“I’ll make a huge Saturn!” cried David Michael, inspired. “I’ll use a beach ball, and I’ll put hula hoops around it for rings.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Kristy, “but it isn’t science-y enough. You’re going to be competing against some kids who are playing hardball.”
“Huh?”
“Kids who really know science. Kids who will do great experiments. You’ve got to do something better than them if you want to win.”
“Help me, Kristy,” said her brother, plaintively.
Kristy paused. “I’ll help you,” she said at last, “but I won’t do the project for you. Just like I can give you pointers on how to pitch a ball, but when you’re on the pitcher’s mound during a game, you’ve got to throw the ball, not me. Okay?”
“Okay.” David Michael turned back to his book.
“Hey, Emily,” Kristy said, “what are you building?”
Emily looked up from a messy tower she was working on. “Building,” she repeated, smiling.
“You’re building a building?”
Emily looked frustrated. “No!”
“What are you building?” Kristy repeated patiently.
“Bwocks.”
Kristy sighed. Emily Michelle is what the pediatrician calls “language delayed.” And it’s no wonder. The first part of her short life was spent in an orphanage in Vietnam, where she was spoken to in a foreign language (Vietnamese, of course), when she was spoken to at all. Then she was uprooted at the age of two and flown to a completely new country where she didn’t understand a word anyone said to her. Believe it or not, Claudia has been working with Emily some afternoons, teaching her vocabulary and concepts and other things that most two-year-olds already know.
Emily looked frustrated with her block-building, so Kristy decided to give her something new to do.
“Hey, Emily,” she said. She led her away from the blocks. “Show me your nose. Where is your nose?”
“Nose,” said Emily, pointing to it proudly.
“Good girl!” cried Kristy. (Claudia said that Emily learned fastest when she was praised for her good work.)
Then, without being asked, Emily pointed to her eye and said triumphantly, “Eye!”
“Great!” exclaimed Kristy. “Where’s your ear?”
Emily pointed. “Ear.”
“Oh! I just thought of a great song for you, Miss Emily,” said Kristy suddenly. “Come over here. We need space.”
Kristy led Emily to the middle of the den, away from furniture. “Watch this,” she said, and sang a song she’d learned in preschool.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes!
Kristy pointed to each body part as she sang the word. The song is fun, especially when you get going fast. (I can’t wait until Squirt is old enough for it.)
Emily had smiled while she watched Kristy. Now Kristy took her sister’s hands and placed them on her head and shoulders and so forth as she sang the song again. Emily laughed.
Kristy and her sister were going through the song for the fourth time when David Michael cried, “I’ve got it!”
“What?” asked Kristy.
“I’ll draw a picture of each planet in our solar system. I’ll color them in really carefully and I’ll write their names by them.”
“We-ell,” said Kristy. “Are you giving this your best shot?”
“Guess not,” replied David Michael. “Hey! How about, like, I get all my space monsters and all my astronauts and show them having a big, big, fight … on Venus?”
Kristy hesitated.
“I know, I know. Not good enough,” said David Michael.
An hour went by. David Michael suggested several more ideas to Kristy, who kept encouraging him to go one step further. Kristy and Emily sang their new song together.
It was just before Kristy’s mom and Watson came home from work that David Michael jumped up from his chair and announced, “This time I really do have a great idea!”
“What?” asked Kristy, who was losing hope.
“I’ll build a mobile and it will show all the planets. I mean, I’ll hang them in the right order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars. You know. And I’ll put the sun in the center. Maybe I’ll even make moons. At least, I’ll make our moon.”
“Now that,” said Kristy, “sounds like a good idea. You’d really be showing something. Maybe you could even fix up the mobile so the planets could turn around each other.”
“Maybe …” said David Michael uncertainly. But Kristy said he acted pretty excited when his mom and Watson came home. He told them all about the science fair and his solar system mobile.
Then Emily had to show off, too. “Eyes and ears and nose and mouf and shin,” she sang happily. Kristy couldn’t get her to sing the rest of the song, but it didn’t matter. David Michael was already clamoring for Kristy’s help with his project.
Kristy and David Michael were now official competition in the science fair.
When Stacey arrived at the Johanssens’ on Friday afternoon, Charlotte didn’t run for the door as she usually does when she knows Stacey’s going to be her sitter. Instead, Dr. Johanssen answered the bell.
“Hi, Stacey,” she said. “How are you feeling?” (Dr. Johanssen knows about Stacey’s diabetes and has been a help sometimes, even though she isn’t Stacey’s doctor.)
“Still kind of funny these days,” Stacey admitted. “I’ll probably see my doctor in New York soon.”
“Well, that’s good. Remember, you can always call me if you or your mom have any questions.”
“Thanks,” replied Stacey gratefully.
Dr. Johanssen led Stacey into the kitchen. “Charlotte is as busy as a bee in here,” she said. “I’ll let Char tell you what she’s doing, but I’ve got to get to the clinic now. You know where the emergency numbers are. Mr. Johanssen will be home early today — around five o’clock or five-fifteen. You’ll have plenty of time to get to your club meeting this afternoon.”
“Okay,” said Stacey. “Thanks. See you!”
“See you,” Charlotte echoed absently, not looking up from her work.
Dr. Johanssen smiled, shook her head, and left.
“What are you doing, Char?” asked Stacey. “What’s your project?”
“It’s not a project. It’s an experiment.”
Charlotte is just eight years old, but she’s very bright. She’s an excellent reader and does extremely well in school.
“An actual experiment?” said Stacey. “You mean you’re going to discover something?”
“I hope so.”
“Tell me what you’re doing.”
“Okay,” said Charlotte eagerly.
In front of her were three jelly jars. They had been cleaned thoroughly. In the bottom of each jar was some damp, white stuff.
“Well,” said Charlotte, “my experiment will show if music helps plants grow better, or if some kinds of music help plants grow better.”
“What’s that white stuff?” asked Stacey, pointing to the bottoms of the jars.
“Wet cotton balls,” Charlotte told her. “Can you believe it? If you bury seeds in damp cotton, they’ll start growing faster than if you put them in regular dirt. So I put three lima bean seeds in each jar. The seeds are just beginning to sprout. I keep the jars on this windowsill here in the kitchen. They all get sunlight part of the day. And I water them the same amount each day. But, here’s the difference. Every afternoon, I take this jar, Jar Number One, upstairs to my room and play classical music to it for half an hour. I close the door so the other plants can’t hear the music. Then, I bring Jar Number One downstairs, and take Jar Number Two upstairs. I play rock-and-roll music to those beans. I play it at exactly the same volume I played the classical music.”
“What about Jar Number Three?” asked Stacey, already impressed with what Charlotte was doing.
“Oh, I don’t play any music to that one. Because maybe music isn’t good for pl
ants. After all, plants that grow wild don’t hear music.”
“And I guess you’re keeping track of how the plants grow and stuff like that,” said Stacey.
“What?”
“Well, you’re charting them or something, aren’t you?”
“No. I mean, look at them. You can see for yourself. The sprouts in Jar Number One are bigger than in the other two jars. Those are the sprouts that hear classical music. I bet they’re going to be tallest.”
“But what if they were tallest, but the plants that heard the rock-and-roll music grew thicker than the others? Or their leaves were brighter or something?”
Stacey was going to keep on talking, but Charlotte got the message right away. “Oh, wow!” she exclaimed. “I’ve got to keep all kinds of records and stuff, don’t I? I should make charts and graphs. I should measure the plants every day.” She giggled. “I could keep a growth chart for them just like Mommy and Daddy kept for me when I was little. And I could make a chart showing their coloring and — and what else did you say, Stacey?”
“The thickness of the plants.”
“Oh, yeah. Boy, I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Charlotte assembled crayons, a pencil, a ruler, graph paper, and plain white paper on the kitchen table. Stacey sat down next to her to watch her work. But before Charlotte began, she jumped up, exclaiming, “Oops! I forgot! I’ve got to take Jar Number One upstairs. It needs its music.”
Charlotte carried the jar up the stairs, and soon Stacey could hear a few strains of what she thought was some music by Vivaldi. (Mrs. McGill loves Vivaldi.) Then Charlotte must have closed her door, because the music dissolved into silence.
For awhile after that, Stacey and Charlotte sat at the kitchen table. Char worked hard, occasionally asking Stacey for suggestions or help. Then, after awhile, Charlotte glanced up, looking like the timid child she used to be.
“Stacey?”
“Yeah, Char?”
“Do you think that maybe — I mean, if you have time — you could come to the science fair? Only if you want to. It’s just a kids’ thing. I know that. And you’re thirteen, but —”
“Charlotte, you know I’ll be there. If you want me there, I’ll come. Even if you hadn’t invited me, I probably would have come, anyway. You’re like my sister. I’m interested in everything you do.”
“Thank you, Stacey!” exclaimed Charlotte, jumping up to give her a hug.
Charlotte settled down to work again, and Stacey admitted to me later that she couldn’t help thinking that Char’s project for the science fair was the best one she’d heard of so far. It was a real experiment. Although if Jackie’s volcano really did erupt, that would be pretty exciting.
A few moments later, the doorbell rang.
“Do you want me to get it?” asked Stacey.
“Please,” said Charlotte. “A half an hour’s up, and I’ve got to switch jars and music right now.”
So Stacey answered the door. Guess who was standing on the stoop. Becca — my own sister and Charlotte’s best friend.
“Come on in,” said Stacey.
Becca stepped inside, looking glum.
“What’s wrong?” Stacey asked.
“Everything,” mumbled Becca. “Where’s Charlotte?”
“Upstairs. She’ll be right down, though. She’s working on her project for the science fair.”
“Oh, yeah. The plants.”
Charlotte trotted downstairs then. “Hi,” she said. “Well, Jar Number Two is listening to Duran Duran.” She paused. “Becca? What’s the matter?”
“Oh, it’s Aunt Dictator,” said Becca, flopping into a chair in the living room.
Char and Stacey couldn’t help giggling. “Aunt Dictator?”
“Yeah. That’s what Jessi calls Aunt Cecelia.”
“What’s your aunt doing?” asked Charlotte.
“What isn’t she doing!” Becca countered. “You know, Aunt Cecelia is supposed to be a baby-sitter, but she sure could take some lessons. She isn’t like you guys at all,” she said to Stacey. (Stacey guessed that “you guys” meant the members of the BSC.) “She never listens to Jessi and me; she just orders us around. And she doesn’t believe us. She doesn’t trust us, either. It was like when I got stranded on the island with Dawn and everyone the weekend Mama and Daddy left Jessi in charge. When Jessi called Aunt Cecelia to tell her about the emergency, Aunt Cecelia raced to Stoneybrook and took charge like Jessi didn’t even exist.
“And,” Becca went on, “she thinks she’s so great with Squirt, but she isn’t. She leaves him in his playpen when he should be walking around exploring things, or playing with me.
“You know what else is weird? Jessi and I have been playing all these practical jokes on Aunt Dictator, and she hasn’t said a word about them.”
“What kinds of jokes?” Charlotte wanted to know.
Becca explained, and Charlotte giggled helplessly.
“We figure,” said Becca, “that if we do enough awful things, Aunt Cecelia will get fed up and leave.”
“You mean, make like a tree and leave?” said Charlotte.
The sillies were setting in, Stacey could tell. But she let the girls go ahead and plot Aunt Cecelia’s demise. She didn’t think Becca would carry out any of their ideas, and she thought that taking imaginary action might make Becca feel better.
The girls discussed: tying Aunt Cecelia to a chair and telling the Ramseys that robbers had done it; hiding Aunt Cecelia’s hair combs, so that she couldn’t look perfect one morning; dressing up as Avon ladies and selling Aunt Cecelia jars full of water; coloring Squirt’s beautiful curls with wash-out green dye; and other things bound to drive poor Aunt Cecelia crazy.
Stacey laughed along with the girls, but she was worried. There are serious problems in the Ramsey household, she thought.
“I wonder what the world’s record for a gum chain is,” said Mal thoughtfully as she and I worked dutifully at ours.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe we could look it up in the Guinness book under ‘Gum Chain, Longest.’”
It was a Wednesday afternoon. Mal and I were in Claudia’s room, waiting for a BSC meeting to begin.
“Claud?” I asked. “Do you have the Guinness book here?”
“Yes, but I don’t know where it is,” she replied. She was separating the contents of a package of Neccos, pushing all the violet-colored ones aside. Claud doesn’t like purple Neccos.
“Oh,” said Mal. “Well, I’ll look it up at home. You know, if by some chance our gum chain beats the record, then I think we should try to braid the world’s longest friendship bracelet next.”
“But what would be the point?” I asked. “No one could wear it.”
“So what? No one can eat a five hundred-pound pancake, but people are always making things like that, trying to set records.”
“I know,” I replied, “but five hundred people could each eat a piece of the pancake,” I pointed out.
“Would you want to eat something that four hundred and ninety-nine other people were touching? And that had probably been buttered by an army of people skating across it with slabs of butter strapped to the bottoms of their shoes?”
“You guys! Cut it out!” exclaimed Mary Anne, looking absolutely green as she entered club headquarters and heard that last comment.
“Yeah, Mal. What’s gotten into you?” I asked. “You’d think Aunt Dictator lived at your house.”
“Nothing. I’m just pointing out to you guys that —”
“Order! Order! It is now five-thirty,” Kristy interrupted.
I looked around. The seven of us were assembled in our usual places. Since it was a Wednesday, Stacey didn’t have to collect dues.
“Any club business?” asked Kristy, as she always does.
“Logan baby-sat for the Arnold twins and Marilyn accidentally locked herself in the basement,” said Mary Anne. “Logan had to rescue her through the outside cellar door.”
We giggled.
“I know it sounds funny,” Mary Anne continued, “but we should remember how that basement door works.”
“Right,” agreed Kristy. “Everybody, make a mental note of that.”
(Claudia pretended to write something across her forehead.)
The phone rang then and Dawn answered it. “Hi, Mrs. Perkins…. A week from Saturday? I’ll have Mary Anne check, and I’ll call you right back.”
Dawn hung up the phone. “The Perkinses have a big, fancy party to go to. They need someone to baby-sit a week from Saturday,” she told Mary Anne. “It’ll be a late night.”
Mary Anne was already looking through the record book. “Hmmm,” she said. “Believe it or not, we’re all busy. We’ll have to call Logan or Shannon. I’ll take care of it.”
In the end, Kristy’s friend Shannon wound up with the job for the Perkinses. Then the BSC members waited for the phone to ring again. It didn’t. So we began to talk.
“You guys should see Margo’s shadow box for the science fair,” said Mal. “I want her to win, and I’m helping her when she asks for help, but mostly she’s working on her own. I don’t know what kind of research she’s doing, but she seems to have decided that Barbie, Ken, and Skipper inhabit the moon, and that they dress in pink and silver sparkly outfits, kind of like the ones that the Jetsons used to wear. You know, on that old cartoon show?”
“Yes,” said several of us, laughing.
“So then I asked Margo what people on the moon would eat, and she said, ‘Well, I guess they couldn’t grow any food in moon dust. They’d have to bring food with them like the astronauts did.’ So she put Tang and little plastic pastries and eggs and things from her dollhouse into the shadow box. To be honest,” Mal finished up, “the shadow box looks like a Barbie scene with a picture of the earth in the background.”
“Why don’t you correct her?” I asked. “Help her start over. Give her some books to read. Make her do it right.”
“Nope. That’s not what I’m there for,” said Mal. “As her sister or her baby-sitter. This is her project. She’s got to learn for herself.”
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