Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls (6 page)

Saturday, October 25

This evening I baby-sat for David Michael. The rest of the Thomases went out for dinner with Watson and Karen and Andrew, but David Michael had to stay at home in bed because he's got a cold. I like baby-sitting for David Michael. He's almost like my brother. I've known him since he was born. And he's usually pretty good. But tonight, since he's sick, he fell asleep very early, and I felt all alone. I couldn't think of anything except prowlers and weird phone calls and especially the Phantom. The weather
was fine—a little breezy but not stormy—and there were lots of funny shows on TV, but I was still spooked….

Spooked isn't the word. Mary Anne was practically out of her mind. She was just sitting quietly on the couch, watching an old
I Love Lucy
episode, when suddenly she got goose pimples all along her arms. She jumped up, turned down the volume on the TV, and listened. Nothing. Not a thing. Even so, she dashed upstairs to check on David Michael. He was lying on his side, breathing noisily, a box of Kleenex next to him. Mary Anne left the hall light on and went back downstairs.

She closed every open closet door and turned on two more lights. Then she closed off the laundry room, in case someone was hiding in there. Finally, she pulled down the venetian blinds in the den. But still she didn't feel safe, even though Louie, the Thomases' dog, was in the house with her.

What if someone sneaks inside while I'm watching TV? she thought. That was when she decided to rig up the burglar alarms. All three of them.

Now, the thing about Mary Anne Spier is that she may be quiet, and she may be shy, but she
does
have a good sense of humor and a good imagination. You'd have to, to think up the alarms that Mary Anne rigged in the Thomases' house.

Well, actually, the first one wasn't much in terms of imagination. It was the alarm Mary Anne had described at our emergency club meeting the week before: a big stack of pots, pans, and cans from the kitchen built up against the inside of the door into the garage. If anyone tried to get in from the garage, the door would push the stack over and it would crash down, alerting Mary Anne, who would be able to escape out another door and call the police. The burglar might even be so startled that he'd turn around and leave.

Mary Anne finished her alarm, sat down in front of the TV again, and immediately decided she ought to rig up the front door, too. She was pretty sure a prowler wouldn't come right through the front door, but you can never tell with prowlers. She was out of pots, pans, and cans, though, so she had to think of something else. She looked at a shelf full of David Michael's toys, and her eyes fell on a large bag of marbles.

“Aha!”
she said aloud.

Mary Anne took the marbles into the front hall. Then she found a long piece of string. She placed the bag of marbles on a table next to the door and attached the string to a little hole near the opening of the bag. She tied the other end securely to the doorknob. This was Mary Anne's idea: The prowler quietly opens the door; the string pulls the marbles to the floor; they spill everywhere, not only making a racket to alert Mary Anne but causing the prowler to slip and fall when he steps inside.

Naturally, as soon as Mary Anne finished her second alarm, she decided she needed one for the back door. It was the only way she would feel safe. Then she would have all the doors covered.

Mary Anne had to think a while before making that last alarm. By then, she was out of marbles as well as pots, pans, and cans.

What else could make a lot of noise? Mary Anne thought.

Blocks? Maybe.

Tinkertoys? Nah.

Music! Music could be good and loud. The plans for Mary Anne's final alarm began to take shape.

First, she tiptoed upstairs to Kristy's room to borrow her portable stereo. Then she looked
through the music collection in the room Sam and Charlie share. She selected one called
Poundin' Down the Walls
by the Slime Kings and slipped it in.

Back downstairs, she sat on the rug in the den to think, the stereo in her lap. How could she arrange for the stereo to turn itself on?

She thought some more. How did
she
turn it on? She pressed the PLAY button, of course. Okay. How could she get something else to press the PLAY button? Better yet, how could she get the back door to press the PLAY button?

In a flash of brilliance, she had the answer. Mary Anne leaped up and carried the stereo into the kitchen. She sat down on the floor again and examined the skinny, rubber-tipped doorstop attached to the bottom of the back door. Perfect.

Mary Anne set the stereo about two feet from the door. She lined the doorstop up with the PLAY button. Then she opened the door. The doorstop hit the stereo and it fell over. But that didn't stop Mary Anne. I need to … to shore it up or something, she thought.

She dragged a heavy, round footstool in from the den and set it just behind the stereo.

She opened the door again.

The doorstop hit the
PLAY
button, and
Poundin' Down the Walls
blared out. Mary Anne smiled. Satisfied, she hit the
STOP
button, turned the volume up to ten, and went back into the den. She curled up on the couch with her tattered copy of
The Secret Garden
and began to read.

She was in the middle of one of her favorite parts—the one where Mary discovers poor, sickly Colin hidden in Misselthwaite Manor—when she heard an ominous creak from the front hall. Actually, Mary Anne told me the next day, it was just a little creak, but her head was filled with the dark, shadowy hallways of Misselthwaite, so almost any noise would have sounded ominous.

Mary Anne looked up sharply. She jumped to her feet. “Louie!” she whispered urgently. Where is that dog when you need protection? she asked herself. She tiptoed to the den door and peeped into the hall.

There was Louie. He was standing at attention, staring at the front door.

The hinges creaked slightly.

Louie whined.

And all of a sudden, the door flew open, pulling the marbles to the floor and scattering them loudly.

Louie barked twice.

But no one came in.

Mary Anne let out a sigh of relief. “It's just the wind, Louie,” she said shakily, “like the wind off the moors in Yorkshire,” she added, thinking of her book. “I must not have closed the door all the way.”

But Louie didn't look convinced. He sat at the screen door, silently begging to be let out to patrol the property. Mary Anne opened it for him and then set to work gathering up the marbles. She put them back in the bag but decided not to rig the alarm again. She settled for locking the screen door and double locking the inside door.

Then she returned to
The Secret Garden.
In the story, Mary was having her first conversation with Colin. Suddenly, Mary Anne heard a soft thud.

And then—to her absolute horror—
Poundin' Down the Walls
blasted on in the kitchen!

Mary Anne let out a bloodcurdling scream as she gazed at the partly open back door. She was just about to make a dash for the front door when Louie strolled into the kitchen, sniffed curiously at the stereo, and headed for his water bowl.

“Louie!” exclaimed Mary Anne in a half gasp, half shriek.

She'd forgotten that David Michael had taught
Louie how to throw his weight against doors. If they weren't latched properly, they opened, which was occasionally useful to Louie. Mary Anne probably hadn't closed the back door tightly after she'd tested the music alarm.

“Some baby-sitter I am,” she scolded herself, “leaving doors open right and left for anybody to walk through.”

“Bary Add!” called a voice.

Mary Anne looked around to see David Michael standing sleepily on the stairs, his old stuffed dog in one hand.

“Bary Add, cad you put the busic off?” he asked. “I don't like it. It's too loud.” He blinked in the bright light of the hall.

“Oh, my gosh! I'm sorry, David Michael,” cried Mary Anne. “I didn't mean to wake you up. Really.”

She dashed to the stereo and turned it off. “That was an accident. I'm sorry…. How are you feeling?”

“Stuffy. Ad by head hurts.”

“Oh,” said Mary Anne sympathetically. She remembered that Mrs. Thomas had said David Michael could have half a children's aspirin if he needed it. “Do you want some aspirin?” she asked him. “It'll make your head feel better.”

“Okay,” said David Michael wheezily.

“You go back to bed and I'll be right up.”

Mary Anne felt better since the house wasn't so quiet. She brought David Michael the aspirin, and then she sat on his bed and told him a story about a tiny man named Mr. Piebell, who lived in the woods on the twelfth floor of an oak tree apartment building with his miniature collie, Louie.

David Michael fell asleep with a smile on his lips.

Mary Anne was just closing the door to his room when she heard a tremendous crash downstairs.

The tin-can burglar alarm! It had gone off, and Mary Anne was trapped upstairs where there was no escape route! Heart pounding, she tried to figure out what to do. Should she wake David Michael and bring him into Mrs. Thomas's room while she called the police? Should she risk everything and make a dash for the front door? What if it was just Louie fooling around? Maybe she should call Stacey and try out our code. If only she could remember it …

“Mary Anne?” said an uncertain voice from downstairs.

Yikes! It was a
man's
voice!

Mary Anne shrank into a corner of the hallway. “Mary Anne?” it called again more loudly.

The voice sounded vaguely familiar. How does the Phantom know my name? wondered Mary Anne.

Then she heard another voice call her. It was Kristy.

Mary Anne dared to peep downstairs. Kristy, Sam, Charlie, Mrs. Thomas, Watson, Karen, and Andrew were standing in a group at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her.

“Oh,” said Mary Anne, trying to sound nonchalant and realizing that the first voice had been Watson's. “I thought I heard you. I just gave David Michael some aspirin and got him back to sleep. He woke up with a headache.” She trotted down the stairs.

“Um … Mary Anne … if you don't mind my asking,” said Mrs. Thomas, “what are all those cans and things doing by the door?”

“Oh,
those?”
replied Mary Anne. “Those are just … just … Actually, they were sort of a burglar alarm. I meant to put them away before you got home.”

Kristy began to giggle. Charlie snorted.

“And my stereo?” asked Kristy.

Mary Anne demonstrated the back-door alarm, this time with the volume turned down.

“Ingenious,” commented Watson.

“It certainly looks as if David Michael is safe with you,” said Mrs. Thomas.

Mary Anne nodded. She knew she was blushing furiously.

“You could start another business of your own,” said Sam. “Mary Anne's Surefire Alarm Systems.”

Mary Anne blushed even more furiously.

“Come on,” said Kristy after Mrs. Thomas had paid Mary Anne. “I'll walk you home.” And she did.

Boy trouble.

So far, the Baby-sitters Club had managed to keep boys and boy trouble pretty much out of the meetings.

But not on Monday, October twenty-seventh. At that meeting, we were trying to discuss baby-sitting problems, but the subject of boys kept coming up instead. Kristy started it.

“Do you know what Alan Gray did to me today?” she asked, a look of pure disgust on her face.

“What made you think of Alan Gray?” I asked. We'd been talking about Charlotte Johanssen.

“Everything makes me think about him,” said Kristy, throwing her hands in the air. “He bothers me all the time, every single second of every single day.”

“He's not bothering you right now,” said Mary Anne.

“Yes, he is. He bothers me just by living. Alan Gray is so horrible whenever he's around me that he's all I can think about.”

“So what did he do to you today?” asked Stacey.

“He hid my math homework, and then when it was time to hand it in and I couldn't find it, he jumped up and said to Mr. Peters, ‘Excuse me, but I know where Kristy's paper is. Her little brother ate it. Kristy wouldn't give him breakfast, and he was starving.'”

I giggled.

Kristy turned on me, eyes flashing.

“Well, I'm sorry, I think it's kind of funny.”

“You would.”

“Oh, Kristy,” I said with a laugh. “Calm down.”

“But it's not just that,” she went on. (I could see that Kristy was determined to be upset.) “I think he's getting worse. On Friday, he hid my shoes. On Thursday, he called me a skinny pipsqueak in front of the class, and twice last week I caught him looking in my desk in the morning. Every day it's something. He never stops.”

“Why don't you talk to … to Sam about it?” suggested Stacey.

“My own
brother?
No way. Besides, he'd never
understand. He's girl crazy. You should have seen who—or maybe I should say
what
—he took to the movies last Friday. She's a freshman in high school, and she had spiky yellow hair with green stuff at the ends and these little lace gloves with the fingertips cut out. Now, what is the point of wearing gloves if—”

Kristy stopped talking when she realized that the rest of us were staring at her.

“What? What is it?” she finally asked. Then she noticed Stacey, who was sitting on my bed, gazing sadly down at her hands.

“Sam took a high school girl to the movies?” she asked softly.

“Yeah, I—Oh, no. Stacey, I'm sorry.” Kristy had forgotten all about Stacey's crush on Sam. “I'm sure it doesn't mean anything. He is interested in you. Really.”

“Then what about that girl—”

“Tamara? You mean, why did he take her to the movies? Honestly, I don't know. But she was so weird Sam'll never be serious about her. I'm positive. I think he went out with her just to shake Mom up.”

“I thought he liked me,” said Stacey.

“He does, he does,” Kristy assured her.

“What do you mean when you say she's weird?” asked Stacey carefully.

“Well, the green-tipped hair, for one thing. And the clothes. Her clothes were just … just
weird.”

“Like mine?” I asked suspiciously.

“Oh, no, not at all like yours,” said Kristy, beginning to blush.
“Nothing
like yours.”

I glanced at Stacey. For the first time since I'd met her, she didn't seem so sophisticated. In fact, she looked like a lost little girl. Two tears slid slowly down her cheeks.

“Oh, no! Please don't cry!” exclaimed Kristy.

Mary Anne jumped up from her spot on the floor and sat down next to Stacey. She can't stand for people to be upset.

The phone rang, and I answered it. It was Mr. Willis from down the street. I'd baby-sat for his kids once before.

“Yes?” I said. “This Saturday? Sure, sure … eight
P.M
…. sure. I'll be there.” I hung up the phone and noted my job in our record book.

When I looked up, everyone was glaring at me, even Stacey. It was my turn to find out what I'd done wrong.

“Okay, what is it?” I asked.

“Did you just accept that job?” Kristy demanded.

I felt my stomach drop. “Yes,” I whispered.

“But, Claudia, you know the rule.”

Of course I knew. I'd just forgotten. “I'm supposed to check with everyone else first.”

Kristy nodded. “I'm free on Saturday.”

“So am I,” added Mary Anne.

“Oh,” I said.

“I'm not,” said Stacey, “but I wish you'd asked me. You didn't know I was busy.”

“I—I'll call him back,” I suggested. “One of you guys can have the job.”

“No,” said Kristy. “That makes us look disorganized. You keep the job. But I want to know something. How often do you get calls for the club and accept jobs without asking anyone else first?”

“Oh, not often. I mean, almost never. Only … only once before.”

“That job with the Newtons?”

“All right, twice, then.”

“You mean that job with Charlotte?” asked Stacey.

“Oh, all right, three times.”

“Claudia!” exclaimed Kristy.

“I don't do it on purpose!” I exploded. “I'm not trying to cheat you guys, you know.”

“We d—”

“It's just that I have so much on my mind.”

“What's wrong?” asked Mary Anne.

“The Halloween Hop is only four days away, and I don't think Trevor even knows my name yet.”

“Wow,” said Stacey sympathetically. “I didn't realize it was getting that serious.”

I nodded. “I guess there's no hope now.”

“Yes, there is!” Mary Anne cried suddenly. “Where there's time, there's hope! And you've got four days. Anything could happen in four days.”

“I think you should talk to him,” said Kristy.

“
I
think you should ask him to the dance,” said Stacey.

I gasped. “No way! This isn't the Sadie Hawkins dance. I can't ask a boy to go with me.”

“In New York we did it all the time.”

“Well, this isn't New York. It's little Stoneybrook. And I am not asking Trevor Sandbourne to the Halloween Hop.”

“You're scared,” said Stacey.

“You're right.”

“Maybe Trevor is scared, too.”

“You think so? He
is
sensitive….”

Before Stacey could answer, the phone rang again.

“I'll
get it,” said Kristy meaningfully, reaching for the receiver. “Hello? … Hi, Mr. Newton. Where are you? At the office? … Oh …
Oh
…”

“What?” I asked.

Kristy waved at me to be quiet. “Now?” we heard her say. “But I thought the baby wasn't due for three more weeks…. Oh … Mm-hmm … Jamie called you? … I didn't know he could use the phone, either…. Yes … Right … Okay, we'll be here. Bye.”

“The baby?” squealed Mary Anne. “Already?”

“I guess so,” replied Kristy. “Mr. Newton said that Jamie just called him at the office and said he wanted him to come home. When Mr. Newton asked if the baby was on the way, Jamie said yes!”

“Oooh! I can't believe it!” I cried.

“So Mr. Newton says he'll probably need one of us to stay with Jamie this evening. If he's going to be at the hospital really late, Jamie can just spend the night at our house, I guess. He's done that once before. Mr. Newton will call as soon as he gets home.”

“Gosh, I hope Mrs. Newton's all right,” said Stacey. “I mean, asking Jamie to call Mr. Newton, and the baby coming early and everything.”

“Yeah, you're right,” I said.

For a moment, we forgot our boy problems.

“Are babies who are born three weeks early usually okay?” I asked.

The other members of the Baby-sitters Club shrugged. “Don't know,” said Mary Anne.

“I once heard of a baby who was born three
months
early,” said Stacey. “He had to stay in the hospital practically forever, but now he's okay.”

“David Michael was two weeks early,” put in Kristy, “and he was just a little small. The doctors made him stay in the hospital three extra days to gain a few more ounces, but he was fine.”

“You know something?” said Mary Anne. “I don't even know whether I was born early or late or on time. Dad hardly ever talks about stuff like that—you know, what I did when I was a baby. It's times like this when I wish I had a mother. I bet she'd talk about those things.”

For a moment, nobody said anything. I saw Stacey looking sympathetically at Mary Anne. Stacey once told me she wished she knew her better, but Mary Anne is still a little shy when she's around Stacey.

Then Kristy broke the silence (as usual) and saved the day. “You know what?” she said to Mary Anne. “You should ask my mother those
things. Or ask Mrs. Kishi or Mimi. I bet they'd know, since we all grew up together. My mom told me once that when we were really little, around a year old, our parents formed a play group for us so we could be with kids our own age, and they could talk about child rearing and stuff. They must have known all three of us pretty well.”

“Really?” asked Mary Anne. “Maybe I will ask one of them … someday.”

The phone jangled. “Mr. Newton!” cried Kristy as she dove for the receiver. “Baby-sitters Club,” she said officially, and I realized I'd forgotten to do that earlier. Another strike against me. Kristy nodded at us to let us know that it was Mr. Newton on the phone. We watched her face anxiously. “It was?” she said, looking disappointed. “Oh … oh … Sure, we understand. Actually, I'm glad the baby's not coming early. It'll be better for him—or her—to be on time…. Right … Right. No problem. Okay, see you soon. Bye.” Kristy hung up the phone.

“False alarm?” I asked.

“You could say that.” Kristy began to giggle.

“What's so funny?”

“Mrs. Newton is fine. She didn't even know Jamie was using the phone. You know how Jamie
always wants to talk to his dad and waits for him to come home from work every day?”

We nodded.

“Well, today he got tired of waiting and just went ahead and called his father for a chat. Mrs. Newton had taught him how to dial the number in case there ever
was
an emergency with the baby or something, only Mr. Newton didn't know that. Anyway, Jamie told Mr. Newton he wanted him to come home—because he always wants him to come home—and Mr. Newton asked if the baby was on the way, and Jamie said yes—because of course a baby
is
on the way in his house and—oh, it was just a big mix-up!”

We all began to laugh. “It'll be pretty exciting when the baby really does come,” said Mary Anne.

“It would be pretty exciting if Trevor asked me to the dance,” I added. I sighed loudly.

If I had known what was going to happen that very night, I might not have bothered sighing over Trevor. He was nothing compared to the other problems that were about to come up.