“Uh-oh,” Kristy said to Mary Anne. “I smell trouble.”
You know what? I’m glad Johnny was on my back. If he hadn’t been, I think I would have decked King right then and there, or at least tried to. I was that angry.
“Who writes your material, King?” I asked, somehow unclenching my teeth. “It’s stale. Try again.”
I think I confused him. His eyes kind of went blank, then he said to Pete, “Hey, let’s show Lois the booth on health careers for women.”
“Those morons,” Mary Anne said. She started to come around the table, but Kristy held her back.
“Don’t, Mary Anne,” she said. “If they see you trying to help him, they’ll just get worse. Logan can handle it.”
That was good advice. I was glad Mary Anne was concerned, but King was just waiting for any excuse to be obnoxious.
So I thought I’d beat him to it. “You know, Clarence,” I said, “if you doubled your brainpower, you’d be a halfwit.”
“Whew,” Irv said, pretending to be shocked, “are you going to take that, King?”
King smiled tensely. “I don’t hit girls,” he replied.
Before I could respond to that, Johnny crouched down and whispered in my ear, “Um, Logan? I have to go to the bathroom.”
Pete found that uproariously funny. He turned away, trying (barely) to hide his laughter.
“You heard the kid,” King said with a smirk. “Go take him to the potty.”
I could feel Johnny squirming on my back. Mathew was holding my hand, looking scared and helpless. And I did the only thing I could do.
I walked toward the men’s room with the Hobarts. I tried as hard as I could to tune out the gale of laughter behind me.
And you know what the worst thing was? I just hated, hated the fact that that pigskin-head King was getting the last laugh.
“I don’t go to the potty. Only little boys go to the potty!”
Guess what? I wasn’t the only one upset. King had insulted Johnny Hobart’s big-boyhood — and Johnny wasn’t going to take it sitting down.
At least, not sitting down on a potty.
“He didn’t really mean it,” I said, trying to sound like I was telling the truth. “He knows you’re a big boy.”
“I am!” Johnny agreed. “I can use the toilet like a man, too! Go get him, Logan. I’ll show him!”
“Not now,” I said. “Let’s just go inside and get it over with, okay?”
The men’s room was a small cinderblock building on one end of the shopping center. As we neared the entrance, Johnny started wriggling like crazy. “No … no!”
“No what?” I asked.
“Let me down!”
I did, and Johnny stood next to Mathew, between me and the entrance. “We’re allowed to go inside by ourselves,” Johnny said defiantly. “Right, Mathew?”
“Uh-huh,” Mathew agreed.
The two of them stood there like miniature soldiers guarding a fort. As upset as I was, I didn’t have the heart to say no. I knew Johnny’s pride was hurt, and he needed something to make him feel strong.
Boy, did I understand how that felt.
“All right,” I said. “You can both go in. But Mathew is officially in charge. Mathew, you keep an eye on things, okay?”
“Yes,” Mathew replied.
“Okay,” Johnny said solemnly, as if we’d just negotiated an international treaty. “Now you wait over there.”
He pointed to a bench in front of a nearby shop. I walked over to it as the boys marched proudly into the men’s room. They disappeared behind an outdoor metal partition and through an entrance.
I sat staring at that partition, not wanting to move my gaze for a second.
To tell you the truth, I didn’t feel real comfortable about this arrangement. I kept wondering what Mr. and Mrs Hobart would think if they found out. What I was doing was not responsible baby-sitting.
But I didn’t want to doubt my instincts. Johnny needed this, I said to myself. Besides, what could possibly happen?
However, after about five minutes, I started to feel nervous. But I calmed myself down and sat tight. The last thing I wanted to do was march in there and completely blow Johnny’s trust in me. He was just taking awhile. It happens to all of us.
I checked my watch once, twice, three times.
After ten minutes, I began imagining Johnny’s picture on the side of a milk carton.
I’d waited long enough. I stood up and walked behind the partition and into the building. I was in a short entryway. Beyond it, a carpeted hallway led to the left.
Bang!
“Give it back!”
It was Mathew’s voice. My heart started to race. I sprang around the corner, clenching my fists.
The hallway stretched in front of me. Three snack machines lined the right side. A doorway was to the left.
And there was Mathew, standing in front of a candy machine with his fist in the air. “Oh!” he gasped, jumping back. “You scared me, Logan!”
I let out a deep sigh of relief. “Sorry,” I said. “Where’s Johnny?”
Mathew pointed to the door down the hall. “Still inside,” he muttered. Then he started yanking one of the knobs on the machine. “This dumb machine took my money. I put in the right amount, and I pulled the knob for a Milky Way, and nothing came out! No candy bar, no money!”
“Maybe it ran out, Mathew,” I suggested. “Do you want to try another kind, or do you want your change back?”
“Another kind,” Mathew said with a frown. “Three Musketeers.”
I pulled out the Three Musketeers knob and a candy bar clunked down into the chute. Mathew’s face lit up.
“There,” I said. “Now will you please go inside and get your brother? He must have fallen asleep in there.”
“Okay.” Mathew scampered through the door, unwrapping his candy and calling out, “Johnny!”
I heard the metallic slam of a stall door.
“Johnny!”
Another slam, then another.
“Johnny?”
The last one was a question more than a shout. I didn’t like the sound of it.
Mathew came running out. “I can’t find Johnny!” he cried.
I rushed past him into the room. “Come on, Johnny!” I said. “This isn’t funny.”
My voice echoed against the tiled walls. I pulled open one stall after the other. I looked under the sinks. I even opened up the wastebasket and pushed aside the pile of paper towels.
No Johnny.
I felt my stomach do a flip-flop. “Come with me!” I said, grabbing Mathew’s hand. We ran out the door, then took a right down the hallway, went back through the entrance and into the shopping center.
“Johnny?” we called, looking left and right. We scanned Tommy Anatomy’s audience. We checked the food concession.
When we arrived at the BSC booth, Mary Anne was looking worried. She’d been watching us while Kristy was talking to a group of SMS kids.
“Logan, what’s going on? Where’s Johnny?” she asked.
“I can’t find him,” I said, shocked at the words as they came out of my mouth. “I — I watched him go into the men’s room, and I didn’t take my eyes off the entrance once, and —”
“You let him go in by himself?”
That was Kristy. She had turned around to listen. The people she’d been talking to were now staring at me. I felt like a chainsaw murderer or something.
“No!” I cried. “He went in with — what’s the difference, Kristy? I have to find him!”
I turned to leave. Kristy shouted after me, “There’s a lost-children area near the cine-plex!”
I veered in that direction, with Mathew close behind me. When I reached it, the man in charge just shook his head. Then he asked for Johnny’s name.
I gave it to him, told him I was with the BSC, and ran back across the shopping center, shouting, “Johnny! Johnny!”
“Will Johnny Hobart please go to the Baby-sitters Club bo
oth,” came the lost-children man’s voice over a loudspeaker.
People started looking around. I could hear a buzz of concern. Even Tommy Anatomy stopped his show momentarily.
Mathew and I peered into every group of people, every corner. When we reached the other end of the shopping center, we ducked into a toy store and searched it thoroughly. Then we tried the pet shop, the soda fountain at Woolworth’s, the comic book shop, even the barber.
No luck anywhere.
I was freaking out. Kristy was right. What kind of baby-sitter would do what I had done? Where did I get off thinking I could be responsible for kids? What was I going to tell Mr. and Mrs. Hobart?
I tried to throw those thoughts out of my mind. I had to keep looking, and the pizza shop was one of the only logical places left. Keeping Mathew by my side, I ran toward it, hoping against hope that Johnny was talking his way into a slice and a soda.
When I spotted a pay phone right, I stopped short. “Wait!” I ordered Mathew, determined not to let him get away. I fished around in my pocket for some change.
“What are you going to do?” Mathew asked, his eyes wide with panic.
“I’m calling the police!” I said.
But the minute I picked up the receiver, I heard Mary Anne’s voice.
“Logan, stop!” she was shouting. “Come here!”
Mathew and I turned around. We couldn’t see the entire BSC booth, but we could see Mary Anne poking her head around some people and waving frantically to us.
I dropped the phone and grabbed Mathew by the hand. Somehow I managed not to yank his arm off as I sprinted toward Mary Anne.
My jaw dropped when we arrived at the booth. There was Johnny, making a paper airplane out of a BSC flier. There were Kristy and Mary Anne, looking relieved.
And there was King, leaning on the card table and smirking. “Look who I found,” he said.
“Wha —” Before I even finished the word, I realized talking to King was a waste of time. “Johnny, are you okay?” I asked.
Johnny threw the airplane and it nosedived to the ground. “Uh-huh.”
Uh-huh? I had just been through the worst fifteen minutes of my life, aged about ten years, even began imagining what life in prison would be like — and all he could say was Uh-huh?
I felt relieved, but I wanted to kill him.
“Johnny, what happened?” I cried. “Mathew and I couldn’t find you in the bathroom! Why didn’t you stick with us?”
Johnny shrugged. “Mathew left before me. You left, too.”
“I did not!”
King sort of chuckled and shook his head. “Chill out, Logan. He’s okay, in case you didn’t notice. No thanks to you, though.”
I spun around and looked King in the eye. “What do you have to do with this? Why don’t you mind your own business?”
King backed off, raising his hands defensively. “Hey, if you’d been minding your business, I wouldn’t have had to bring him back.”
“You brought him back?” I said.
King nodded nonchalantly. “I saw him coming out the back entrance of the men’s room, totally and completely alone. The poor kid looked pretty frightened —”
“Back entrance?” I said. “Johnny, when you finished, where did you go?”
“Um, I left the bathroom and went into the hall.”
“The hall with the candy machines?” I asked.
“Yeah. And nobody was there …”
“I was, too!” Mathew protested.
“Well, I didn’t see you,” Johnny said. “So I went outside.”
“When you went outside, did you pass by the machines?” I asked.
Johnny thought a minute. “Uh-uh. I went the other way.”
King gave a cocky, I-told-you-so smile. “The back entrance, like I said. So there I was, ready to go home, and this poor kid was just standing there, helpless and lost —”
“Get to the point, King,” Kristy said, letting out an exasperated sigh.
“So I brought him here,” King said. “It’s a good thing I’d seen him before and knew who he was.”
“Yeah, because he probably didn’t want to talk to you,” Kristy said.
“I don’t go potty,” Johnny reminded King.
“Okay, you said that a million times,” King replied (sensitive soul that he is).
I forced these words out of my mouth: “Thanks, King.” It hurt, but I had to say it.
“Hey, my pleasure,” King said. “You girls ever need another member, you know who to call.”
With every stupid thing King said, I could feel myself shrinking. But Kristy just sneered at him and said, “Don’t push your luck. We have a minimum IQ requirement.”
I wished I had thought of that.
“Hmmmph. Some gratitude,” King mumbled.
Kristy was only warming up. “Hey, King,” she said. “I think I hear your mommy calling. Don’t you have to go potty?”
Johnny’s eyes popped wide open. “He goes potty?”
“Only after Lois gets off it,” King said. But before Kristy could say another thing, he turned and left, calling, “Ta-ta, girls!” over his shoulder.
As he lumbered away, Mary Anne said, “What a creep.”
I stood there, speechless. Johnny and Mathew were playing with paper airplanes as if nothing had happened. A small crowd of people was shuffling away, muttering among themselves. Kristy was staring at me with her arms folded.
I had an urge to run after King and tell him not to mention the incident to anyone. I would bribe him if I had to. How could I possibly show up at practice after this? The guys were going to take me to the cleaners. I was going to become the laughingstock of every SMS team. An outcast.
I’d spent my life playing sports, making friends with my teammates — and now it was all going down the tubes.
And all because of the Baby-sitters Club.
I felt Mary Anne’s arm around my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Everything worked out fine.”
For now, I wanted to say. I took a deep breath, looking from Mary Anne to Kristy. I wanted to tell them how I felt, but I couldn’t. They had just heard King try to make himself into a hero. I had to tell my side of the story. “I guess I owe you both an explanation.”
I told them the entire story — the earlier episode with King and his buddies, Johnny’s hurt feelings, the incident at the candy machine. The more I talked, the more I realized how stupid I had been.
“I feel terrible,” I said. “This was all my fault. I never should have listened to Johnny. I should have insisted on going inside. And when I did finally go inside, I shouldn’t have panicked. I should have checked out the building and found the other exit.”
“Logan, you’re being too hard on yourself,” Mary Anne said. “It could have happened to anyone. You meant well. You were just being sensitive to Johnny’s feelings.”
“I was also being incredibly irresponsible and hysterical,” I replied. “I mean, talk about safe sitting! I broke just about every rule.”
“You did not, Logan,” Kristy said. “Part of good sitting is recognizing what a kid needs, right? That’s what you were trying to do. We all make mistakes.”
“I don’t know …” So many thoughts were tumbling around in my head. Thoughts of my former friends laughing at me, the panic on Mathew’s face as I dragged him around the shopping center, the accusing looks from strangers.
Suddenly the solution to my problem became clear, “Guys, this is ridiculous,” I said. “I can’t take Dawn’s place.”
“What?” Kristy said.
“Logan, don’t say that,” added Mary Anne gently.
But I’d made up my mind. “It just isn’t working. I have to resign.”
“Look, we can talk it out at Monday’s meeting,” Kristy said. “Maybe we can find a better way to work around your schedule.”
“Kristy, you said the club is going to get busier and busier,” I said. “It’s already out of control. I — I don’t e
ven know if I can be an associate member.”
Mary Anne was looking at me with those deep, searching eyes. “You really mean it, don’t you?”
For a moment I wanted to laugh and say I was joking. I hated to disappoint Mary Anne.
“Can you at least give us another week?” Kristy said. “We’re really busy.”
I took a deep breath. “No, Kristy,” I said. “I can’t. You’ll have to do without me, starting Monday.”
“No girls at this table!”
King bellowed at his own joke. I calmly put my lunch tray down across from him. “But gorillas are okay?” I asked, handing him a banana from my tray.
Around us, the football team laughed. King scowled. “Get out of here … Lois.”
I pretended to yawn. “Real clever. How long did it take you to think of that one?”
There was another burst of laughter. I felt pretty good. Insulting people is not my strong point, but I was getting better out of necessity. It was the only way to deal with King.
A week and a half had gone by since the health fair. A week and a half since I’d done any baby-sitting.
I had quit, cold turkey.
The first practice after the fair had been brutal. Insults flew from all over. “Potty animal” was one of the nicer ones. I finally lost it when Irv Hirsch said, “Leave Lois alone! She couldn’t go into the boys’ room at the fair. Girls aren’t allowed!”
Instantly a shoving match started, and four other guys jumped in. Coach Mills broke us up and angrily sent the whole team to the showers early.
After that, things became better, little by little. I went to all the practices and worked out just about every day for track tryouts. Most of the guys started laying off me — except for Irv and, of course, King.
As I sat down to eat, I felt a little nervous. The guys were talking about the tryouts, which were scheduled for after school that day.
“What are you guys going out for?” Trevor casually asked the table.
“Pole vault,” Harry replied with a mouthful of chicken.
“Low hurdles,” Jim Poirier said.
“The hundred-yard dash,” King said. “Same as Lois.”
As you can see, practically the whole football team had decided to go out for track. Some of those guys were really fast and agile, which made me a little nervous.