Get Well Soon, Mallory!
Page 9
You’ll never guess who was on the phone. Dawn. Calling all the way from California.
I held the receiver so Kristy and the others could put their heads close to it and listen in.
“Happy Thanksgiving!” Dawn shouted. “I wish I were with you. It’s seventy degrees here. It doesn’t even feel like Thanksgiving. More like the Fourth of July.”
We took turns telling Dawn how much we missed her, and everyone promised to write. Then the call was over and it was time for pumpkin pie.
Dessert was served in the living room because our dining room is barely big enough for ten people. Fifteen is impossible. I lay on the couch eating my pie, surrounded by my family and closest friends. We chattered nonstop for two hours.
I know I didn’t get to go to New York and stay in a fancy hotel. And I didn’t get to watch the parade from those special bleachers. But that night it didn’t matter. I went to sleep feeling happier than I’d felt in weeks.
Ring!
On Friday morning the phone woke me up. It was Mom’s cousin Marie.
“Mallory, how are you feeling?” she asked when I answered.
“Much better,” I replied. “But I wish we could have watched the parade with you.”
“Me, too,” Marie said. “But if it makes you feel any better, the weather was kind of lousy. Halfway through it started to drizzle. I was afraid we were going to have a real downpour.”
“Still, it would have been nice to be in New York and see all the decorations.”
“That’s what I’m calling about,” Marie said. “Put your mom on the line, will you?”
Then Marie invited Mom and my family to come to New York on Saturday for lunch and shopping. It sounded like a lot of fun. Of course, I couldn’t go, but Margo, Vanessa, Claire, and Nicky went with Mom. The triplets decided they wanted to stay home to watch football and play with their friends.
It was cozy being home with just Dad and the triplets. On Saturday afternoon, Dad made a bowl of popcorn and we watched as the first snow began to fall. Winter had arrived and Christmas was just around the corner.
The next morning everything was covered in a sparkling blanket of white. The sun shone brightly and I felt great. Well, maybe not great, but better than I’d felt in a month. I got dressed, ate breakfast at the table, and actually caught up with some of my homework.
Sunday afternoon the doorbell rang and I was surprised to discover Jessi and Kristy standing on our front doorstep. Kristy held a manila envelope in her hand.
“We’ve been working on our new advertising campaign,” she said as she took off her coat. “But we wanted to talk to you first, before we did anything.”
“Kristy thought, with Christmas only a month away, it would be a great time to post new advertisements,” Jessi explained as Kristy opened the envelope and pulled out a sheet of white paper.
“Claud designed the new flier.” Kristy held up the drawing. It was a holiday design with holly and ivy around the border.
“It’s wonderful,” I said. “Her best yet.”
“It’s finished except for one thing,” Kristy said, pointing to the paper. “Your name.”
“Claud is going to list every BSC member’s name at the bottom,” Jessi said. “And she’d be happy to list you as an honorary member —”
“But we think we know how you feel about that,” Kristy added. “So we won’t list your name if you don’t want us to.”
This was it. The moment of truth had arrived. I didn’t know how long it would be before my parents would let me rejoin the club. What if they said I never could?
I took a deep breath. “The mono could stretch on for another month or two, according to Dr. Dellenkamp. And even if I do get better soon, Mom and Dad may not let me come back to the BSC. At least not right away. That’s an awfully long time to be absent.”
Jessi and Kristy nodded but kept silent. It was absolute agony for me to say it but I did. “You’d better not put my name on the new flier. Or on any future advertisements or letters.”
Jessi sighed and took my hand. “I know that was a tough decision to make, Mal.”
Kristy nodded. “But we’ll honor your wish.”
I bit my lip and added, “You should probably start looking for a replacement for me.”
Kristy patted my shoulder. “I don’t think we’re going to start a big search, but if someone great wants to join the club — if he or she comes to us — then we might consider it.”
I knew leaving the club was the right thing to do, but it hurt. A deep, aching kind of hurt. I was getting better. But clearly it was going to take time before I was completely well. Maybe a lot of time. I didn’t even know when I’d be able to go back to school. All I could do was wait.
* * *
Dear Reader,
In Get Well Soon, Mallory!, Mallory comes down with mono and has to leave the club until she’s better. As a child I was very healthy, and I rarely missed school. However, early in June at the end of sixth grade, I had an accident. I fell out of a tree fort in my back yard and landed on a stump, rupturing my spleen. (For those of you who read the Baby-sitters Little Sister books, you will recognize this story in #81, Karen’s Accident.) When this happened, I was playing in our woods with my best friend, Beth, and our neighbor Jessi. Jessi was trying out our new archery set, and when I fell out of the tree, she thought she had shot me! She hadn’t, of course. But that night I had surgery to remove my spleen, and I stayed in the hospital for a week. Being in the hospital wasn’t all bad, though. For one thing, the hospital was just down the street from my school. One day at lunchtime, my teacher brought several of my classmates to visit. They weren’t allowed in the hospital, but they stood outside and we visited through the window. After a week I was allowed to leave the hospital, and then I stayed in bed for another week. I missed the rest of school that year.
After reading this book, you might think that I had mono when I was a kid. I did have mono, but not until I was forty — years after I wrote this book. Usually I write a story about something that has already happened to me. This time, something happened to me after I had written about it in a book. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen too often.
Happy reading,
* * *
The author gratefully acknowledges
Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner
for their help in
preparing this manuscript.
About the Author
ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.
There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.
Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.
Copyright © 1993 by Ann M. Martin.
Cover art by Hodges Soileau
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First edition, November 1993
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e-ISBN 978-0-
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