“What if they don’t call?” Sunny asked. “And if they do, which one of us should take the job?”
Jill shrugged. “We could both go, and split the money.”
Okay, that was it. I had had enough. It was time for us to paddle to shore and build a ship.
Or at least a nice, sturdy raft.
“I hate to say it,” I began, “but maybe we should talk about making rules. I know we’re different from the Baby-sitters Club, but things are getting out of hand.”
I’d had this conversation once before with Sunny. She had insisted that the W♥KC didn’t need to be as rigid as the BSC. Up till now, she’d been right. We’d never had as many clients as the BSC did. But that was obviously changing.
I expected everyone to protest. Instead, they just looked at me.
“What should we do?” Jill asked.
“Well, first of all we should decide on regular meetings,” I said. “Then we make some fliers to pass around and post in public places — fliers that say parents should only call during meeting times, and use Sunny’s phone number. This way we can easily record our jobs. That’s how the BSC works. We also have officers, so nobody gets confused about who does what.”
“I don’t like the idea of officers,” Maggie complained. “Like, ‘Aye-aye, Captain Sunny.’ That seems so official.”
“We don’t have to do everything exactly the same as the Baby-sitters Club, Maggie,” Jill replied. “Maybe just some things.”
“Or we can make up our own rules,” Sunny suggested. “Stuff that makes sense for us.”
Maggie shrugged. “As long as we can be kind of loose about it. No attendance sheets or demerits or secret handshakes and stuff.”
Sunny’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, secret handshakes! I like that idea!”
“Me too!” Jill said.
For the next few minutes, we tried out different We ♥ Kids Club handshakes — behind our backs, under our legs, jumping in the air. Finally we collapsed from laughter.
By the end of our meeting, we hadn’t decided on any changes. But we did agree that something had to be done.
For the time being, we’d just try to cope.
And buy a new calendar.
Did I tell you that Kristy is a complicated person? Well, she is.
Ninety-nine out of a hundred Kristy ideas are fantastic. But there’s always that one clinker.
From Stacey’s letter, I could tell that Kristy had really outclinked herself.
It started at that Friday BSC meeting. Everyone went crazy over the article and the video. Even Claudia’s sister, Janine, watched it. (Janine’s comment was “very good production values.”)
Afterward the members of the BSC retreated to Claudia’s room.
“This is so cool!” Stacey kept saying.
“I think Dawn’s telegenic,” Shannon said.
“You believe in that stuff?” Claudia asked.
“Huh?” Shannon looked at her blankly.
“Reading minds and everything?”
Shannon threw back her head and laughed. “That’s telepathic! Telegenic is like ‘photogenic on television.’ ”
Then Kristy spoke up. “We should make a video.”
“That would be great,” Jessi piped up. “We could do a takeoff! Daddy does an excellent TV announcer impression —”
“No, I mean really make one,” Kristy interrupted. “Hey, if the We Love Kids Club could be on TV —”
“Kristy,” Stacey said, “you don’t just make a video and put it on TV. The news station contacted the We Love Kids Club. No one’s contacted us.”
“Well, why not?” Kristy snapped. “We’ve been around longer than the We Love Kids Club. If it weren’t for us, they wouldn’t exist!”
“Okay, so they were lucky,” Stacey replied. “Maybe someday we’ll be lucky, too.”
Fortunately the phone started ringing with sitting jobs before Kristy could answer Stacey. It was past five-thirty. Kristy was so worked up, she’d forgotten to call the meeting to order. (I believe that is a first in BSC history.)
I should explain something. As I mentioned before, Kristy and Mary Anne are best friends. They grew up as next-door neighbors and started playing together when they were still in diapers.
When I moved to Stoneybrook, whoosh, all of a sudden Mary Anne became my best friend, too, and then moved into my house and became my sister. You can imagine how Kristy felt. I was not her favorite person. Fortunately things smoothed out over time. Kristy and I became friends and stayed friends. But a little germ of tension never quite went away.
I guess the germ started to grow again when Kristy saw the article and video. (At least that was Stacey’s opinion.) There I was on TV. First I’d “stolen” Kristy’s best friend, then taken her greatest idea to a bunch of girls who got it all wrong, and now they (and I) were getting all the glory.
By Friday the germ had become a raging flu.
That night Kristy baby-sat for her younger brother (David Michael), her stepsiblings (Karen and Andrew), and her adopted sister (Emily). After she put them to bed, she read the article and watched the video again.
I can just see the wheels turning in her head. I’m sure she tried to put aside her feelings about me. I’m sure she thought she was just cooking up another idea to help the Baby-sitters Club.
Whatever was on her mind, here’s what she decided: If the TV stations and newspapers weren’t coming to her, she would go to them.
The next morning, Saturday, she decided to “pitch” a story about the Baby-sitters Club to the news. (“Pitch” means “try to sell an idea.” Kristy had heard that term on TV and liked it, probably because it sounded like baseball.)
She began making phone calls. The first one was to the Stoneybrook News.
“News switchboard, may I help you?” an operator asked.
“Hello, my name is Kristy Thomas and I’d like to speak to the person in charge of, um, like, publicity for —”
“Please hold,” the operator interrupted. (I hate when that happens.)
Click … rriiiing! “Children’s calendar, weddings, and obituaries,” a voice said.
Well it took awhile for Kristy to reach the right department. When she did, the response was, “We’re all booked with features for a while. Have you tried your school paper?”
That wasn’t the response she wanted — so she tried the Stamford newspaper (Stamford is the nearest city to Stoneybrook). They were even less interested.
Next Kristy tried the two local television stations. The first one wouldn’t let her past the operator.
She tried a different tactic for the Hartford station. She actually wrote a script for her “pitch.”
Somehow she got through to a station official. As soon as she heard the woman’s voice, Kristy barged ahead, trying to read her script in an adult voice: “Hello, this is Kristy Thomas of the Thomas Talent Agency, and I have exclusive rights to the story of an extraordinary organization known by every parent in the Southwestern Connecticut radius. It’s called the Baby-sitters Club.”
Kristy took a deep breath. The woman said, “The what?”
“The Baby-sitters Club.”
The woman burst out laughing. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“No!” Kristy shot back. Then she remembered her mature voice: “I mean, imagine, an answer to the age-old problem of parents everywhere —”
“Do you have a tape?”
“A tape?”
“If you represent this act, or whatever it is, you must have a tape.”
Kristy hadn’t figured that into her script. “Uh, well, I’ll have to … call you back.”
Ball four. Kristy had to return to the pitcher’s mound.
One thing about Kristy, she never gives up. She couldn’t wait to bring up her big plan at the Monday BSC meeting. She figured everyone would be excited about the idea. Maybe they could make a tape of their own and send it to the station.
As soon as the meeting began, she reenacted her p
itch. The reaction? Total silence.
“So, what do you think?” Kristy said. “Should we make a tape?”
Claudia and Stacey shared a Look. So did Shannon and Jessi. And Mary Anne and the floor.
Finally Stacey spoke up. “I don’t remember deciding we were going to contact the media.”
“Sure we did!” Kristy protested. “Remember on Friday when we said we never got on TV or in the papers —”
“Well, yeah, but we didn’t say anything about actually trying,” Stacey said.
Kristy shrugged. “What’s so terrible about trying?”
“Kristy, you’re the one who’s always lecturing us about group decisions,” Claudia said. “You went and did this without telling us first.”
“But — but —” Kristy sputtered, “I didn’t think anyone would mind something like this!”
“Remember when Mary Anne got her hair cut?” Stacey asked. “We felt a little hurt because she hadn’t told us in advance that she was going to do that.”
“Well, that was dumb of us,” Kristy replied. “We all agreed.”
“But this isn’t,” Shannon piped up. “I mean, why do we need more publicity, Kristy? Dawn’s in California, Mallory’s home recovering from mono, and calls are coming in like crazy. We can barely keep up with the jobs as it is.”
“I just got a call from Dawn,” Mary Anne said. “It sounds like the We Love Kids Club is going crazy.”
“That’s because they’re not organized!” Kristy exclaimed. “They’re hardly even a club.”
“Look,” Stacey interrupted. “We said we didn’t want to take in new members to replace Dawn and Mal, right? If we get any more publicity, we’ll have to recruit half of SMS.”
“We could hold our meetings in the gym,” Claudia suggested.
“You’d have to order M&M’s by the truckload,” Stacey said.
“Oh, that reminds me!” Claudia cried. “Get off the bed.”
Mary Anne jumped off and Claudia reached under the mattress to pull out a huge bag of Reese’s Pieces. “Food break!”
“I thought the bed felt a little lumpy,” Mary Anne remarked.
Jessi laughed. “Mary Anne Spier, the Princess and the Pieces.”
Everyone groaned. The meeting was finally returning to normal. Sort of.
Kristy grabbed a fistful of candy and munched away, but she was glowering. She hardly said a word the rest of the meeting.
Reading about this incident made me feel a little guilty. Maybe I should never have sent that article and video.
Oh, well. At the end of Stacey’s letter, she promised she’d keep me posted on the “Kristy Crisis.”
Thursday was my double-sitting day.
I was lucky. Mr. Robertson and Mrs. DeWitt were nice as could be when I explained what had happened. They agreed I could take Stephie over to the DeWitts’ and sit for all three kids there. Erick (who’s eight) and Ryan (six) were happy she was coming over.
Stephie, on the other hand, did not seem thrilled with the idea.
She barely said hello when I picked her up. And she was silent practically as we walked to the DeWitts’.
Finally I said, “Stephie, are you mad about something?”
“Yes. I hate Erick and Ryan.”
“But I thought you didn’t know them very well.”
Stephie looked at me as if I’d said the stupidest thing in the world. “They go to my school, Dawn. And they’re cootie heads.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s just true.” She stared at the ground and pouted. “And I know why we’re going there. You forgot you were sitting for me, so you said you’d sit for them. And you said we were like sisters. Sisters don’t forget!”
No wonder she was upset. I stopped walking and crouched down next to her. “Oh, Stephie, I just made a mistake. You wouldn’t believe how many phone calls I got after the We Love Kids Club was on TV. It was all so confusing, I couldn’t think straight. I promise it will never happen again.”
“I wish that TV show had never happened,” Stephie said under her breath.
“Hey, you want to know a secret? When I went to your school, sometimes we wrote ‘CP’ on our palms.”
She gave me a baffled look. “Why?”
“It stands for Cootie Protection. Just in case. Here, give me your hands.”
She did. I took out a pen and wrote a tiny CP on each palm. “There,” I said, “now you can’t catch cooties.”
A teeny smile appeared on her face. “Are we still like sisters?”
“Of course.”
She looked admiringly at her CPs. “Well … okay.”
Whew. Stephie remained in a pretty good mood — until we reached the DeWitts’ front lawn.
There, dueling with plastic swords, were Peter Pan and Captain Hook.
“Blast you, Pan! I’ll cleave you to the biscuit!” Ryan shouted.
“Brisket, dummy!” Erick replied.
Ryan lowered his sword. “Uh-uh. No such word.”
Erick lunged forward and whacked Ryan’s sword away. “You’re a codfish, Hook!”
“Hey, no fair!” Ryan protested.
Erick finally glanced our way. “Look! There’s Wendy and Tiger Lily.”
Stephie was glaring at them. I could tell she had no intention of being Tiger Lily.
Fortunately the front door opened just then, and out walked Mrs. DeWitt. “Hi, Dawn! And hello, Stephie. Oh, look at you. Just as pretty as always!”
Mrs. DeWitt is tall and thin, with huge brown eyes and a wonderful smile. She’s an actress and has been in tons of commercials.
Ryan, who had disappeared behind the house, now returned with a long rope. “Erick, you tie up Tiger Lily and I’ll rescue her.”
Stephie looked horrified.
“Ryan Martin DeWitt, you put that rope away!” Mrs. DeWitt ordered. She smiled at Stephie and added, “They’re just excited to see you.”
Stephie stayed glued to my side while Mrs. DeWitt quickly gave me some instructions. Then she looked at her watch and said, “I have to run. Have a good time. I left a snack inside for you and the kids.”
“Snacktime!” Erick shouted. “Yay!”
“First come say good-bye.” Mrs. DeWitt knelt down and the boys ran into her arms, almost knocking her over.
“Will you be back in time to tuck us in?” Ryan asked.
“Way before that, sweetheart,” she said, kissing his forehead. “And so will Daddy.” She wrapped them both in a huge hug. “Be good.”
The boys ran inside.
As Mrs. DeWitt headed to her car, Stephie called out, “ ’Bye,” with a wave of her hand.
“ ’Bye, honey,” Mrs. DeWitt replied. “Have fun.”
Stephie beamed. I could tell she liked Mrs. DeWitt.
Now if only she could feel that way about her sons.
We walked inside. The DeWitts’ living room was crammed with photos — baby pictures of Erick and Ryan and their proud, smiling parents; a younger Mrs. DeWitt on stage, taking a bouquet of roses from Erick, in his dad’s arms; the four of them on a mountain hike, at the zoo, on a ski slope, and so on.
Stephie stopped to look at every one, her mouth open in awe.
In the kitchen, Erick and Ryan were wolfing down cream cheese-and-jelly sandwiches. With their free hands, they were reaching into a bag of Cheez Doodles.
“Hey, you’re taking mine!” Ryan shouted.
“There’s plenty left,” Erick shot back, grabbing a fistful of Doodles. “It’s a free country.”
“Give me those!”
Ryan reached across the table, knocking the remaining Doodles to the floor.
“Dawn, look what Ryan did,” Erick said in a singsong voice.
“You tattletale!”
“She saw you!”
I sighed. Eventually the mess was cleared away and we finished our snacks peacefully.
Then Erick decided he’d try to make friends with Stephie. “You want to play Turtles?” he asked. ??
?I’ll be Leo and you be Raph.”
“And I’m Don,” Ryan added.
Stephie shook her head. “Uh-uh.”
“Okay,” Erick said. “Um … how about hide-and-seek?”
“I don’t want to play that either.”
“Freeze tag?”
Stephie shook her head. “I can’t play anything rough. I might get an asthma attack.”
“Oh.” Erick looked at her blankly.
“Come on, Leo,” Ryan said. “Cowabunga, dude!”
The boys ran outside, off to … wherever Ninja Turtles go.
Now, Stephie’s asthma no longer prevents her from running around. And anyway, it’s usually emotional stress that triggers her attacks. Come to think of it, though, maybe running around with Erick and Ryan could be classified as emotional stress. So I wasn’t about to drag Stephie outside. But I couldn’t just ignore the DeWitt boys.
In a pile of stuff by the back door, I saw two Skatch paddles and a ball. “I know,” I said. “We can play Skatch outside, just you and me.”
Her eyes lit up. “Okay!”
That worked terrifically — for about ten minutes. Then Erick insisted on playing. Before long, he and Ryan were trying to prove who could throw the fastest.
Well, when two boys have a throwing contest, you know what happens. Someone always gets beaned on the head.
And you can guess who it was.
“Owwwww!” Stephie cried.
“It’s only rubber,” Erick said.
“Do we have to take her to the hostipal?” Ryan asked.
“Hospital, stupid!”
“I’m not stupid!”
“Whoa, chill out, guys!” I said.
Stephie was hugging me, whimpering.
Ryan walked closer to her, staring at her head. “Does she have a big bump?”
Immediately Stephie stuck her palm in front of his face.
Ryan’s eyes widened. “Cootie protection? I don’t have cooties!”
“Yes, you do,” Stephie said.
Erick was rolling on the ground, laughing. “Ryan has cooties!”
As for me, I was vowing to myself never, ever to double-book again.
It seemed like weeks before Mrs. DeWitt returned. I don’t know who was happier to see her, the boys or me.