Claudia and the Bad Joke (3 page)

     
“All right,” Mimi began, “what are your assign — assign — what ishomework?”

     
“One page of math problems, read this chapter in my science book, and answer these questions for English,” I told her.

     
Mimi nodded. “Where to start?”

     
“English,” I said promptly. I don’t love English, but I hate math and science.

     
“Why not get bad work done first, then do English?” suggested Mimi.

     
I screwed up my face. “Okay,” I agreed. We began with the math. I don’t know what it is about numbers. They just don’t make sense to me. Stacey once said that she can “read” numbers the way she can read words. She understands them. She can look at a problem for a few moments, and suddenly she has the answer, without doing any figuring or writing. She calculates things in her head as if her brain were a computer.

     
Not me. Oh, no. I sit and figure, and half the time I’m figuring wrong. Adding when I should be multiplying, subtracting four from ten and getting seven. What a mess!

     
Mimi and I plodded through my work. Mimi is so patient. She never raises her voice or gets aggravated.

     
“Now,” she said, when I had finished my math and science, “where are English plobrems, my Claudia?”

     
I knew she had meant to say “problems.” “They’re just some questions,” I told her, “and they’re right here.”

     
In English class this year we’re reading the Newbery Award-winning books. We’ve already read several. Now we’re reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. I didn’t think I would like it, but really, it isn’t bad.

     
Mimi looked at the list of questions and read the first one. “In what — in what ways is main — is the main character in Roli~. of, um, Thunder, Hear My Cry simi — similar to main — to the main character in A Wrinkle in Time?”

     
“Oh, lord,” I replied, “They couldn’t be more different! I hate questions like that.”

     
“Think, my Claudia. Is anything the same about them?”

     
“They’re both girls,” I said.

     
If Janine had been helping me, she probably would have thrown down her pencil in disgust at that answer, but Mimi just said, “That a good start. What else?”

     
We worked and worked. The more we talked, the more answers I found. When we were finally done, I kissed Mimi, thanked her, and escaped to my room.

     
Ah, art. I looked at the half-finished pastel drawing on my easel. I just stood in front of it for several minutes, thinking. After awhile,

I opened my box of pastels and slowly set to work. When I’m in the middle of a good project, especially a painting or a drawing, I can forget about everything else. Which is what I did. And which may explain why I jumped a mile when the phone rang.

     
“Hello?” I said.

     
“Hi, Claudia. It’s Ashley.”

     
Ashley Wyeth is a new friend of mine. We have a funny relationship. It seems like we’re always mad at each other. We’re forever fighting, then making up. But Ashley is the only person who truly understands my love of art. She’s an artist herself — the most talented person our age I know. Before she moved to Stoneybrook, she lived in Chicago and went to this really great art school there. And she thinks i’m talented! Ashley can be a pain in the neck, though, because she’s always bugging me to quit baby-sitting and spend more time on my art.

     
So when Ashley called, I braced myself for a lecture, but all she wanted was our English assignment. I read her the questions and then hung up. As soon as I did, the phone rang again.

     
“Hello?”

     
At first there was just silence at the other end of the phone. Then an odd-sounding voice

said, “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?”

     
“Huh?” I replied. “Prince Albert?”

     
“Oh, never mind.” The voice suddenly sounded disgusted and the caller hung up.

     
I looked at the receiver as if it could explain to me what had just happened. A goof call gone wrong, I decided as I hung up. The caller was probably someone who’d been at the film festival. Practical-joke season had begun — and I, for one, did not like it.

It was Thursday morning and I was nervous.

A couple of kids who used to baby-sit for Betsy

Sobak had told me why they wouldn’t do it

anymore.

     
“She’s an incurable practical joker,” Diana Roberts said.

     
“Well, she used to be,” Gordon Brown corrected her. “Supposedly she outgrew it, but I don’t sit for her anymore.”

     
“Me neither,” agreed Diana. “I don’t think it’s safe yet.”

     
“I’ll let you know,” I told them. “Her parents must have gotten desperate without you guys, because her mom called the Baby-sitters Club. I’m going to sit for Betsy this afternoon.”

     
I was smiling, trying to pretend I wasn’t nervous. This wasn’t easy with Diana and Gordon looking at me sympathetically, but I put up a good front.

     
“Be careful,” Diana called as she headed for the girls’ room.

     
“Yeah, we’ll be thinking of you,” Gordon added.

     
Oh, lord. What had I gotten myself into? I found out at three-thirty that afternoon. That was when I rang the Sobaks’ doorbell. I stood nervously on their front stoop. In a moment, the door was opened by a friendly looking girl with brown hair, which had been pulled into two ponytails and tied with big blue ribbons. She was wearing a very snazzy pair of red pants that were held up by red suspenders. Under the suspenders was a blueand-white-striped T-shirt. The legs of her pants ended in cuffs, and on her feet were running shoes tied with purple laces.

     
“Hi!” she said cheerfully. “I’m Betsy. Are you Claudia?”

     
This was the kid I’d been afraid of?

     
“That’s right,” I told her. “Claudia Kishi.”

     
“Come on in.”

     
Betsy held the door open for me and I entered the Sobaks’ front hallway. A woman bustled forward to meet me, trying to put on her coat and shake my hand at the same time.

     
“Cookie Sobak,” she said. (Cookie?) “On my way to a meeting at the Woman’s Club. About

to be late. Emergency numbers by the phone in the kitchen. Mr. Sobak works at Tile Corp., if you need to reach him. Better fly. Betsy — behave. Back at six. Ta-ta.”

     
“Ta-ta,” replied Betsy. Then she stuck her tongue out at her mother’s back.

     
“Betsy,” I admonished her, but I couldn’t help smiling. Mrs. Sobak was so, I don’t know, fake, that I kind of wanted to stick my own tongue out at her.

     
“Listen,” I said to Betsy as her mother’s car backed down the driveway, “have you had a snack yet?”

     
“Urn, no. No, I haven’t.” A smile crept over Betsy’s face. (I was glad she was so easy to please.) “Want some cookies?” she asked. “My mom makes great oatmeal raisin cookies.”

     
“Sure,” I replied. (Oh, goody. Cookies.) “Here, let me help you.”

     
“No, no,” said Betsy hurriedly as she led me into the kitchen. “You’re kind of like my guest. I’ll serve us. Do you want some apple juice?”

     
I didn’t, really, but I said yes anyway. Betsy seemed so pleased to be in charge of fixing our snack.

     
“You sit right there,” she told me, pointing to a chair at the kitchen table.

     
I sat. Betsy got busy filling glasses, opening the cookie jar, finding napkins.

     
“So,” I said, “you’re an only child, huh, Betsy?”

     
“Almost,” she replied, her back turned. “My sister Pat is twenty-three. She even has a baby. I’m an aunt now.”

     
“Wow,” I replied, impressed. I didn’t know any other eight-year-old aunts. “Aunt Betsy.”

     
“Yup. Here you go.” Betsy set a plate of cookies and two napkins on the table. Then she carefully handed me a tall glass of juice. At last she sat down, a much smaller glass in her hands.

     
I reached for a cookie. “Mmm,” I said, after I’d taken a bite. “These are great. Your mother must be a good cook.”

     
“The best,” agreed Betsy.

     
I took a swallow of apple juice, wishing Letsy hadn’t poured me quite so much. There was an awful lot of juice in the glass, and — “Oh, ew! Ew!” I shrieked. Something else was in the glass. A fly! It was stuck in an ice cube!

     
I’d barely gotten the first “Ew!” out when I realized the glass was dripping. Apple juice was running down my shirt.

     
“What — ?“ I cried. 1 set the glass on the

table. “Betsy, there’s a fly in my glass, and I think..

     
I stopped talking because Betsy didn’t seem the least bit horrified. In fact, she was laughing. Hysterically.

     
When she got control of herself, she managed to gasp out, “Gotcha! The fly is fake. It’s in a fake ice cube! And I gave you a dribble glass!”

     
“Well, that’s just great, Betsy,” I said. I knew that, as a baby-sitter, I wasn’t supposed to get sarcastic, but sheesh. “Now, I’ve got apple juice all over my white shirt,” I told her.

     
Betsy couldn’t have known it, but the shirt was one I’d made myself. I’d taken a shirt of my dad’s, painted it, and sewn sequins all over it. It had taken ages to do, and the shirt was very special to me. Also, it had to be dry cleaned.

     
“Dry cleaning,” I informed Betsy, “is expensive. Plus, I’m going to smell like sour apples all afternoon.” Practical jokes were seeming less and less funny.

     
“Sorry,” said Betsy, not sounding sorry at all.

     
“I talked to a couple of your old sitters today,” I told her. “I thought you quit playing jokes on people.”

     
“I tried. I really tried. And then I went to some movies on Saturday. And, I don’t know. I have all these great jokes. zYou haven’t even seen them all yet —“

     
“And I don’t care to see any more.”

     
Betsy didn’t answer that. She was laughing again.

     
I got up in a huff, opened cupboards until I found the Sobaks’ glasses, and poured the rest of my juice into a regular glass. Of course, I picked the fake ice cube out first.

     
Betsy set it on the table between us. “Isn’t it lifelike?” she asked me. She sounded as if she were quoting from an ad.

     
“Very,” I replied. “Where’d you get it?”

     
“From McBuzz’s Mail Order. It’s a catalogue. All McBuzz’s sells is practical jokes. I spend most of my allowance on stuff from McBuzz’s. . . . Well, I used to. Then Mom and Dad made me quit. But it didn’t matter. I already had McBuzz’s best jokes.”

     
“Oh, good,” I said. “You wouldn’t want to miss out on a single instrument of torture.”

     
“Want to see a catalogue?” asked Betsy. Before I could answer, she’d dashed out of the kitchen and upstairs. She returned carrying McBuzz’s Mail Order.

     
“Look. Look at the front cover,” she in-

structed me. “This catalogue features rubber chickens and plastic ants.”

     
“Great.”

     
Betsy flipped through the pages. I had to admit that some of the stuff — especially the selection of whoopee cushions — was kind of funny. By the time we’d finished, I’d calmed down.

     
But when Betsy said, “Want some gum?” I was immediately on my guard again.

     
“Uh, no,” I replied.

     
“Look,” said Betsy, “I’m sorry about the juice. I really am. Here.” She pulled two pieces of gum out of her pocket. She kept the Wrigley’s for herself. She handed me one in a plain white wrapper.

     
Well, I might not be a good student, but I’m no fool. I know about trick gum. “Thanks,” I said drily, “but I prefer Wrigley’s. So let’s trade.”

     
Betsy frowned. “We-ell . . . all right.”

     
We swapped sticks, I peeled off the Wrigley’s wrapper, popped the gum in my mouth, and, “Aughhh! Oh, EW!” I spit the gum out. “It tastes like pepper! That is so hot!” I grabbed for my glass of apple juice and polished it off, but my mouth was still on fire.

     
Across from me, Betsy was chewing her own

gum happily and was in hysterics again. “Gotcha! I gave you trick gum!” she cried. “I switched wrappers! I knew you wouldn’t trust me, so I switched wrappers.”

     
“Why should anyone trust you?” I muttered. It was hard to talk.

     
I had to do something fast. I was losing control of the situation, and a good baby-sitter always stays in charge. I thought quickly. “Let’s play outside,” I suggested. What could Betsy do to me outside? If she wanted to get any of her tricks, she’d have to go back in the house — and I simply wouldn’t let her.

     
“Could we play on my swing set?” asked Betsy.

     
“Sure, anything.” I fanned my burning mouth with my hands.

     
“Goody!” said Betsy, jumping up. “Let’s go!”

     
We put on our jackets, and Betsy ran out her back door. I followed her closely. Betsy’s swing set was not in her backyard, where I’d thought it would be. It was by the side of the house, near the Sobaks’ driveway.