“Yeah,” said Danielle. “I know I’m thin. It’s the chemo.”
“What’s chemo?” someone asked.
“It means chemotherapy. Fighting cancer with drugs. Only the drugs are really strong, and they make you feel sick a lot. They also made my hair fall out.”
“Will your hair grow back?” my sister wanted to know.
“Yup,” replied Danielle. “And guess what. It might come back different. Like, curlier or thicker. That happens sometimes.”
“Cool,” said Becca.
A fifth-grader spoke up. “If you’re still sick, how come you’re back in school? I mean, how come you’re not in the hospital?”
“Because I’m not as sick as I was. I don’t need shots all the time. I can take pills. Anyway, I wanted to come home. I’d been in the hospital a long time. And the hospital is not exactly fun.”
“Can you do everything you used to do?” asked a boy.
“Almost,” Danielle answered. “I still get tired easily. But my mom says I have to do all my homework. She says cancer isn’t an excuse for falling behind.”
“Meanie-mo!” exclaimed Vanessa.
After another silence, Bruce asked, “How did you get sick? I mean, you seemed okay at the end of third grade.”
“I was. I felt fine. But over the summer I started getting all these sore throats and fevers. And I was tired all the time. My parents took me to the doctor and he did a blood test and that was when they found out it wasn’t just the flu or something. It was leukemia.”
“Danielle, are you afraid?” asked my sister.
“Sometimes. But I made up a rule as soon as I got home from the hospital. The rule is that I will only be sick when I’m in the hospital. When I’m at home, I’ll try to be like everyone else. That means not thinking and worrying about the leukemia all the time. I say to myself, ‘You are very strong. You are stronger than the leukemia. You will get better.’ ”
I glanced at Mr. Katz, who was smiling, but whose eyes looked awfully bright. I wasn’t surprised. I was blinking back tears myself.
A few minutes later, when the kids seemed to have run out of questions, Mr. Katz said, “Okay. Are you ready to write to your pen pals?”
The room exploded with activity. The kids jumped to their feet. (I think they were all sort of tense.) Danielle was left sitting on the desk, so I approached her. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Jessi Ramsey. I’m Becca’s sister.” I pointed out Becca and Charlotte, who were working across the room. “I’m helping Mr. Katz until Ms. Simon can come back.”
I explained what we were doing and asked Danielle if she wanted to work with a partner.
“No,” she replied. (The kids had scattered.) “That’s okay. Besides, there are twelve kids to write to now. When I left the hospital, two new kids were coming. One is a boy who has leukemia like me. He’s six. I want to write to him.”
I helped Danielle work on her letter, even though she didn’t seem to need much help. She wanted to talk, though. “You know what my dad says to my little brother and me each night before we go to sleep?” said Danielle. “He says, ‘Wish on the North Star.’ That’s the bright star in the sky. I never tell him, but I always make two wishes on the star. I wish that my family and I could go to Disney World. We’ve never been there. And I wish to graduate from fifth grade and go to middle school.”
When the club meeting was over, the kids ran noisily out of the room. Except for Danielle, whose mother picked her up. Danielle was tired and droopy. As they walked down the hall, I made a wish of my own. I wished that Danielle would recover.
The barn was hot and dusty — and peaceful. I lay against a bale of hay and breathed in the barn smells. I watched the sun shine through a small window high above me. “You guys are so lucky,” I said to Dawn and Mary Anne. “How come you don’t live in the barn?”
Dawn grinned. “Too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter.”
“Oh. Well, you’re lucky anyway.”
The house that Dawn’s mom bought is a colonial farmhouse. Behind it stands an immense old barn. Dawn and Mary Anne and their parents don’t use it for much of anything, except storage. It’s a great place to hold club meetings, though. Except that there’s no phone. And no electricity. And no hidden junk food…. Okay, so it isn’t perfect. But it’s a nice change.
On a Saturday afternoon, the members of the BSC arrived at the barn for a meeting. An unofficial one. The seven of us hadn’t been in the same place at the same time for ages. (Well, for about two weeks.) And we missed each other.
Now we were going to get together to discuss our new projects.
“Hello?” called someone from below us.
“Come on up. We’re in the hayloft!” Mary Anne replied.
Several seconds later, Stacey’s head appeared at the top of the ladder. She was the last to arrive. She climbed into the loft and stretched out flat on her back. (She was dressed in her grubby clothes.) “This is the life,” she said with a sigh. “I think I was meant to be a country girl.”
“You mean, life without Bloomingdale’s?” asked Claud.
“Oh. No. What was I thinking? I’m not a country girl at all. My mistake.”
Claud laughed. So did Kristy.
Then Kristy said, “Okay, you guys. As you know, this isn’t an official meeting of the Baby-sitters Club.”
“Right. No phone, no alarm clock, no visor,” said Mallory.
“We’re just here to talk.” Kristy was smiling. “So. What’s new?”
“My job,” spoke up Stacey, “is so cool.” She paused. “It isn’t easy, though.”
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“Not really. No,” said Stace. “I was prepared for problems, I guess. See, the boy, Gordon, is great. He asks lots of questions, and he follows my advice. But Charmaine will not listen to me. She’s trying to pretend she isn’t sick. She gets her insulin because her parents give her the injections. But she doesn’t stick to her diet. She says that turning down sweets reminds her she has a disease. So she eats them. But, of course, then she doesn’t feel well. I think she’s really frustrated. Which I can understand.”
“Have you told her that?” asked Mary Anne.
“What? That I think she’s frustrated?” replied Stace.
“No, that you understand that she’s frustrated. She’d probably like to know that. Tell her how hard it is for you to stick to your diet.”
“Hey, that’s a good idea!” exclaimed Stacey. “I’ve been trying to be this role model, this perfect person.”
“Beep,” said Claud. “Wrong. Bad move. Who wants to have to live up to someone perfect? That’s much too hard. I used to think I had to be like Janine, which was impossible. Now I know better.”
“Well, I’m in love with Frankie,” said Mary Anne. “What a great little boy. I don’t know why I’m in love with him, since he can’t walk or talk and I never know what’s going on in his mind. But he has this incredible smile. And sometimes he’ll grin right in the middle of one of his toughest exercises. It’s as if he’s saying, ‘This hurts, but I know you’re doing it to help me, so thank you.’ ”
“I’m in love, too,” said Kristy. “With babies.”
“Lucky duck,” said Mal.
“Yeah. Babies are so sweet.”
“Gag, gag,” said Dawn.
“No, really. And they change so fast. It’s hard to believe, when you’re holding an infant, that a year later, she’ll probably be walking and beginning to talk. She’ll be a person.”
“Danielle is a person,” I said quietly.
Six pairs of eyes turned toward me.
“What?” said Claud.
“I said that Danielle is a person. But some people seem to have forgotten that. To almost everyone, especially the other kids, Danielle isn’t just a person. She’s a kid with cancer. Which is the last thing she wants to be. And I don’t mean that Danielle wishes she didn’t have leukemia. She’s accepted that she has it. But she wishes people wouldn’t tre
at her so differently. She’s still Danielle.
“You know what she does wish?” I went on.
“No,” said Mary Anne. The others shook their heads.
“She has two wishes,” I told them. “To take a trip to Disney World with her family. And to graduate from elementary school. Can you believe it? Most kids are thinking, ‘When I grow up …’ or, ‘When I’m sixteen …’ But Danielle isn’t looking much past fifth grade right now.”
“One of her wishes is to graduate from Stoneybrook Elementary?” repeated Mary Anne. Immediately she began to cry.
Everyone else looked pretty teary, too. Even Kristy.
“Danielle sounds like a great kid,” said Claud, in a choked-up voice.
“Oh, she is,” I agreed. “I hope you get to meet her some time. You’d love her. She has the best sense of humor.” I told my friends some of the things Danielle had said when she was talking with the members of the Kids Club. “And she wears a T-shirt that says ‘bald is beautiful,’ ” I added.
The tears turned to laughter. (Well, to chuckles.)
“Is there any chance Danielle’s first wish will come true?” asked Mary Anne.
“To go to Disney World? I don’t know,” I replied. “I’ve met Danielle’s mother and we’ve talked a little. I don’t think the Robertses are poor or anything, but I know that Danielle’s medical expenses are huge. Insurance covers some things, but not everything. I don’t think they have much extra money now. Not enough to send four people to Disney World.”
Mary Anne had stopped crying by this time. “Have you ever heard of something called Your Wish Is My Command?” she wanted to know.
I shook my head. Most of the others looked puzzled, too.
“It’s this organization in Stamford,” said Mary Anne. “It grants the wishes of children who are sick — kids who’ve been sick a long time or who are sick most of the time. Especially kids whose illnesses have been expensive for their families. Kids like Danielle.”
“What kinds of wishes?” asked Mallory.
“Almost any kind,” Mary Anne replied. “Little kids sometimes just want toys their parents can’t afford. Older kids usually want to go to Disney World or Disneyland. Sometimes they want to get together with relatives they haven’t seen in a long time. Some kids want to meet stars. YWIMC grants as many wishes as they can. They get the money from donations.”
“Cool!” I exclaimed. “Boy, if Danielle could go to Disney World, she … I mean, her family … I don’t know. I just think a trip like that would be great for the Robertses. They all need a vacation. They’ve practically lived in the hospital recently. I bet they can hardly think of anything except medicine and treatments and leukemia and money. And Danielle has a great attitude, but she is just a kid. I’m sure she’d like to spend a few days in a place where she isn’t Danielle Roberts, the girl with cancer. Even Mr. Katz, who is so wonderful, sometimes overprotects Danielle. It’s hard not to. But if Mr. Katz overprotects her, think what her parents must do, even if they try to treat her just the way they used to.”
My friends and I talked until the sky clouded over and the barn grew cool.
“The meeting might as well be adjourned,” said Kristy then. “Remember — anyone who’s free, go to Claud’s on Monday at five-thirty to answer the phone.”
We left the barn then, and I rode home on my bicycle, pedaling fast to beat the rain. I just made it. As I was putting my bike in our garage, I heard a clap of thunder. Ordinarily, I sort of like storms, but I couldn’t think about this one. My mind was busy with wishes.
I found the phone book in our kitchen, turned to the Stamford pages, and looked up Your Wish Is My Command. Would anyone answer the phone on a Saturday? Probably not.
“Hello? Your Wish Is My Command.”
A volunteer had picked up the phone. I asked him a zillion questions about the organization. Who could have a wish granted? How long would it take? What process did the family have to go through? Then I told him about Danielle and her wishes. The man was really nice. He answered my questions patiently. He listened to what I had to say. And then he said, “Have Danielle’s mother or father give us a call.”
It was as simple as that.
I said thank you and hung up. I turned to the Stoneybrook section of the phone book. A lot of families are named Roberts, but I picked out Danielle’s family easily. Her parents are named Ray and Faye!
I dialed the phone.
Mrs. Roberts answered.
“Hi,” I said. “This is Jessi Ramsey from the Kids Club. Um, Mrs. Roberts, I just found out the most wonderful thing….”
Kristy’s stepsister Karen is so much like Kristy that it’s weird. She and Kristy didn’t know each other until shortly before Karen’s dad married Kristy’s mom, but they could be twins. Not in terms of looks. Karen has wide blue eyes, long blonde hair, and freckles, and she wears glasses. She and Kristy are not even remotely similar. Unless you get to know them. Karen is as full of ideas as Kristy is. She has just as much energy, if not more. And she is a talker. Also, she tends to get noisy. Adults always have to remind her to use her “indoor voice.”
So try to picture Karen in Claudia’s art class at the community center. Of course, Claud and the other teacher were in charge of not just Karen but eleven other seven-year-olds, including Margo Pike and Jackie Rodowsky. The members of the BSC adore Jackie, but we refer to him as “the walking disaster,” because of his constant accidents — tripping, falling, spilling, breaking, you name it. He doesn’t do those things on purpose. But if there’s so much as a piece of lint on the carpet, you can bet Jackie will stumble over it.
All right. Now picture these kids making sculptures out of clay, glazing them, and firing them in a kiln. This is what Claudia meant by a professional project. The kids weren’t making plasticene creations that would never dry. Or even clay pieces that would dry into a chalky gray mess. Their sculptures would look shiny and ceramic. Actual pottery.
The art teacher, Mr. Renfrew, had told the kids they could make whatever they wanted. Claudia walked from student to student, answering questions, helping out. The kids were seated at long tables that formed a square. The classroom was small and crowded — but Claud didn’t mind. She had a feeling that open space would have encouraged running around.
“Can you tell what I’m making?” Margo Pike asked as Claud paused next to her, peering at the wet clay that oozed between Margo’s fingers.
Claud considered the brown blob. It didn’t look like much of anything. And she didn’t want to hurt Margo’s feelings by making the wrong guess. Luckily (or unluckily; it was hard to say), before she had a chance to answer, she heard someone say, “Uh-oh.”
It was Jackie. Claud knew that without even looking around.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing,” said Jackie, which in Jackie-talk means, “Something.”
“Hey! How come there’s clay all over the floor?” exclaimed Karen Brewer.
“I was trying,” said Jackie, “to make a snake. And I was squeezing the clay and it shot out of my hands.”
“It flew right past me,” Karen started to say indignantly. Then she stopped talking and stared at the clay that had come to rest on the floor. “A snake! Oh, that’s a good idea!” she cried. “Jungles need snakes.” Karen forgot about Jackie and returned to her sculpture.
Claud glanced at Mr. Renfrew, who was busy across the room, and then at Jackie, who was holding out his hands helplessly.
“This stuff’s slimy,” he complained. “Hey, just like snakes!”
“Snakes are not slimy,” Karen informed him. “They have scales.”
“So do fish, and fish are slimy,” replied Jackie.
“Okay, you two,” said Claud. “Karen, work on your jungle, please. Jackie, help me clean up your clay, please.”
“Why does clay have to be so goopy?” asked Jackie. He was on his hands and knees, retrieving the clay. He looked like someone trying to pick up a wet bar of soap. (Cl
aud hid a smile.)
“The clay is wet,” she said to Jackie, “so you can mold it more easily.”
“Oh.” Jackie settled down.
“Now guess what I’m making!” cried Margo.
Claudia winced. Then she took another look at Margo’s clay — which had changed from a blob to …
“A person!” said Claudia. “It’s a statue of a person.”
“Yup.” Margo nodded. “A whole person. Head, body, arms, legs.”
The boy next to Margo glanced at her work. “It looks like a hamburger,” he said.
“Reid!” cried Karen. “That is not nice. You made Margo feel bad. Now she’s going to cry, aren’t you, Margo?”
“Yes,” Margo answered, even though she had looked fine. Her lower lip began to tremble, followed by her chin.
“But it does look like a hamburger,” said Reid.
“It’s a Hamburger Man!” added Jackie.
Margo bit her lip. Then she started to smile. “Yeah! It’s a Hamburger Man!” she exclaimed. “I’ll give him lettuce and tomato for a hat, and …”
“How’s your jungle?” Claud asked Karen.
“Well, elephants are hard to make. Did I do his ears right?”
The ears, in fact, looked awful, but Claudia answered the question by saying, “I could tell right away that it was an elephant.”
“You could? Goody. And this is going to be a purple tree —”
“A purple tree?” interrupted Reid.
“Yes, a purple tree,” Karen answered defensively. “And now, right here, sliming along on the floor of the jungle is,” (Karen paused dramatically) “a blue snake.”
“I thought you said snakes aren’t slimy,” said Jackie. He had finished cleaning up his mess and was energetically rolling his clay into a lengthy snake.
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