Unfortunately, she had forgotten to confirm with Mrs. Walsh, the mother of her charge. Mrs. Walsh, thinking Sunny was over-booked and that she had no sitter, had canceled the meeting she was supposed to go to. A very important meeting, judging from how angry she was with Sunny.
This was not good for business. I called a special club meeting. I asked the girls to meet at Sunny’s house at exactly ten o’clock Saturday morning. That would give us plenty of time to discuss our future. I told them that the meeting would start promptly, no matter how many of us were there.
Shades of Kristy Thomas. I never thought I’d hear myself bossing people around like that.
It worked, though. Everyone arrived by 9:55. And everyone started talking at once.
“Mrs. Walsh chewed my ear off,” Sunny reported. “She told me she would never call any of us again.”
“Mr. Fackler told me we ought to be more organized,” Maggie said.
“He should talk,” Jill replied. “He and his wife can’t decide who should make the appointments.”
“Doesn’t his voice sound familiar?” Sunny said. “Like Mr. Ed, the talking horse?”
I was not going to let us get off track again. “Excuse me!” I interrupted. “Let’s make a list of our problems, okay? Then, when we finish, we’ll make a list of possible solutions.”
My friends nodded, as if they’d just heard Abraham Lincoln speak. I took a sheet of paper from Sunny’s desk and drew a line down the middle.
“Okay, problems?” I asked.
Sunny: “Double-booking.”
Maggie: “Who controls the record book?”
Jill: “We don’t know who’s doing what job.”
Maggie: “Parents have to make too many calls if one of us isn’t home, or has already booked a job.”
Sunny: “My mom accepted a job for me when I wasn’t there, the night before a big test.”
I scribbled furiously. Then I said, “Solutions?”
The room became absolutely silent.
“What about regular meeting times?” I asked.
Jill complained that that sounded too rigid. Maggie said it would be a hassle to call all our clients and tell them about the change. To that, Sunny remarked we might not have any more clients if Mrs. Walsh told her friends what had happened.
We talked and talked. Finally we settled on a plan:
1. We would have regular meeting times. Every week. (But no guilt trips about lateness.)
2. We would divide up our clients and each notify several of them that they had to call Sunny’s number during meeting hours.
3. We would use the record book and check it before confirming a job.
But that was it. We decided not to assign officers or keep a club notebook. Which was all right. Deciding on any rules was a major step with this group.
By the end of the meeting we were pretty pleased with ourselves. The We ♥ Kids Club would still be relaxed and fun.
Just a lot more efficient.
I was dying to tell Stephie. She’d be thrilled to hear that double-booking was a thing of the past. Besides, I wanted her to know that I still had time for her, even though things had been crazy lately.
As I walked to her house, I felt better than I had in a long time. And not only because of the W♥KC. It had been two weeks since my plane trip, and the atmosphere in my house was lightening. Carol had actually kept up a fair noise level the last time she’d been over.
I had never thought I’d be happy about that.
Stephie answered when I knocked at her door. “Dawn!” she exclaimed, her face breaking into a huge grin. “What are you doing here?”
“I just dropped by to say hi and tell you some good news,” I answered.
I described our meeting. Stephie’s reaction was not exactly what I’d expected. She shook her head and said, “I can’t believe you girls are thirteen and you just thought of that.”
Before I could reply, she ran inside, calling, “I have to show you my book!”
She returned a few moments later with a small stack of looseleaf paper, folded in half and stapled together.
The cover showed a drawing of a little girl asleep on the ground. A huge, smiling flower with arms was cradling her.
The flower had long blonde hair.
“That’s me, isn’t it?” I asked softly.
Stephie giggled. “It’s not you, silly. It looks like you, and it’s named after you. But it’s just part of a story!”
I couldn’t help laughing. Poor, sad little Stephie? She was going to be all right.
* * *
When I returned to my house, I called Mary Anne.
“Hi!” she said. “How are you? Did you have that big meeting you were telling me about?”
“Yes,” I replied. “And you won’t believe what happened.”
“Good news or bad?”
“Good.”
“Great! Wait a minute, Dawn. Kristy’s over. I want her to hear.”
She called Kristy, who ran upstairs and picked up the other phone. I told them what had happened in great detail.
I was sure Kristy would disapprove. After all, we weren’t adopting all of the BSC rules. But you know what she said? “I think you’re on the right track.”
“I mean, we’ll never be as organized as the BSC,” I added.
“I know,” Kristy replied. “And we’ll never be as famous as the We Love Kids Club.”
Uh-oh. I didn’t want to get into that.
“But that’s okay,” Kristy went on. “Fame isn’t so important.” She took a deep breath. “I was actually jealous of your group for a while. Can you believe that?”
“Really?” (I was glad Kristy couldn’t see the smile on my face.) “Well, to tell you the truth, all that publicity was one huge pain in the neck. You should be proud that the BSC is doing so well without that kind of attention.”
“Thanks to your brain, Kristy,” Mary Anne said.
“Yeah?” Kristy replied. “Well, I guess you have a point. I mean, we’re doing all right.”
More good news. Kristy and I were friends again. I don’t think she had apologized to the BSC, but that was okay.
With Kristy, you take what you can get.
“Hey, Dawn!” Jeff came running into my room. “What did the man say who wanted to taste some roasted goat at a restaurant?”
I looked up from my homework. “I don’t know, Jeff. I’ve never ordered it, myself.”
“It’s a joke!” (What a surprise.) “Please pass the butt-er! Get it? Because a goat butts, and he said —”
“I get it! Now let me do my homework. Go call Robin Williams or something.”
“That wasn’t funny,” Jeff said, stalking out.
It was six-thirty. Dad and Carol had gone out for an early dinner, and they probably wouldn’t be back before eight-thirty or nine. So I was doomed to spend two more hours in a house with the worst joke-teller on the West Coast. Very soon I would actually have to endure a meal with him.
Pure torture.
Before long I couldn’t stand the hunger. I closed my books and headed for the kitchen.
That was when I heard the familiar click of a key in the front door, and Dad’s muffled voice outside.
Salvation!
Jeff wandered into the kitchen. “What are they doing home so early?”
I heard the front door swing open. “No, of course you don’t see my point,” Dad was saying. “You’re still wrapped up in your fantasy.”
“Fantasy?” Carol sounded shocked. “Is it a fantasy to want to see a movie once in a blue moon? Is it a fantasy to want to spend a little time with the person you’re going to marry?”
“Uh-oh,” Jeff muttered.
“I think we’d better get out of the way,” I said. “Follow me.”
I ran into my bedroom, with Jeff at my heels. We shut the door softly behind us.
“Face reality, Carol.” Dad’s voice rang through the house. “I’m not a college kid. I have a family. You knew
that when you met me.”
“Well, what am I? We’re getting married, Jack, so that makes me family, too! Is there, like, some rating system — kids first, divorced wife second, new wife at the bottom of the heap?”
“Carol, you couldn’t be at the bottom of any heap. You’d push yourself right to the top!”
“And what do you mean by that?”
Jeff and I were crouched near the door. “That sounds like a compliment to me,” my brother whispered.
“It’s not,” I said. “Sssshh.”
“Carol, we go out once or twice a week. And you’re over at the house just about every day. Soon you’ll be living here. What more do you want? Restaurant-hopping every night? We’re both a little too old for that.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“That wasn’t a compliment,” Jeff informed me.
SLAM! went the door to Dad’s bedroom. The argument became muffled, but if they thought they were out of earshot, they were wrong.
I heard Dad call Carol immature. I heard her call him preoccupied. Soon they were practically screaming.
Then suddenly they stopped. Jeff’s eyes widened. “Did they kill each other?”
“Ssshh.”
Carol was sobbing. Dad’s voice grew soft and comforting. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Oooh, they’re making up,” Jeff said with a wicked grin.
I finally opened my bedroom door. We stepped out of our prison. (That’s what it felt like.)
“Come on,” I said to Jeff, “let’s get something to eat.”
We rummaged around in the refrigerator. I took out a yummy-looking salad. Jeff found cheese and bread and frozen fish sticks.
Just as we were sitting down, I heard Dad’s bedroom door open.
A wad of chewed carrot caught in my throat. I coughed and swallowed.
Carol walked into the kitchen. Her eyes were dry, but she looked tired and glum. “Good night, Dawn. Good night, Jeff,” she said.
I was glad she and Dad had made up. The argument had been scary. “See you tomorrow,” I replied, trying to sound cheerful.
Carol was already halfway to the front door. “Good-bye,” was all she said.
Jeff and I looked at Dad. He was leaning against the kitchen door frame, looking at the floor.
He shifted his weight and let out a sigh. Then he glanced at us. His eyes were glazed. “Kids, Carol and I have decided to stop seeing each other.”
His words hung in the air for a moment.
“You mean the engagement is off?” I asked.
“No, the whole relationship is off.”
Be careful what you wish for. It might come true. The words popped into my head, just as I’d seen them in Mal’s letter. It was something Vanessa had said to Nicky.
I had gotten my wish.
I felt dizzy. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t been such a spoiled baby.
“I’m so sorry, Dad,” I managed to say. “I didn’t want this.”
Dad sat down next to me. He smiled, but his eyes were still sad. “It’s not your fault, Sunshine. We just weren’t meant to be married, that’s all.”
“Oh, Dad, I know my trip to Connecticut has something to do with it,” I said. “I know what it did to Carol.”
“Listen, Dawn. Carol and I had problems long ago. Your trip brought some things to a head, that’s for sure. But now it’s clear to me that we’d have broken up eventually anyway. You may even have done us a favor. It would have been worse to go ahead with the wedding. You know what it’s like to break up after you’re married.”
“Much worse,” Jeff agreed.
We ate dinner together, hardly saying a word. Part of me felt happy. Carol was out of my life, where I’d wanted her to be for a long time. But most of me felt awfully guilty. I had no business driving Dad and Carol apart. Even if it was meant to happen, it should have happened by itself.
I think Jeff knew how I was feeling. He didn’t tell one joke the rest of the night. Then, before he went to bed, he came into my room and said, “Don’t worry, Dawn. Maybe they’ll get back together.”
I smiled. “Yeah, maybe. Thanks.”
He said good night and headed for his room. As I got ready for bed, I thought about the future. Maybe Dad would get back together with Carol. Maybe he’d find another girlfriend he wanted to marry. Sooner or later, the situation was bound to come up again. What would I do?
Maybe I’d be in Connecticut by then. If not, I know one thing for sure. I would deal with it. Maturely. Calmly.
But before I sank into bed, I found the piece of paper on which I’d written Dad’s credit card number. I ripped it into little pieces and let them drop into the trash basket.
Just in case.
* * *
Dear Reader,
In Dawn and the We ♥ Kids Club, we get an inside look at a different baby-sitting club. Guess what. In the years since the Baby-sitters Club series began, lots of kids who read the books have started their own clubs. Some of them are real businesses, with names such as Wee Care and Kids Are Us. Some of these businesses are modeled after the Baby-sitters Club, others are run differently. Some last for many years, some are short-lived. Every now and then the members of a baby-sitting club come to a store where I’m signing books, and I meet other real-life Dawns and Kristys and Jessis. Running a business can be difficult, though, and it takes a lot of hard work. For that reason, many kids have started other kinds of clubs. They meet regularly to have fun, and talk about books.
By the end of Dawn and the We ♥ Kids Club, Dawn and her friends realize that while baby-sitting is a business, the business runs better when it’s relaxed and fun. That’s how any club should be!
Happy reading,
* * *
The author gratefully acknowledges
Peter Lerangis
for his 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 © 1994 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, February 1994
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-76836-8
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