Mary Anne Saves the Day (3 page)

The next morning I woke up feeling sad. Kristy had never stayed mad at me for so long. Then again, I had never called her the biggest, bossiest know-it-all in the world. As I got dressed for school, though, I tried to convince myself that the members of the Baby-sitters Club couldn't stay mad for long. After all, we had a business to run. Surely things would get straightened out in time for our meeting the next day.

When breakfast was over, I kissed my father good-bye and headed out the front door. I hoped he wouldn't see that I was walking to school alone. If he did, he would know that something was wrong.

I had walked to school alone only six times since kindergarten. Four of those times were days Kristy was home sick; once was when she and her family left for Florida the day before spring vacation started; and once was the day after the
Thomases announced that they were getting divorced, and Kristy had been too upset to go to school.

Sometimes Claudia walked with us; sometimes she didn't. However, since just after we started the Baby-sitters Club, Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and I had been walking to and from school together almost every day.

I reached the sidewalk and paused in front of Kristy's house, trying to decide whether to ring her bell and ask to talk to her. In the end, I just kept on walking. Basically, I'm a coward. I didn't want to have a scene with her in front of her family.

I walked quickly to school, keeping my eyes peeled for Kristy, Claudia, or Stacey. But I didn't see them. A horrible thought occurred to me: Maybe they'd all made up, and I was the only one they were still mad at. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I entered school.

The very first person I saw was Kristy! She was not with Claudia and Stacey, so I began to feel a bit better.

I waved to her.

Kristy looked right at me. I'm sure she did. She saw me wave.

But she tossed her head in the air, turned around, and flounced down the hall. I followed
her, since my homeroom is next to hers, but I tried to keep a safe distance between us.

As I neared my homeroom, I spotted Claudia coming down the hall toward Kristy and me.

“Hey, Kristy!” Claudia called.

Oh, no, I thought. They
have
made up.

But Kristy ignored Claudia.

“Kristy,”
Claudia said again.

“Are you talking to me?” Kristy asked icily. “Or to some other job-hog?”

Claudia's face clouded over. “No, you're the only job-hog I see at the moment.”

“Then get a mirror,” snapped Kristy.

Claudia looked as if she was preparing some sort of nasty retort, but before she could think of a really good one, Kristy walked into her homeroom and slammed the door shut behind her.

I wondered whether it was safe to approach Claudia. After all, she had wanted to make up with Kristy. But just then, the bell rang.

Claudia disappeared into her homeroom; I disappeared into mine.

The morning passed slowly. I couldn't concentrate. In my head, I wrote notes of apology to my friends. I realized that I must still be mad at them, though, because some of the notes weren't very nice:

Now
that
was a note I could send.

In English class, I finished my work early. I carefully removed a fresh piece of loose-leaf paper from the middle of my notebook, and took my special cartridge pen from my purse. The cartridge was filled with peacock blue ink, and the nib on the pen made my handwriting look like scrolly, swirly calligraphy.

Slowly, making sure each word looked perfect and was spelled correctly, I printed the note to Claudia. Then I waved it back and forth to dry the
ink, folded it twice (making the creases straight and even), and tucked it in my purse. I would give it to her at lunchtime.

My knees felt weak as I made my way to the cafeteria a few minutes later. I'd know right away whether Stacey and Claudia had made up, or if they were still mad, too. They always sat with the same kids — a sophisticated group that included
boys
.

The first thing I did when I entered the cafeteria was look around to see what was what with my friends. I found Claudia and Stacey's table. There was the usual bunch, or almost the usual bunch: Pete, Howie, Rick, Dori, Emily, and Stacey. But no Claudia.

So. Claudia and Stacey hadn't made up, either.

I scanned the lunchroom and finally found Claudia. She was sitting with Trevor Sandbourne. Just the two of them. Trevor is this boy she likes and goes out with sometimes. Claudia was leaning on her elbows, her hair falling over her shoulders, whispering to Trevor. He was listening with a smile on his face. They looked very private and very cozy.

I edged around a crowded table toward the one where Kristy and I always sit with the Shillaber twins, Mariah and Miranda. It was a round table
with four chairs, perfect for our little group. But halfway there, I stopped. Kristy and the twins were already at the table. They had spread their lunches everywhere so that there wasn't an inch of available space. Furthermore, they'd removed the fourth chair, or lent it to a crowded table, or something. It didn't matter what. The point was that they hadn't saved a place for me.

I watched my friends for a moment. Kristy was facing me. She was talking away a mile a minute and Mariah and Miranda were giggling.

Kristy glanced up and saw me. She began talking even more earnestly. Then she gestured for the twins to lean toward her, and she made a great show of whispering in their ears and laughing loudly.

I turned around.

Suddenly, I felt like a new kid at school. I didn't know who else to sit with. Ever since middle school began, I'd been eating with Kristy, Mariah, and Miranda.

I knew that if Kristy were in my shoes, she'd just join some other group of kids, even if she didn't know them very well. But I'd die of embarrassment first. I could never do that.

I walked around the cafeteria until I found an empty table. I plopped down in a chair and
opened my lunch bag. Since I pack my own lunch, I never have to eat things I don't like, such as liver-wurst sandwiches. On the other hand, there are never any surprises. Treats, yes; surprises, no.

I spread a paper napkin on the table and arranged my lunch on it: peanut butter sandwich, apple juice in a box, potato chips, banana. I looked it over and realized I wasn't hungry.

I was still staring at it when a voice next to me said, “Excuse me, could I sit here?”

I glanced up. Standing uncertainly by my side was a tall girl with the blondest hair I had ever seen. It was so pale it was almost white, and it hung, straight and silky, to her rear end.

“Sure,” I said, waving my hand at all the empty chairs.

She sat down with a sigh, placing a tray in front of her. I looked at her lunch and decided I was glad I had brought mine. I knew Stacey and Claudia think Kristy and I are babies because we still bring our lunches to school, but the macaroni casserole on the girl's tray looked really disgusting. And it was surrounded by mushy, bright orange carrots, a limp salad, and a roll that you'd need a chain saw to slice.

The girl smiled shyly at me. “You must be new, too,” she said.

“New?” I blushed. Why else would I be sitting alone? “Oh,” I stammered, “um, no. It's just — my friends are all … absent today.”

“Oh.” The girl sounded disappointed.

“Are — are you new?” I asked after a moment.

She nodded. “This is my second day here. Nobody ever wants the new kid to sit at their table. And I feel embarrassed sitting alone. I thought I'd found the perfect solution — another new kid.”

I smiled. “Well, I don't mind if you sit with me. Even if I'm not new.”

The girl smiled back. She wasn't exactly pretty, I decided, but she was pleasant, which was more important. Especially considering three
un
pleasant people I could think of.

“My name's Dawn,” she said. “Dawn Schafer.”

“Dawn,” I repeated. “That's such a pretty name. I'm Mary Anne Spier.”

“Hi, Mary Anne Spier.” Dawn's blue eyes, which were almost as pale as her hair, sparkled happily.

“Did you just move here?” I asked. “Or did you switch schools or something?”

“Just moved here,” she replied. “Last week.” She began to eat slowly and methodically, taking
first a bite of macaroni stuff, then a bite of carrots, then a bite of salad. She worked her way around the plate in a circle. “Our house is still a mess,” she went on. “Packing cartons everywhere. Yesterday it took me twenty minutes to find my brother for dinner.”

I giggled. At that moment, I happened to look up and see Kristy across the cafeteria. She was watching me. As soon as I caught her eye, she began talking to Mariah and Miranda again, making it look as if they were having the time of their lives without me.

Well, two can play that game, I thought. Even though I have never been much good at talking to people I don't know well, I leaned across the table and put my head next to Dawn's conspiratorially.

“You want to know who the weirdest kid in school is?”

She nodded eagerly.

He happened to be sitting at the table next to Kristy's. I took advantage of that to point in her direction. “It's Alexander Kurtzman. The one wearing the three-piece suit. See him?” I whispered.

Dawn nodded.

“Don't ever try to butt in front of him on the lunch line. Don't even try to get in
back
of him,
unless he's at the end of the line. His hobby is obeying rules.”

It was Dawn's turn to laugh. “Who else should I know about?” she asked.

I pointed out a few other kids. We spent the rest of the lunch hour whispering and laughing. Twice I caught Kristy's eye. She looked absolutely poisonous. I knew I wasn't helping our fight, but I kind of liked the idea of getting even with her for not letting me sit at our table.

“Hey, do you want to come over to my house after school tomorrow?” Dawn asked.

“Well … well, sure,” I replied. It felt so strange to be talking with somebody besides Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, or the Shillabers. I wasn't sure that I had ever made a new friend all on my own. Mariah and Miranda had originally been friends Kristy had made, Stacey had been a friend of Claudia's, and I had just grown up with Kristy and Claudia.

“Oh, that's wonderful!” exclaimed Dawn. She must have been really lonely.

I began to feel guilty. I knew full well that one reason I wanted to go over to Dawn's house was to make Kristy (and Stacey and Claudia) mad.

I hoped Kristy would see me leaving school
with Dawn the next afternoon. I hoped she would be surprised. I hoped she would be mad (madder than she already was). I even hoped she'd be a little hurt.

“That would be fun,” I added. “Where do you live?”

“Burnt Hill Road.”

“That's not too far from me! I live on Bradford Court.”

“Great! We can watch a movie.”

“Okay!”

Dawn and I got up and cleared our places.

“Want to eat lunch again tomorrow?” asked Dawn. “Or will your friends be back?”

I paused. What if we'd all made up by the next day? I decided to cross that bridge when I came to it. “I don't know,” I answered.

“It doesn't really matter anyway,” said Dawn quietly.

“Okay. Well … see you.”

“See you.”

We left the cafeteria.

I didn't see Kristy, Claudia, or Stacey again until school let out that day. Just after the last bell rang, I was standing in the front doorway of Stoneybrook Middle School, looking out across the lawn.

Then I saw them, all three of them. They were walking home from school, each one alone, each one still probably mad.

I set out slowly after them. It wasn't until I got home that I realized I had never given Claudia the note I'd written.

The first thing I thought when I woke up the next morning was, it's Wednesday. Today is a clubmeeting day. We can't stay mad much longer or we won't be able to hold the meeting. And we've never missed a meeting. Suddenly, I was sure our fight was over.

I was so sure that, on my way to school, I stopped at Kristy's house and rang her doorbell. I thought we could walk to school together and apologize to each other.

Ding-dong.

David Michael answered the door. “Hi, Mary Anne!” he said.

“Hi,” I replied. “Is Kristy still here?”

“Yup,” said David Michael, “she's just —”

“I am
not
here!” I heard Kristy call from the living room.

“Yes, you are. You're right —”

“David Michael, come here for a sec,” said Kristy.

David Michael left the front hall.

A few seconds later, I heard footsteps tiptoeing toward the hall. The front door slammed shut in my face.

I stood on the Thomases' stoop, shaking.

Then I turned and crossed the lawn.

All the way to school I kept hearing Kristy's angry voice and the door slamming. Well, I thought, there's still Dawn. Dawn wasn't the same as Kristy or my other friends, but she was something.

We ate lunch together after all. “Your friends are absent again?” Dawn asked. She looked skeptical.

“Yeah,” I replied. I decided not even to go into it.

I looked around the cafeteria for the other members of the Baby-sitters Club. Things were a bit different that day. Kristy was still eating with the Shillabers, but the empty chair had been filled by another friend of theirs, Jo Deford. Claudia and Trevor were sitting with Rick and Emily. At the opposite end of their long table were Dori, Howie, Pete, and Stacey. Every so often, Stacey would look up and give Claudia the
evil eye, or Claudia would whisper something to Trevor and then look in Stacey's direction and laugh. Once, she stuck her tongue out at Stacey.

Things were worse than ever. I wasn't surprised that Kristy was holding a grudge, but I had sort of expected Stacey and Claudia to make up, or at least to pretend to have made up. I never thought I'd see the day when cool Claudia would stick her tongue out at somebody in front of Trevor Sandbourne.

“Boy,” I said under my breath.

“What?” asked Dawn.

I sighed. “Nothing.”

When the bell rang at the end of the day, I made a dash for the front door of school. I was supposed to meet Dawn there and was trying to figure out just how to time things so that Kristy would be sure to see me walking off with my new friend. I decided that I should simply meet Dawn and dawdle. As it happened, things worked out better than I could have hoped.

Almost as soon as I reached the door, kids started streaming past me. I kept my eyes glued to the crowded hallway. After a few moments, I spotted Kristy. She spotted me at the same time
and made a face that was a cross between a scowl and a sneer. So what did I do? I smiled. Not at Kristy, but at Dawn, who happened to be right in front of her. I'm sure Kristy thought I was trying to make up with her again.

Boy, was she surprised when Dawn called, “Hi, Mary Anne!” and ran up to me.

“Hi,” I replied. I flashed another smile. And as we headed out the door I looked over my shoulder in time to see Kristy standing openmouthed behind me.

Dawn and I walked across the lawn, talking away a mile a minute. We passed Claudia and Trevor on the way, which only made the afternoon more worthwhile, as far as I could see.

Dawn's new house turned out to be very old. “It's a farmhouse,” she told me, “and it was built in seventeen ninety-five.”

“Wow!” I said. “You're kidding! Gosh, you were lucky to be able to buy such an old house.”

“Yeah, I think so. Even though it needs a lot of work, and it's not very big. You'll see.”

We walked through the front door. “If my dad were here,” said Dawn, “he'd have to duck.”

I looked up and saw that the top of the door frame wasn't far above my head. “People were
shorter in seventeen ninety-five,” explained Dawn.

I stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind me. I was standing in the middle of a room strewn with packing cartons — some empty, some half-empty, some still unopened — mountains of wadded-up newspaper, and a jumble of, well,
things
. I think we were in the living room, but I could see dishes, toys, sheets and blankets, a shower curtain, a bicycle tire, and a can of peaches.

“My mother isn't very organized yet,” said Dawn. “Actually ever. Mom!” she called. “Mom, I'm home!”

“I'm in the kitchen, honey.”

Dawn and I stepped over and around things, and managed to reach the kitchen unharmed.

I could see what Dawn meant about the house being small. The kitchen wasn't even big enough for a table and chairs. And it was dark, the window being blocked off by some overgrown yew bushes outside.

A pretty woman with short, curly hair that was every bit as light as Dawn's was standing at the counter slowly turning the pages of a large photo album.

Dawn took a look at the mess (the kitchen was as jumbly as the living room had been) and then
at the photo album. “Mom!” she cried. “What are you doing?”

Mrs. Schafer looked up guiltily. “Oh, honey,” she said. “I keep getting sidetracked. I was working away, and I unpacked this album and an envelope full of pictures marked
FOR PHOTO ALBUM
, and I just had to stop and put them in.”

Dawn smiled and shook her head. “I don't know, Mom. The way we're going, we might as well leave the house like it is. Then, if we ever move again, we could just throw the things back in the boxes.”

Mrs. Schafer laughed.

“Mom, this is my friend Mary Anne. We eat lunch together.”

Mrs. Schafer shook my hand. “Hi, Mary Anne. Nice to meet you. I do apologize for the mess. If you go up to Dawn's room, though, you'll find the one civilized spot in the house. Dawn had her bedroom cleaned, unpacked, and organized the day after we moved in.”

Dawn shrugged. “What can I say? I'm neat.”

“Would you like a snack, girls?” asked Mrs. Schafer.

“Is there actual food?” asked Dawn.

“Well,” her mother replied, “there is actual grape jelly and an actual can of peaches.”

“We've been eating out,” Dawn told me, “in case you couldn't tell.” She turned to her mother. “I think we'll skip the snack, Mom. But thanks.”

Dawn and I went upstairs. Everything was little or low: a small dining room; a narrow, dark stairway leading to a narrow, dark hall. At the end of the hall was Dawn's bedroom, also small, with a low ceiling and a creaky floor.

“Wow, I like your room,” I said, “but, gosh, the colonists must have been midgets.”

“Maybe,” said Dawn. “But there are two good things about this room. One is this.” She showed me a small, round window near the ceiling. “I don't know why it's there, but I love it.”

“Kind of like a porthole,” I said.

Dawn nodded. “The other thing is this.” She flicked some switches and the room was flooded with brilliant light. “I can't stand dim rooms,” she explained, “so Mom let me get lots of lamps and I put one-hundred-watt bulbs in all of them. I just hope the wiring in this old place can take it.”

“Hey!” I exclaimed. “You have a big TV in your room! Boy, are you lucky.”

“Well, it's only temporary, until the rest of the house is in order. Then it goes downstairs to the living room. What movie do you want to see?”

“What do you have?”

“Practically everything. My mom's a movie nut.”

“Well,” I said, “you probably don't have
The Parent Trap
, do you?”

“Of course we do. That was the last thing she bought before —”

“Before what?” I asked.

Dawn lowered her eyes. “Before the divorce,” she whispered. “That's why we moved here. Because Mom and Dad got divorced.”

“Why did you move
here
?”

“Mom's parents live here. My mother grew up in Stoneybrook.”

“Oh! So did my dad. I wonder if they knew each other.”

“What's your dad's name?”

“Richard Spier. What's your mom's name? I mean, what was her name before she got married?”

“Sharon, um, Porter.”

“I'll have to ask my father. Wouldn't it be funny if they knew each other?”

“Yeah.” Dawn was still staring at the floor.

“Hey,” I said, “I guess it's awful when your parents split up, but there's nothing
wrong
with it, you know. Lots of kids have divorced parents. Kristy Thomas, my be — my next-door neighbor, has been a ‘divorced kid' for years. And her mom
dates this nice divorced man. And —” (I was about to tell her that the parents of the Shillaber twins were divorced, but I didn't really want to talk about the twins.) “And, I mean, I don't care that your parents are divorced.”

Dawn smiled slightly. “Where did your mother grow up?” she asked. I guess she wanted to change the subject.

“In Maryland, but she's dead. She died a long time ago.”

“Oh.” Dawn flushed. Then she started the movie. Soon we were wrapped up in
The Parent Trap
.

“What a great movie,” said Dawn with a sigh when it was over.

“I know. One of my favorites.” I looked at my watch. It was 5:15. “I better go,” I said. “This was really fun.”

“Yeah, it was. I'm glad you came over,” said Dawn.

“Me, too.”

We clattered down the midget staircase.

“See you tomorrow!” I called as I left. I ran all the way to Claudia's house. My stomach was tied up in knots. It was time for a meeting of the Baby-sitters Club.

I had no idea what to expect.