“Oh, chill, Abby,” Kristy snapped at her.
“Hey, you guys, don’t fight,” Margo said.
“Mind your own business, Margo,” Abby barked at her.
Margo’s jaw dropped and tears welled in her eyes.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Kristy cried.
“I’m sorry, Margo,” Abby apologized. “Really. I’m mad at Kristy, not you.”
Margo sniffed. “That’s okay.”
“What are you mad at me for?” Kristy asked in disbelief. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Well, you certainly haven’t done any baby-sitting. You’ve been too busy being a one-woman filmmaking crew.”
“I’ll say,” said Alan.
“Oh, Alan, shut up,” Kristy said. “Anyway, we’re done for the day.”
Alan stared at her. “I didn’t say cut.”
“Cut!” Kristy shouted.
Later that afternoon, I sat in Claudia’s room wishing Pete were there to film the meeting. I thought it would be great if he could capture the tension between Abby and Kristy.
Kristy sat in Claudia’s director’s chair wearing a frosty expression. Abby slumped on Claudia’s bed, looking everywhere but at Kristy.
I could easily imagine the camera moving back and forth between them, capturing their angry expressions and waiting for the spark that would ignite an explosion. It would be fabulous film footage.
When the phone rang, Claudia picked it up. “Baby-sitters Club.” She took down some information and hung up. “It was Mrs. Wilder,” she told us, “for this Sunday.”
Mary Anne opened the record book. As I looked at her I realized she hadn’t said a word since she’d arrived. Was she still upset about the interview? Her expression was blank, hard to read.
“Kristy, want the job?” she offered.
“Haven’t you heard? Kristy’s given up baby-sitting,” Abby spoke up. “She’s just a film-maker now.”
Kristy glared at her, then turned to Mary Anne. “Yes, I’ll take the job. Unlike some people who are too exhausted these days to do more than one thing, I am able to baby-sit and deal with the rest of my life. Some of us can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.”
“And film and direct,” Abby shot back. “Are you also going to edit the movie?”
“That’s Logan’s job, but filmmaking is a team effort,” Kristy replied sharply. “Maybe if you were in the class you’d have just the slightest idea of what you were talking about.”
“Well, unlike you, I don’t think I know everything.”
Luckily, the phone rang again, cutting short the Fight of the Century. It didn’t stop ringing until the end of the meeting, leaving no time for further arguing.
At six, Abby stood and picked up the phone. “Hello, Mom? Could you come and get me at Claudia’s, please?” she said. “Yes, but I’d rather not ride with them today,” she continued. “I’ll explain on the way home. Thanks.”
“Fine,” Kristy grumbled as she left. “Fine with me … you big baby.”
Since I had a lot of homework, I wanted to get home pretty quickly too. Mary Anne was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. “Can we talk?” she asked.
“Sure,” I replied.
“I’ll walk with you.” Mary Anne fell into step beside me as we left Claudia’s, but she didn’t say anything.
“What did you want to talk about?” I asked.
“Well …”
“Well, what?”
“Would it be possible … would you mind if … ?” Again she hesitated. “I’d like you to cut my interview out of your film,” she said at last.
“All of it?” I cried, surprised.
“At least the part about my being mad at my mother,” she said. “I don’t want that on film.”
“What bothers you about it?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t want that to be my only public comment about my mother. I don’t remember her, but she was still my mother.”
“Our film isn’t exactly going to play in the mall,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, but you never know who will see it. There’s another thing too. I don’t want Sharon to see it. She tries so hard to be a good stepmother. I wouldn’t want her to hear me say that I don’t consider her my mother.”
“But do you?” I asked.
“She’s a kind of mother,” Mary Anne replied. “But I don’t know if it’s the same. I’ve never had a mother that I remember, so how would I know? Sharon and I had an argument before I saw you. I think that’s why I was in such a bad mood.”
“What did you argue about?”
“You know how she’s so forgetful and scatterbrained? Well, she forgot to pick up a dress of mine from the dry cleaner. She said she would get it. If she hadn’t said that, I’d have picked it up myself. I wanted to wear it when I go out with Logan tomorrow. But she just forgot.”
“Can’t you get it tomorrow morning?” I asked.
“I probably can. But at the time I just felt crabby, because she’s always forgetting stuff, and I said so. Then that made her angry and she said I don’t appreciate how much she does remember to do for Dad and me. Before I knew it we were fighting. You know how I hate to fight.”
“Yeah.” Mary Anne would rather die than fight. “So, you were thinking that maybe if your own mother were alive she wouldn’t forget things that are important to you?” I guessed.
“Exactly. I know it was stupid, but it’s how I felt at the time.”
“Everyone gets angry once in awhile,” I said.
“Now do you understand why I want that part out of your film?”
“I do, but …”
“But what?”
“It’s not really up to me to decide,” I told her. “We don’t operate like Kristy and her group.” I grinned. “We’ve been deciding things together. In fact, Emily was the one who wanted you for our project in the first place.”
“Oh, come on, Stacey,” she pleaded. “You can do this for me. I know you can.”
I probably could. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Our film was about life in middle school and Mary Anne had given us a pretty clear picture of hers. Or at least a part of her life.
“I’ll discuss it with Emily, Pete, and Erica,” I said, being careful not to promise anything.
“Oh, thank you. I am so relieved!”
I wasn’t sure she should be.
Pete, Erica, Emily, and I met at Pete’s house to review our film the next day, Saturday. It looked good. Pete’s camera work had improved tremendously since the beginning of the project.
After several minutes, Mary Anne’s face appeared on the screen. As it did, I reached over to the VCR and paused the tape.
“We need to talk about this,” I told the others. “Mary Anne is feeling weird about her interview and would like to be cut out.”
“No way!” Emily cried.
“But if she doesn’t want to be in the film, shouldn’t she have some say about that?” I said.
“It’s our best interview,” Emily pointed out. “It has great emotion. It shows the loneliness a lot of middle school kids feel. What could be more moving? Her mother died when she was just a baby. What’s more dramatic than that?”
“Besides that, it’s technically the best,” Pete added. “The sun is hitting her just right and the sound is great.”
“Once Mary Anne agreed to be interviewed, she gave up the right to control the result,” Emily insisted.
“Says who?” I exclaimed.
“Say the rules of journalism, and they apply to video journalism too. Unless the person asks to speak off the record, it’s on the record.”
I looked at Erica. “What do you think?”
She shook her head. “I can’t make up my mind. I don’t want Mary Anne to be unhappy, but I don’t want to lose our best footage either.”
“We’re not done,” I reminded them. “There will be other good interviews.”
“We don’t know that,?
?? Emily said.
“Emily,” I cried. “How can you be so hard on Mary Anne? You wouldn’t reveal the littlest thing about yourself when you were interviewed.”
“I did so,” she protested. “I said I wanted to be a journalist.”
“Oh, like that’s so personal,” I scoffed.
“We’re not talking about me. We’re discussing our project, and I think the Mary Anne interview should stay.”
“Me too,” said Pete.
“I guess I do also,” Erica agreed.
I sighed. Why couldn’t I be more like Kristy and insist on having things my way? Well, that wasn’t me and I couldn’t. “If that’s how you all feel,” I muttered.
They said nothing — just looked at me, their expressions apologetic but firm. And, to be honest, the part of me that cared about the film thought it should stay too.
Unfortunately, another part of me was Mary Anne’s friend. The filmmaker and the friend were at war right now.
“I’ll tell Mary Anne and she’ll just have to understand,” I said with a sigh.
* * *
That afternoon Emily interviewed Erica. “Sure I get mad,” she answered when Emily asked her the same question I’d asked Mary Anne. “But everyone gets mad. I’m no different.”
“But what things make you mad?” Emily pressed.
“The usual,” she replied. “War, violence, pollution.”
Watching from the couch, I shook my head in frustration. Like Emily, Erica was not going to reveal much. I wondered if that was because they’d watched too many of the other interviews. Erica probably didn’t want to wind up like Mary Anne, having said something she couldn’t take back.
“I think that’s enough,” Erica told Pete after several more unrevealing answers to Emily’s questions.
Pete’s doorbell rang. “I have a surprise interview subject,” he announced, heading for the door.
He returned with Alan Gray.
“Hello, girls,” Alan greeted us. “I guess you didn’t expect me, did you?” He plopped onto the couch and stretched his arms along the back. “This is your lucky day. Here’s your chance to ask me the things you’ve been dying to know for years.”
Emily, Erica, and I looked at one another. Our expressions were a mix of horror and laughter. “Do you want to interview him?” I offered Emily.
“Oh, that’s okay. It’s your turn,” she replied.
No fair! I thought. You conduct a two-minute interview with an easy subject, and now I have to interview the idiot of all time. But she was right. It was my turn.
I sat at the end of the couch, facing Alan.
“Roll ’em,” Erica shouted. Pete aimed his camera at us.
“Alan, how was your day?” I began.
“Great. I didn’t have to see Kristy, dictator of the universe. How can you stand her?”
I know Kristy can be overbearing. And, from what I’d heard from Abby and Mary Anne, she wasn’t being fair to Alan. But she’s my friend and I wasn’t about to say anything negative about her.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I replied.
“Yes, you do. You’re in the Baby-sitters Club with Darth Vader. You know.”
“She’s a really effective president,” was all I would say.
“You are so full of it, Stacey.”
“Excuse me, Alan, but if you’re going to be rude to me and insulting to my friends, maybe we’d better not continue.”
He grinned obnoxiously at me. “When are you going to get real, McGill?”
“When are you going to grow up and stop acting like an immature goofball?”
The taunting grin faded from his face. He scowled down at his hands, which he clenched and unclenched. Uh-oh, I thought. I really hit a nerve.
Still, I was suspicious and guarded. “What’s the matter?” I asked cautiously.
He kept his eyes down as he spoke. “That’s what everybody thinks of me,” he said. “That I’m an immature goofball.”
“Isn’t that what you want them to think?”
“Not all the time. Sure, I like a joke. But sometimes I feel locked into that role. No one takes me seriously.”
“You’re never serious,” I reminded him.
“Sometimes I want to be. I try to say or do something serious, but everyone still thinks I’m joking around. To them I am a joke. Alan Gray, the human joke.”
He was actually being serious. It was hard to believe, but he wasn’t kidding.
“Then why do you do things like writing on Claudia’s T-shirt when you knew she was planning to use it?” I asked.
He drew in a nervous breath before speaking. “That day I saw Claudia in there by herself and I thought maybe I could talk to her. You know, be friendly. But she just looked up and then went back to her work. Oh, it’s only Alan, she probably thought. If I played a joke on her, though, she’d think about me for the rest of the day.”
“She did,” I admitted. “But not fondly.”
He shrugged. “That’s better than being ignored.”
“Have you ever thought about finding some way to relate to people other than by annoying them?”
“I try!” he cried. “I’ve been completely serious about the film project, but Kristy treats me like I’m a fool incapable of doing anything right.”
“That’s the only side of you she’s ever seen,” I said.
“Yeah, but no matter how I act now, she thinks I’m a clown. How do I change my reputation?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “A little bit at a time, I suppose. I see you differently now. Maybe you just started to change your reputation this very minute.”
“Cut!” Erica cried. “Excellent.”
Facing Alan, I was suddenly uncomfortable. I could be personal in my official role as interviewer. But now, as just me, I felt awkward. “Excuse me,” I said and headed for Pete’s downstairs bathroom.
I closed the door behind me, then stood and gazed at myself in the mirror. Alan had really surprised me. I realized I needed to have a talk with Kristy. She wasn’t being fair to Alan. Was it up to me to tell her?
It seemed there were two uncomfortable conversations in my future. One with Mary Anne. And one with Kristy. I dreaded them.
There was one more thing to be anxious about too. I was the next and last person on our list of interviews. How personal would I let myself be?
How much of the real me did I want to reveal to SMS?
It took me till noon on Sunday to work up the nerve to call Kristy. Yet somehow it seemed easier than talking to Mary Anne.
I picked up the cordless phone and sat at the kitchen table with it. “Hi, it’s me, Stacey,” I said when Kristy answered. “I have to talk to you about something and I’m not exactly sure how to begin.”
“Just say it,” she suggested.
“Okay.” I told her what Alan had revealed the day before. “He’s really trying to change. The things you’re doing are frustrating him and hurting his feelings.”
“Since when does Alan Gray have feelings?”
“See? I didn’t believe he was for real either. But I saw a different side of him.”
“Alan is not a person,” Kristy replied. “He’s a pimple on the face of the earth. If I took him seriously, our film would be as big a joke as he is.”
“Come on, Kristy.”
“Come on, yourself. Don’t you see that he was putting you on? He faked you out.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. To get to me, maybe. He wants to turn our film into an Alan Gray joke and he’s using you to persuade me to move aside and let him. Well, I won’t.”
“I really don’t think that’s true,” I insisted.
“Yeah … well … I do. ’Bye, Stacey. See you tomorrow.” She hung up, leaving me staring at the phone. She can be the most stubborn person in the universe, I thought angrily. Of course, I couldn’t blame her entirely. She hadn’t seen Alan’s interview.
As long as the phone was in my ha
nd, I decided I might as well call Mary Anne and get it over with.
“I have some bad news,” I began, after we’d said hello. “I mean, it’s bad, depending on how you look at it. It’s possible to think of it as good news too.”
“What is it, Stacey?”
I took a deep breath. “Everyone in my film group thinks your interview is by far the best. They think you came across so well — so much better than everyone else — that they want to keep your part in.”
I waited for her reply, but there was only silence. “Are you there?” I asked.
“I’m here,” she said quietly. “How about just taking out the part about me being mad at my mother?”
“That’s the most interesting part,” I answered. “And Emily pointed out that it isn’t good journalism to cut compelling material just because it might be upsetting. Not that this is really upsetting. It’s just emotional. Don’t you think?”
More silence. “Did you even try?” she asked with a quiver in her voice.
“Yes! Of course. I told them how you feel. But, Mary Anne, you don’t come across badly. You’re a real girl who has a real problem and is talking about it sincerely. Kids will relate to —”
Click.
She’d hung up on me!
Putting the phone down, I let my head fall into my hand. “Well, that went badly,” I said aloud to the air.
A glance at the wall clock told me that I was due at Emily’s house for my interview in ten minutes. Well, I knew the answer to her first question. How was my day going?
It was terrible.
I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to reveal, though. I could get into an even bigger mess if I discussed how stubborn Kristy is and how overly sensitive Mary Anne can be.
No, it would be better to say my day had been fine and keep it light.
Wow! I was thinking just like Emily and Erica. I suddenly understood how they’d felt. I didn’t want to sound as boring as they had, though.
Pete had given a meaningful interview without embarrassing himself or creating a mess. I’d try to walk a middle line as he’d done.
When I arrived at Emily’s, everyone was waiting in her front yard.
“This will be our last interview before we have to show the film next Friday,” Erica reminded us. “We’ll use the rest of this week to edit it, and maybe we should film an opening.”