Kristy's Great Idea (9 page)

“Yes?” she said to Karen.

“That's where the witch lives, right, Andrew?”

Andrew plowed the wagon into a tree and Boo-Boo leaped out. “Yup.”

“It's Mrs. Porter, and she's an honest-and-truly witch. Mrs. Porter isn't her witch name, though. Her witch name is Morbidda Destiny. The big kids on the street told me so. And she eats toads and casts spells and flies to witch meetings on her broomstick every midnight.”

Mary Anne stared at the house, nibbling away at her nails again. She wasn't sure what to tell Karen. If she told her the stories weren't true, she probably wouldn't get off to a very good start as a baby-sitter. If she agreed with Karen, she'd practically be lying to her. At last she asked, “Do you believe in the stories about Morb—Mrs. Porter?”

Karen nodded. “I have proof.”

“You do?”

“Yup. The proof is Boo-Boo. Mrs. Porter made him fat. One day when Boo-Boo was nice and
skinny, he went into Mrs. Porter's garden and dug up some of her flowers. Mrs. Porter came out and yelled at him and threw a fit. The next day he started getting fat.”

“Yup,” said Andrew.

“So now we have to keep Boo-Boo away from Mrs. Porter's house. We don't want her to cast another spell on him. Making him fat wasn't so bad, but she might do something really, really mean.”

“Well,” said Mary Anne, “we don't have to worry about it today since Mrs. Porter's not at home.”

And it was at that
exact
second that Mary Anne saw a window shade snap up on the first floor of Mrs. Porter's house. A wrinkled face with a big nose pressed itself against the panes of glass.

Karen saw the face, too. “Augh!” she screamed. “That's Morbidda Destiny! She's home after all! Where's Boo-Boo? Where's Boo-Boo?”

Mary Anne began to feel afraid again. She knew there were no such things as witches (were there?), but the face at the window didn't look very friendly. And Andrew was crying, and Karen was panicking.

“All right.” Mary Anne tried to remain calm. She thought about what Watson had told her—
that Mrs. Porter was just an eccentric old lady. “Let's look for Boo-Boo, you guys,” she said.

“We don't have to,” wailed Karen. “I see him. He's—” Karen gulped. She pointed her finger. “He's in Morbidda Destiny's garden!”

“Well, I'll just go get him—somehow,” said Mary Anne, remembering that she wasn't supposed to touch Boo-Boo, let alone pick him up.

“She's already gone from the window!” Karen cried. “She's coming to the door! I know it.”

“Okay, okay. Karen, you're in charge of Andrew for a few minutes. You stay in the yard with him and watch him. I'll be right back.”

Mary Anne said her heart was pounding as she crossed Watson's yard and stood at the edge of Mrs. Porter's property. Boo-Boo was about ten feet away from her in the middle of some chrysanthemums, digging away happily.

“Boo-Boo,” Mary Anne called softly. She glanced at the house. No sign of Mrs. Porter. Maybe she hadn't seen Boo-Boo. “Boo-Boo,” Mary Anne called again. “Come here.” She snapped her fingers.

Boo-Boo didn't even look up.

“Yoo-hoo! Boo-Boo!” Mary Anne stepped closer. Boo-Boo sat down and scratched himself. “Boo-Boo. Hey, fat cat!”

“Boo-Boo. Hey, fat cat!” called a croaky voice.

Mary Anne's heart just about stopped beating. She whirled around. As she was whirling, she could hear Karen shrieking in Watson's yard. Behind Mary Anne stood … a witch. “Honest to goodness,” she told me later. “She looked just like a witch from a picture book.”

Mrs. Porter, or Morbidda Destiny or whoever she was, was dressed in black from head to toe. Her hair was gray and frazzly. There was a wart on the end of her nose. She was carrying what Mary Anne at first mistook for a broom, but which turned out to be a rake.

“That fat cat,” said Mrs. Porter, shaking the rake with every word, “is digging up my mums.”

“I know, I know. I'm sorry. I'm trying to get him out for you.” Mary Anne decided to forget Watson's warning. She stepped right into the garden and reached for Boo-Boo.

Boo-Boo hissed and swiped at her with his paw, claws extended.

Mary Anne jumped back.

“That does it, girlie,” said Mrs. Porter. She jumped into the garden and waved the rake at Boo-Boo.

Boo-Boo's eyes opened wide. He leaped over a bush of golden mums and streaked away.

Luckily, he streaked back into Watson's yard.

Mrs. Porter shook her rake after him. “Rapscallion!” she cried. She headed for her house. Mary Anne could hear her muttering things like “Children and pets” and “Darned nuisance.”

Back in Watson's yard, Karen greeted Mary Anne tearfully. “Did you hear that? It was a curse!”

“What was? ‘Rapscallion'?” Mary Anne asked, looking nervously over her shoulder at the chrysanthemum bed.

“Yeah!”

“No, that wasn't a curse. That's a real word. She was calling Boo-Boo a name, but she did
not
put a spell on him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Right, Andrew?”

“Yup.”

“I don't know,” said Karen. “I don't know.”

“Look,” Mary Anne went on. “Did you see Morb—Mrs. Porter mixing up herbs or looking for bats' feet?”

“No …”

“Did you see her crushing toadstools or stirring things in a cauldron?”

“No …”

“Then how do you know she cast a spell?” asked Mary Anne triumphantly.

“She's a witch. She can do anything she w—hey!” shrieked Karen, pointing.

Mary Anne's stomach flip-flopped. She immediately looked over at Mrs. Porter's yard, sure she was going to see the old woman flapping across the lawn in her funny black dress. But Mrs. Porter wasn't in sight. Karen was pointing at Boo-Boo.

“Look at that!” cried Karen. “He's going crazy.”

Boo-Boo did, in fact, look a little crazy, Mary Anne said later. As she watched, the cat ran partway across Watson's backyard, came to an abrupt stop, ran around in a circle, then dashed off in the direction he had just come from and scrambled up a tree.

“Oh,” said Mary Anne nervously, “he's just being a cat. Cats do silly things like that all the time.” Mary Anne had never owned a cat, so she'd had very little experience with them, but she had once seen the Pikes' cat, Sarge, wake up from a sound sleep, leap off the couch, jump up on top of the television set, and immediately fall asleep again. Still …

“
Boo-Boo
doesn't do silly things,” said Karen, edging toward Mary Anne. “He's too fat and old.”

Mary Anne took Karen and Andrew by their hands. The three of them stood and watched
Boo-Boo. For a while he looked as if he might go to sleep up in the tree.

Karen grew bored. “Psst,” she whispered after a moment. “Morbidda Destiny's at her window again—and she's looking over here.”

Sure enough, the old face was pressed against the windowpanes. Morbidda raised her right hand to her nose …

… and Boo-Boo sat straight up, slipped, slid, and finally fell out of the tree, landed on his feet, and shot past Mary Anne and the kids, hissing as he went by.

“Oh,
nooooo,”
wailed Karen. Mary Anne squeezed her hand.

Boo-Boo tore up the steps to the back porch and waited by the door.

“I guess it would be a good idea to let him in,” said Mary Anne. “At least we won't have to worry about Mrs. Porter's garden anymore.”

So Mary Anne opened the door and Boo-Boo ran inside. He ran straight into the laundry room, jumped into the laundry basket, and stayed there while Mary Anne and Karen and Andrew ate lunch. Every time Mary Anne checked on him, he peered at her through the sides of the basket and yowled.

Mary Anne started to tell Karen that it was all
just a big coincidence, but then she didn't know how to explain the meaning of coincidence, so she gave up.

“Daddy, it's a spell,” Karen told Watson urgently as soon as he came home.

Watson laughed. “Don't be silly. There are no such things as spells.”

But by then, even Mary Anne wasn't so sure. She was very relieved to go home.

On the Wednesday after Mary Anne baby-sat for Watson's kids, Claudia, Mary Anne, Stacey, and I were holding a regular meeting of the Baby-sitters Club in Claudia's room. It was 5:45 and the phone had rung twice. The first call had been Mrs. McKeever, who was back in Stoneybrook. I'd said that, although Pinky and Buffy were very nice, we were not pet-sitters. The second call had been a new customer. Stacey had answered the phone. “Hello. Baby-sitters Club.”

“Hello, my name is Mrs. Marshall,” said the voice on the other end. “I live over on Rosedale. I got your flyer, and I need a baby-sitter for Friday night. I'm sorry it's such short notice, but we had a baby-sitter lined up, and he had to cancel.”

“Oh, that's okay,” said Stacey. “Maybe I should tell you some things about the club, though, first. There are four of us and we're all twelve years
old. On Friday nights, we can sit until ten. Well, one of us can.”

“Oh, that's fine,” replied Mrs. Marshall. “My husband and I are just going out for dinner. We should be home around nine-thirty.”

“Okay,” said Stacey. “And how many children do you have?”

“Two.”

“And how old are they?”

“Nina is three and Eleanor is one.”

“Do you have any pets?”

(Some people seem a little surprised when we ask this question, but Mrs. Marshall was okay about it.) “We have a cat. He's no trouble at all.”

“And is there anything special the baby-sitter should know, or that she'd have to do?”

Mrs. Marshall paused. (Aha! There's always a catch.) “Well, you'll have to give Eleanor her eardrops. She's getting over an ear infection. She always cries and puts up a fuss, but in the end, she holds still and lets us put the drops in.”

That didn't sound too bad. “Okay,” said Stacey. “Let me find out who's available and I'll call you right back.”

As you can see, we'd learned a lot over the last couple of weeks.

Claudia took the job, since Stacey was mysteriously busy that night (she wouldn't tell us exactly what she was doing), and Mary Anne's father and my mother get hysterical if we're not home by nine-thirty on the dot. If Claudia was a little late, the Kishis wouldn't mind (much).

After we called Mrs. Marshall back, I said, “Hey, why don't we figure out how much money we've earned on our Baby-sitters Club jobs?”

“Okay!” said Stacey. She loved anything to do with money. Claudia handed her a piece of paper and a pencil. Then I opened our record book and read out the amount of money we'd been paid for each job.

“Hey, that's not bad!” I exclaimed. “You know what we should do? We should each donate about three dollars and we could have a pizza party on Saturday afternoon.”

“Yeah, a celebration of our club,” said Claudia excitedly, “because it's a success!”

“We'll get Coke and M&M's,” I said.

“All the junk food we can eat,” added Mary Anne happily.

Stacey remained silent.

“Oh, Stace,” I said suddenly. “I'm sorry. We forgot about your diet. Maybe—”

“Oh, never mind.” Stacey cut me off. “I may not be able to go anyway. We're, um, going to—to New York on Friday and we might not be back in time for the party.”

“Didn't you just go to New York?” asked Claudia.

“Well, yes, but there are a lot of things to finish up. The move and all.”

Claudia frowned. “I thought you said you finally got everything straightened out.”

“Oh. We—we have to see some friends, too. Oh, wow, it's six. I better go. Bye, you guys!”

Stacey tore out of Claudia's house.

Claudia and Mary Anne and I just looked at one another.

When I got home that evening, I found Watson parked on our living room couch, reading the paper like he lived at our house or something. I couldn't help making a face. Luckily, Watson didn't see it. In fact, he didn't look up from the paper until I was tiptoeing past the living room, trying to sneak into the kitchen without having to speak to him.

“Well, hi there, Kristy,” he said cheerfully.

“Hi,” I replied. I paused for a second,
trying to decide whether I should say anything else, then gave up and went on into the kitchen.

Mom must have just gotten home. She was reaching into the refrigerator, pulling out vegetables and leftovers for dinner. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said. “How was school?”

“It was fine. Um, Mom, Watson's in our living room.”

Mom smiled at me. “I know, silly. He came home with me. I picked him up after work.”

“Is he staying for dinner?”

Mom began slicing a tomato. “Yes, he is.”

“Do you know this is the third time he's been over for dinner in the last week?”