Hello, Mallory

by Ann M. Martin

  I could also tell I had disappointed the girls.

  Today Melory and I sat for the Perkins. What an experyence! First of all Maria and Gaby were exited about the new baby. So was I. I love the idea of three litle grils! And I love the name Laura Elzabeth. Isn’t that pretty! Maria, Gaby and Laura. I wish I had a baby sister. Melary has three yonger sisters I guess that’s why she didn’t seem to exited. Anyway heres how the job whith Melory went. Not well. It seemed like she’d never seen a kid befor in her life….

  I didn’t read Claudia’s poorly spelled notebook entry until a long time after she’d written it. When I did read it, I was mad. But I was mad at myself because Claudia was right. I was a terrible sitter that afternoon. Only I don’t think it was all my fault. Claudia made me nervous.

  I met Claudia in front of her house at 3:25 and we walked across the street to the Perkinses’. The door was answered by Mr. Perkins, Myriah, Gabbie, and Chewy. Everyone seemed excited, even Chewy. (Well, Chewy always does, so I don’t know if this counts.)

  Mr. Perkins, who was grinning widely, handed Claudia and me each a pink balloon. “In honor of Laura,” he said.

  “We have a baby! We have a baby sister!” cried Myriah, who was dancing around the front hall.

  “Her name is Laura Elizabeth,” added Gabbie.

  “I know. I think that’s wonderful.”

  “I am so glad the baby is a girl,” Gabbie went on. “Now she can wear all my old clothes.”

  I smiled at Gabbie and she smiled back.

  “We visited the baby last night,” Myriah informed me. She was still jumping up and down. “We went to the hospital and we saw Mommy and Laura Beth. It was so, so fun.”

  “I’ve got to get going,” said Mr. Perkins hurriedly. “I just came home to get Myriah at school and pick up Gabbie. She’s been with friends of ours today. Now I’m going back to the hospital. Emergency numbers are in the kitchen near the phone. I guess you know everything else by now, Claudia. I’ll put Chewy in the backyard on my way out. He can stay there.” Mr. Perkins kissed Myriah and Gabbie. “I’ll see you at dinnertime, girls. Tonight you can visit Mommy and your sister again. Maybe we’ll go to Dunkin’ Donuts on the way home.”

  “Dunkin’ Donuts!” exclaimed Gabbie. “Oh, boy,” she said as her father rushed off. “I love donuts! And the little donut holes, too. I want a chocolate donut. What are you going to get, Myriah?”

  “Oh, I’m not sure,” said Myriah. “I just want to see Laura Beth again. And Mommy. Hey, Claudia, don’t you think Laura Beth is a good nickname for our baby?”

  “It’s great,” agreed Claudia.

  I decided I better show Claudia that I could take charge. “Are you guys hungry?” I asked Myriah and Gabbie.

  “Starved,” Myriah replied.

  “Well, let’s go have a snack. What do you want?”

  “Cookies,” said Gabbie.

  “A Popsicle,” said Myriah.

  “Mallory,” Claudia spoke up, sounding very superior, “It’s usually better not to ask kids what they want. Just give them something — something healthy. That way, there won’t be any arguments, and the parents will be happy, too. The girls are going to have donuts tonight. That’s enough sweet stuff for one day.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, my face reddening.

  But I was annoyed. There was Ms. Junk-Food Junkie talking away about health food. And practically scolding me in front of Myriah and Gabbie.

  I pretended I didn’t care. And that I’d known what I was doing all along.

  “Apples for everybody!” I called, trying to smile, as I led the girls into the kitchen.

  “But we don’t have any,” Myriah said.

  I looked in the fruit bowl and the refrigerator. She was right. There were no apples.

  Claudia shook her head. Then she said, “Hey, you guys. Guess what you do have — bananas and raisins. You know what we can do with bananas and raisins?”

  “What?” asked Myriah and Gabbie.

  “We can make banana-men.” Claudia peeled a banana and stuck raisins into it to give it eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

  “Hey!” cried Myriah. “Cool! Can I eat it?”

  “I want it!” said Gabbie.

  “You can both have one,” Claudia said. “We’ll make another.”

  I felt completely left out. I might as well not have been there.

  The afternoon didn’t get much better. The next thing that happened was that I tried to pour a glass of milk for Gabbie and spilled it all over the kitchen counter. Then the glass slipped out of my hand and broke. Claudia had to take the girls out of the kitchen while I cleaned up the glass shards. Just as I was finishing, I heard Chewy scratching at the back door, so I let him in. After all, he’d been inside when I arrived.

  Chewy tore into the house, tail whipping back and forth, and crashed his way into the living room, where he knocked three picture frames off a table with one sweep of his tail. Luckily, they didn’t break.

  “Mallory!” Claudia exclaimed. “What on earth?”

  “Yikes! Chewy’s a wildman!” Myriah shrieked.

  “He was scratching at the door, so I let him in,” I said lamely. I made a grab for Chewy and missed his collar by inches.

  “Mr. Perkins said to leave him outside,” Claudia reminded me.

  “Oh, yeah.” Chewy rocked back on his haunches, stretching his front legs out, and barked playfully at me. “Come here, boy,” I said. Chewy jumped away.

  “I’ll get him,” said Myriah.

  “And I’ll help you,” Claudia added. They dashed after Chewy as he headed into the dining room.

  Gabbie and I looked at each other. Now what?

  “Are you excited about seeing your mommy tonight? And your new sister?” I asked her.

  Gabbie’s eyes filled with tears and her chin quivered. “I miss Mommy,” she said.

  I sat on the couch and pulled Gabbie into my lap for a hug.

  “What happened?” asked Claudia. She struggled into the living room, holding a wiggling, wagging Chewbacca by the collar.

  “I said, “Are you excited about seeing your mommy and your sister?’” I told Claudia, “and she started to cry. She misses her mother.”

  Claudia closed her eyes for a moment, as if I had made her so discombobulated that she had to stop and recover before she could do anything else. “All right,” she went on. “Let me just take Chewy outside. Then I’ll come back and straighten things out.”

  She would straighten things out?! No way. I could do it myself. First I tickled Gabbie and made faces until she began to giggle. Then I called Myriah into the living room and told the girls they were going to have a pajama party in the middle of the day. Claire and Margo like to do this sometimes.

  I helped the Perkins girls into their night-clothes, and then the three of us gave each other new hairstyles and sang some songs.

  Claudia looked somewhat happier.

  Still, before the afternoon was over, I tripped while I was giving Myriah a piggyback ride and we fell down, and later I popped my Laura balloon, frightening both Gabbie and the cat.

  I couldn’t get home fast enough.

  “Please come to order,” said Kristy primly, adjusting her visor. She looked around at the other people in the room. Mary Anne, Dawn, and Claudia were sitting side by side on Claudia’s bed. I was sitting in the desk chair, the outcast.

  It was Friday afternoon, five-thirty, the beginning of another meeting of the Baby-sitters Club.

  “Have you all been reading the notebook?” asked Kristy.

  “Yes,” chorused Mary Anne, Dawn, and Claudia.

  “How’s the treasury?”

  Dawn flipped through the record book. “Fine. This week’s dues helped. If we don’t spend anything for awhile, then no problem.”

  “Okay,” said Kristy. “In that case, the next — and most important — order of business is Mallory’s test. And Mallory herself.” She glanced at me.

  I glanced back and tried to smile. I know
my smile was wobbly.

  “Mallory,” said Kristy, “you flunked the test.” She said it flat-out like that, but she didn’t sound mean. She sounded disappointed and a little sorry for me.

  “It was a hard test,” I said.

  “We know. It was supposed to be. Baby-sitting is serious business.”

  “But the test wasn’t fair.”

  “Fair?” cried Kristy. “Wait a second. We’re not talking about fair here. We’re talking about children. What if you were baby-sitting and one of the kids was in a bicycle accident and was bleeding really, really badly?”

  “I’d dial nine-one-one. I’d call for an ambulance or the police.”

  “And then what? What would you do while you were waiting for help?”

  “I — I’m not sure. I’d have to see what was going on.”

  “And really,” said Claudia. “Your drawing of the divestive system was terrible.”

  “Digestive system,” I corrected her.

  Claudia blushed. I actually felt good that I’d made her do that.

  “Furthermore,” said Kristy, “what if you were sitting for a seven-month-old baby who was crying and crying and you did everything you could think of — maybe even gave it soy formula for colic — when the real problem was that the baby was teething? Only that didn’t occur to you because you think babies don’t cut their first teeth until they’re eight months old?”

  “But I wouldn’t give a baby soy formula if the mother didn’t tell me to!”

  Luckily, the phone rang then. The girls forgot about me and the test as Mary Anne took the call and made a sitting appointment for Dawn. The caller must have been a new client because Mary Anne kept telling her (or him) things like, “Yes, we meet three times a week — Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons from five-thirty until six…. No, our going rate is a little higher than that…. We’re available weekends, evenings, and afternoons.”

  But as soon as Mary Anne hung up the phone, Kristy turned to Claudia and said, “On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate Mallory’s job with the Perkins girls yesterday?”

  “On a scale of one to ten?” Claudia repeated.

  “Yes. One being lousy, five being average, and ten being so incredibly wonderful you almost can’t believe it.”

  “Mmm … a three,” said Claudia.

  “A three!” I exclaimed.

  “Well, let’s face it Mallory, you spilled milk, broke a glass, and had a complete disaster with the dog.”

  “But those were accidents,” I protested.

  “Most of them.”

  “Then there was the business with the snack.”

  “What was that?” asked Dawn.

  Claudia told the story about the apples and her stupid banana-men.

  “You made me nervous!” I finally accused her. “You watched me like a hawk and you criticized everything I did!”

  The phone rang again. Dawn answered it. Mr. Perkins was calling. They talked for several minutes, lining up appointments.

  “How’s the baby?” Kristy called from the director’s chair.

  “How’s the baby?” Dawn asked Mr. Perkins. “Oh, good … Thanks! I’ll tell Claudia. She’ll be glad to hear that. Yeah, she had fun yesterday, too.”

  What about me? I thought. Dawn was talking as if only Claudia had baby-sat. I was there with her. Didn’t she think I counted? I guess not, since I’d been responsible for all those accidents.

  As soon as Dawn hung up the phone, the girls began talking excitedly about babies.

  “Remember when Lucy Newton was born?” asked Claudia. “Remember her colic?”

  “Yeah, that was terrible,” said Mary Anne.

  “She cried endlessly,” added Kristy.

  “Claire had colic,” I spoke up.

  “Oh, yeah. You mentioned that,” replied Claudia. “I don’t think the Newtons gave Lucy soy sauce, though, like you did.”

  “I hope not!” I exclaimed. “Soy sauce!”

  “Huh?” said Claudia.

  At last, I thought. Something I really knew about — that the girls didn’t know much about at all.

  “Soy sauce,” I said, “is a salty, um, condiment. For your food. Soy formula is a very gentle formula to give to babies who have trouble with milk. I should know.”

  The girls were looking at me. I felt like saying, “Nyah, nyah-nyah, nyah, nyah. I know something you don’t know.”

  “Oh,” said Claudia in a small voice.

  Silence reigned.

  Then Kristy said, “When are Mrs. Perkins and the baby coming home?”

  Dawn cleared her throat. “Tomorrow,” she replied.

  “Oh, wow. That’s wonderful!” cried Mary Anne.

  “Let’s celebrate,” added Claudia. “Now let’s see. Where —”

  “Do you still have Gummi Worms in your hollow book?” asked Kristy hopefully.

  “Sure.” Claudia pulled a fat book off her shelf. She opened the cover. To my surprise, there were no pages inside, just a hollowed-out space. And the hole was filled with a mess of squiggly Gummi Worms.

  Claudia handed one to each of us. The girls raised their worms in the air. I raised mine, too.

  “To Laura Elizabeth Perkins,” said Kristy. And she bit into her worm.

  The rest of us ate our worms, too, except for Dawn, who just played with hers. “Not only are these worms junk food,” she said, “but they’re disgusting. I personally do not see how you guys can eat worm heads.”

  We began to giggle.

  “Once,” I spoke up, “when Nicky was really little, he ate part of a mudpie.”

  “Oh, gross!” cried Mary Anne.

  “My brother once ate dog food,” said Kristy. “He thought it was leftover hamburger.”

  “Ew, ew, ew!” said Mary Anne.

  The phone rang and the girls lined up a couple of sitting jobs. It was almost six o’clock. Time for the meeting to end.

  Even so, Dawn said, “The Barretts’ dog once ate a knee sock.”

  We began to laugh again.

  “Remember when we were at Sea City,” Mary Anne said to me, “and I got sunburned and Claire brought me a tub of margarine to rub on my skin?”

  We laughed harder. This was how I usually thought of the girls in the Baby-sitters Club — nice, funny people who like to have a good time (but who are also serious sitters, of course).

  Since we seemed so relaxed, I dared to say, “Well it’s almost time to go home. Um … have you decided whether I can be in the club?”

  Kristy sighed. She got out of the director’s chair and crossed the room to the bed, where she had a huddle with the other girls. When they were done talking, Kristy turned to me. “You can be in the club if you pass another test.”

  “Another test?” I couldn’t believe it. How dare they? One unfair test wasn’t enough?

  “You flunked the first one,” said Kristy mildly.

  “It … was … NOT … FAIR!”

  “Was too.”

  “Was not!” Kristy must be crazy.

  “Then you can’t be in the club.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told her, jumping angrily to my feet. “I’m not going to be in your stupid club. I quit!”

  “You haven’t joined yet!” Kristy yelled as I stomped out of the room.

  “That’s the best thing that’s happened to me all year!” I yelled back. Then I ran home.

  There are a lot of things I do well, and one of them is mope. I moped all weekend and I moped through school Monday morning. At noon, I ate my lunch quickly, then escaped to the playground. Way off in a far corner of the playground is this fat, comforting sycamore tree. That’s where I headed.

  I walked slowly to it, dragging my feet with every step. When I reached the tree, I plopped down and leaned against its trunk. The tree is so huge you can only reach your arms about halfway around it. I wondered how old the tree was. I wondered how long the playground had been near it. I wondered how many other kids had sat by the tree or cried by it or even
talked to it when they were upset.

  While I wondered about these things, I felt around on the ground for a good worry stone, something smooth to play with while I brooded. I ran my hand through the pebbles until it met … another hand!

  A brown hand was lying near mine. It jumped when I touched it.

  “Aughhh!” I shrieked.

  “Aughhh!” shrieked the person attached to the hand.

  I scrambled to my feet and could tell someone else was scrambling to his or her feet on the other side of the tree. After a moment I dared to peek around the trunk. I found myself face to face with Jessi Ramsey.

  “Oh, it’s only you,” we exclaimed at the same time.

  Then we had to hook pinkies and say “jinx.”

  We sighed and slid back to the ground. This time we sat next to each other.

  “I read Impossible Charlie,” I told Jessi. “It was great. Really funny.”

  “And I read A Morgan for Melinda,” she replied. “That was great, too.”

  “Let’s switch back and then switch two more books. I’ve got one called The Lightning Time. It reminds me of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. You know, from the Narnia Chronicles.”

  “Oh, yeah? I’ve got all seven Narnia books.”

  “You do? I’ll trade you The Lightning Time for the The Horse and His Boy. I read every Narnia book except that one.”

  “Okay.”

  I looked at the ground. I still needed a worry stone. Jessi was looking at the ground, too.

  “Everything all right?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “How about you?”

  I shrugged.

  “Do you come to this tree a lot?” Jessi wanted to know.

  “Only to mope.”

  Jessi nodded. “It seems like a good moping place.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m so mopey I can’t even think of any good jokes. How come you’re moping?”

  I paused, trying to decide whether to tell Jessi about my problem. She looked as if another problem were the last thing she needed. Finally, I decided that telling her about it wouldn’t make it her problem. It would still be mine. All she had to do was listen. And I’d be willing to listen to her problem, if she had one.