Baby-Sitters' Winter Vacation Read online

  “Well, don’t get snowed in past Sunday. I’ll die if I can’t see you when I come home.”

  “You will?” I said in a small voice.

  “Figuratively speaking.”

  “Oh, Logan. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Mary Anne.”

  I hung up the phone, feeling like a new person.

  Not going too well? My journal project was a failure, unless you consider learning from big mistakes to be a success. But I didn’t want to admit that to Mary Anne or any of my friends. Two things had gone wrong: One, I’d been caught spying a couple of times. Two, hardly anything that I thought I’d observed had actually happened.

  For starters, the cook (whose name I found out is Curtis) is probably not crazy. Anyway, he isn’t trying to poison us all. If he were, somebody would be dead by now, but everyone’s fine, all bodies are accounted for. I sneaked into the kitchen to try to find out what the stuff was I’d seen Curtis sprinkling into the food, but Curtis sneaked up on me and nearly scared me to death.

  The powder was probably garlic or parmesan cheese. Sometimes people keep them in unlabeled jars.

  Then, just this morning, I was tiptoeing around the lodge with my journal and I came across Stacey and this boy Pierre she’s been spending so much time with. I passed by the doorway to the library and they were in there alone, sitting very close together on a couch. I thought that maybe if I stood outside and peeked at them through the crack in the door, I could find out just what goes on when a boy and a girl kiss. (I’ve been dying to know.) But I hadn’t been there long when Pierre said softly to Stacey, “Either I’m crazy or that door has eyes.”

  Stacey was off the couch and in the hall in a flash. She caught me red-handed!

  “Mallory!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” I replied, which is the best answer to give when you know you’re doing something that someone will disapprove of.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” I replied, trying to hide my journal. I escaped in a hurry.

  The last thing that happened was the one that convinced me I knew nothing at all about observational skills. I didn’t need to hone them, I needed to acquire them. Remember when I saw Ms. Halliday crying in the bathroom and decided it was because she was in love with the vice-principal (don’t worry, he’s not married or anything), but that he didn’t love her back? Well, later I overheard her talking to Mary Anne and it turns out she’s engaged to someone in Stoneybrook and she was just upset because she missed him.

  Maybe, I decided, spying was not the best method for gathering information. Or if it was, I’d have to learn how to do it without reading all sorts of things into what I saw and letting my imagination run away with me. Like Jessi. She decided that Pinky’s nasty behavior was a result of being prejudiced. But if Jessi had opened her eyes and looked beyond her own problems, she’d have seen that Pinky was having some trouble being away from home. And furthermore, that she was being upleasant to everyone, not just Jessi.

  * * *

  Anyway, back to Thursday evening. That night was a big one. Not only had the storm hit, but it was Talent Night and Jessi was in a frenzy. Plus, before the show began, all us SMS students were to gather in the common room, where a roaring fire was going, and where we were going to be served Curtis’ famous hot chocolate. (I was glad I didn’t need to worry about his poisoning us anymore.)

  While we drank the hot chocolate, we were going to tell ghost stories! I was afraid that the Conway Cove kids, who were invited since they were going to be in the show later, would be too scared, but they insisted on coming.

  “I know they’re going to have bad dreams all night. I just know it,” I told Jessi.

  But Jessi was too busy worrying about the show to answer me.

  At seven o’clock, we gathered in the common room. Now, that room is big, but I have to admit that seating the sixth-graders, seventh-graders, eighth-graders, and the Conway Cove kids, the SMS teachers, the Georges, and Curtis (who was pouring his hot chocolate into Styrofoam cups) was a bit crowded. We were jammed all over the floor, the couches, and the chairs. But I felt cozy and excited with the storm whistling and blowing outside.

  When the hot chocolate had been served, Mr. Cheney stood up and said, “Attention, and welcome to the ghostly portion of Talent Night.” (Everyone laughed.) “We’ll be telling our scariest stories for the next hour, and then we’ll move to the grand ballroom for the show. By the way, the teachers get to tell their stories first. That’s one of the prerogatives of being a teacher.” (Sometimes Mr. Cheney likes to impress us students with big words. In case you don’t know what “prerogative” means — and I didn’t — it’s a special right or privilege.) “Anyone who wants to tell a story,” Mr. Cheney went on, “just raise your hand and come stand before the fire so the others can see and hear you.”

  At that point the lights dimmed, and Mr. Cheney himself walked to the fireplace. The room grew quiet. All around me, kids leaned forward slightly.

  “My story,” Mr. Cheney began in a low, spooky voice, the firelight flickering behind him with an eerie glow, “takes place in a nice, normal neighborhood. It could be your neighborhood in Stoneybrook.” (I shivered.) “On Silver Fox Lane lived a young woman. She wasn’t married, but she had a good job and had just bought a house that she loved. However, she’d always been nervous about living alone, so she also bought a big guard dog, Butch, to protect her.

  “One night, the woman came home and found the front door to her house ajar. Right away, she became scared. She knew someone had broken in.

  “‘Butch!’ she called. ‘Butch?’

  “She didn’t hear a sound, so she flicked on the light in the entryway. She saw blood everywhere — but nothing seemed to be missing. She could see her TV and her tape deck in the living room.

  “Now the woman was smart and knew she should get out of her house and call the police, so she did. When they arrived, they searched everywhere. The only unusual thing they found, apart from the blood, was Butch lying unconscious on the kitchen floor. The woman screamed. Then she rushed Butch to the vet, and the vet performed emergency surgery. And do you know what he found in Butch’s stomach? … A man’s finger. Butch had torn it off the intruder when he broke into the house, and had accidentally swallowed it.”

  All around me kids were gasping.

  “Oh, ew,” I said to Jessi. “That is so gross. Do you think it’s true?”

  Jessi looked at me wide-eyed. “It could be,” she whispered. And boy was she surprised when, right then, Pinky scrambled into her lap for safety.

  We hardly had time to think about Pinky, though, because as soon as Mr. Cheney returned to his seat on the couch, Ms. Halliday stood up.

  “My story,” she began, “is about a man and a wife who were on their honeymoon. They were driving along a deserted road very late at night, listening to the radio. Suddenly an old Beatles song was interrupted by a news-flash. ‘We have just learned,’ said the announcer, ‘that an insane murderer has escaped from the Towson County Jail. Please do not go out alone, and keep all your doors and windows locked. Thank you.’

  “Well, the couple was scared to death. And wouldn’t you know, just as the announcement was ending, one of their tires blew out, so the man left the woman alone in the car while he went looking for a gas station. He had been gone for about fifteen minutes when the woman started to hear a faint scratching sound, like this — scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch — on the roof of the car.”

  At that moment, every light in the lodge went out.

  “Aughhh!” we screamed. Even the eighth-grade boys screamed.

  Jessi tried to grab me, but Pinky was hugging her too tightly.

  “He’s here! He’s here!” cried some kid. “It’s the insane murderer!”

  “No, it’s the Leicester Lodge ghost!” exclaimed Curtis.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” I recognized Mr. George’s voice. “Hold your horses. The power’s gone out, t
hat’s all. It happens nearly every time we have a big storm. Just sit tight and I’ll turn on the emergency generator.”

  The room grew silent. I watched a flashlight bob away, the figure of Mr. George behind it.

  “Shall I continue my story?” asked Ms. Halliday.

  “NO!” we screeched.

  A few more silent moments passed. They seemed like weeks. Then Pinky said in a whisper that was almost a sob, “We’re going to get snowed in, aren’t we? We’re going to get stuck here. We’ll never be able to go home, and the insane murderer will kill us all.”

  “Maybe they’ll evacuate us tomorrow,” Jessi said uncertainly to me.

  Evacuate us tomorrow? Really? If that happened, there would be no all-school dance. I wouldn’t have to go! Despite the storm and the power failure, I began to feel a little better. I prayed for a gigantic storm and an evacuation.

  But Mr. George spoiled it all. The lights came back on, and a few minutes later he reappeared saying, “Good news. I just heard a weather report. Now they’re saying that the storm is supposed to pass to the east of us. The worst is probably over. When you wake up tomorrow, you’ll find sunshine and about four inches of fresh snow for your ski competitions.”

  DARN.

  No blizzard and the dance would be held after all. And there didn’t even seem to be any sign of the ghost Mary Anne had told about. I guessed the “ghost” was just another ghost story.

  Ms. Halliday finished her story. “So, anyway,” she said, “the woman waited all night for her husband to return. He never did. But the woman heard the scratching noises until the next morning, when a police car pulled up alongside her.

  “‘Stay in the car, lady!’ shouted a police officer.

  “The woman followed his instructions. There was a huge scuffle, and a man was pulled off the roof of her car, handcuffed, and led to the squad car. It was the insane murderer! He had killed her husband, and was after the woman. All night he had lain on the roof of her car where she couldn’t see him, and had been scratching through it with his fingernails. Another eighth of an inch and he would have killed the woman, too!”

  I nearly fainted. Then two more teachers told us tales that scared us to death. After that, kids started telling stories. We heard about ghostly hitchhikers, about campers who were the prey of escaped convicts, about some more honeymoon couples, and we heard one particularly scary story that Stacey’s friend Pierre told, called “Three-Fingered Willie.”

  But I only half heard them. I couldn’t stop thinking about the dance the next night. I knew I was going to make a fool of myself.

  Oh, wow. Was I ever nervous before the show began! I had never been in charge of something as big as Talent Night. And I was going to be in the show, too. I thought that was fair. Besides, there were a few kids that I needed to show off in front of. But I had to be sure and do a good job.

  When the scary stories were over and the hot chocolate was finished, us SMS students moved into the grand ballroom. It had been set up like a theater. There was the stage with a curtain at one end of the room, and now row after row of folding chairs had been set up so that everyone would have a place to sit down.

  While the audience settled into the chairs, I ran backstage with the kids who were going to be performing. I quickly counted heads. Everyone was present.

  “Okay,” I said, “I think you know the order in which you’re supposed to go on stage, but in case you forget, I’ve posted the listing in the wings. Remember, the teachers go first, the Conway Cove kids go last, and when the show is over, we all run on stage in two lines, holding hands, for the curtain call.

  “Now all the props are over there,” (I pointed to a sturdy folding table) “and Callie is in charge of the music. If you need music for your number, just hand her your tape before you go onstage and she’ll put it in the tape deck. Any questions?”

  There weren’t, so I tapped Terry Morgan on the arm and said, “You’re on, Mr. Announcer.”

  As coordinator of the show, I guess I could have been the announcer, but when Terry’s plan to dress up like Father Goose and recite nursery rhymes in Italian wasn’t accepted by me as an act for the show, he begged to do something — anything. So I told him he could be the announcer. (Besides, I would have felt funny announcing myself later on.)

  When I felt that the kids were ready to begin the show, I signaled Ms. Halliday, who signaled someone else, and the lights in the grand ballroom were dimmed, except for two bright ones on the stage.

  I nodded to Terry, he nodded back, and then he stepped confidently onto the stage. “Good evening, ladies and germs,” he began. (I had told him he could say that.) “Well, I just flew in from Stoneybrook and, boy, are my arms tired.” (The audience groaned, but they were laughing, too.) “Anyway, welcome to Talent Night. We in the show have enjoyed preparing these numbers for you, and we hope you will enjoy seeing them. And now, without further adieu,” (I had not told Terry he could say that), “may I present the SMSTs.”

  Terry walked offstage in one direction while the SMS teachers walked on from the opposite direction. There were eight of them, and they were all wearing red turtlenecks and blue jeans, and carrying microphones.

  One teacher stepped forward and said, “Welcome to the Do-wop Stop.” Then he stepped back in line. For the next seven or so minutes those teachers sang a medley of fifties hits. That in itself was pretty good because it turned out that these, like, math and social studies teachers could actually harmonize. But the fun part was that they’d changed the words of the songs, so they were singing about things like kids cutting classes, the noise in the cafeteria, the bus ride to Leicester Lodge, and even the Winter War. When they were done, they somehow seemed like real people to me, instead of just teachers. I guess they sounded like that to the rest of the kids, too, because they got a huge round of applause.

  The next act was Dimples Howard (that was her stage name, of course), doing her tap number to “Singin’ in the Rain.” Terry introduced her as the Titan of Tap, but I don’t think anyone knew what he meant.

  “Wait till I reach the middle of the stage before you hit the Play button,” Dimples told Callie as she handed her the cassette.

  “Okay,” said Callie.

  Then Dimples, who was already wearing her raincoat, tied on a rain bonnet and stooped down to buckle one of her shoes. But the buckle broke and it took her so long to fix it that the audience got restless and Callie started the tape, just so people would have something to listen to. By the time Dimples ran onstage, the audience was listening to the end of the second verse of the song and Dimples couldn’t find her place.

  “Start it over!” she hissed to Callie, but Callie got flustered and fast-forwarded to some later spot in the song, so Dimples just sort of improvised until the song was over. When that happened, Dimples stayed onstage and demonstrated the single, double, and triple time steps as well as the Manhattan time step, so at least she felt she had shown what she was capable of doing.

  The next act was a personal favorite of mine, partly because it involved no music. Bobby Henson, who had wanted to play “Doe, a Deer” with his armpit, which I wouldn’t let him do, then decided to dress up as Lucille Ball and imitate her rehearsing this commercial for a product called Vitameatavegamin, which he assured me happened during an I Love Lucy show entitled “Lucy Does a TV Commercial.”

  “Hello, friends,” Bobby began. (He was wearing a polka-dotted dress, and a ladies’ hat and gloves, which was pretty funny by itself, so already kids were laughing.) “Are you tired, run-down, listless? Are you unpopular? Do you poop out at parties?”

  Bobby had memorized the entire commercial — including the way Lucy started goofing it up. When he said, “Are you unpoopular? Do you pop out at parties?” I saw one kid in the audience laugh so hard that he began coughing and had to leave the grand ballroom for a drink of water.

  The show continued. The Flooglemeister was a big hit, despite the fact that Terry introduced him as the Frugalmaster. The
girls who imitated the Andrews Sisters were a hit, too. Then came the funny ghost story, the skit about Leicester Lodge, the “Chains of Love” number, and finally … my dance routine. After so much hilarity, I hoped the kids were ready for me because Swan Lake was serious, not funny.

  The kids were ready. Even so, I was nervous, but I’ve danced in front of big audiences before, and I know how to tune out the people and pay attention only to the music and the movements of my body. So I turned and pirouetted in a world of my own, not returning to the real world until the music was over.

  When I stopped dancing, there was a moment of silence. Then the kids and teachers, even the ones backstage, began clapping loudly. A few kids even whistled! I felt as if I had finally, really been accepted at Stoneybrook Middle School, which was why I grinned until my face nearly fell off.

  The last act of the evening was the skit performed by the Conway Cove kids. They were looking a little tired from the excitement of the evening — the snowstorm, the power failure, the ghost stories, and the talent show — but they pulled themselves together nicely. When I gave them the cue, they ran out on the stage, introduced the characters they would be playing, and launched right into the skit. Not one of them forgot a line, and they spoke clearly and confidently, even Pinky, and thank goodness, because she had one of the funniest parts. She played a teacher named Miss Wyndham, who I gathered had been at their school for decades, and whose claim to fame was that she’d once gotten a grape stuck up her nose. Personally, I thought it was one of those stories that had never happened but was destined to circulate the school each year for as long as Miss Wyndham continued to teach. At any rate, Pinky got tons of laughs.

  So I was quite surprised to find her crying in the first-floor bathroom after the show. I’d headed in there to be by myself for a few minutes before tackling the job of helping my friends put the little kids to bed. I just needed some of what Mama calls “down time.”