Mary Anne and Miss Priss Read online

  “Is that a real beach?” a little boy in a swimsuit asked, wide-eyed.

  “No,” Sam replied. “It’s called a set. We have a crew of set-dressers whose only job is to re-create a beach. They did pretty well, huh?”

  The little boy nodded.

  A short plump woman in black leggings and a black sweatshirt with Picture This! in neon pink writing across the front jogged over to meet us. “Hi, I’m Dixie. I’m the assistant director. Why don’t you follow me to the beach?” Then she winked at Jenny and added, “I hope you can swim.”

  Mrs. Prezzioso carried Andrea to the sand and placed her on a colorful beach towel. The prop man handed Andrea a bright yellow bucket and a red plastic shovel, which she promptly stuck in her mouth. Jenny was asked to kneel next to the sandcastle and act as if she were building it. The little boy was positioned on the other side of the castle.

  Ten minutes went by as the technicians moved lights and positioned the big metal reflector. At one point a man in a folding canvas chair with Director written across the back called, “Give the kids a little sunburn.”

  Jenny looked up, alarmed. I felt panicky myself. But the director just wanted more red in the lights. That took another ten minutes. When the lighting guys were finished, the kids really did look as if they’d been in the sun all afternoon. Their cheeks and shoulders had a nice rosy glow.

  “That looks good,” the photographer called from behind the camera. “Okay, clear the set.”

  The prop people moved out of range while Dixie crouched near the kids, whispering words of encouragement. “Smile big, kids!” she urged. “You like this castle. It’s the best castle you ever built.”

  Jenny smiled and followed Dixie’s and the director’s instructions exactly. She scooped sand. She put a flag on top of the castle. She played with sunglasses on and with sunglasses off. Whatever they told her to do, she did. While Jenny posed with the castle, Andrea played happily with the bucket and shovel.

  “You are a really good model, Jenny,” Dixie said, while the prop people brought out inflatable ducks, reset the sandcastle, and smoothed the sand. “You and your sister are naturals.”

  Jenny’s face blushed an even brighter pink. Not with embarrassment, but with pleasure. “Thank you, Dixie.”

  By the end of the session, Jenny was starting to look tired and Andrea was getting fidgety. She kept trying to crawl off the beach set. The boy said he was thirsty and needed a break. I was amazed that those kids had lasted so long.

  When they finally announced that the shoot was over, everyone was relieved. “Can we go home now, Mommy?” Jenny asked. “I’m kind of tired.”

  “Of course we can go home, my angel,” Mrs. Prezzioso replied. “You worked hard and did a really wonderful job today.”

  Madge the wardrobe lady waved to Jenny as we were leaving. “I hope I see you again. You were a delight to work with.”

  Jenny waved back and made a beeline for the exit. I was puzzled. The photo shoot had been a big success, and I expected that Jenny would want to linger for a while longer, to hear everyone’s compliments. But she was anxious to leave. I couldn’t figure her out.

  Even stranger was what happened when we arrived back in Stoneybrook. Mrs. Prezzioso was slowly driving past Brenner Field when Jenny cried out, “Mommy! Stop the car!”

  Mrs. Prezzioso hit the brakes. “What’s the matter?”

  “Look!” Jenny pointed out the window. “The triplets are having a kickball game.”

  “Are you sure that’s the triplets’ team?” I asked. I couldn’t believe they’d worked everything out so quickly.

  “Sure!” Jenny cried excitedly. “There’s Adam and Byron. Look, Claire is going to kick and I think Suzi is pitching!”

  “Do you want to go watch?” Mrs. Prezzioso asked.

  “No,” Jenny replied. “I want to play!”

  I winced. The last time Jenny had wanted to play, several of the kids had created a terrible scene. Of course, that was when she was Miss Priss and had made such a big deal about staying clean.

  “Why don’t you ask Adam if it’s all right to join the game?” I suggested, getting out of the car and opening Jenny’s door.

  “Adam!” Jenny shouted, bolting across the grass. “Can I play?”

  There was a hurried conference between Adam and his brothers. Then Adam gave her the thumbs-up sign. “Sure, if you don’t say you’re getting dirty.”

  “I won’t. I promise. I just have to change my clothes,” Jenny called. “And I’ll be right back.”

  She leapt into the car, shouting, “They said I can play! Hurry, Mommy, I have to change so I can get in the game.”

  Jenny’s enthusiasm surprised both her mother and me. We looked at each other and shrugged. “A new phase?” Mrs. Prezzioso mouthed to me.

  I hoped so. As Miss Priss, Jenny had been tense and difficult to be around. Miss Mess had been more adventuresome, but awfully hard to handle. Maybe Jenny was finding a middle area — somewhere between terminally tidy and dangerously dirty.

  Mr. Prezzioso was waiting for us when we got home. “How’d the shoot go?” he asked, giving Jenny a hug.

  “It went great,” Jenny replied. “Now I have to change and get to the kickball game. Want to come?”

  “Well … yes. I mean, of course!” Mr. Prezzioso was as confused and pleased by her behavior as Mrs. Prezzioso and I were.

  Jenny raced upstairs and changed her clothes in record time. Moments later, as I was walking back to my house, I saw her and her dad cross the street, headed for Brenner Field. I couldn’t help smiling. Jenny was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap.

  “Things are definitely looking up,” I said to myself.

  You know the old saying, “Good things come in small packages?” Well, sometimes good things come in strange packages, too. Mrs. Prezzioso called me Thursday afternoon, just before I was due at her house, with a favor to ask. Jenny had been turned down for a modeling job and a commercial. “Would you help me break the bad news to her?” she asked.

  I agreed to help. But I wasn’t looking forward to it. I wondered how Jenny would react. Would Miss Priss return? Or Miss Mess?

  Neither one of them made an appearance. In fact, Jenny’s reaction surprised both Mrs. Prezzioso and me.

  “Hooray!” she shouted, when she heard the bad news. “Now I can play kickball.”

  “Honey?” Mrs. Prezzioso took her daughter by the shoulders and knelt in front of her. “Do you understand that you didn’t get the job?”

  “Yes,” Jenny replied.

  “And you realize that Andrea did get a job?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you’re not sad?”

  “Of course not,” Jenny said with a grin. “Today’s game is the girls against the boys. And Adam said I could pitch first.”

  “Oh?” Mrs. Prezzioso blinked in surprise. “You’re pitching?”

  Jenny nodded. “We get a turn at every position. That’s the rule.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful, dear,” Mrs. Prezzioso said, still a little bewildered. “Just wonderful.”

  Jenny raced for the stairs and I turned to Mrs. Prezzioso. “I guess Jenny’s decided to give up her modeling career.”

  “I guess so. Mr. Prezzioso and I have been encouraging her to do other things, and praising her for it. And Jenny did well on that one job. Maybe that’s all that mattered to her.”

  Jenny appeared moments later in her jeans and a T-shirt. As she skipped happily down the stairs, Mrs. Prezzioso whispered, “Now Jenny can concentrate on important things, like being a four-year-old.”

  “And kicking a home run,” I whispered back.

  On Friday, I couldn’t wait to break the news about Jenny to the BSC. I arrived at Claudia’s house early and had trouble waiting for the meeting to start.

  At five-thirty, Kristy flopped into the director’s chair and tugged on her visor. “This meeting of the BSC is officially called to order. Any news or announcements?”


  I started to speak, but suddenly someone appeared in the doorway. There, with glistening eyes and a grin that spread from ear to ear, stood Mallory.

  “Hi, everybody!” she cried. “I’m back!”

  Everybody jumped up and rushed forward to hug Mallory. I cried (of course), but so did a couple of others. When we finally calmed down, Kristy cleared her throat. “I would like to take this moment to officially welcome Mallory back to the Baby-sitters Club.”

  We cheered and applauded

  “How did you talk your parents into it?” Jessi asked.

  “Well.” Mallory clasped her hands in front of her. “I took Kristy’s advice. I didn’t talk to my parents about being sick or well, although that did come up in the discussion. I showed them my schedule and they were flabbergasted to find out how much time I’d spent baby-sitting.”

  “Is that when they said yes?” Claud asked.

  “No, first they had to call Dr. Dellenkamp, just to be on the safe side. She told Mom and Dad that my blood tests have been normal for weeks, and she didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t go back to my regular schedule. So here I am!”

  More applause. Then Kristy took the floor again. This time she was holding the BSC notebook. “I think this is such an important moment in Baby-sitters Club history that we should record it. I’m going to send the notebook around the room and I want you each to write something in it.”

  Kristy sat down with the notebook first and at the top of the page she scrawled:

  Solemnly we passed the journal around the circle. Each of us wrote a special note to Mallory. When the book reached me, I wrote:

  By the time the book had made the full circle, we were all looking a little misty-eyed again.

  “This calls for a celebration,” Claudia said, climbing down from her bed and crawling underneath it. “I think I have a whole bag of Mallomars somewhere under here. I hid them a week ago.”

  “It took her two months to find those potato chips,” Shannon joked. “It’ll probably be at least three more weeks before she tracks down the Mallomars.”

  Kristy (Miss Great Ideas) said, “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we go out this weekend and really celebrate? We could split a pizza!”

  “The treasury is in good shape right now,” Stacey said, checking the dues envelope. “We could even throw in sodas.”

  “All right!” Kristy gave Stacey a high-five.

  I listened as we planned our Welcome Back Celebration for Mal and sighed happily. Jenny’s problem was solved. The kickball team was off and running. And best of all, Mal was a member of the BSC again. Things were almost perfect. Now, if Dawn would just come home …

  * * *

  Dear Reader,

  In Mary Anne and Miss Priss, Andrea Prezzioso becomes a baby model. The closest I ever came to doing any modeling was in front of my father’s home movie camera when I was three years old. One rainy day, my parents came up with an indoor activity, which was a pretend fashion show. Mom dressed me in outfit after outfit, and Dad filmed the “fashion show” in our living room.

  My father loved taking home movies. And so did his parents and my mother’s parents. We have home movies dating back to the 1920s. Even my parents’ wedding is captured on film. My father filmed family vacations and birthday parties from the time I was born until my sister and I were in college. A favorite family activity when I was growing up was Movie Night, when we would watch movies of ourselves from when we were younger. Now I’m 41, and I haven’t seen the home movies in years. But I still have fond memories of them — especially my fashion show.

  Happy reading!

  * * *

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Jahnna Beecham

  And

  Malcolm Hillgartner

  for their help in

  preparing this manuscript.

  About the Author

  ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.

  There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.

  Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.

  Copyright © 1994 by Ann M. Martin.

  Cover art by Hodges Soileau

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  First edition, March 1994

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-76838-2