Claudia Kishi, Live From WSTO! (2 page)

Now that Kristy lives so far away, she has to be driven to meetings by her brother, Charlie. Even so, she has hardly ever been late to a meeting. In fact, she's usually the first one there.
That day, she arrived at 5:24.
"Hey, Claudia, what's up?" she said.
"Ohhh, uptown, upstate ..." I answered cheerfully. (Not bad, huh? I had just thought of it.) "Groan." Kristy rolled her eyes and sat in the director's chair near my desk. That's her usual spot. (Mine is on my bed, sitting cross-legged.) "Kristy," I said, "I need an activity, something really interesting and fun. And don't tell me to take a sport — " "DON'T WORRY, I WON'T UPSET YOU." Kristy spoke in this exaggerated, loud voice, then started laughing and slapping her knees.
"Uh, Kristy? Are you okay?" "Upset! Get it? Up . . . set!" I love Kristy. Really. But there's another side to that incredible brain.
She's competitive. Even with jokes. Sometimes she just doesn't know when to stop.
I smiled patiently. "Uh-huh. Um, listen, Kristy. What do you think I should take, tap or drama?" Kristy looked at me as if I'd suggested adding another nose to my face. "Are you serious? What about something like volleyball?" Fortunately Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike walked in the room then. Jessi's eleven, like Mal. They are our two sixth-grade members (the rest of us are eighth-graders).
I explained my situation. Well, almost all of it. I didn't say I felt sad and friendless, just that I needed a change of pace.
Jessi was all smiles when I mentioned tap. "Stand up. I'll give you a lesson," she said.
"Now?" I asked.
"Before the others get here. Come on, hold onto the side of your desk." I did.
"Okay, watch." She began shifting from side to side. "Ball change, ball change. ..." I tried to copy her. It wasn't hard to do, but I looked like a total geek.
When she started doing things called shuffles and falaps, 1 was hopeless.
The problem is, Jessi is practically a pro. She takes all kinds of dance lessons. (Ballet is her specialty. She's performed lead roles in productions at her ballet school.) She even looks like a dancer. She's thin and graceful, with turned-out feet.
Jessi and Mal are our junior officers. Neither of them is allowed to baby-sit during the evenings, unless it's for their own siblings (and boy, do they complain about that), but they do a lot of sitting on afternoons and weekends. They are absolute best friends. They are also certified horse fanatics (I think they have memorized the plot of every single Saddle Club book).
Like Mal, Jessi's the oldest in her family, and is convinced that her parents treat her like a baby. Unlike Mal, Jessi has a normal-sized family, with two siblings. Also, Jessi's African-American and Mal's white.
"No, no!" Jessi was saying to me. "You shift your weight on a falap. That's what makes it different from a shuffle!" Uh-huh.
My dreams of stardom were flying out the window.
By now, the rest of the members of the BSC had arrived. I figured we could settle down and forget I even mentioned tap.
But noooo. Shannon Kilbourne and Dawn Schafer were holding onto a bookshelf and doing perfect falaps (or maybe shuffles). Kristy was trying to imitate them, but her tap-dancing looked like soccer practice.
Only Mary Anne Spier had the good sense to stay seated.
"Come on, Mary Anne," Kristy urged her.
"I, uh, have to do some updating," Mary Anne replied, blushing. She was holding the BSC record book in front of her, like a shield.
Mary Anne blushes a lot. She's the shyest, sweetest, most sensitive person on earth. Also the most organized. Which makes her a perfect club secretary. You should see that record book. In her neat handwriting, she fills a calendar with all our jobs and conflicts (doctor and dentist appointments, family trips, Kris-ty's practices, Jessi's dance classes, and so on). She also keeps an up-to-date client list, with addresses, phone numbers, rates charged, and special needs, likes, and dislikes of the kids we sit for. And, believe it or not, she enjoys doing this! Like Kristy, Mary Anne used to live on my street. You'd never think those two opposites would be best friends, but they are. Actually, they do have things in common. Both are short and brown-haired. And they both had pretty sad lives that changed for the better.
Mary Anne's mom died when Mary Anne was a baby. Her dad raised her by himself, and he went overboard with rules. Right through seventh grade Mary Anne had a super-early curfew, and she had to wear little-girl clothes and keep her hair in pigtails.
Mr. Spier began to loosen up a little over time. But things really changed when Dawn Schafer moved to town. See, Dawn's mom used to be sweethearts with Mary Anne's dad, back when they went to Stoneybrook High School. But Dawn's grandparents thought he was too low-class or something, so the romance went kersplat. Dawn's mom moved to California, married a guy named Jack Schafer, had Dawn and her younger brother, divorced her husband, and came back to Stoneybrook. By that time, Mrs. Schafer had forgotten about her old boyfriend Richard Spier. Then Dawn became close to Mary Anne, and together they found out about their parents' long-ago romance. So ... Dawn and Mary Anne matched them up again. And we all cried at the wedding.
Mary Anne and her dad moved into the Schafers' farmhouse, which is two hundred years old and extremely cool. Now the Schafer/ Spiers are one big, happy family.
Sort of.
Dawn's brother, Jeff, hated Stoneybrook. From the moment he moved here, he was miserable and homesick. Mrs. Schafer finally let him move back to California to live with his dad, and he's been much happier.
Recently Dawn became homesick, too. So she went back to California, but only for a few months. (During that time her dad remarried, and Kristy, Mary Anne, and I went to the wedding.) Dawn and I are sooooo different. Physically, for one thing. Her hair is practically white, and she has light, freckled skin. Another big difference is our taste in food. Now, I have nothing against healthy eating. Seriously. I do eat unjunky food. But I just don't understand how anyone could get excited about tofu. (Have you ever tasted the stuff? It's like eating warm socks.) Dawn can get excited about it, though. Plus she gets excited about non-food things such as global warming, ozone layers, rain forests, and animal testing. She is such an independent thinker. She doesn't care what anyone else thinks of her.
As alternate officer, Dawn takes over whenever another member is absent. Lately she's been our treasurer, since Stacey left the BSC.
Which brings me to the story of Stacey.
Okay. First of all, Stacey is (or was) a very cool girl, and one of the original BSC members. She has gorgeous golden-blonde hair, and an incredible sense of style — sophisticated and urban and up-to-the-second. She was born and raised in New York City, and she often visits her dad there (the McGills are divorced).
Anyway, Stacey recently met this guy, Robert Brewster, who's cute, athletic, smart, and sensitive. Plus he's in LUV with her. So, naturally, Stacey began spending a lot of time with him and his friends. But then she started arriving late to BSC meetings. And backing out of jobs. And acting superior to other BSC members. And not inviting club members to a party at her house (I was the only one invited, which made me feel weird).
Then came the Big Fight. Everyone blew up at Stace during a BSC meeting (and vice versa). She quit and Kristy fired her at the same time.
1 was pretty mad at Stacey then. I still don't hang out with her, but I've calmed down. I've started saying hi to her in school. (The other club members don't, which I think is kind of immature.) I wish Stacey had never met Robert. I have nothing against him. Or against her. It's just the situation. I miss Stacey, especially at our meetings. I could picture her that Wednesday, trying to tap dance. She'd probably be just as klutzy as the rest of us, but she'd look great.
"Uh, guys," I said to the thundering herd. "I don't think I'm cut out for this." "No, you're fine!" Jessi insisted.
But before Jessi could show me another way to look like a klutz, my clock radio clicked to five-thirty.
"Okay, enough," Kristy harrumphed. "This meeting of the Baby-sitters Club will come to order!" Panting for breath, we all sat down.
"The first order of business," Kristy said, "is Claudia's problem. Okay. You've had a tap lesson. Now, Shannon and I would be happy to give you a drama lesson." Drama lesson?
"Whoa," I protested. "Can't we just, like, talk about it?" "You bet," Kristy replied. "Shannon, you have the floor first." Thank you, Kristy Thomas, talk-show host.
Shannon, by the way, is one of our two associate members (the other is Logan). Associates aren't required to attend meetings, but Shannon's been helping out since Stacey left. Shannon goes to a private school called Stoney- brook Day. (The rest of us go to Stoneybrook Middle School.) She's in tons of extracurricular activities there, including drama club.
"Well, we started You Can't Take It With 'You," Shannon said. "Right now we're just blocking, though." "Not the football kind," Kristy remarked.
Duh.
"No. Blocking is mapping out all the movements. Entrances, exits. Stuff like that has to be precise. It's like choreography, sort of." "I remember seeing some of that in Peter Pan rehearsals. Is it hard?" I asked.
"A little. All your moves happen on specific lines of the dialogue. You mark down all the moves in your script. You memorize your cue lines. Then, after you've memorized your own lines, you've memorized the blocking, too." Right. Sure. Gee, that sounded easy.
I might as well join the math club.
"What happens if you forget your lines during a performance?" I asked.
Shannon smiled. "That's called 'going up/ The actor's nightmare. Happens to everybody." Oh, yeah? Well, not to me.
My list was a bust. Zero for six.
The rest of the meeting was pretty busy with phone calls. We didn't talk much more about my problem. Which was okay. I didn't want to make it seem like a big deal.
Ease up, Kishi, I told myself. Life wasn't so bad.
Just dull.
I said good-bye to everyone, then flopped onto my bed. In about ten minutes, I'd have to start helping with dinner. Not enough time for homework, and I didn't feel in an artistic mood.
I flicked on my clock radio. It was tuned, as always, to the local radio station, WSTO. A rock song was playing, and I listened to the end of it. My eyes started feeling heavy. I could feel myself dozing off.
"And that was U 4 Me, rockin' it for you here on WSTO!" chirped this goony-sounding deejay. "We'll have more music for you in a minute, but first let me tell you about our coooooool connnntesssssst. ..." Those last two words were full of echo or reverb or whatever they call that. It was giving me a headache. I reached out to turn the radio off.
"Say, kids, if you've been listening to me and thinking, 'Hey, I could do that,' well, here's your chance. You can be the host of your own show on WSTO. A kids' show. That's right. If you're between the ages of ten and fourteen — that's years, ha ha — you can have your own one-hour radio show, twice a week for ... a fuuullll monnnnnth!" My hand froze.
"You find the guests/' he went on. "You plan and emcee the show. It's all up to you, if you're the winner of our Host of the Month Contest! To enter, just tell us why we should hire you — on one sheet of paper, please. Make it serious, make it funny, make it you\ Don't forget to include your name, age, address, and a description of yourself and your interests. We'll announce the winner on Monday, so hurry. And now, more greaaaat muuuusid" My mind was in warp speed. ^ My very own radio show? Me, Claudia Kishi, a deejay?
Yes. I could see it.
This was it.
This was what I was looking for! Chapter 3.
No. No. No.
Everything sounded awful.
I dropped my pen, propped up my elbows on my desk, and buried my face in my hands.
Think, Claudia! What had happened to me? I used to be a pretty decent writer. Seriously. When I was doing my Personals column for the SMS Express, I had to deal with tons of horribly written personal ads. Sometimes I'd rewrite them from scratch. First I'd figure out exactly what the person was trying to say. Then I'd cut out the words that weren't necessary.
The essentials. That's what I needed.
The brilliance would come later.
I wrote out a list. Just short sentence fragments. Exactly why I wanted the job.
Then I worked on putting it all together into an essay. I tried to keep it short, sweet, and really me.
I consumed a Milky Way, a box of Peppermint Patties, two Chunkies, and half a bag of Cape Cod potato chips.
Finally I had to go to sleep. My brain was fried. (My stomach didn't feel too great either.) I worked on the essay the next morning, before I went to school. Then, during lunch, I convinced Emily Bernstein (the SMS Express's student editor) to let me use the newspaper's word processor for my final draft.
I typed my essay out carefully. Then I closed my eyes, held my breath, and prepared for the worst part.
Spellcheck.
My spelling stinks. The computer went wild. It must have stopped at a hundred misspelled words. I thought it would crash from overwork.
But when it was done, my essay looked like this: WHY I WANT TO BE WSTO HOST OF THE MONTH by Claudia Kishi Here Is my idea of a great host for a kids' show: Someone who's not shy but is also a good listener. Someone who knows what kind of music, fashion, and jokes kids like. Someone who understands the problems and concerns of kids of all ages. And most of all, someone who's reliable and hardworking.
And that someone is me, Claudia Kishi! Okay, first of all, let me say right out, I don't have any radio experience. But I'm an expert at talking. Just ask any of my friends. (On second thought, don't. Take my word for it!) As for reliable and hard-working? Well, I baby-sit a Jot. In fact, I'm vice-president of a baby-sitters club that meets three times a week. I also used to run a column in the Stoneybrook Middle School newspaper, called Claudla's Personals.
From my column and my baby-sitting", I've learned a Jot. I think I Jmow what Jcids Jike — from infants right on up to eighth graders! I once heard an old saying that went, "Having an open mind is one thing, but letting bats fly around inside it is something" eJse entirely." WeJJ, my mind is open to the experience of a radio show. But the only things flying around inside it are my ideas for programming. I can't wait to share them with you! Not bad, huh? Serious but humorous, not too stiff, well-spelled. And it's always nice to throw in a little quotation. (I'd been dying to use that one. I read it in a book once, and I think it is so cool.) "Good afternoon, this is Claudia Kishi on WSTO," I said as I pressed the print key.