So the kids returned to the living room and took up the game again. They were still playing when Mr. Brewer came home.
Kristy sighed as she left. She’d had fun. But she was pretty sure she hadn’t heard the last about old Ben Brewer.
I had to do something about Kristy. I was trying my hardest to be nice to her, but things were no better between us. So one day at school, out of the clear blue, I said to her, “Want to come over to my house this afternoon?” I didn’t even know I was going to say it. It just slipped out. I was as surprised as Kristy was.
And we were both pretty surprised when she replied, “Okay. Sure.”
What had I gotten myself into? What would Kristy and I do? Every time we talked, it turned into an argument. Well, I thought, we could always watch a movie. I hadn’t seen The Sound of Music in a while.
After school that day, I met Kristy and we walked to my house together. Mary Anne didn’t walk with us. She was baby-sitting for Charlotte Johanssen, and the Johanssens live in the opposite direction from me. That was just as well, since Mary Anne is sort of the cause of our problems. Kristy and I needed some time alone together.
At first we walked along in silence. Kristy stared at the ground. She didn’t look mad, but I felt uncomfortable being silent with her.
“We live in an old farmhouse,” I told her, just to make conversation. “It was built in seventeen ninety-five.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Kristy.
Was she interested, or did she think I was bragging?
“Yeah,” I replied uncertainly.
“Do you like it?”
“Mostly. It’s neat living in a place that old. But the rooms are kind of small and the doorways are low. The first time Mary Anne came over, she said the colonists must have been midgets.”
Kristy burst out laughing. Then she caught herself and scowled. She pressed her lips into two straight lines. Thin lips are never a good sign.
I cringed. How could I have mentioned Mary Anne? I really hadn’t meant to.
I went on about the house some more. “When the house was first built,” I said, “there was nothing but farmland for miles around it. But Stoneybrook kept growing, and the people who owned the house kept selling off land until finally there were just one and a half acres left, with the house, an outhouse, a barn, and an old smokehouse. It sort of got run-down. By the time my mom bought the place, nobody had lived on the property for two years. We got it cheap.”
“You have a barn on your property?” Kristy asked with interest.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Do you play in it?”
“Well,” I said, “we’re not supposed to go in it too much, but sometimes my brother and I play there.”
“Why aren’t you supposed to go in it?”
“Because it’s so old. Mom’s afraid the roof will come crashing down sometime. She may be right.”
“You don’t have any animals, do you?” asked Kristy.
“You mean in the barn?” I shook my head. “But the people who lived there before us must have. There are still bales of hay sitting around, and there’s tons of hay in the hayloft. Sometimes Jeff — that’s my brother — and I go up in the loft. There are great places to hide, and we rigged up a rope so that we can swing down from this beam way high up under the roof, and land in the hay.”
“Really?” said Kristy.
“Yup.”
She paused. Then she said, “I guess you and Mary Anne play in the barn all the time.”
“Mary Anne?” I exclaimed. “Not a chance. She won’t jump off the beam into the hayloft. She won’t even go inside because of what Mom said about the roof. She may have changed this spring, but not that much.”
Kristy looked at me and grinned.
When we got home, the front door was locked, so I let myself in with the key. Back in California, I never needed a key. Mom was always home. Now I’m in danger of becoming a latchkey kid.
I almost said so, but luckily remembered just in time that Kristy has been a latchkey kid for years. Instead I said, “I wonder where my mom went.”
We found out as soon as we walked into the kitchen. Stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a pair of lips was a note that said:
Hi, kids! I’ve gone on two job interviews. Back at five. Love, Mom. P.S. Do not, under any circumstances, touch the tofu-ginger salad in the refrigerator.
Kristy looked at me, wide-eyed. “You mean there’s a chance someone would?”
I tried to glare at her, but it turned into a smile. “Yes,” I replied. “We all happen to love tofu-ginger salad. It’s good…. Really,” I added, as Kristy made gagging noises.
I looked helplessly around the kitchen. “You’re probably hungry, aren’t you?”
“Starved,” Kristy said, “But—but not so starved I’d eat tofu or sunflower seeds or something. I don’t suppose you have any peanut butter.”
“Sugar-free and unsalted, made from organically grown peanuts.”
“That’ll do. Any jam or honey?”
“Raw honey. We’ve already scooped the comb out.”
“Wonder Bread?”
“High-fiber wheat-and-bran.”
Kristy made do with the peanut butter, honey, and bread. I ate some yogurt with wheat germ in it.
Jeff came home, ate a banana, and went over to the Pikes’ to play with the triplets.
When he was gone, I looked at Kristy. “Well,” I said, “what do you want to do? We could watch a movie. Or I could show you my room. Or we could search the house for a secret passageway.”
“Could we go in the barn?” asked Kristy.
“Sure,” I said. “As long as we’re careful.”
We ran out the back door and across the yard to the barn. We didn’t even need our jackets since the hayloft gets pretty warm on a sunny day.
The main entrance to the barn (which, I should say, is not a very big barn) is a pair of sliding doors on one end. We leave one of the doors partway open all the time. We’ve stored some stuff in one of the horse stalls, but nothing that’s worth stealing.
Kristy and I stepped through the opening. “Ooh,” said Kristy. “It smells … like a barn. I mean, even without the animals.”
“I know,” I said. “Isn’t it great? You could almost imagine you were on a big old farm out in the middle of nowhere.”
(I think the barn smell comes mostly from the hay.)
We walked down the aisle between two rows of stalls. The stalls had long ago been cleaned out, and the harnesses and tools that had once hung on the walls had been removed, but here and there a nameplate remained.
Kristy read a few of them aloud. “Dobbs, Grey Boy, Cornflower.”
Aside from the stalls and some old feeding troughs, there wasn’t much to see.
“How do you get to the hayloft?” asked Kristy.
“This way,” I said. I led her to the end of the barn. A ladder was leaning against the loft, which was just a couple of feet above my head.
We climbed up and Kristy walked around in the hay. “Mmm,” she said. “It’s soft — sort of. And it smells good.” She looked up. The roof was high above us. The sun shone through the cracks and caught the dust motes in its light.
“Neat,” said Kristy. “It’s so quiet in here.”
“You want to swing from the rope?” I asked.
“Sure. I mean, I think so. How high up is it?”
“I’ll show you.” A series of wooden blocks were built into the wall above the loft. They went up and up and up. I climbed them until I reached a beam that was twelve feet above the hayloft. (Jeff and I measured once.)
“Swing that rope up to me,” I called to Kristy.
Kristy looked doubtfully at the rope, then at me. “All the way up there?” she said.
“Sure, it’s easy. Just try it.”
Kristy took hold of the end of the rope and swung it over and up.
I missed it by inches.
We tried again and I caught it. “Watch this!�
� I yelled. Holding on to the knot that Jeff had tied near the bottom of the rope, I pushed away from the wall and sailed out and down. When I had almost reached the other wall of the barn I let go and landed with a thump in the hay. “Oof. Oh, that was great! Do you want to try?” I stood up, brushing the hay off my jeans.
“I guess so.” Kristy began her ascent. She was climbing the wall awfully slowly.
“You don’t have to go all the way to the beam, if you don’t want,” I told her.
“No — I can do it.”
Kristy sat shakily on the beam. I tossed the rope to her. The expression on her face as she flew through the air changed from sheer horror (“Let go! Let go!” I screeched as she approached the opposite wall) to amazement to joy (when she landed).
She sat in the hay for a moment, then leaped up and exclaimed, “Oh, wow! That was terrific!”
We each took five more turns, Kristy looking cockier every time. Then we lay on our backs in the loft, gazing at the roof and watching the sunlight grow dimmer.
We began to talk. We talked about divorces. (“They should be against the law,” said Kristy. I agreed.) We talked about moving. (“Across town is nothing compared to across country,” I pointed out. Kristy agreed.) We talked about the Baby-sitters Club. (“It’s more important to me than school,” I said. Kristy understood.)
Then we talked about Mary Anne. After saying some boring things like how good she looked in her new clothes, Kristy said, “I’m glad she made a new friend.” “Really?” I asked. “Yes. She needs new friends.” “Well, I’m glad she still has her old friends.” “You know, I’ve been thinking,” said Kristy. “We should have an alternate officer for our club. Somebody who could take over any job if one of us can’t be at a meeting. Someone who understands each office. Would you like to be Official Alternate Officer?”
“Definitely!” I replied. And that was how, all in one day, I patched up my problems with Kristy and became Official Alternate Officer of the Baby-sitters Club.
The spring was growing warmer and warmer. For several days in a row, the temperature reached eighty degrees. Mary Anne said that this was abnormal, which I took as both good news and bad news.
The good news was that maybe we’d continue to have abnormally warm weather, which would be a kind way to ease me through my first Connecticut springtime. The bad news was that maybe next year we would have an abnormally cool spring (to make up for this year), which would be cruel to my system.
I think I’m cold-blooded.
One of those eighty-degree days was a Saturday, and I had a baby-sitting job with the Barretts. I had been there several times by then. I was looking forward to the day not only because it was going to be warm (hot!) and because I liked the Barrett kids, but because Stacey and Claudia were going to be sitting down the street at the Pikes’, and we had plans to get together with our charges.
The reason both Stacey and Claudia were going to be sitting for the Pikes was because all eight children were going to be there.
Mrs. Barrett had asked me to show up at 8:15 on Saturday morning. Yuck. I like to sleep late. But Mrs. Barrett had found a seminar she wanted to go to that would help her with her job search. It was an all-day affair that started at eight-thirty in the morning.
Despite the fact that I had sat at the Barretts’ on Thursday — just two days earlier — the house was in its usual messy state when I got there on Saturday. Furthermore, although Mrs. Barrett came downstairs looking stunning, Buddy, Suzi, and Marnie were still in their pajamas. Their beds were unmade, they had not eaten breakfast, their hair was a fright, and Marnie’s diaper badly needed to be changed.
Mrs. Barrett didn’t mention any of this, though. She didn’t give me any instructions, either, just dashed out of the house, saying that the number where she could be reached was taped to the phone. At least she had remembered to do that.
The kids gathered around me in the kitchen and looked at me expectantly. “How long are you staying?” asked Buddy.
“All day,” I replied, feeling less than enthusiastic.
“Yay!” cried Buddy and Suzi. They jumped up and down.
Marnie made the ham face.
I felt better.
I changed Marnie’s diaper. Then I asked the kids if they were hungry.
“Yes!” chorused Suzi and Buddy.
Well, first things first. I decided to give the kids breakfast. After breakfast I would get them dressed and help them make their beds and clean up their rooms. The day began to take shape. They could play outdoors until about twelve-thirty, then have lunch. Around one-thirty the girls would go down for naps, and maybe I would have a quiet time with Buddy. After that, more playtime, then some races to clean up the living room and playroom.
I made a mental schedule as I settled the kids at the kitchen table. The only thing I forgot to figure in was playing with Claudia, Stacey, and the Pike kids.
My mental schedule called for breakfast to be over at 9:15.
At 9:20, Buddy asked for more cereal.
At 9:22, Pow whined to be let in.
At 9:25, Marnie spilled Suzi’s orange juice.
At 9:28, Suzi was still yelling at Marnie.
At 9:31, Pow whined to be let out.
At 9:34, I was still cleaning up the table. (The schedule called for the kids to be dressed by 9:45. I revised the schedule, deciding that the kids could be dressed by 10:15, and chopped half an hour off their morning playtime.)
At 9:50, Claudia called and suggested having a picnic lunch in the Pikes’ backyard with all the kids. She asked if we could bring sandwiches for ourselves and bake brownies for everyone. She said she thought the picnic should start at one o’clock.
One o’clock! I’d never get Marnie and Suzi down for naps by one-thirty. I revised the afternoon schedule and re-revised the morning schedule, shortening play time again, then adding brownie-making time. If the kids were dressed and their rooms straightened by ten-thirty, we might be ready for the picnic by one o’clock.
“How would you guys like to have a picnic lunch at the Pikes’?” I asked.
I got a yeah from Buddy, a yeah from Suzi, and a ham face from Marnie.
“Okay,” I told them. “Then we have a lot to do this morning. You’ve got to get dressed and pick up your rooms, and — guess what — we’re going to make brownies for the picnic!”
“Oh, boy!” cried Buddy. “Can we start right now?”
“Nope,” I told him. “Not until you and your sisters are ready for the day.”
“We’re ready for the day,” he said.
“Not in your pajamas you aren’t. Come on, everybody.”
Dressing, bed-making, and room-straightening went much more slowly than I could have imagined. I thought about having cleaning races, but decided not to overuse the activity. If I did, it would lose its appeal.
An hour and a half after we’d gone upstairs, the Barretts were “ready for the day.” It was eleven-thirty. The picnic started at one o’clock. We had an hour and a half to make brownies. I hoped Mrs. B. had brownie mix somewhere, because the kids and I were going to do a lot better working with Duncan Hines than working from scratch.
I assembled Buddy, Suzi, and Marnie in the kitchen. (I put Marnie in her high chair and gave her a wooden spoon to play with.)
“Aprons for everybody,” I announced, pulling three out of a cupboard.
“Not me,” exclaimed Buddy. “Aprons are for girls.”
“Aprons are for cooks,” I corrected him. “See? Here’s a plain white one like the master chefs wear.” I tied it on him. It came to the floor.
“Now,” I continued, “does your mom buy cake mixes?”
“Yup,” said Buddy.
“Where does she keep them?”
Buddy pointed to a cupboard. I opened it and looked inside. I found flour, sugar, baking powder, boxes of cake and frosting mix, and (thank goodness) way in the back of the cupboard, two boxes of E-Z-Bake Brownee Mix. (Why can’t food companies spell things prop
erly?)
“Here we go!” I said. I decided we’d better make both boxes, a double batch, since there would be fourteen people at the picnic. Mrs. Barrett would probably appreciate the leftovers.
Buddy and I looked at the instructions on the back of the box.
“What do we need to add to the mix?” I asked him.
He frowned. “An egg and … and some o-oil,” he finally pronounced triumphantly.
“Good. Okay, you get out the eggs and the bottle of oil, and I’ll get the pans and mixing bowls.”
“What should I do?” asked Suzi.
“You can, um, get some dish towels,” I replied. They were the first unbreakable things that came to mind. Luckily, she didn’t ask me what they were for. I didn’t know at the time, but I figured we’d use them for something.
I was right. We needed the towels when Buddy dropped an egg on the floor, and again when Suzi turned on the electric mixer just as Buddy was lowering the beaters into the batter.
The brownies finally went into the oven at 12:35. They had to bake for a half an hour. We would only be five or ten minutes late to the picnic.
We spent that half hour cleaning the chocolate batter off the wall around the mixer, and washing the bowls and spoons. At 1:05 I removed the pans from the oven and tested the brownies with a knife. They were done. And they smelled divine!
I remembered just in time that you’re not supposed to cut brownies into squares before they’re cool, so I carried the pans over to the Pikes’ with hot mitts. I had to make two trips: the first with one batch of brownies, Pow, and the Barrett kids (Suzi took our sandwiches), the second with the other batch after the Barretts had been left at the Pikes’.
The Pikes’ backyard looked festive but crowded. Claudia and Stacey had spread blankets on the ground and laid out paper plates, cups, and napkins, and plastic spoons and forks. The Pike kids had been busy decorating the yard with flags and balloons left over from a recent birthday party.
I took a quick head count to make sure we were all accounted for, and came up with fifteen.
Dawn and the Impossible Three Page 5