Claudia and the Bad Joke (2 page)

     
“Ah-hci! There you are!” I exclaimed. I saw my Doritos behind a pillow and some other things that had somehow wound up under the bed.

     
“Hi, Claud!”

     
“Ow!” I replied, as I banged my head on the bed, trying to scramble out.

     
Dawn had arrived. Mimi must have let her in. Mimi knows my friends, and they love her as much as I do. She loves them right back. That’s just the kind of person Mimi is.

     
“Sorry,” said Dawn. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m a little early.”

     
“That’s okay,” I answered. I sat up and rubbed my head. Then I held out the Doritos. “I knew these were under there somewhere.”

     
Dawn wrinkled her nose, plainly meaning, “Junk food. Ew.”

     
Kristy showed up then. Since her move across town, she depends on her brother Charlie to drive her to and from meetings. (The club pays him for this, in order to be sure that he’ll do it regularly.) Kristy headed straight for my director’s chair — she conducts our meetings from it — put her visor on, stuck a pencil over one ear, and reached for the club notebook.

     
She was ready.

     
The time was 5:25. Within the next five minutes, Mary Anne, Jessi, and Ma! showed up. The club members are prompt. Kristy wouldn’t have it any other way.

     
Maybe I should explain to you how our club works. I better start by telling you how Kristy got the idea for it. One evening her mother said that she was going to need a sitter for David Michael. It turned out that she needed one at a time when none of the older Thomas kids — not Charlie, not Sam, not Kristy — was available. So Mrs. Thomas got on the phone and started making calls. It took forever to find a sitter.

     
While that was going on, Kristy was thinking how terrific it would be if her mother could make just one call and get in touch with a

whole lot of sitters at once. And that was the beginning of the Baby-sitters Club. Kristy got together with Mary Anne, me, and another girl, Stacey McGill. (Stacey’s the one who had to move away, the one Jessi and Mallory replaced.) The four of us decided to meet on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons from five-thirty until six. We did plenty of advertising so people would know when we were meeting and could call us at those times.

     
Kristy’s idea was terrific. People did call us. They always reached four sitters, and at least one of us was usually available to take their jobs. Our clients loved finding sitters so fast, and we loved our baby-sitting jobs and earning money.

     
Since then, the club and the way it’s run haven’t changed much, but the members have. First, Dawn moved here and joined us, becoming the fifth member. Then Stacey had to move away. That was really sad (for me) since Stacey and I had gotten to be friends. In fact, she was my first and only best friend. She’s been gone for awhile now, and I miss her a lot. But she’s not too far away — just in New York City — so we talk on the phone a lot, and recently Mary Anne, Dawn, Kristy, and I visited her there and stayed for the weekend!

     
Anyway, by the time Stacey left, our club

was doing so much business that we knew we’d have to replace her. First we found Ma!, which was good but not good enough, because Mal is too young to sit in the evening, unless she’s helping take care of her own brothers and sisters. So we asked Jessi to join, too. She’s not allowed to sit in the evening, either, but we figured two afternoon-only sitters would free up the rest of us enough to handle the evening jobs. So far, we seem to be right. Plus, we have Logan and Shannon as backups. We call one of them when the club is offered a job that none of us can take.

     
Logan and Shannon, as I said earlier, are associate members of the club, meaning that they don’t attend meetings. Mal and Jessi are junior members. The rest of us hold offices. You know about Kristy’s. Her office is president. As president, she gets great ideas, conducts the meetings, and generally keeps things running.

     
I’m the vice-president. That’s because we hold the club meetings in my room, and that’s because I’m lucky enough to have my own phone and personal, private phone number. When job calls come in, which is often, we don’t tie up anyone else’s line.

     
Mary Anne is the club secretary. She probably does more actual work for the club than

the rest of us put together. You see, it’s the job of the secretary to keep the club record book in order and up-to-date. The record book is one of the two most important features of the club. (I’ll tell you about the other one in a minute.) It’s where Mary Anne writes down the names and addresses of our clients, it’s where Dawn (our treasurer) keeps track of the money we earn, and it’s where Mary Anne schedules our baby-sitting jobs. That is not easy to do. Mary Anne has to remember all sorts of things, like when Jessi goes to her ballet lessons or when I go to my art classes, in order to know when we’re free to sit. Somehow, she keeps everything straight, though. The appointment calendar in the book is always accurate and contains the latest information. Thank goodness for Mary Anne.

     
I might as well tell you about the other important feature of the club now, while I’m on the subject. It’s the notebook we keep. This, of course, was Kristy’s idea. None of the rest of us would have thought of it, and none of the rest of us like writing in it very much — but we all admit that it’s helpful. In the notebook, each of us is supposed to describe every job we go on, even if the job is, say, Mallory taking care of some of her own brothers and sisters. It’s surprising what we can learn by

reading about our friends’ sitting experiences. Plus, it’s just good to know what’s going on with the kids we sit for. Anyway, we write up our jobs, and then we’re responsible for reading the notebook once a week. We keep the record book and notebook in my room, the club headquarters.

     
The fourth office in our club is treasurer, and that belongs to Dawn. Dawn took over the job from Stacey when Stacey moved. Stacey had been a great treasurer. She loves numbers and is a real math brain. Dawn is just average at math, but she’s doing a fine job. She keeps careful records of who earns how much money, and she watches over the treasury, always remembering to collect dues, to give Kristy money to pay Charlie, and to let us know when club funds are getting low. And that’s about it. I can’t think of much else to tell you, so I’ll just let you see how a typical meeting is run.

     
Kristy began it at five-thirty on the nose.

     
“Any urgent club business?” she asked.

     
We shook our heads. We’d been busy, but things had been running smoothly.

     
“The treasury is fine,” Dawn spoke up. “We’ve got plenty of money to pay Charlie, and more left over in case anyone needs anything for her Kid-Kit.”

     
Oops. I forgot to tell you about Kid-Kits. Kristy thought those up, too. Naturally. They’re boxes that we decorated and keep filled with our old toys, books, and games, plus a few new items such as coloring books or activity books. We each have one, and sometimes we bring them with us when we baby-sit. The Kid-Kits are always a surprise and always a treat. Children love them!

     
We were discussing what we needed for our Kid-Kits when the phone rang. Jessi answered it, and Mary Anne, record book open, set up a job for Dawn. As soon as she hung up, it rang again. Mrs. Perkins, whose family moved into Kristy’s old house, was calling to say she needed a sitter for Mynah and Gabbie. Then two more of our regular customers called.

     
We had just arranged sitters for those jobs, when the phone rang a fifth time. Kristy answered it. After saying yes a lot, asking a bunch of questions, and nodding her head, she told the caller, “I’ll get right back to you.” Kristy hung up. “Okay,” she said to us club members, “a new client. Mrs. Sobak. She lives on Cherry Valley Road. She needs a sitter for her eight-year-old daughter, Betsy, this Thursday afternoon.”

     
Mary Anne was looking at our calendar. “Claudia, you’re free,” she said.

     
“Great,” I replied. “But I’m confused. I know other kids in that neighborhood who sit for Betsy Sobak. How come her mother is calling us?”

     
Kristy shrugged. “Don’t knock it,” she said. “A job is a job. Mrs. Sobak’s regular sitters are probably all busy. Maybe the Sobaks will become regular clients.”

     
“Right,” I agreed.

     
Kristy called Mrs. Sobak and told her that I would be Betsy’s sitter. When she hung up, she looked at her watch. “Almost six,” she announced. “Oh, hey, Mary Anne, can I have the record book for a sec?”

     
“Sure,” replied Mary Anne. She leaned over, holding the book out.

     
Kristy reached for it, pen in hand, and SPLOOTCH. She squirted blue ink all over Mary Anne’s white sweat shirt. Mary Anne,. gasped, but Kristy dissolved in laughter. “It’s disappearing ink!” she cried. “Sam lent it to me!”

     
We all watched the ink disappear, but Kristy was the only one laughing. Somehow, a practical joke seemed funnier in the movies than in real life.

Chapter 3.

The meeting ended at six o’clock, but it was six-fifteen before all of my friends had drifted away. Dawn was the last to leave. With her brother Jeff back in California, Dawn’s never in a rush to get home. She might be if she thought her mother would be there, but Mrs. Schafer works very hard at her job and recently hasn’t been getting home until seven on weeknights. And sometimes she goes out with thi,s guy, Trip, whom Dawn calls the Trip-Man and can’t stand. Dawn has stayed over at our house for supper a few times, but that night, she headed home to start fixing dinner.

     
I went downstairs to give Mimi a hand with our own dinner. I found her in the kitchen making a salad. I could smell chicken cooking.

     
“Hello, my Claudia,” she greeted me. “How was meeting?”

     
Mimi is native Japanese (English is her second language), but the reason she talks funny

doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s because she had a stroke last summer. The stroke left her with a limp, and she can’t use her right hand. Also, she has trouble with her speech. Even so, my family is amazed at how much she’s relearned in the past few months.

     
I kissed Mimi on the cheek. “The meeting was fine,” I told her. “Oh, I think we have a new client. Mrs. Sobak. She needed a sitter for her daughter, and I got the job. I go on Thursday.”

     
“Wonderful!” said Mimi.

     
“What can I do to help?” I asked.

     
Words must have escaped Mimi just then, because all she did was point into the dining room. I knew she wanted me to set the table.

     
I had just finished, when the genius came home.

     
“Hello,” she said somberly.

     
I guess life is a trial when you’re as smart as my sister Janine. All I worry about is babysitting and art projects. And maybe school. Janine has to worry about molecular theories and foreign politics and things like, Will the earth ever revolve so near the sun that it burns up?

     
My parents came home not long after Janine, and since Mimi’s dinner was ready, we sat down to eat.

     
“How was school?” Dad asked when we’d all been served.

     
I was hoping he was asking Janine, but no, he was looking at me.

     
Darn. That simple question can be very touchy.

     
“Fine,” I replied.

     
“Did you get your math quiz back?” Janine wanted to know.

     
I shot her a killer look, but everyone was waiting for my answer. They had all helped me study for that quiz.

     
“Yes,” I answered.

     
Silence.

     
“And how did you do?” Mom finally asked. “I got, urn, an eighty-one.” I put a huge bite of chicken in my mouth, hoping no one would ask me questions when they could see that I was trying to chew.

     
No one did. More silence.

     
I swallowed my chicken. I sighed. “An eighty-one,” I told them, “is good. It’s a Bminus.”

     
Mimi smiled at me from across the table. She didn’t say anything, though, and this time it wasn’t because of her stroke. It was because she and my parents don’t agree on my schoolwork. My parents think I could try harder and do better; Mimi thinks they should leave me

alone. But Mimi isn’t my mother, so she doesn’t say anything.

     
I changed the subject in what I thought was a very kind and thoughtful way. “Tell us about your research project,” I said to Janine.

     
Janine’s projects are all boring, so I hardly ever ask about them. However, Janine loves to talk about them. She was flattered that I’d asked. I was relieved that she had something long-winded to say.

     
The attention was off of me~ and my B-minus (which, frankly, I’d been sort of proud of).

     
When dinner was over, Mom and Dad and Janine cleared the table and began cleaning the kitchen. Mimi and I went into the living room to do my homework. It’s sort of a family rule that somebody has to give me a hand with my homework each night. This is because my grades used to be so bad. My homework was always a mess, and I didn’t know how to study for tests or quizzes. The best homework nights are the ones on which Mimi helps me. The worst are the ones on which Janine helps me. I wish I didn’t have to have any help at all, but my parents told me I couldn’t stay in the Baby-sitters Club unless I kept my grades up.