Dawn's Wicked Stepsister Read online

  “But who’s going to leave?” asked Mom. “Whoever leaves is going to feel as if she’s been kicked out.” She put her hands on Mary Anne’s shoulders. Mary Anne just kept on crying.

  “Maybe the girls could alternate,” suggested Richard.

  “You know,” I said to Mary Anne, “when my real brother was living here, we hardly ever fought like this. In fact, you and I didn’t fight until you moved in.”

  “Until we became stepsisters,” said Mary Anne angrily.

  “Okay, okay, that’s enough,” said Richard. “Do you girls think you can work this problem out tonight?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll work in the stupid guest room.”

  “Don’t bother,” replied Mary Anne. “It would be silly for you to do that since I’m going to be sleeping there tonight.” And with that, she started yanking the covers off of her bed.

  Mom gave me a look that plainly said, “Now see what you’ve done?”

  But I didn’t care. Mary Anne was just as much a part of this problem as I was. If she wanted to go and sleep in the guest room — fine. That was her decision. She sure was making me look bad, though. I had not, I realized, gotten just a stepsister. I’d gotten a wicked stepsister.

  A Pike nightmare! In all honesty, nobody was in dire straits that Saturday. As Jessi pointed out, Mal, Nicky, and Vanessa were just about better, except that Nicky would have to wear his cast for two more weeks. And the triplets were on the road to recovery, but they needed their rest because they still tired out very quickly. Margo and Claire were feeling the worst of all, Mrs. Pike wasn’t in much pain but she couldn’t walk, and Mr. Pike was in more pain and couldn’t use his right hand.

  All in all, it was not a healthy household, and with both the adults out of commission, Mrs. Pike thought they could use some help. So on Saturday morning (after Mr. Pike had spent half the night waiting around in the emergency room), Mrs. Pike called Claudia to see if the BSC could provide two sitters on an emergency basis (extra pay) for most of the day. Claudia couldn’t take the job, but she called the other club members and found that Jessi and Kristy were free for the day. So Charlie drove Kristy to the Ramseys’, picked up Jessi, and then dropped the girls off at the Pikes’.

  “Thanks!” they called as he backed down the driveway, and Kristy added, “I’ll call you later about a ride home!”

  Jessi rang the Pikes’ bell then, and both she and Kristy were surprised when Mallory answered the door. She was even dressed.

  “You’re up!” exclaimed Jessi.

  “Yup,” said Mal. “Out of bed. I even feel pretty good, but I am not up to handling this crowd today. Not by myself. The three of us ought to be able to handle things, though, with a little help from Nicky and Vanessa. We’ll be going back to school on Monday.”

  “Great!” said Kristy. She started to let herself in, but Mal held the door closed.

  “Wait a sec,” she said. She turned and walked away. Jessi and Kristy looked at each other with question marks on their faces. “Okay,” said Mal, returning. She opened the door a crack and stuck her hand out. In it were two surgeon’s masks. “Wear these whenever you’re in the house,” she said. “They’ll keep you from catching pneumonia or bronchitis — I hope.”

  “Do we have to?” asked Kristy.

  “Do you want pneumonia?” replied Mal.

  “Let me think it over,” said Kristy. “I could use a break from school.” But, of course, she put her mask on. So did Jessi.

  Then Mal let them in.

  “Oh, my lord,” said Kristy, sounding just like Claudia. “What a mess. I know what our first job is.”

  The Pike house looked, as Richard would say, as if a tornado had blown through it. There was stuff everywhere. And no one had cleaned up the kitchen from the disastrous dinner the night before.

  “Well, you might think you know what your first job is,” Mal told Kristy and Jessi, “but the clean-up will have to come later. Guess what comes first — breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?” repeated Kristy. “For everyone?”

  “Yup. And seven of those breakfasts have to be served in bed on trays.”

  According to Jessi, Kristy looked, at that moment, as if she were going to faint. But she pulled herself together. “Okay. Breakfast. What do people like to eat?”

  “Oh, don’t ask them,” replied Mal. “You’ll get ten different answers. Breakfast this morning is scrambled eggs, toast, and orange juice. For everybody. Oh, and coffee for Mom and Dad.”

  “All right,” said Kristy uncertainly.

  And Jessi added, “I thought Claire didn’t like scrambled eggs.”

  “She doesn’t,” replied Mal. “But don’t worry about it.”

  So my friends set to work in the kitchen. As it turned out, they had to clean it up just a little bit in order to use it. When that was done they set up an assembly line to fix the breakfasts. Mal scrambled a dozen and a half eggs in two huge frying pans. Jessi made toast after piece of toast, and Kristy set seven trays, plus three places at the table.

  “Oh, set two more places,” said Mal. “For you and Jessi.”

  “That’s okay,” Kristy replied. “I don’t think we’re going to be eating much. I think we’ll be pretty busy.”

  Kristy was right. No sooner had the girls started carrying the trays upstairs than they heard comments such as, “But I don’t like scrambled eggs,” or, “I want French toast, not regular toast,” or “Can’t I have milk instead of orange juice?”

  “This is NOT a restaurant,” Mal yelled from the hallway, where everyone could hear her. “Either eat it or beat it.”

  “We can’t beat it,” said Claire pathetically. “We have to stay id our beds. Bobby said dot to get up.”

  “Bobby?” Jessi asked Mal.

  “She means Mommy.”

  Kristy, Mal, and Jessi finished passing out the unwelcome trays. The only people who seemed glad to see them were Mr. and Mrs. Pike. Then Mal sat down to breakfast with Vanessa and Nicky.

  Kristy and Jessi took coffee to Mal’s parents. They brought paper towels to Claire, who had spilled orange juice over her quilt. Then Margo said, “Could I puh-lease have sub fruit?”

  “Some fruit?” repeated Jessi. “I don’t see why not. That’s healthy.”

  So Jessi sliced up a banana for Margo.

  “You’ll be sorry,” Mal warned her.

  “Why?” asked Jessi.

  She found out soon enough.

  “If Margo gets a banana, then I want milk,” said Byron.

  “And I want fruit, too,” said Adam.

  “And I want French toast,” said Jordan.

  Breakfast wasn’t over for two hours.

  * * *

  The day wore on. Kristy and Jessi did all the chores Mr. Pike had planned to do. They washed seven loads of laundry. They changed the triplets’ beds. They emptied overflowing wastebaskets.

  “Remind me,” Kristy said as she and Jessi were folding the third load of laundry, “never to baby-sit on an emergency basis again. I’m not sure I could take it.”

  “But think of all the money we’re earning,” Jessi pointed out.

  “I know. And just imagine — our parents do this for free everyday.”

  “They must be crazy.”

  Ding, ding, ding.

  “Darn. There’s Margo and Claire’s bell again,” said Kristy. “I’d like to kill Mal for giving it to them.”

  “I’ll see what they want,” said Jessi. She happily abandoned the laundry.

  Jessi ran up to the girls’ room. She checked her mask before opening their door. It was in place.

  “Yes?” she said.

  Margo and Claire were both tucked into Margo’s bed. They were giggling.

  “Guess what we are,” said Margo.

  “Mmm, you’re … ” Jessi had no idea what they were.

  “We’re two peas in a pod!” shouted Claire.

  Jessi giggled. “That’s pretty funny. Who thought it up?”

  �
�Be!” cried Claire.

  “Be!” cried Margo.

  Which was pretty funny itself, except that it caused an argument over who really had thought it up.

  At four-thirty, Mal said to Jessi and Kristy, “We should start working on dinner. I’m a little nervous. We’re running out of stuff.”

  “You’re low on milk,” said Jessi.

  “I know. And on bread and butter and eggs. How are we going to last until Monday? That’s when the doctor said Dad could start using his hand again.”

  “Maybe Stacey’s mother could go to the store for you,” suggested Jessi, “since she lives —”

  “Wait!” cried Kristy. “I’ve got an idea. We’ll ask Charlie to stop at the store on his way over here. Can you pay him back for whatever he buys?”

  “Sure,” replied Mal.

  So Kristy talked Charlie into doing the Pikes’ shopping. She had to agree to pay him for his work, but that was okay. He deserved it. Especially since, after he reached the Pikes’, he put on a surgeon’s mask and stayed to help my friends cook dinner.

  When the job was done, and he and Kristy and Jessi were walking to his car, Charlie said, “Boy, the Pikes’ house sure is clean. Does it always look that way?”

  Kristy and Jessi grinned at each other. If only he knew.

  Charlie started the car, and at the last minute, Kristy realized that they might as well pick up Mary Anne for her overnight at the Brewer/Thomas mansion, since they were in our neighborhood.

  That was fine with me. Mary Anne, my wicked stepsister, had been sleeping in the guest bedroom ever since Monday night, when we’d had our fight. She hadn’t spoken to me, either, until that morning when she’d said she would be moving back in with me on Sunday when she returned from Kristy’s. Sleeping in one room and keeping her stuff in another room was too inconvenient, she’d said.

  Well, tough. I’d decided I didn’t want her sharing my room anymore.

  After Mary Anne went to Kristy’s house that night, I had plenty of time to think about what happened after our fight on Monday. It had taken a long time for me to realize that Mary Anne and I were not meant to share a room. I’d wanted a sister so badly. Sisters, I’d thought, should share everything — a room, their clothes, their secrets, even their germs. Just like Claire and Margo, or Mallory and Vanessa.

  I think Mary Anne had felt the same way. Or she’d tried to.

  But something was very wrong. I didn’t want to admit it, but it was true. That was the first thing I’d thought when I’d awakened alone in my room on Tuesday morning. Something is very wrong.

  In school that day, Mary Anne wouldn’t speak to me. She doesn’t get angry very often, but when she does, she’s an expert with the silent treatment.

  I wasn’t surprised. I hadn’t expected her to speak to me. Anyway, as long as she wasn’t speaking to me, it was a good excuse for me not to speak to her. I did, however, decide to do something bold. I decided to talk to Kristy about my problem. But I also knew that Kristy was much better friends with Mary Anne than with me. I also knew that Kristy had been through a remarriage, a move into her stepfather’s house, and the experience of gaining a stepbrother, a stepsister, and even an adopted sister. I figured she might be sympathetic. And I was right.

  I caught up with Kristy at her locker before study hall. That was a good time to talk because it wouldn’t matter much if we were late for study hall.

  “Kristy?” I said.

  Kristy was busy jamming stuff into her locker.

  “Yeah? Oh, hi, Dawn.”

  “Hi…. I need to talk to you.”

  “I thought you might.”

  “You did?”

  “Yup. I know what happened between you and Mary Anne last night.”

  “Oh.”

  “Listen, it’s okay. I’ve been through just what you’re going through, except that I never had to share a room with anyone.”

  Kristy and I talked all the way to study hall, and right through it until the end of the period. No one noticed or cared. Anyway, Kristy told me a lot of things that made sense. She said that it’s hard for new families to fit together. Everyone tiptoes around, trying to figure everyone else out. People get mad. People feel threatened. They need their space. That’s why her mother and Watson had been glad that all the kids could have their own rooms at Watson’s big house.

  Kristy also said that it wasn’t unusual for parents to side with their stepchildren during arguments. “They just want their stepkids to like them. They’re trying to make things work.”

  And then Kristy reminded me of the Arnold twins. “The girls needed separate rooms because they needed personal space.”

  Or emotional space, I thought, remembering my conversation with Jeff.

  “Thanks, Kristy,” I said, just before the bell rang. “I really appreciate this.”

  “No problem.”

  “I hope this doesn’t insult you, but I thought you might not want to talk to me about this. I mean, because you’re really, um, a little closer to Mary Anne than to me.”

  “Maybe,” said Kristy, “but you guys are best friends, too. Or at least you were, and I’m sure you will be again someday. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to see a great friendship dissolve, especially when my two good friends are part of it.”

  Well, no matter what else you say about Kristy, you have to admit that when the chips are down, she comes through. I’m not sure I would have been as nice to Kristy if she were having a fight with Mary Anne as she’d been to me that day.

  When study hall was over, Kristy and I hugged each other.

  * * *

  I did some heavy thinking after school on Tuesday. It was a good time for it, since Mom and Richard were at work and Mary Anne was baby-sitting. I lay down on the bed in my room and looked around.

  The room was so crowded you could barely walk through it. You had to edge around the beds and squeeze past the desks. The closet door only opened halfway because it was blocked by my armchair. There just wasn’t any other spot for that chair.

  I closed my eyes. I pictured the room the way it used to be, nice and light and airy and open. Now it was not only crowded, but messy. (Or as messy as Richard would let it get.) Since both Mary Anne and I are neat people, this wasn’t really our fault. It was just that there was nowhere to put all of Mary Anne’s stuff. The closet was overflowing, and things that we’d stashed under the beds sort of kept leaking out.

  It occurred to me that living under those conditions would drive anyone crazy, but Mary Anne and I had other problems, too. The two of us and Mom and Richard really were struggling to fit together as a family. I pictured Richard making Mom breakfast every weekend, and Mom never eating half of it. I pictured Mom trying to cook dinner and clean for Richard, and never pleasing him. I pictured Mary Anne rushing Tigger into the kitchen and thinking she had to protect him from Mom after he’d gotten sick. And I pictured the fight Monday night — Richard and me facing off against Mom and Mary Anne. Each parent was siding with his or her stepkid. As Kristy had said, Richard just wanted me to like him, and Mom just wanted Mary Anne to like her. What we really needed was for Mary Anne and me to like each other and to like living together.

  That was hard, considering how differently Mary Anne and I had been raised. When we had just been friends our differences hadn’t mattered so much, but now that we were trying to become a family, they mattered a lot.

  I sighed. I knew that Mary Anne and I shouldn’t be sharing a room. We needed our space, and anyway, sharing wasn’t practical. But I had insisted that we share my room. Mary Anne had said so during our fight and she was right. I’d put pressure on her to share, even though she didn’t really want to. So how could I admit that I’d been wrong? Or did I even have to?

  If I could help it, I didn’t want to admit to that. I wanted Mary Anne to move out, but I didn’t want her to think it had anything to do with her or me or our ability to share a room. I wanted her to move out for some other reason.

  Hmm. Now wha
t other reason could there be? Mary Anne could move out because … because … Not because the room was too messy. I’d said we could fit everything in just fine. Not because she didn’t like my room, because I knew she did, or used to. Well, except for the secret passage, which she was afraid of.

  Wait a second! The secret passage! Maybe I could use the passage to scare Mary Anne out of our room. That would solve everything. It would be understandable, and neither of us would have to admit that Mary Anne had left because we couldn’t get along. Furthermore, I could take revenge on my stepsister without her knowing it. I could get back at her for all the stinky things she’d done — getting me in trouble with Mom, complaining about Mom’s food, following Mom around with the DustBuster, getting chummy with Kristy and leaving me out of things, catching Mom’s bouquet, taking the job at the Perkinses’, and pitying me for not having a boyfriend. I could watch Mary Anne panic, but no one would know I was the cause of the trouble. Not if I put on the horror show when Mom and Richard weren’t around. They’d just think Mary Anne’s imagination had run away with her. And they’d be delighted to see her move into the guest room.

  * * *

  Those were my thoughts on Tuesday, after I spoke to Kristy. For the rest of the week I planned my revenge. On Wednesday afternoon I sneaked into the secret passage. I had to be very quiet, since Mary Anne was at home. I checked the passage to make sure it was in the same shape as the last time I’d been in it, which was quite awhile ago. I also tried the secret door to my room. Everything seemed to be in order.

  On Thursday I called Jeff. I needed his help.

  “Hi,” I said when he picked up the phone. “It’s me.”

  “Hi, you. How are you doing?”

  “Fine. How are you and Dad?”

  “We’re fine,” replied Jeff. “What’s up?”

  “I need to scare Mary Anne.”

  “You need to what?”

  “Scare Mary Anne,” I repeated. I told Jeff about the plan I was forming.

  “Oh,” said Jeff knowingly. “Well, you could … ”

  And Jeff rattled off a list of things I could do that were sure to make Mary Anne’s hair stand on end.