“Don’t you want to know her name?” asked Margaret.
“Of course I do!” I said. I’d been so distracted by the news of her deafness that I’d forgotten to ask.
“Tinkerbell!” said Sophie and Margaret.
“Get it?” asked Margaret. “She’s kind of named after the other cat, Tinker. But since she’s a girl, she’s Tinkerbell!”
“That’s a perfect name,” I said.
“You know what’s really funny?” asked Margaret. “Since the night that Rasputin went away and Tinkerbell came to live with us, we haven’t heard that meowing noise from upstairs. Not once!”
“Hmmm …” I said. “That is kind of funny.” I wondered what it meant. Was Ghost Cat really a ghost after all — the ghost of Tinker? Or was the man who came to get him a ghost? Or both? Did the Craines put the ghost of Tinker to rest by bringing Tinkerbell home? It was frustrating to realize I’d never know for sure. But it was also fun to have a mystery to chew on.
* * *
Later that afternoon, I headed over to Claud’s for a BSC meeting. I couldn’t wait to give everyone the latest installment in the Ghost Cat mystery. I ran up the stairs and burst into Claud’s room, only to find that I’d gotten there early. The only ones there so far were Claudia herself, who naturally doesn’t have any trouble getting to meetings on time; and Kristy, who is extremely punctual.
“Hi, you guys!” I said, taking my usual place on the floor.
“Hi, Mallory,” said Kristy. “Come here and see what Claud’s doing. You’re not going to believe this.”
Claudia had lined up three bottles of nail polish on her night table: one red, one white, and one black. She sat cross-legged on her bed, concentrating hard on what she was doing, but she looked up and smiled at me. “Nail designs,” she said. “Everybody’s doing it.”
Everybody? Claudia was the first one I’d seen. But she’s often the first of my friends to try new things. Anyway, you wouldn’t believe Claud’s nails. She wasn’t just painting them — she was making designs on them! Each nail had a face on it, and each face was different. And, as usual with anything at all artistic, Claud was doing an incredible job. Her left pinky had a happy face on it. Her right thumb had an angry face. Her right ring finger looked kind of worried.
“Wow,” I said. “I love that sad one. Will you do my nails sometime?”
“Sure,” she answered. “Or if you want, I’ll teach you how to do it yourself. It’s not too hard.”
By that time, the other members of the club had drifted in. Stacey plopped down next to Claud on the bed and picked up the bottle of red polish. “Mind if I use this?” she asked Claudia. Claud shook her head, and Stacey got to work. Jessi came in and I sat on the floor next to her. Dawn and Mary Anne arrived last and found their places just in time.
“Order!” said Kristy. Claudia’s digital clock had clicked to five-thirty. The meeting had begun. We took care of club business pretty quickly: Stacey reported on how much money was in the treasury; Mary Anne asked a few questions about scheduling; and Kristy made an announcement about a new story hour that she’d heard about, which was starting that Saturday at the library. Then the phone rang.
“Hello?” asked Stacey, who’d been the first to dive for the phone. “Baby-sitters Club.” She listened for a minute. “Okay, Mrs. Korman. I’m sure we can have somebody there.” She hung up. “Mrs. Korman needs a sitter for Friday night,” she said.
“Not me!” said Kristy. “I’ve had enough of Melody-the-cat for a while. Anyway, I have a job at the Perkinses’.”
“Oh!” said Dawn. “That reminds me. I haven’t gotten around to writing it in the club notebook yet, but when I sat at the Kormans’ on Thursday, Melody wasn’t a cat anymore.”
“That’s a relief,” said Kristy.
“Well, maybe,” said Dawn. “The thing is, she decided to be a fish, instead!”
We all cracked up. “How does she do that?” asked Kristy.
“She just walks around making swimming motions with her hands, and kissy-faces with her mouth,” said Dawn, giggling. “I didn’t even try to stop her, I was so grateful that she wasn’t meowing!”
After we’d decided who would take the job and Stacey had called back Mrs. Korman, I told everybody about the latest on the Ghost Cat mystery. They were all fascinated, Dawn especially. She asked me about the man who had come to pick up the cat, and said she was positive he was a ghost.
“I don’t know about the man,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure a ghost is involved somehow. Anyway, it’s good that the Craine girls are happy with Tinkerbell.”
“You’re going to miss those girls, aren’t you?” asked Mary Anne. She’s always so sensitive to other people’s feelings.
“I am,” I said. “But I still have another week of sitting for them, and even after that I think I’ll be seeing them now and then. You know who I do miss already, though? Uncle Joe.”
Jessi reached out and touched my shoulder. “Just think, though,” she said. “At least he’s being taken care of, and he’s comfortable. There are even things he likes about being at Stoneybrook Manor.”
“You’re right,” I replied. “At least he’s not spending the rest of his days like old Kennedy Graham, all alone in a big old house and going crazy because his cat has died.”
The meeting went on, but I kind of tuned out for the rest of it. I was thinking about Uncle Joe, and planning my next visit to Stoneybrook Manor. Maybe the Craine girls would like to come with me sometime. We could even bring Tinkerbell….
The author gratefully acknowledges
Ellen Miles
for her help in
preparing this manuscript.
About the Author
ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.
There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.)In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.
Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.
Copyright © 1992 by Ann M. Martin.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First edition, February 1992
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-69060-7
Mallory and the Ghost Cat Page 11