I caught Dad and Kate exchanging happy glances.
“Well, I think that’s terrific,” I told Muffin. And I meant it.
Then I realized I hadn’t greeted Kate.
I stepped over to her.
“Hi, Kate.”
Kate handed Baby Boy over to Dad.
“Hi, honey,” she said.
Before I knew it I had reached out and given her an awkward little hug around the waist. She kissed my forehead. Neither of us said anything.
When all the sloppy stuff was over, I suddenly realized I had a lot to show everybody.
“Come on!” I said. “We have an hour until lunch. You have to see the horses. And Sunny Skies!”
I dragged them all over camp. I showed them the lake and the art stuff and the horses and the amph. Muffin especially liked the horses. Sharon was at Haven, and she lifted Muffin onto Mr. Chips, and I led them around the ring a couple of times. Muffin was ecstatic. When she got off, Sharon let me demonstrate my jumping. Muffin was so impressed it was embarrassing.
“I want to do that someday,” she kept saying. “Just like you. Just like you, Kammy.”
I took them to Misty Mountains next. I had a surprise there for Muffin.
“This is my bunk,” I said as we entered the cabin, “and this is Nancy’s room, and this is where I keep my trunk.” I opened it. Muffin peered inside curiously. I guess she’d already forgotten how she watched Kate and Mrs. Meade pack it for a week.
“I think there’s something in here for you, Muffin,” I said, like I had just remembered it.
“There is?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“Mm-hmm.” I reached in and pulled out a little box. Emily had lent me the box just for this occasion. She kept her earrings in it. “It’s a birthday present,” I said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get it to you on your real birthday, but I made it and it wasn’t finished on time.”
“Did you make it at Sunny Skies?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, completely bowled over that she’d think of that. Four-year-old minds can be very hard to figure out.
Muffin lifted the lid on the box and stared. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or if she didn’t know what the present was.
“They’re barrettes,” I filled her in. “For your hair.”
I had taken two of my own barrettes and glued tiny beads and seashells on them.
“Ooh,” breathed Muffin. “Mommy, can we put them on?”
“Sure,” replied Kate.
I fixed them in Muffin’s hair and she looked pleased as punch. She even remembered to thank me.
After that it was time to go back to the mess hall for lunch. Actually, we ate on the main lawn in front of the mess hall, where another picnic was spread out. I ate a whole lot more this time than I did two weeks ago.
It was at some point during lunch that Muffin started to get fussy.
First she refused to eat the potato salad because it had black specks in it. Kate kept telling her they were just pepper, but it didn’t seem to matter to Muffin. (I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t eating the potato salad for the same reason.)
Then Muffin wouldn’t finish her milk because she said it tasted funny. Dad pointed out to her that she didn’t seem to mind the taste of the half she’d already drunk, but Muffin wouldn’t give an inch.
(Along about now Baby Boy began to cry. I wondered how his colic was getting along, but I was afraid to ask.)
I tried to ignore everything and enjoy the picnic, but it was tough.
As Dad was telling me how Simon had come within inches of catching a small spider, Emily wandered over. Her parents weren’t at camp. They lived so far away they only came to one Visiting Day each summer. Emily didn’t mind.
“Hi,” she said, standing by our little group. She sounded almost shy.
“Hi!” I answered happily. “Everybody, this is Emily. She’s my bunkie.”
Dad stood up and shook her hand politely. He invited her to sit down with us.
Emily sat.
Kate smiled and said, “Glad to meet you.”
Muffin pouted, for some reason I’ll never figure out.
And Baby Boy let loose one of his louder squawks.
Emily looked slightly alarmed.
“You’ll have to forgive him,” Kate apologized. “I think he’s sleepy.”
Why he couldn’t just drop off was beyond me.
Emily noticed the barrettes in Muffin’s hair and asked her how she liked them. Muffin stared at her sandals.
“Oh, that reminds me,” I said suddenly, ignoring Muffin’s lack of manners. “Do you have the box the barrettes came in, Muffin? It belongs to Emily.”
Muffin looked at me warily.
“Do you have the box?” I asked again.
Muffin nodded.
“Can you please give it to Emily? It’s hers.” I was being as patient as I knew how.
“No,” said Muffin.
“No?”
“It’s mine.”
“No,” I said very carefully. My father once told me my voice gets an “edge” to it when I’m angry. I carefully kept the edge out of my voice. “The barrettes are yours,” I explained, “but Emily lent us the box they came in. Now we have to give it back to her.”
Well, that did it.
Muffin turned on the tears.
She and Baby Boy were both crying to beat the band. I took a casual look around to see how much of a scene we were creating. Several people were staring, but that seemed to be about it.
After a few minutes of pleading and explaining, we got the box back from Muffin and I handed it to Emily, who had turned a fierce shade of red and kept repeating she didn’t really need the box; she could keep her earrings in her soap dish.
It was taking a great deal of effort on my part not to blow up. I felt quite explosive.
Luckily, the gong sounded before anything too awful happened. All picnickers fell quiet, Muffin included. Kate stuck a teething ring in Baby Boy’s mouth, and that silenced him for a while.
Mrs. Wright stood up and announced that the girls of Camp Arrowhead were going to present a program for Visiting Day.
We had had a meeting about this over a week ago and we all knew what would happen. Just about every camper was in the program. The Lower Girls would present their stuff first. Emily and I could watch until intermission, when we’d have to get ready for our parts. I was going to be in the drama group play. Emily was in a group that was going to do choral speaking, whatever that was.
Mostly what the Lower Girls did was sing. The littlest ones charmed us with an off-key rendition of “B-I-N-G-O,” the next oldest ones sang “My Grandfather’s Clock” with a lot of sound effects and gestures, and the oldest ones performed “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound of Music. Last of all, a special group put on a play, The Three Bears. It was really cute. The girls playing bears were wearing bear ears and bear noses and bear paws and bear tails. When they first came on, I looked over at Muffin to see how she was enjoying it. She was sound asleep.
Intermission came and I asked Dad if maybe he or Kate could wake Muffin up just enough so she could see me as the grandmother in our play, Flabby Tabby and the Blue Balloon Mystery.
Dad said they’d see.
After that came a flurry of getting ready. Flabby Tabby was the closing performance. While the other groups did their thing, Angela, Cassandra, me, and the rest of our group ran around getting our costumes together, putting on makeup, setting up the scenery, and finding the props.
All I had to do in the play was walk onto the set during the second act, let my glasses fall off, say, “Oh, my,” wait for Inspector Gardell to pick them up for me, and say, “Thank you, sir.” It may not sound like much, but it was crucial to the mystery, because when Inspector Gardell picks up the glasses he sees that the grandmother wears trifocals and therefore could not possibly have been the mysterious figure without glasses seen shooting BBs at blue balloons the week before.
Our group had gotten itself all ready by th
e time Emily’s choral speaking performance began. It turned out that choral speaking meant a group of people reciting something together. It was like a choir talking instead of singing. They recited the poem “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” with different groups saying each stanza.
It sounded really neat and I was trying to enjoy it, but I couldn’t concentrate. Suddenly I noticed my stomach didn’t feel so hot. I looked around for Cassandra.
“Cassandra?” I said when I found her. I was feeling pretty sick by then, and I guess my voice was sort of shaking, because right away Cassandra said, “Oh, no, not you, too.”
She led me to a shady spot where three pale girls from our group were sitting. One of them was Angela. She was holding a plastic bag in case she barfed.
“What is it?” I gasped. “Food poisoning?”
“No, silly,” said Cassandra, but she said it in a caring way, not a mean way. “It’s called butterflies. You’ve all got a good case of stage fright. You’ve got to get your minds off the play.”
“If I do that,” wailed Angela, “I’ll forget my lines.”
“No, you won’t,” Cassandra promised. “We’ve rehearsed so much, they’ll come to you just like that”—she snapped her fingers—“as soon as we get going. Now I want you to try something. Have you ever played Concentration?”
Cassandra started teaching us the crazy complicated circle game with hand-clapping and finger-snapping. It took a lot of concentration. Anyway, we got so carried away trying to keep it going, we started giggling and forgot about our stomachs. Angela even got rid of the plastic bag.
Before we knew it, “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod” was over and Cassandra was waving us back to the group. We had no time to worry about anything. The play began.
I guess it must have looked a little funny. I mean, we weren’t using the amph or anything because our audience was too big, and we didn’t have a real stage, just my scenery all propped up on the lawn in front of the mess hall; but it didn’t seem to matter.
The first act went off with only one small hitch. Bonita Evans, who was cast as the Flabby Tabby, tripped over her flabby tabby tail and almost killed Inspector Gardell. Otherwise, everything went fine. I hoped Dad liked my scenery.
Act II began, and I stood behind the scenery waiting to make my grandmother entrance. Me. Kamilla Whitlock. I had never done anything like this before.
I listened for my cue, and when I heard it, walked right on the stage (I think you could even say I walked on with confidence), let my glasses slip off, said, “Oh, my,” and “Thank you, sir,” at just the right places, and walked calmly offstage.
Then I hugged Cassandra, who understood.
The play ended and everyone in our group, including Cassandra, joined hands and walked in front of the scenery in a line. We took a bow, and our audience applauded. I frantically searched the sea of faces for Dad’s. And for Kate’s and Muffin’s. I was sure I’d never find them. But I did!
Lo and behold, Muffin was awake. She was waving at me and smiling again. Maybe she just needed a little nap to get over being fussy. After all, she was just four years old. I grinned at her.
A few minutes later, everything was over and I was back with my family.
“Well,” said Dad, “it’s time to make a decision.”
“I know,” I said.
Dad looked at me very seriously. He reached out and touched my cheek. “It’s completely up to you….Are you leaving or staying?”
I looked back at him. I couldn’t read anything on his face—except kindness. I thought I might find a hint there, like whether he wanted me to stay. But no hint.
I checked Kate. No hint there either.
“O.K.,” I said at last. “I’m leaving with you.”
Dad smiled. “All right, sweetie. And Kate and I want you to know we’re very proud of you. You tried something you were scared of and you stuck it out. Not many people would do that.”
“Oh, Kammy,” said Kate. “I’m glad you’re coming home. I know you and I got off to a bad start, but I’ve missed you these two weeks! I’m glad we don’t have to wait six more before we start over.”
Well, that was more than I had hoped to hear. I swallowed quickly a couple of times. I had something important to say.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Wait. I’m not coming home. I’m—I’m staying here. I have things to finish,” I said, thinking of Baby Boy’s quilt. “And—and Emily’s going to be here six more weeks. I can’t desert her. And our drama group’s going to put on some more plays, and I’m going to be in a horse show and everything. And we can write letters. And, Kate, in six more weeks maybe you can get the house all organized and clear up the baby’s colic and—”
“Kammy,” she stopped me, putting her hand on my arm, “It’s O.K. I understand.”
I think she really did.
We all hung around for a little while longer, and then the visitors began to drift off.
Dad looked at his watch. “I think we’d better get a move on,” he said. “Simon will be wanting us to serve his dinner.”
“Oh, Dad,” I groaned.
We all stood up.
Dad lifted Muffin onto his shoulders. “Remember when I used to carry you this way?” he asked me.
“Yeah,” I said wistfully.
“Somehow you seemed a lot lighter.”
“That’s because you were a lot younger.”
“Oh, Kammy,” he groaned.
I picked up the diaper bag, and we walked to the car. We got the kids and the bag loaded in, and I kissed Dad and Kate good-bye.
Dad had just started pulling out of his parking space when I thought of something. “Hey!” I cried. “I know what to name the baby!”
The car stopped. Dad and Kate poked their heads out of the front windows.
“What?” my father asked.
“Call him Robert, after you, Dad.”
Dad and Kate turned to each other and smiled. Then Kate flashed me the thumbs-up sign out the window, and Dad said, “I love you, Kams.”
They started to drive off again and then jerked to another stop as Kate poked her head back out the window.
“Kammy,” she called, “we have to start planning a party. You’ll have your birthday right after you come home from camp in August.”
“A party?” I echoed. “For me?”
“Of course!” cried Kate. “What’s a birthday without a party?”
This time they drove off for real.
Muffin and I waved until the car turned a corner and we couldn’t see each other anymore.
I headed back to Misty Mountains to find my bunkies. I had news for them.
A Personal History by Ann M. Martin
I was born on August 12, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey. I grew up there with my parents and my sister, Jane, who was born two years later. My mother was a preschool teacher and my father was an artist, a cartoonist for the New Yorker and other magazines.
When I was younger, my parents created an imaginative atmosphere for my sister and me. My dad liked circuses and carnivals and magic, and as a teenager, he had been an amateur magician. My father would often work at home, and I would stand behind his chair and watch him draw. When he wasn’t working, he enjoyed making greeting cards.
My parents were very interested in my sister’s and my artistic abilities, and our house was filled with art supplies—easels, paints, pastels, crayons, and stacks of paper. Coloring books were allowed, but only truly creative pursuits were encouraged, and I took lots of art classes.
Our house was as full of pets as it was of art supplies. We always had cats, and, except for the first two years of my life, we always had more than one. We also had fish, guinea pigs, and turtles, as well as mice and hamsters.
When I think about my childhood I think of pets and magic and painting and imaginary games with my sister. But there is another activity I remember just as clearly, and that’s reading. I loved to read. I woke up early so I could read in bed before I went to school
. I went to bed early so I could read before I fell asleep. And from this love of books and reading came a love of writing.
In 1977 I graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts. I taught elementary school for a year, which is what I had wanted to do, and used children’s literature in the classroom. I loved teaching, but by the end of the school year I had decided that what I really wanted to do was work on children’s books. So I moved to New York City, entered the publishing field, and at the same time, began writing seriously. In 1983, my first book, Bummer Summer, was published.
In 1985, after the release of my first three books—Bummer Summer, Inside Out, and Stage Fright—an editor at Scholastic asked if I’d be interested in writing a series about babysitting. She had a title in mind—the Baby-Sitters Club—and she was thinking of a miniseries consisting of four books. So I created four characters: Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and Mary Anne, and planned to write one book featuring each girl. The series was supposed to start in 1986 and end in 1987. Instead, it ended fourteen years later in 2000, with over two hundred titles and four related series, including Dawn’s spinoff, California Diaries.
Saying good-bye to the Baby-Sitters Club was sad. It had been nice not to have to let go of the characters at the end of each book. But by 2000, I had found that I wanted more time to spend working on other kinds of stories (though I did return to the series to write a prequel, titled The Summer Before, in 2010).
I felt myself drawn to the 1960s, the most important decade of my childhood. I think this interest was due in large part to the fact that my mother’s diaries came into my possession, and I spent a good deal of time reading them, especially the ones that covered the 1960s. The next thing I knew, I had written three books set in that decade. The second, A Corner of the Universe, is the most personal of all the books I’ve written. It’s loosely based on my mother’s side of the family, and in a way, it started on a summer day in 1964 when I learned that my mother’s younger brother, Stephen, who had died shortly before my parents first met, had been mentally ill. Stephen was the basis for the character of Adam in A Corner of the Universe. The book won a Newbery Honor in 2003.
The life I lead now is not terribly different from the one I led as a child, except that I no longer live in Princeton. I moved to the Catskill Mountains in New York a number of years ago. Animals are still very important to me. Influenced by the many stray cats I’ve known, and inspired by my parents, who used to do volunteer work for Princeton’s animal shelter, I became a foster caregiver for an animal rescue group in my community. I also still have cats of my own, and only recently said good-bye to my dog, Sadie, the sweetest dog ever. She was the inspiration for my book A Dog’s Life.