual, with my friends coming over to my house and being greeted by Mimi. Mimi told them to go straight to my room, even though I wasn’t there. She understands how important the club is, and she really likes my friends. It might have seemed funny to Kristy, Stacey, Dawn, and Mary Anne to be in my room without me, but it was okay with Mimi.

  I had called Dawn around five o’clock that day. She had seemed quite cool, but, well, you’d think she’d enjoy the chance to be a real officer instead of just sort of an officer-in-waiting … wouldn’t you?

  She didn’t seem too thrilled, though, and told me later that as she biked over to my house for the meeting, a mean little rhyme kept running through her head:

  Traitor, traitor.

  Claudia — we hate ’er! Traitor, traitor.

  So long, see you later!

  Good-bye, Claudia.

  Dawn and Kristy reached my house first, and as soon as Mimi ushered them inside, they ran to my room. Stacey arrived next. She stood in the doorway of my room, looked at Dawn sprawled on my bed and Kristy reading the notebook, and said, “Okay, where is she?”

  “You mean Claudia?” replied Dawn.

  “Who else?”

  “She’s at Ashley’s.”

  “Ashley’s?!” Stacey’s face turned the color of a pomegranate. “That big liar! Are you sure? She told me she couldn’t go to the mall with me this afternoon because she had to study at the library.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Kristy.

  “I’m dead serious,” replied Stacey, who became so mad then that she couldn’t even speak. That was when she took our notebook (grabbed it right out of Kristy’s hands) and started writing all that stuff about friendship.

  Mary Anne showed up at five-thirty on the dot. “Hi, you gu —” she started to say. Then she narrowed her eyes. “Is she missing again?” she asked.

  “Ha,” said Kristy. “Very good, Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Hey, don’t snap at me,” retorted Mary Anne, sticking up for herself for once. “I didn’t skip another meeting. I’m here on time.”

  “Sorry,” said Kristy contritely.

  “You know what I feel like doing?” said Stacey, setting the diary aside. “I feel like raiding Claudia’s junk food. It would serve her right if she came back and found we’d eaten everything.”

  “But you can’t eat that stuff!” Dawn exclaimed.

  “I can eat some of it,” Stacey replied. “I can eat her pretzels and her crackers — not too many, of course. And I know where they’re hidden. Pretzels in that old pajama bag, crackers in the Monopoly box.”

  “I wouldn’t mind eating up some of her stuff,” said Kristy with a slow grin. “Let’s see, she’s got marshmallows in that shoe box and licorice sticks under her mattress.”

  “I’ll even help you eat that junk,” said Dawn, making, for her, a supreme sacrifice.

  “Well, I’ll help, too,” said Mary Anne. “And, hey! After we’re done? We should take whatever’s left and put it back in the wrong places!”

  My friends began giggling but had to calm down when the phone rang three times with job calls. When the sitters were all lined up, Stacey began raiding my junk food. She tossed the licorice sticks to Mary Anne, the marshmallows to Kristy, the pretzels to Dawn, and took the crackers for herself. My friends ate for a while, then stopped to switch food. Dawn actually wolfed down three marshmallows, but then made a big deal out of having to rinse her mouth out so she wouldn
’t get cavities.

  When they couldn’t eat anymore, Stacey said, “Okay, now take what’s left and put it away — where it doesn’t belong.”

  Mary Anne stuffed the bag with the few remaining marshmallows in one of my sneakers.

  Kristy stuck the licorice sticks into the back of a bureau drawer.

  Dawn hid the crackers in a purse I don’t use anymore.

  And Stacey saw my old black fedora on the shelf in my closet and put the pretzels underneath it.

  Then my friends began laughing hysterically.

  (That night, it took me almost an hour to find everything. Plus, a bag of Doritos is still missing, but no one will tell me if they had anything to do with that.)

  The club members had to calm down, though, when Mrs. Perkins called needing a sitter for Myriah and Gabbie, and Mrs. Delaney called needing a sitter for Amanda and Max.

  But as soon as that business was taken care of, Kristy said, “Let’s short-sheet her bed!” They didn’t even use my name anymore. They just called me “she” or “her” and knew who they meant.

  So Kristy and Mary Anne short-sheeted my bed. Was I ever mad that night when I discovered what they’d done! I was dead tired because I’d stayed up late trying to catch up on my homework and read The Twenty-One Balloons (another Newbery book). By the time I was ready to go to bed, I was so sleepy I could barely turn my comforter back. When I did, and I slid between the sheets, my legs only went halfway down. I kicked around. I couldn’t imagine what was wrong. Finally I lifted up my comforter and looked. I couldn’t believe it! Pinned to the sheet was a note that read: Ha, ha! Sleep tight!

  It wasn’t the only note I found. That was because while Kristy and Mary Anne had been working on my bed that afternoon, Stacey had said, “Hey, Dawn, let’s hide some notes for Claudia to find.”

  “Notes? What kind of notes?”

  “Mean ones.”

  Stacey ripped a sheet of paper out of the club notebook. Then she stopped to think, tapping a pencil against her mouth. Finally she wrote: Roses are red, violets are blue, traitors are jerks, and so are you.

  “Now what?” asked Dawn.

  “I think I’ll put it under her pillow.”

  Dawn grinned. Then she tore a piece of paper out of the book and wrote down the rhyme she’d made up earlier. I found that note in my jewelry box.

  It was Kristy’s idea to hide a blank piece of paper under Lennie, my rag doll.

  “What for?” asked Stacey.

  “To drive her crazy. She’ll wonder if we used invisible ink, or maybe wrote something so mean we had to erase it.”

  Stacey began giggling. But she had to get herself under control when the phone rang. A new client was calling. Stacey took down the information we needed and got the man squared away with a sitter for his twin girls. Then she said, very seriously, “You guys, why do you think Ashley Wyeth wants Claudia to be her friend so badly?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Mary Anne, after a pause. “She just wants a friend, doesn’t she? She’s new here. She doesn’t know anyone.”

  “I guess what I mean is, why only Claudia? Doesn’t it seem that she wants just one friend and that friend is Claudia?”

  “Yeah,” said Dawn slowly. “I see what you mean, Stace. When I first moved here, I wanted friends — in general. It was great when you and I got to know each other, Mary Anne, but it wasn’t like I wanted just one friend and once I had you I was happy. I was really glad when you introduced me to the rest of the club. I had a bunch of friends in California, and when we moved, I hoped I’d have a bunch in Connecticut, too.”

  “Exactly,” said Stacey. “I felt the same way when I moved from New York. I met Claud first and we’re still best friends … I think. But I was really happy to meet all of you, too. Plus Pete and Howie and Dori and everyone we ate lunch with last year. But Ashley doesn’t seem to want any friends except Claud.”

  “Yeah, she hardly ever speaks to us,” added Dawn.

  “She doesn’t pay much attention to anyone but Claudia. She doesn’t talk to other kids, either. If she didn’t eat lunch with Claudia,” said Stacey, “I’m sure she’d eat alone.”

  “Ashley’s in my gym class,” spoke up Mary Anne. “She’s always alone. You know, I think all Ashley really cares about is art, and she’s found a good artist in Claudia. Maybe Claudia is sort of a project for Ashley.” Mary Anne paused, putting her hands in her lap and staring down at them. “Oh, I’m not explaining myself very well.”

  “You’re explaining yourself fine,” said Stacey. “What you just said is that Ashley likes Claud because she’s an artist, not because she’s Claud. And if that’s true, I’m beginning to wonder just how good a friend Ashley Wyeth is.”

  “Whoops,” said Jackie Rodowsky.

  You know how I’d be absolutely lost without the word what? Well, Jackie would be absolutely lost without whoops, oops, and uh-oh.

  I hadn’t really been doing much baby-sitting lately. Since I kept missing meetings, I wasn’t signed up for many jobs. But I’d been signed up for this afternoon with the Rodowsky boys for quite some time, and to tell you the truth, I’d really been looking forward to it. Jackie might be accident-prone, but whenever his mother comes home and finds something broken or a spill on the carpet or a Band-Aid on Jackie’s finger, she never minds. Well, of course she’s concerned if Jackie hurts himself, but she never gives me, as the baby-sitter, any grief. I guess she’s used to such things.

  Besides, there’s something about Jackie’s freckles and his shock of red hair and his great big grin with one tooth missing that always makes me want to grin, too. Even if Jackie’s holding out a toy he’s broken or is coming to tell me he’s just accidentally poured glue over the telephone.

  So I had looked forward to sitting for the Rodowskys that day. Nevertheless, I glanced up warily at the sound of Jackie’s “whoops” that afternoon. I knew it meant trouble of some sort. I was in the kitchen rinsing off dishes from the boys’ afternoon snack. As I shut off the water, I heard the vacuum cleaner being turned off.

  “Jackie?” I called. “Archie? Shea?”

  “Um, we’re in the dining room,” said Shea as the vacuum cleaner whined into silence. Shea sounded as if he were admitting to the Great Train Robbery.

  I dashed into the dining room. There I found Jackie peering into the hose of the vacuum cleaner as Shea and Archie looked on guiltily. All three boys were barefoot. Their shoes were lined up under the dining room table.

  “What is going on?” I asked, trying not to sound too exasperated.

  “We tried a speriment,” said Jackie. “And guess what? You can vacuum up socks.”

  “Socks?!” I exclaimed. “Did you vacuum up all of your socks?”

  “Six of ’em,” said Archie. “Three pairs, six socks.”

  I groaned.

  “We didn’t mean to, exactly,” spoke up Shea. “They were in a pile. We thought maybe the vacuum would just get one, but they all went. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh,” he said, demonstrating with his hands.

  “Shea, really. You’re the oldest,” I said, knowing that didn’t mean a thing. (Why should it?)

  “It was Jackie’s idea,” he countered.

  “Well, what did you plan to do about your sock if it was vacuumed up?” I asked Jackie.

  “See what happened to it,” he replied simply.

  This wasn’t getting us anywhere. “All right,” I said, sighing. “The next thing to do is find the socks.”

  “Goody!” cried Jackie, jumping up and down. “I wonder what they’ll look like.”

  “Maybe the Vacuum Monster attacked them. Maybe they’ll be all chewed up,” suggested Archie.

  I was just dying to ask Archie what he thought the Vacuum Monster was, but I didn’t want to start anything. Instead, I lifted the cover of the vacuum, pulled out the dusty bag at the back, and headed into the kitchen with it. The boys trailed behind me.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Jackie.
/>
  “Cut it open and see what’s inside,” I replied.

  “Awesome,” said Shea.

  I took a look. Nothing but a cloud of dust.

  “Ew, gross,” said Jackie, and sneezed.

  I threw the bag away and returned to the vacuum cleaner. I noticed that the boys hadn’t put an attachment on the end of the hose. Gingerly I reached into the hose as far as possible, which really wasn’t very far, and withdrew my hand, a sock between my fingers. The sock was rumpled but otherwise fine.

  The Rodowskys looked on in surprise.

  “I wonder why the Vacuum Monster didn’t want it,” said Archie.

  “Some experiment,” commented Shea.

  It took more than fifteen minutes, but after poking, prodding, and digging around with a pair of toast tongs, I managed to remove all the socks from the hose.

  “Will you guys promise me something?” I said as they put their socks and shoes back on.

  “What?” asked Jackie.

  “That you won’t use the vacuum again without asking me first.”

  “Promise,” they replied.

  “Thank you. Now let’s do something fun.”

  “Let’s watch Sesame Street,” said Archie.

  “Wouldn’t you rather play a game?” I asked.

  “Red Light, Green Light!” cried Jackie. “Please, Claudia?”

  “Well …” I replied, remembering my vow not to play stupid games in the Rodowskys’ front yard anymore.

  “Puh-lease?” added Archie. “That was fun. Can I be the policeman?”

  I hadn’t even answered the boys and already they were racing for the front door.

  I followed them. Red Light, Green Light it would be. That was my responsibility as their baby-sitter.

  Jackie threw the front door open. Standing on the stoop was Ashley, her hand poised to ring the bell.

  Despite the fact that the boys had been somewhat awed by her the first time they met her, Jackie began jumping up and down. “Hi!” he cried. “We’re going to play Red Light, Green Light again. You want to play?”

  He pushed open the screen door and squeezed by Ashley, jumping down the steps (and narrowly missing the hedge that lined the front walk).