Stacey's Mistake Read online

  Another crisis had passed.

  “Thank you, Dawn,” I said gratefully. “You know how I feel about …”

  “The B-word?” suggested Dawn. We laughed. “I may be nervous about the city,” she went on, “but I can handle a little, um, B. Anyway, she didn’t get sick.”

  “But she might have,” I said, shuddering.

  “Hey, let’s get going!” cried Mary Anne. “There’s a whole park to explore, and we’ve got to take these kids home in an hour or so.”

  By now we were so relaxed that we let the kids run ahead of us. My friends and I linked arms and followed them. The Baby-sitters Club was together again.

  Dear Janine —

  Hi, how are you? I’me fine. We whent to Centrle park today and saw a clock and whent to the childrens zoo. Remerber when you read Stewart little to me we saw the boat pond where he had his scarry advertiure. We saw a stachew of Alice in wonderland. The kids climed all over it. They were allowed to. I’ll be home by the time you get this postcrad. I hop you had a good weekend.

  Love,

  Your sister Claudia

  It had been a long time since I’d just wandered through the park. Usually my friends and I go tearing through it to get to the east side of the city. I hardly ever wander around looking, the way I used to do when I was a kid.

  But that was how we spent the rest of our time in the park. First we ambled west until we came to —

  “The merry-go-round!” Leslie shrieked. “There it is! Please please please please please can we ride it?” She jumped up and down on those little legs of hers that looked like they couldn’t support a mosquito.

  The carousel costs next to nothing to ride, so I paid for the ten kids. Then, as an afterthought, I gave the man enough money for five more fares.

  “Come on, you guys,” I said to the members of the Baby-sitters Club. “We’re riding, too.”

  My friends looked doubtful at first. Then they grinned and scrambled for horses. So there we were, bobbing up and down on a carousel in the middle of a park. I felt like I was in Mary Poppins (which, by the way, is my favorite movie ever). It was as if Mary Poppins and Jane and Michael Banks and I had jumped into one of Bert’s chalk drawings on a London sidewalk and were riding the carousel in a make-believe world.

  “Stacey?” said Mary Anne, interrupting my daydream.

  “Yeah?” (I was afraid she was going to spout some fact, like how old the carousel was, or how much it had cost to create, or how many horses were on it.)

  But all she said was, “This is really fun. I’m glad we came to the park today.”

  “Me, too,” I replied.

  The carousel wound down, and the older kids reluctantly slid off their horses. My friends and I helped the younger ones climb down, and then we set off again.

  “I didn’t know the park was so big,” commented Kristy.

  “And you haven’t even seen half of it,” I told her.

  “Here are the checker-people!” called Henry suddenly.

  “The checker-people?” I repeated, and then I realized what he meant. We’d come to a group of tables, sort of like picnic tables — with benches attached to the sides. Only these tables aren’t as long as picnic tables and the tops are very special. They’ve got checkerboards built right into them. A lot of old people, and some not-so-old people, bring their checkers or chess sets to the tables in nice weather and enjoy games and company.

  Blair Barrera tugged at my hand. I looked down at him.

  He indicated that he wanted to whisper something to me, so I leaned over.

  “They’re very serious,” he said, nodding toward Henry’s checker-people.

  He was right. A lot of the players had brought along clocks or stopwatches so they could put time limits on their moves. They sat at those tables in silence, concentrating as hard as if they were taking IQ tests.

  So the players were not pleased when Leslie suddenly shrieked, “Cut it out! Stop that, Cissy. Stop that! You are an old toad!”

  “I am not. You are,” Cissy retorted. “Because I’m rubber and you’re glue, and whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you. Nyah, nyah, nyah.”

  “Unh-unh,” sang Leslie, hands on hips. “I’m rubber and you’re glue.”

  “No, I’m rubber —”

  “You guys!” I cried desperately.

  Four checkers players and two chess players were glaring at us. I felt as if we had just screamed in a library.

  “Come on,” I whispered to my friends. “Let’s get the kids out of here.”

  We hurried along a path that wound down a little hill, and found ourselves in a wide-open area. A group of kids were playing softball. Two guys were tossing a Frisbee back and forth.

  Claudia burst out laughing.

  “What?” I asked.

  “There’s a dog playing Frisbee!” she cried, pointing to a German shepherd just as it leaped into the air, expertly catching a Frisbee thrown by its master. “And it’s a better player than I am!”

  We walked and walked. By the time we reached the boat pond, the kids were looking tired and us baby-sitters were feeling tired. We sat down on some benches. There was plenty to watch. For one thing, this golden retriever kept diving into the pond for a swim, leaping out, shaking himself off all over whoever was nearby, and diving in again.

  Then Carlos spoke up. “I wish I had my boat with me.”

  “Do you have one of those boats?” asked Dennis enviously.

  “Those” boats are specially powered sailboats and sloops that can be controlled from the shore. Their owners turn them loose in the pond and then direct them here and there, running back and forth at the edge of the water, making the boats zigzag and loop, using the remote controls to keep them from crashing into each other. They’re sort of like bumper cars, except you can’t ride in them; you can only watch.

  “Sure I’ve got one,” replied Carlos. “Don’t you?”

  “No,” said Dennis. “I want one, though. Has yours ever been in an accident?”

  “Only about a million of them. It survived.”

  “Like Stuart Little,” added Peggie Upchurch.

  “Who’s Stuart Little?” asked Sean.

  “Who’s Stuart Little?” repeated Peggie, looking alarmed.

  “Peggie, not everyone reads as much as you do,” said her older sister.

  “I read plenty!” protested Sean.

  “Then you should know who Stuart Little is,” said Peggie.

  “I don’t know who he is,” spoke up Leslie.

  “Me neither,” said Grace softly.

  “Perfect,” I replied. “Then I’ll tell you who he is. He’s a mouse. A man named E. B. White wrote a book about him.”

  “Is he real?” asked Leslie, wide-eyed.

  “Who? E. B. White?” said Kristy.

  “No! Stuart Little.”

  “He’s made up,” Kristy told her, and pulled Leslie into her lap for the story.

  “Stuart,” I began, “was sort of a surprise. He was a mouse who was born to human parents, Mr. and Mrs. Little. They were expecting a baby, of course, but they got this mouse. The Little family lived right here in New York City, and one day Stuart took himself over here, to this very pond.”

  I told the kids about Stuart’s adventure in the pond, and the wind that blew up, and his scare. Even the kids, like Peggie, who had heard or read the story several times already, listened dreamily. (Partly because they were tired, I think, but who cares?)

  When I finished the story I said, “I think it’s time to start for home, kids. We don’t have to be back for a while, but we’ve got to walk all the way through the park again, and that’s going to take some time.”

  “Aw, Stacey, do we have to?” whined Cissy.

  “Yes, we do,” I told her. I wasn’t sure if she was whining because she didn’t want to leave the park or because she didn’t want to walk home. At any rate, I told her to climb up for a piggyback ride. Kristy did the same with Grace, Dawn did the same with
Leslie, Mary Anne did the same with Henry, and Claudia did the same with Sean. We set off.

  Soon we stopped by the Alice in Wonderland statue and let the kids climb on it. Then we walked on. We passed roller skaters and a man who was performing magic tricks. But we never saw the crouching panther. I’d forgotten where it was; I remembered only that it was on a route Laine and I used to take when we would rent skates and go careening around the park.

  By the time we were nearing the west side of the park and Eighty-first Street, the piggyback riders were walking again and the ten kids were ahead of us baby-sitters. They were huddling together and whispering.

  “They’re up to something,” I said to Claud, nudging her. “I just know it.”

  “Well, we’re lucky,” she replied. “Whatever it is, it’s quiet.”

  Famous last words. Just as she finished speaking, and just as I was about to yell ahead to the kids not to cross Central Park West without us, they turned around and began singing loudly, “For they are jolly good sitters, for they are jolly good sitters, for they are jolly good sit-ters, which nobody can deny.” (Except for Grace, who sang, “For they are jelly good sitters, which nobody can peny.”)

  I’m sure my face turned red. Kristy’s did. And so did Claudia’s, Mary Anne’s and Dawn’s. A bunch of people were nearby, watching and smiling. At first I wanted to hurry the kids across the street and home, away from our audience. Then I thought, How come everything embarrasses me so much? How come this embarrasses me? It’s cute. The kids are doing this because they like us and they had a good time today.

  “Thanks, you guys!” I called, running to catch up with the kids.

  “Yeah, thanks!” cried my friends.

  And the fifteen of us formed our Madeline lines again and crossed the street, tired and happy. We took a left and hup-two’d down the sidewalk. We turned onto my street and passed Judy.

  Blair decided to try again. “Hup, two!” he said to Judy.

  “Hup, two!” she replied. Then she noticed me and added, “Hello, Missy.”

  Blair grinned.

  We marched to our building, past James and Isaac and Lloyd, into the elevator, and rose up and up. Our adventure was over.

  Dear Logan,

  As Claudia would say, “Oh, my lord!” You will not believe what we did last night. We had the most glamorous, exciting Saturday night in the history of the universe. We went to a Broadway play. We sat right in the middle of the theater, up close. And we ate dinner out - just the five of us, plus Stacey’s friend Laine. And we RODE IN A LIMO. (Limo is short for limousine.) We really did. This is the truth. Uh-oh, I’ve run out of room, so I’ll have to tell you the rest when we get back.

  Love,

  Mary Anne

  After what happened between Laine and Claudia the night before, I would never have believed that we’d spend Saturday evening with Laine. But we did. And what an evening it was. Did we ever have fun! You know one reason I had so much fun? Because I pretended I was a tourist, not a native New Yorker. I saw everything through new eyes. But before I go any further, let me tell you how the evening came about, and how our baby-sitting adventure ended.

  When we reached my apartment, we found it full of people. All the parents were there, waiting for their kids. The meeting had ended earlier, and everyone was talking about the homeless problem. They stopped when we came in, though, and for a few moments, there was pandemonium.

  Grace literally threw herself at her mother. The Deluca kids chattered away nonstop. Leslie announced, “I almost threw up, but didn’t.”

  Mrs. Reames looked horrified. “Did you eat something with wheat in it?” she cried. She was talking to Leslie but looking at me — accusingly.

  “No, no,” I said hurriedly.” A little too much ice cream, I think. On top of too much excitement.”

  Henry chose that moment to say to his father, “I got lost! But then I got found.”

  Mary Anne told Mr. Walker what had happened in the museum.

  For the most part, the kids were excited and enthusiastic, so their parents were pleased. When everyone left, Mom and Dad and my friends and I collapsed in the living room. My parents seemed as tired as we did.

  “The meeting was very long,” said Mom.

  “But productive,” added Dad. “We made a lot of headway. We came up with some plans that should start to help Judy and the other homeless people around here. For one thing, we’re going to open a soup kitchen.”

  “One of the churches is going to help us, too,” Mom was saying when the phone rang.

  I answered it in the kitchen. “Hello?”

  “Hi, it’s me.” Laine.

  “Hi!” I replied. I know Laine had said she would call, but considering how badly the party had gone, I was a little surprised to hear from her.

  “How was the baby-sitting?” she asked.

  I told her about our adventure.

  Then Laine went on, “Well, guess what. You won’t believe this.” She paused dramatically. “I’m not sure whether to tell you about this, but, well, Dad got free tickets — house seats, excellent ones — to Starlight Express. They’re for tonight. He and Mom don’t want to go, so he offered them to me. This may be a bad idea, but would you and your friends like to go to the play? He could get six seats, all together. And he’d order us the limo. I don’t know about Claudia, but I feel awful about last night, and I’d kind of like to start over.”

  I should explain a few things here. One, Laine’s father is a big-time producer of Broadway plays. That’s how the Cummingses got enough money to move into the Dakota, and that’s why Laine’s father is always being given tickets to things. Two, the tickets he’s given are usually for “house seats,” which are also in really prime locations. Like about six rows back (not up in some balcony that’s two miles away from the stage), and smack in the middle of the theater. Three, the Cummingses are forever hiring this limo to take them places. They don’t own a car (owning a car is a real pain in New York), but instead of taking cabs, they get this lo-o-o-ong limo. It’s called a stretch limo and can seat about a million people and has a bar and a TV inside. When the chauffeur beeps the horn, it plays the first two lines from “Home on the Range.”

  I, of course, was completely bowled over by Laine’s invitation. Free tickets? Six of them? The limo? But I knew I had to check with my parents and my friends. I told Laine I’d call her back. Then, after getting permission from Mom and Dad to go to the play, I gathered my friends in my bedroom.

  “So what do you think?” I asked when I’d explained the situation. I watched their eyes grow wider and wider, so I knew they were excited. Possibly, Mary Anne had become catatonic. She seemed unable to move or speak.

  Still, I kept remembering Laine calling Claudia a jerk, and Claudia calling Laine a stuck-up snob, and everybody accusing each other of things.

  “Laine says she wants to start over, to try again,” I added.

  Claudia cleared her throat. “We-ell,” she said slowly. “If Laine wants to try again, then so do I. And I promise I’ll really give her a chance.”

  “Ya-hoo!” Kristy shouted, jumping to her feet.

  “Broadway … wow,” Mary Anne managed to say.

  Dawn looked at Claudia. “Oh, my lord,” she said, and giggled.

  Then I called Laine back. We agreed to meet for dinner at this little restaurant that’s between our apartments. After dinner, the limo would take us downtown to the play. Later, it would bring us home.

  Mary Anne immediately became hysterical about clothing. This time I was able to say, “You guys, wear the fanciest outfits you brought.”

  In all honesty, people don’t necessarily get dressed up for the theater anymore. You see everything from blue jeans to fur coats there. (Often, you see jeans and a fur coat on the same person.) But since my friends and I were going to be arriving and leaving in a limo, I decided it would be fun to get very dressed up.

  This presented a problem for Kristy, but she borrowed a dress from Mary
Anne, some accessories from Dawn and Claudia, and a pair of shoes from me. She was all set. When the five of us left the bedroom and entered the living room, my parents made a big fuss over us.

  “Let me just take your picture,” said Mom. (She took twelve.)

  “Have a great evening,” my father added. He slipped me some money. “Now if anything goes wrong, call us. Do you have change?” (I nodded.) “I don’t even want you taking a cab by yourselves late at night. So if something happens with the limo, try to find a nice, well-lit coffee shop and call from there. Don’t stand around on the street.”

  “We could hang around in the theater,” I said hopefully, thinking of the stars we might see there. “I could call from the lobby.”

  Dad barely heard me. He had a lot more instructions to give out. So did Mom. They were worried about letting us loose for the evening. Mom was so worried, that as we left the apartment she said, “Have fun and be very, VERY careful.”

  I was worried about other things. Namely, how everyone would get along that night. As we walked to the restaurant, my heart began to pound.

  But the thought of the free tickets and the limo must have mellowed my friends out. When we reached the restaurant, Laine was already there and she and Claudia just smiled sheepishly at each other.

  A waiter seated us at a large round table, and we ordered our food. Nobody did any apologizing. (It didn’t seem necessary.) But nobody did any sniping, either.

  Laine told us about the play we were going to see. “It’s the story of a train race. My father said the set is really amazing. The costumes, too. And every actor and actress is on roller skates.”

  “You’re kidding!” exclaimed Claudia. “Awesome.”

  Somehow, we started talking about places we’d visited. Laine was going to California over Christmas and had never been there before. So Dawn told her about California. Then Laine told us about a trip to Japan she’d been on. Claudia was fascinated.

  I couldn’t believe it when I looked at my watch and saw that the time was 7:35. “We better get going!” I cried. “The show starts at eight.”