Kristy and the Mother's Day Surprise (2 page)

become friends so fast. Stacey awed Mary Anne and me. She seemed years older than twelve — very sophisticated with trendy clothes, pierced ears, and permed hair. But she was also very nice. Furthermore, she’d had plenty of babysitting experience in New York, so we knew she’d be a good addition to the club.

     
After Stacey agreed to join us, we sent around fliers and ran an ad in Stoneybrook’s newspaper so people would know when to call us — and we were in business! The club was great. By the time Dawn moved to town, we needed another sitter, and later, when Stacey moved back to New York, we were doing so much business that we replaced her with both Jessi and Mal. And somewhere along the line we decided that we better have a couple of people lined up whom we could call on in case none of us could take a job. So we signed up two associate members, Shannon Kilbourne and Logan Bruno. Shannon lives across the street from me in my new neighborhood. We’re friends, sort of. Logan is a boy — and he’s Mary Anne’s boyfriend! Shannon and Logan don’t come to the meetings. We just call them when we need them, so that we don’t have to disappoint any of our clients by saying that no sitters are available.

     
I run our meetings in the most businesslike

way I can. As president, that’s my job. Also, I come up with ideas for the club and generally just try to keep things going smoothly.

     
The job of the vice-president is, well. . . To be honest, Claudia Kishi is the vice-president because she has her own phone and personal, private phone number. The club uses her phone so we don’t have to tie up some grownup’s phone three times a week. The only thing is, our clients sometimes forget when our meetings are and call at other times. Claudia has to deal with those job offers, and she handles things really well.

     
Mary Anne Spier, our secretary, has the biggest job of any of us. Our club has a notebook (I’ll tell you about that soon) and a record book. Mary Anne is the one who keeps the record book in order and up-to-date. She writes down our clients’ names, addresses, and phone numbers and is responsible for scheduling all our sitting jobs on the appointment pages. This is more difficult than it sounds, since she has to keep track of things like Jessi’s ballet classes, Claud’s art lessons, Mal’s orthodontist appointments, and you name

it. I don’t think Mary Anne has ever made a mistake, though.

     
Our treasurer, Dawn Schafer, collects dues from us every Monday and keeps track of the

money that’s in our treasury. We use the money for three things. One, to pay Charlie to drive me to and from the meetings, since I live so far from Claudia now. Two, for club parties and sleepovers. Every now and then we like to give ourselves a treat. Three, to buy materials for Kid-Kits. What are Kid-Kits? Well, they’re one of my ideas. A Kid-Kit is a box that we fill with our old toys, books, and games, and also some new things, like coloring books, crayons, or sticker books. Each of us has her own Kid-Kit, and we need money to replace the things that get used up. The children we sit for love the Kid-Kits. Bringing one along on a job is like bringing a toy store. It makes the kids happy. And when the kids are happy, their parents are happy... . And when their parents are happy, they call the Babysitters Club again!

     
Mallory and Jessi, our junior officers, don’t have any special jobs. The junior officers simply aren’t allowed to sit at night unless they’re sitting for their own brothers and sisters, so when Mary Anne schedules jobs, she tries to give the after-school and weekend jobs to Jessi and Mallory first. That way the rest of us will be free to take the evening jobs.

     
And that’s it. That’s how our club — Oh, wait. One more thing. The club notebook. The

notebook is different from the record book, but just as important. It’s more of a diary than a notebook. Any time one of us club members goes on a baby-sitting job, she’s responsible for writing up the job in the notebook. Then, once a week, each of us is supposed to read the notebook. This is really very helpful. We learn how our friends solve sitting problems, or if a kid that we’re going to be taking care of has a new fear, a new hobby, etc. Some of the girls think that writing in the notebook is a boring chore, but I think it’s valuable.

     
Okay. That really is it. Now you know how our club began and how it runs, so let’s get-~ back to business.

     
After I had said “Order!” for about the third time, everyone settled down. “Any business?” I asked.

     
“Dues day!” announced Dawn. She bounced off the bed, blonde hair flying. The treasury envelope was in her hands, and she opened

it.

     
“Oh,” groaned the rest of us. We earn a lot of money baby-sitting, but we don’t like to part with it for dues, even though we know we have to.

     
“Aw, come on,” said Dawn. “It isn’t that bad. Besides, think of me. 1 have to listen to this moaning and complaining every Monday

afternoon.” Dawn collected the money, then handed some of it to me. “That’s for Charlie,” she said. “We have to pay him today.”

     
I nodded. “Thanks, Dawn.”

     
My friends settled down. Claudia leaned against one of her pillows and began braiding her hair. Mary Anne unwrapped a piece of gum. Dawn flipped through the pages of the notebook. On the floor, Mallory doodled in one of Claudia’s sketchbooks, and Jessi absentmindedly lifted the cover of a shoe box labeled PASTILS AND CJ-IARCAOLS (Claudia isn’t a great speller), and exclaimed, “Hey, there’s M and M’s in here!”

     
“Oh, yeah,” replied Claud. “I forgot about those. Hand them around, Jessi, okay?”

     
“Sure!” said Jessi. She took out the bag of candy, replaced the lid on the box, opened the bag, and sent it around Claud’s bedroom.

     
Everyone took a handful of M & M’s except for Dawn, who mostly eats health food — she won’t even eat meat — and can’t stand junk food, especially candy. Claudia remembered this and handed Dawn a package of wholewheat crackers. Dawn looked really grateful.

     
This is just one of the things I love about my club family. We really care about each other. We look out for each other and do nice things for each other. Of course, we fight,

too — we’ve had some whoppers — but that’s part of being a family.

     
“Well, any more club business?” I asked.

     
Nobody answered.

     
“Okay, then. We’ll just wait for the phone to ring.” I picked up the record book and began looking at the appointment calendar. “Gosh,” I said, “I cannot believe it’s already April. Where did the school year go? It feels like it was just September.”

     
“I know,” agreed Mary Anne. “Two more months and school will be over.” She looked pretty pleased.

     
“Yeah,” said Dawn happily. “Summer. Hot weather. I’ll get to visit Dad and Jeff in California again.”

     
“Whoa!” I cried. I was still looking at our calendar. “Guess what. I just realized that Mother’s Day is coming up — soon. It’s in less than three weeks.”

     
“Oh, brother. Gift time,” murmured Mallory. “I never know what to get Mom. None of us does. She always ends up with a bunch of stuff she doesn’t want and doesn’t know what to do with. Like every year, Margo” (Margo is Mal’s seven-year-old sister) “makes her a handprint in clay and paints it green. What’s Mom going to do with all those green hand sculptures? And the triplets” (ten-year-old boys)

“always go to the dime store and get her really ugly plastic earrings or a horrible necklace or something.”

     
“Once,” said Jessi, “my sister gave our mother a bag of chocolate kisses and then ate them herself.”

     
We began to laugh.

     
“This year,” Claud began, “I am going to give my mother the perfect present.”

     
“What?” I asked.

     
Claud shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”

     
“I never have to think of Mother’s Day presents,” said Mary Anne softly.

     
The talking and laughing stopped. How is it that I forget about Mary Anne’s problem year after year? I never remember until somebody, usually the art teacher, is saying something like, “All right, let’s begin our Mother’s Day cards,” or “I know your mothers will just love these glass mosaics.” Then I watch Mary Anne sink lower and lower in her seat. Why don’t the teachers say, “If you want to make a Mother’s Day gift, come over here. The rest of you may read.” Or something like that. It would be a lot easier on the kids who don’t need to make Mother’s Day stuff.

     
Dawn looked at Mary Anne and awkwardly patted her shoulder.

     
Claud said, “Sorry, Mary Anne.”

     
We feel bad for her but we don’t quite know what to say. Sorry your mother died? Sorry the greeting card people invented Mother’s Day and you have to feel bad once a year? Sorry we have moms and you don’t?

     
I was relieved when the telephone rang. (We all were.) It gave us something to do. I answered the phone, and Mary Anne took over the record book.

     
“Hi, Mrs. Newton,” I said. “Friday afternoon? . . . Yeah, it is short notice, I guess, but I’ll check. I’ll get right back to you.” I hung up. “Check Friday after school,” I told Mary Anne. “This Friday.”

     
Mary Anne checked. “Claudia’s free,” she said. “She’s the only one.”

     
I glanced at Claud and she nodded.

     
So I called Mrs. Newton back. “Claudia will be there,” I told her. We said good-bye and hung up. The Newtons are some of our oldest clients. They have two kids — Jamie, who’s four, and Lucy, who’s just a baby. We all love sitting at the Newtons’, but Claudia especially loves it. I knew she was happy with her job.

     
The phone rang several more times after that. All job calls. Then, toward the end of the meeting, we began talking about Mother’s Day again. We couldn’t help it. We knew Mary Anne felt sad, but the rest of us really needed

to think about what to give our moms.

     
“Flowers?” suggested Jessi. We shook our heads. “Chocolate-covered cherries?” suggested Claudia.

     
We shook our heads.

     
“Oh, well. It’s six o’clock,” I announced. “Meeting’s over. Don’t worry — we have plenty of time to think of presents. See you guys in school tomorrow.”

Chapter 3.

When I left Claudia’s house, Charlie was waiting for me in the Kishis’ driveway. He has been really good about remembering to drive me to and from the meetings of the Babysitters Club. We are paying him, but still . . . I keep thinking he might get tied up with an after-school activity and forget me sometime.

     
Moving across town was so inconvenient. I’m not near any of my closest friends, and I’m not near my school. Now I have to get rides all the time and take the bus to school. The other kids in my new neighborhood go to private schools. But I wanted to stick with my regular school (so did my brothers), so we’re the only ones who go to public. We really stand out.

     
Charlie pulled into the drive, and Watson’s huge house (well, our huge house) spread before us. I am amazed every time I see it. We parked, and my brother and I went inside.

     
We were greeted by Sam. “Boy, Kristy. I don’t know how you do it,” was the first thing he said.

     
“Do what?”

     
“Baby-sit so much without going looney tunes.”

     
I grinned. Sam had been watching David Michael, Andrew, and Karen, since Mom and Watson were still at work. “Baby-sitting is easy,” I replied. “It’s a piece of cake. What happened?”

     
“What do you mean ‘What happened?’ Nothing happened. They’re just kids. I’m worn out. I couldn’t give another cannonball ride if my life depended on it.”

     
“That’s Charlie’s fault for inventing cannonballs,” I told Sam.

     
At that moment, Andrew came barreling into the front hall, crying, “Sam! Sam! I need a cannonball ride!”

     
Without pausing, Sam picked Andrew up, Andrew curled himself into a ball, and Sam charged off toward the kitchen, shouting, “Baboom-ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom.”

     
“I thought he couldn’t give another cannonball ride,” said Charlie.

     
“Andrew is hard to resist,” I told him.

     
Dinner that night was noisy. It was one of

the few times when everyone was home. Andrew and Karen usually aren’t with us, and when they are, they’re almost always here on a weekend — when Charlie’s out on a date or Sam is at a game at school, or something. But that night was different. We ate in the dining room. Watson sat at one end of the table, Mom at the other. David Michael, Karen, and I sat along one side of the table; Charlie, Sam, and Andrew sat across from us.

     
When everyone had been served, Mom said, “Isn’t this nice?” She had been a little emotional lately.

     
“It’s terrific,” agreed Watson, who sounded too enthusiastic.

     
Mom and Watson get all worked up whenever we’re together as a family, and I know why. I like my family and everything. I like us a lot. But sometimes I think we feel more like pieces of a family instead of a whole family. We’re a shirt whose seams haven’t all been stitched up. I mean, Mom and Watson got married, but I would only go to Mom if I needed to borrow money. And Andrew usually heads for Watson if he’s hurt himself or doesn’t feel well. We’re Mom’s kids and they’re Watson’s kids. Two teams on the same playing field.