Claudia and the New Girl (4 page)

This year is different, though. Right off the bat, the five of us club members started eating together and going places together and gen-

erally being a group (even though we've got non-club friends). It's just expected that when that bell rings before lunch period, we'll all run to the cafeteria, and the first one down there will save our favorite table.

So when Ashley Wyeth caught up with me in the hallway on my way to the cafeteria the day after I'd sat at the Rodowskys' and said, "Let's eat lunch together, Claudia," I wasn't sure how to answer her. I didn't want to desert my friends.

Finally I said, "Do you want to sit with my friends and me? The members of the Babysitters Club always eat together."

Ashley thought that over. Then she said, "Let's sit by ourselves. You don't always sit with them, do you? Besides, what are you going to talk about? Baby-sitting?"

"Not necessarily," I replied. "We talk about lots of things, like boys and school dances and" ... and ... stuff."
    
"***

"Well, we need to discuss art," said Ashley.

"You and me?"

"Who else around here knows as much about sculpture as we do?"

I felt extremely flattered.

"We have an art show to enter," Ashley reminded me. "We have to figure out what

the subjects of our sculptures are going to be. I'd like to help you, if you want help."

Did I want help from a person who'd studied at Keyes? I thought. Of course I did. "Oh, thanks. That'd be great," I told her. "But don't you mean who the subjects will be?"

Ashley smiled and shook her head.

Mystified, I pushed open the double doors at the back of the cafeteria.

Ashley headed toward a table by the windows that overlooked the playing fields, but I pulled her in the opposite direction. "I have to talk to my friends for a sec first," I told her. Then I paused. "Are you sure you don't want to sit with them?"

"I just don't think we'd get anything accomplished," Ashley replied. "Time is valuable — if you want to become a great artist."

"I guess so."

My heart began to pound. How would the club members react when one of us "defected"? It wasn't like I was sick or had to do makeup work in the Resource Room or something.

I led Ashley over to the Baby-sitters Club's table, where Kristy and Mary Anne were just settling down with trays. They'd bought the hot lunch, and as usual, Kristy was making comments about it. "I know what this looks

like!" she was exclaiming, indicating the pizza-burger. "It looks like . . . remember that squirrel that got run over?"

Next to me, Ashley was turning green, so I said hastily, "Hi, you guys."

"Oh, hi!" said Mary Anne. She pulled a chair out for me. "Dawn and Stacey are buying milk. How come you're late?"

"Well," I replied, stalling for time. "It's . . . Do you guys know Ashley Wyeth? She's the new g — ,1 mean, she's new here. And she's in my art class. And, um, we're going to eat together today because we have to discuss something, this project," I said in a rush, not even giving anyone a chance to say hello.

Ashley slipped her arm possessively through mine.

"Oh," replied Kristy, shifting her eyes from Ashley and me to her tray. "Okay."

Mary Anne looked away, too, but didn't say anything.

Neither did Ashley. Finally I just said, "Well, um, see you guys later."

"Yeah. See you," said Kristy.

As Ashley and I made our way across the cafeteria, I began to feel angry. Why, I thought, shouldn't I have a new friend? Was there some law that said I had to eat lunch with Kristy, Mary Anne, Dawn, and Stacey every day? No,

of course not. They had no right to try to make me feel like I'd committed a federal crime or something.

"Hey," I said suddenly to Ashley as we set our books on an empty table. "Aren't we forgetting something?"

"What?" asked Ashley. She swept her hair over her shoulders, and I could see her earrings. Sure enough, six altogether. Two gold balls and a hoop in one ear. A seashell, a real feather, and a dangly flamingo in the other. Pretty cool.

"We forgot our lunches," I said, grinning.

Ashley broke into a smile. "Oh, yeah."

We left our things on the table and went through the lunch line. I never bring my lunch to school, but I refuse to buy the revolt-o hot lunch. I usually eat a sandwich instead. Ashley bought a yogurt and an apple. Health food. She and Dawn would probably get along great, since Dawn only eats stuff like fruit and granola and vegetables. It was too bad Ashley didn't seem to want to get to know my other friends.

When we returned to our table, Ashley said, "So, have you thought about what you want to sculpt?"

"No," I replied. This wasn't quite true. I had thought about it, but I'd been hoping Ashley would have some good ideas, since she

was such an expert. "Do you have any ideas for your project?"

Ashley shook her head. "Well, I mean, there are plenty of possibilities. I just haven't narrowed them down. But I have a great idea. I read that there's a new exhibit opening at Kuller's Gallery."

Kuller's was the other gallery in Stoney-brook, the old one.

"I think it's a water color exhibit, but we ought to go check it out. I always get really inspired when I'm at a show."

"But we need ideas for sculptures," I said, "not paintings."

"You never know what might strike you, though."

I paused just long enough so that Ashley jumped back into the conversation with, "Oh, Claud, you have to go with me. Nobody else will appreciate the show the way you will."

I beamed. "Okay," I said. "I'll go. Just as long as I'm home by five-thirty. I've got a meeting of the Baby-sitters Club."

I didn't get home until 5:45. At five o'clock I'd started saying things to Ashley such as, "I better leave soon," and, "I really better go."

But every time I said something, Ashley would pull me over to another painting, saying,

"Just look at this one, Claud. You have to look at this one." She was so intense. I think she barely heard what I was saying.

I must admit, I got much more out of a show when Ashley was along than I did by myself. She made me look at paintings in different ways and see things in them that I wouldn't have noticed by myself. And she listened, really listened, to anything I had to say about the watercolors.

So I had a hard time leaving. I was just enjoying appreciating the art. I knew my other friends would never get so much out of an exhibit. They didn't enjoy art the way Ashley and I did.

At quarter of six when I finally ran into my bedroom, I found the club meeting in progress.

"You guys started without me!" I exclaimed accusingly.

"Hello yourself," said Kristy. "Of course we started without you. The phone began ringing. What did you expect? That we'd tell everyone to call back later — after Claudia got here? We weren't sure you were coming at all. Where were you?"

"Ashley and I went to an exhibit at Kuller's."

At the mention of Ashley's name, my friends exchanged glances.

"How come you didn't call to say you were

going to be late?" asked Kristy. "That's a club rule, you know."

"I was trying to get here," I said. "I ran the whole way home. I left the exhibit late. It was just. . . Ashley and I were having such a good time."

"How good a time?" spoke up Stacey, and I thought she looked a little pale. "As good a time as when you and I go to the mall?"

"Stace, I don't know," I said, forcing a laugh.

The phone rang, and we stopped our discussion to take a job. And then two more.

"What did I miss?" I finally dared to ask. "I mean, at the beginning of the meeting."

"Three calls," replied Kristy. "On the appointment pages, it looked like you were free for a couple of them, but we couldn't be sure. Stacey and Mary Anne took them instead."

I nodded. That was fair. And anyway, it was a rule. If you were going to be late to a meeting and didn't tell anyone about it first, you lost privileges. Still, I didn't like the way being left out felt.

Or the way Stacey was looking at me.

Chapter 6.

What you need to know about Dawn's younger brother Jeff is that ever since school started this year, he's been having problems. He's been saying he misses his father. See, the reason Dawn moved to Stoneybrook last January was that her parents had just gotten a divorce, and Stoneybrook is where Mrs. Schafer grew up. Her parents, Dawn's grandparents, still live here. So Mrs. Schafer moved Dawn and Jeff back to her hometown. Mr. Schafer stayed in California.

At first, things seemed okay. I mean, Dawn didn't like the cold Connecticut winter, but she made friends and joined our club, and Jeff made friends, and Mrs. Schafer found a job and even started dating. Then at the end of the summer, Dawn and Jeff flew back to California to visit their dad. Maybe Jeff got homesick or something. Who knows? Anyway, he's become a real handful. He's been saying he misses Mr. Schafer and that he doesn't want to live with Dawn and their mom anymore. And he's been getting into trouble in school. So that's what had been going on in Dawn's life at the time she took the job baby-sitting for Myriah and Gabbie Perkins.

When Dawn rang the Perkinses' bell it was

answered by the gallumphing feet of Chew-bacca, their big black Labrador retriever.

"Chewy! Chewy!" she could hear Mrs. Per-kins saying. Then she heard a little scuffle. "Dawn?" Mrs. Perkins called.

"Yeah, it's me," Dawn replied.

"Let yourself in, okay? I'm going to put Chewy in the backyard."

"Okay!" Dawn opened the front door and stood listening. Apart from the sounds of Mrs. Perkins taking Chewbacca outside, she couldn't hear a thing. Where were Myriah and Gabbie? Usually they race to answer the door if one of us baby-sitters is coming over.

When Mrs. Perkins returned, she put a finger to her lips and whispered, "I want to show you something. Follow me."

Dawn followed Mrs. Perkins upstairs and into the girls' bathroom. Mrs. Perkins gestured for her to peek inside.

Dawn did. Seated on the (closed) toilet, she saw Gabbie, who's almost three, holding a mirror and carefully applying a streak of green eye shadow in a long line from one eye, across her nose, to her other eye. She looked like a cave woman.

Myriah, who's six, was standing on a step-stool, leaning over the sink to the mirror on

the medicine cabinet, and smearing on purplish lipstick.

Strewn around them — on the floor, on the back of the toilet, and all around the sink — were cotton balls, Q-tips, hair curlers, and dribs and drabs of leftover makeup, such as the ends of lipsticks, almost empty pots of blusher, and drying tubes of mascara. And seated carefully in a line on the floor were the girls' dolls and teddy bears.

Myriah glanced up and saw her mother and Dawn in the mirror. "Hi!" she called excitedly.

"Hi, Dawn Schafer!" added Gabbie, who calls almost everyone by both first and last name.

"We're having a beauty parlor!" exclaimed Myriah. She put down her lipstick and jumped off the stool. "These are our customers," she said, pointing to the dolls and bears.

"Our customers," echoed Gabbie.

"And now we're fixing ourselves up," Said Myriah. "I'm doing my makeup first."

"Girls, I'm going to leave now," Mrs. Perkins interrupted. She turned to Dawn. "I've got another checkup." (Mrs. Perkins is expecting a baby.) "The obstetrician's number is on the refrigerator. I have some errands to run afterward, so I probably won't be home until five o'clock. You know where everything is, right?"

Dawn nodded.

"Any questions?" asked Mrs. Perkins.

"Well," said Dawn, looking around the messy bathroom, "is it really okay for the girls to play with all this stuff?"

"Oh, yes. Don't worry about it. I give them the ends of all my makeup. Don't worry about cleaning up, either. We'll do that tonight or tomorrow. They've got a good game going."

Dawn grinned. Mrs. Perkins is great. What a nice mommy. We know this one mommy — Jenny Prezzioso's — who gets hysterical at the very thought of a mess or a little dirt.

After Mrs. Perkins left, Myriah introduced Dawn to some of the "customers" in the beauty parlor. First she held up a bear whose plastic snout was covered with lipstick and who was wearing a shower cap.

"This is Mrs. Xerox," she said. "She's having her hair permed."

"I put her lipstick on," spoke up Gabbie. She had finished her own makeup job and looked at Dawn solemnly from garish eyes. Lipstick, red and pink, stretched from ear to ear. She held up the hand mirror again. "Don't I look pretty? I'm a lovely lady."

"And this," Myriah went on, holding up a baby doll, "is Mrs. Refrigerator. She just needed an eye job. . . . Oh! I better do my eyes!"

Myriah jumped up on the stool again and began collecting tubes of mascara and eyeliner.

The phone rang.

"Can I get it?" cried Gabbie. She leaped off the toilet, spilling a lapful of hair curlers.

"Better let me," said Dawn. "I'll be right back. You guys keep . . . keep up the good work." She dashed into Mr. and Mrs. Perkins' bedroom and picked up the phone, which was ringing for the third time.

"Hello, Perkins residence," she said.

"Dawn?" asked a disgruntled voice.

"Yes. Jeff? Is that you?"

"Yeah."

"What's up? Are you at home?"

"Not exactly. I'm kind of at school. Using the teachers' phone. And I'm kind of in trouble."

"What do you mean, 'kind of in trouble'?"

"Oh, all right. I am in trouble. And Ms. Besser wanted me to call Mom. She won't let me go home until she talks to her. Only I called Mom's office and they said she went to a meeting somewhere in Stamford. So then I remembered you said you were sitting at the Perkinses' and I looked up their number. What should I do now, Dawn?"

"Okay," Dawn said, trying not to get upset,

"let's start at the beginning. Why are you in trouble with Ms. Besser?"

"I threw an eraser across the room. You know, a big blackboard eraser."

"Gosh, that doesn't sound so bad. I mean, you shouldn't have done it, but — are you sure that's all you did?"