Aloha, Baby-Sitters!
Page 11
As a wave came in, I held up my cassette recorder and said into the mike, “Mallory, this is the sound of a small wave on the North Shore of Oahu.”
BOOOOOOM!
Very dramatic.
Stacey was sitting on a lounge chair we’d brought from our cottage. Surrounded by SMS kids, she was telling the story of her crash and rescue for about the twentieth time. By now the story was, well, growing.
“… The other helicopter passed so close we could smell the exhaust,” she was saying. “We looked around for dry kindling for smoke signals. All we saw were strange footprints leading into a cave …”
I tried to tape-record her, but Stacey wouldn’t let me. She said she’d write about it in the journal.
I, of course, wrote a lot, especially during our evening trip:
Just past the Fiji display, a woman sidled up to Stacey’s wheelchair. “You’re the girl on the news, aren’t you?” she asked. “The helicopter crash?”
“Uh … yeah.” Stacey looked around nervously, as if she were expecting a practical joke.
Well, you would not believe the crowd that gathered. About twenty people wanted to shake Stacey’s hand. They’d all seen her story on the TV news. Some of them followed us all the way to the luau at the center’s restaurant.
Do you know the main feature of a luau? A roasted pig. (Dawn threatened to boycott it, but instead she stuck to the vegetarian buffet.) After that we saw a huge, splashy revue called “Mana!” complete with an exploding volcano. That was cool.
I took notes for Mallory during the activities. I took notes during the show. I took so many notes I had to start a new spiral notebook. I also took a whole roll of photos, my thirteenth.
That night, Abby, Claudia, Dawn, Mary Anne, Logan, Stacey, Robert, and I all stayed up late gabbing. After we reminisced about Honolulu and Windward Oahu, Logan turned to Stacey and asked what she’d been afraid of most in her jungle adventure.
“Well,” Stacey replied as we all leaned in, “the one-eyed hermit was definitely pretty horrible, but the Great Haleakalā Lava Beast was the worst.”
We were howling until midnight.
* * *
By the next morning, Stacey was walking again. To celebrate, Mr. De Young took a group of us to Haleiwa, where Stacey bought new sneakers.
They came in handy on our hike in Waimea Falls Park. A new set of fingers would have helped me a lot. Mine were aching from so much journal writing. I abbreviated that day:
Don’t worry, the guy in that last part was a professional diver, who plunged into the water at the base of the falls. (My heart nearly leaped into the water with him.)
Around noon it was beach time again. A lot of kids swam, but not me. I went off with Mary Anne to explore tidal pools.
When we came back, Dawn was giving Logan a surfing lesson.
Sort of. Actually, it was more like a standing lesson. Poor Logan. He’s great on the football field, but on the board? Forget it. He spent most of his time underwater.
“Lo-GAN! Lo-GAN! Lo-GAN!” people were cheering.
Alan and Pete were strumming air guitars and wailing out their own version of a Beach Boys song: “Everybody’s gone suuuuurfin’, over Logan’s head …”
Well, Logan survived (and Alan’s lesson was even worse). Our post-surf lunch was at Matsumoto, where we all had “shave ice,” a fancy kind of snow cone. Mine was covered with pineapple, banana, and mango syrups. Dawn’s was filled with … azuki beans. (Yes, I’m serious. Dawn would have put brussels sprouts in her cone if they had been offered.)
Then off to a banana plantation. An airplane stunt show. A climb to a temple where the ancient Hawaiians made ritual human sacrifices to the gods (for some reason, we all looked at Alan Gray).
What a day. At the end of it I wrote this:
That was an expression I learned. It means “a great surfer.”
Mary Anne thought it meant someone who took a real pounding. She says that definition fits better.
No one wants to admit the truth. I, Logan Bruno, caught a wave. Okay, not a big one. But I traveled forward, and that counts.
If I’d had a second chance, I’d be ready for the Banzai Pipeline.
Unfortunately, on Wednesday we had to fly home.
We packed, scarfed down breakfast, and piled into the minivans we’d been using all week. Of course, Mary Anne and I were in different ones.
Which I thought was pretty dumb.
See, we’d had this experiment, TBI. Together But Independent. Mainly it was to make our friends happy. They had been saying Mary Anne and I were like Siamese twins.
It was cool. It had worked okay. But enough was enough.
Not that I was pining away for Mary Anne or anything. I just felt funny. If I wanted to talk to her, joke around or something, even comfort her about Stacey, I thought I couldn’t. Like I was breaking the rules.
Okay, I kind of missed her. I admit it.
So I sat with her in the terminal as we waited for the flight. “What seat do you have?” I asked.
Mary Anne checked her ticket. “Twenty-two L.”
“I have fifteen A,” I said with a sigh. “Oh, well, at least I get a window.”
“Twenty-three L!” Claudia called out.
“Ten C!” Mari Drabek piped up.
“Twenty-two K!” said Alan Gray.
“Bingo!” shouted Pete Black.
Everyone started laughing. Except Mary Anne. Her face was ghostly white.
Mine would be, too, if I had to sit next to Alan Gray.
I had an idea. “Hey, Alan,” I called out, “want a window seat?”
“You bet I do, surfer dude. What’s up, afraid of heights?”
What a dork. I wanted to slam him.
Oh, well, sometimes you just have to put up and shut up. At least I had my seat next to Mary Anne.
“Thanks, Logan,” Mary Anne said.
The boarding announcement blared over the speakers. Everybody stood up and scrambled for the door.
Ms. Bernhardt and Mr. Wong were already there, and guess what they were holding?
Two boxes of real Hawaiian leis!
“We didn’t get ’em when we came in,” Ms. Bernhardt said. “So we’ll get ’em going out!”
Yyyyyes! That’s what I call a teacher.
The plane smelled like a flower shop when we walked in. Mary Anne and I settled into our seats for the long ride.
How long? Take-off was 7:05, then five hours to L.A., an hour layover, five hours to N.Y.C., and a two-hour bus ride to Stoneybrook.
No one seemed to mind too much. As the plane took off, Claudia and Abby began reviewing the whole ten days, minute by minute, in the seats behind us. Dawn and Jessi were already writing postcards to some kids they’d met at a beach. Robert and Stacey were whispering to each other.
“I’m glad we’re sitting together, Logan,” Mary Anne said.
“Me, too.” I smiled.
Together we watched the Hawaiian Islands shrink away to the size of little pebbles.
“You know, I have a secret,” Mary Anne said softly.
“What?” I asked.
“I hated TBI.”
“So did I.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“Why didn’t you?”
We looked at each other. Then we both cracked up.
“Well, at least our friends aren’t complaining anymore,” Mary Anne pointed out. “We spent lots of time with them.”
“Too much time,” I said. “If I have to look in Trevor’s and Austin’s ugly faces one more time, I think I’ll die.”
Spitballs came flying at me from both sides. Mary Anne and I ducked.
It was true, though. Never again would I let my friends tell me how much time to spend with my girlfriend. I mean, what was the point? I’d just spent ten days in Hawaii avoiding the person I wanted to be with most.
“Next trip,” Mary Anne whispered, “no TBI.”
I nodded. “I hear the social studies classes are visiting the Stoneybrook Dump in September.”
“Save me a seat,” Mary Anne said with a big grin.
* * *
By the time we arrived in hot, muggy New York City, I felt as if I’d been run over by a truck. I was sweaty and tired, and my lei was starting to smell like seaweed. It was eleven at night, and we still had a two-hour bus ride to Stoneybrook ahead of us.
Shuffling through Kennedy Airport with our wilted leis, we looked like the Death Marchers of ancient Oahu.
Tempers were short at the luggage pick-up area. Mr. De Young yelled at Austin. Mari yelled at Pete. Abby yelled at whoever happened to be near. Everyone yelled at Alan.
Me? I wasn’t angry at anybody.
Neither was Mary Anne.
We quietly retrieved our luggage and found seats together on the bus. As we drove away, watching the lights of the New York City skyline, we slowly drifted off to sleep.
I know it sounds weird, but that was one of my favorite parts of the trip.
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 © 1996 by Ann M. Martin.
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, July 1996
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e-ISBN 978-0-545-69055-3