Hello, Mallory (9 page)

The phone rang then. Kristy, perched in the director's chair, adjusted her visor and reached for the receiver. "Keep your fingers crossed that this is a call for at least a year from now."

That brought a smile to Claudia's face, anyway. The girls listened to Kristy's end of the conversation. "Hi, Mrs. Prezzioso. . . . Oh, fine, thanks. How's Jenny? . . . Good. . . . Thursday afternoon? I'll get back to you right away. . . . Okay. . . . Sure. Good-bye."

Kristy hung up the phone. "Somebody around here wasn't crossing her fingers," she said. "Mrs. Prezzioso needs someone for this Thursday afternoon."

Mary Anne closed the notebook she'd been writing in and took the record book from Kristy. "Let me handle this," she said. "It's my job." She looked at the appointment calendar. "What's

the big deal, Kristy? You and Claudia are both free that afternoon."

"Claudia and I are both sitting that evening. You know our parents won't let us take two jobs on the same day, at least not during the week. We'd never get our homework done."

"Well, I'll call Logan," said Mary Anne happily. She didn't look the least bit upset. That was because Logan Bruno is Mary Anne's boyfriend, and she loves any chance to call him.

Mary Anne knew Logan's number by heart. She dialed it, then pulled the phone into a corner and turned her back on the other club members. "Hello, Logan?" they could hear her say. "It's me. Yeah.... Mmphh, mmblmmbl." She dropped her voice so low that even though Kristy, Dawn, and Claudia leaned over as far as they dared, they couldn't hear what she was saying. And she didn't raise it again until the only thing left to say was, "Good-bye."

"Well?" asked Kristy.

"He's free," Mary Anne replied. "You can call Mrs. Prezzioso now."

As soon as Kristy had done so, another call came in for Thursday.

"Shannon Kilbourne is our only hope," said Kristy, who called her immediately. Luckily, Shannon was free, too.

"That was close," commented Claudia.

"I'll say," agreed Kristy. "Too close. We've got to do something. At this point, even a sitter who was only available in the afternoons would help us."

"We have to find another club member," said Dawn, "and that's that."

"You know," said Mary Anne, "when Stacey and I went to Sea City with the Pikes, Mallory was awfully helpful. She wasn't even supposed to be a baby-sitter, but she automatically watched her brothers and sisters all the time, especially in the water. She remembered to see that they were wearing sunblock, and we knew that if we had to split up into groups, like when we were playing miniature golf, we could put her in charge of one of the groups and not have a thing to worry about."

"You know when we held the playgroup last summer?" began Kristy.

"Yeah?" said Claudia.

"Well, Mallory did more than just help out. When she walked the kids from her neighborhood over to Stacey's house, she taught them about crossing the street. She didn't have to do that, she just did it."

"And," began Claudia, "when she and I baby-sat at the Perkinses' she didn't do anything really wrong. She was mostly clumsy,

like when she spilled the milk and broke the glass. She did make a mistake with the snack and with Chewy, but that wasn't so bad. . . ."

"I just remembered something," spoke up Dawn. "Mrs. Pike called my mom last night to tell her about some PTA thing, and they started talking about Nicky's hand. It turns out that it was a total accident. It happened so fast that no one could have prevented it." Dawn explained what had happened. "So it wasn't Mallory's fault at all — and we blamed her for it," she finished up.

"Oops," said Kristy.

Claudia cleared her throat nervously. "Um," she said, "I didn't want to admit this before, but I didn't know anything about the divestive system before we made up that test."

"It's di-ges-tive," Dawn told her, "and neither did I."

"Me neither," added Mary Anne. She and Dawn and Claudia looked at Kristy.

"Oh, all right, neither did I," said Kristy. "Well, not much."

"Did you know about tourniquets?" Claudia asked her.

"Only that you have to let a doctor remove them."

"You know, it took us hours to make up that test," said Mary Anne slowly, "and not

because we had so many questions to choose from. It was because we had to look everything up."

Kristy hung her head. "I guess we were pretty unfair to Mallory."

"Yeah," agreed the others.

"But we do have to be careful," Kristy went on. "Little kids are important. I mean, everyone is important, but we have a responsibility to the kids we take care of, and to their parents. We can't sign up sitters who are going to let accidents happen or who wouldn't know what to do if a kid got sick."

"That's true," said Dawn, "but I don't think we should expect more from anyone else than we do from ourselves. And I think Mallory knows just as much about children as we do."

"You're right," said Kristy. She paused. Then she added, "Well, shall I call Mallory and ask her back?"

"Yes!" cried Claudia, Dawn, and Mary Anne.

When the phone rang in the hall outside my bedroom, Jessi and I hoped desperately that it was a job call. We hadn't had a single sitting job since that Wednesday afternoon at the Ramseys'. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed to hear Kristy Thomas's voice on the other end of the line — that is, until I listened to what she had to say.

"Mallory, we were unfair," she began. "The test was unfair. We see that now. So the reason I'm calling is to find out if you want to try joining the club again as a junior sitter. You know, afternoons only. All you'll have to do is go on one baby-sitting job with another club member. I promise she won't make you nervous."

"You want me to join the Baby-sitters Club!" I cried. I glanced up and saw Jessi's face. She looked stricken. "What about Jessi Ramsey?" I asked Kristy. And then I heard myself say, "Either both of us join or neither of us does. You have to take all of Kids Incorporated."

Jessi smiled broadly.

I listened to the muffled sounds on the other end of the phone that meant Kristy had put her hand over the receiver and was discussing things with her friends. At long last she said, "Mallory? Can you and Jessi both come to the next meeting?"

"We'll be there," I said simply and hung up the phone. Then I looked at Jessi. "I think we made it!" I told her.

Chapter 14.

Jessi and I were nervous wrecks waiting for the next meeting of the Baby-sitters Club. We spent the afternoon before that meeting together at my house.

"Are we crazy to be giving up Kids Incorporated?" I asked Jessi. We were sitting on the back porch, since Vanessa and two of her friends had taken over our bedroom.

"I don't know," replied Jessi with a sigh. "I mean, I haven't met the girls in the club, so I don't know what we're getting into. But we weren't having much luck with Kids Incorporated, were we?"

"No. Just two jobs — and all those meetings! But I hope . . ."

"Hope what?"

"That we can all get along."

"Well," said Jessi, "one thing I've learned since I moved here is that you can get along with people even if you're not good friends

with them. You know, like I'm getting along in school okay, but you're my only real friend."

"That doesn't sound so good," I told her.

"No, no. What I mean is —"

"That's okay," I interrupted her. "I think I know what you mean. The girls in the club are older than we are, so maybe we won't end up close friends, but we can get along. We can work together. Besides, you and I have each other."

"Always," said Jessi firmly.

"Always," I repeated. I looked at Jessi and knew that we were best friends.

At 5:25 that afternoon, Jessi and I stood on Claudia Kishi's front stoop. I rang the bell.

My hand was shaking.

"Relax," said Jessi.

"I can't."

Claudia answered the door. "Hi, you guys," she said. "Come on upstairs."

Jessi and I followed Claudia through her living room, up the stairs, and along the hallway to her bedroom.

The other club members were waiting for us.

"Hi," said Kristy. She looked just as nervous as I felt.

"Hi," replied Jessi and I at the same time.

Claudia closed the door behind us.

Kristy, her visor safely on her head, got up from the director's chair and said, "You must be Jessi Ramsey. I'm Kristy Thomas. And here," she went on, pointing to Dawn and Mary Anne, who were sitting side by side on the bed, "are Dawn Schafer and Mary Anne Spier. That's Claudia Kishi, the one foraging for junk food."

Claudia grinned. She'd found a giant box of Cracker Jacks and she passed it around as Jessi and I settled ourselves on the floor.

"So you moved into Stacey's house," Mary Anne said to Jessi.

Jessi nodded.

"Right into her old room," I added.

"Where'd you move from?" Kristy wanted to know.

Jessi told them.

"Do you like Stoneybrook?" asked Dawn. "1 do. I'm glad we moved here."

"It's — I ..." Jessi paused.

"Not everyone has been exactly friendly," I tried to explain.

"Oh," said Kristy suddenly, looking slightly embarrassed. "I see."

Thank goodness the phone rang then. Jessi and I watched the girls set up a job.

When they were done, Kristy said, "We

were lucky. Claudia happened to be free that afternoon. But there have been lots of days lately when none of us was free. That's why we need you two. If you could take some of the afternoon jobs for us, it would free us to sit in the evenings, and that would be a big help."

I frowned. "So are you asking us to join the club or not?" I said boldly.

"I wish I could say we are," replied Kristy, "but we can't. Not yet."

"But you said —"

"I said no more unfair tests. We do want to see you in action, though. Especially Jessi. We don't know her at all."

"She's great with kids!" I told the girls enthusiastically. "You should see her with her baby brother."

"We just have to make sure," said Kristy firmly. "All we want to do is send each of you on one sitting job with a club member. I promise we won't interfere. We'll just step back and watch — and let you be in charge. If things go okay, you're in the club. Sound fair?"

I looked at Jessi. We nodded. "It's fair," I told Kristy.

"But," spoke up Jessi, "I have to ask one thing."

"Money?" asked Kristy. "Club responsibilities?"

"No," said Jessi, looking down at her hands. "It's more complicated than that. And I better bring it up now before I join the club."

"Jess, what is it?" I asked worriedly. She hadn't told me about any problem.

"Well," began Jessi, sounding awfully serious. "The thing is, so far I've only baby-sat at Mal's house and mine. But a lot of families around here don't seem, um, they don't seem to like me. Because I'm black. So I'm wondering — what if your clients don't want me to sit for them? I mean, that's not going to help you at all. It might even hurt the club."

I watched Kristy and her friends exchange glances.

"We hadn't thought of that," said Mary Anne slowly. "We don't really know if it's going to be a problem."

"We don't care that you're black," added Claudia. "After all, I'm Japanese. Well, Japanese-American. No one minds that."

"But there really are problems," I said. I told the girls what had happened when Amy had wanted to play with Becca and her bubble-maker.

"Whoa," said Dawn under her breath.

"And that's not the only time something like

that has happened," Jessi went on. "Plus, there are other things. None of the neighbors has come by. Well, hardly any. Neither did the Welcome Wagon lady."

"But things are changing, or else beginning to happen very slowly," I pointed out. "The Johanssens invited the Ramseys over for dinner, and Charlotte and Becca are getting to be friends."

"Benny Ott stopped shooting rubber bands at me," added Jessi.

"Who's Benny Ott?" asked Kristy, smiling.

"This jerky boy in our grade," I replied. "He's always doing stuff like making faces behind the teacher's back or throwing spitballs. Once, he brought fake barf to school. And this girl, Danni, took one look at it and barfed for real."

The girls in the Baby-sitters Club laughed.

"Benny Ott sounds just like Alan Gray," said Kristy, giggling.

"Who's Alan Gray?" Jessi and I asked at the same time. (We had to stop the conversation long enough to hook pinkies and say "jinx.")

"Alan Gray," Kristy replied, "is the Benny Ott of the eighth grade."

"You mean boys are still weird in eighth grade?"

"Definitely," said Kristy.

"Sort of," said Dawn.

"It depends," said Claudia.

"Not really," said Mary Anne.

We started to laugh again. Then Claudia grew serious. "We're getting off the subject," she said. "What about Jessi's problem?"

There was a moment of silence. No one seemed to want to speak. At long last Kristy said, "You know what I think? I think we'll just have to face the problem if it happens. It's hard for me to imagine it happening, though. I mean, I can't see any of our regular customers — the Newtons, my mom and Watson, the Barretts, the Perkinses, the Rodowskys — I can't see any of them saying they don't want Jessi to sit. If it does happen with anyone, though, I'll tell you one thing — I wouldn't sit for them, either."

"Me neither," said Claudia, Mary Anne, and Dawn. (It took a moment for the three of them all to hook pinkies and say "jinx.")

"Really?" asked Jessi, awed.

"Really," replied Kristy. "We'll be like the Three Musketeers. One for all and all for one. Only we'll be the Six Musketeers."

Ring, ring.

Claudia grabbed for the phone and got it just before Kristy did. "Hello, Baby-sitters

Club/' she said. "Stacey? STAGE! I don't believe it! Hi! We haven't spoken in two whole days! Guess what? We're having a club meeting. Everyone is sitting right here. . . . What? . . . Oh." Claudia held her hand over the receiver and whispered to us, "That's why she called. Because she knew we'd all be here." She uncovered the phone. "Listen to this," she said to Stacey. "We finally replaced you. Or we're about to, anyway."