"Lamont," the teacher said.
From her seat on the couch, Becca let out a long, low wail. "Oh, no!" she cried. You would've thought Becca was the one caught without her homework.
Daddy started to laugh.
"I take it Lamont is the boy Becca's got a crush on," he teased.
"Shhh!" Becca said.
Just then in the show Waldo raised his hand.
"Miss Pedagogue," he said, very seriously. "I've got the correct answer. Allow me." He strode up to the board and wrote the word "fission" in big block letters. The teacher groaned and buried her head in her hands.
"Waldo," she said, "1 hate to break it to you, but this is history class. After history comes English. And then, after English, comes science. How about if you just hang onto your answer for a couple more periods? Believe me, when it's science, I'll let you know." Waldo got flustered and dropped the magnifying glass that he keeps in his pocket onto the floor. All the other kids in the class laughed. So did the voices on the laugh track.
When that scene was over, P.S. 162 faded off for a commercial break and an ad for some gasoline company came on.
Becca stared dreamily at the screen.
"Isn't Lamont the cutest guy in the world?" she said with a sigh.
"He's pretty nice, all right," Mama agreed.
"I think Waldo's funnier," I said.
"You like Waldo?" Becca said. "So does everyone in my class. Charlotte Johanssen said that the kid who plays him used to go to Stoneybrook Elementary School." (Charlotte Johanssen is Becca's best friend. She's lived in Stoneybrook a lot longer than we have.) "Is that true?" asked Mama.
"Cross my heart," said Becca. She traced an X on her chest over her heart. Then she spit on her finger and raised her hand in a sort of oath. I still didn't know whether to believe her. "Charlotte said he always used to get his picture in the paper here. But now he lives in L.P." "L.A." I corrected her. "Los Angeles - in California." Hmm. Well, maybe Becca was telling the truth. She certainly seemed to have enough details.
"The kids in my class only like the show because of Waldo," Becca went on. "But not me," she said, pouting. "I wish Lamont was the one who'd gone to Stoneybrook Elementary." I was curious to find out more about this Waldo business, but it was too late to ask Becca any more questions. The commercials had finished up and the show had come back on. Lament was back on screen, cornering the kid who had swiped his homework.
"Quiet!" Becca said.
Squirt toddled over and crawled onto my stomach. I picked him up, sat up, and plunked my little brother onto my lap. I stared at the screen and waited for Waldo to come back on. This new information made the show a lot more interesting. I tried to picture Waldo playing baseball with the kids in the schoolyard here. Or shopping for school clothes at Washington Mall. Maybe he got those weird glasses of his at the same place Mallory got her glasses.
When the show was over I ran to the telephone to call Mallory. I figured if there was any family that would know about this Waldo business, it would have to be the Pikes. I mean, out of eight kids, somebody's got to know something. That's one advantage to having a best friend from such a large family. It's like calling Information Central.
When Mallory came to the phone, she confirmed everything Becca had said.
Yes, it was true. Waldo and his family did live in Stoneybrook, only not full-time anymore. She said that Waldo's real name is Derek Masters, and she told me that now that he had to be out in California for a chunk of the year, his family had moved with him to L.A. They would be back when he had finished taping P.S. 162.
"How do you know all this?" I asked.
"A star from Stoneybrook! Are you kidding? It's big news. Everybody knows it," said Mallory. "Anyway, Derek used to be in Nicky's class." Nicky is one of Mallory's younger brothers. He's eight years old and in the third grade.
"In Nicky's class!?" I practically shrieked. Uh-oh. I was getting star struck, and by the time this whole mess was over, I was not going to be the only one. "Put Nicky on the phone, will you?" I asked.
When Nicky got on, he told me all about Derek. He told me that Derek had been a local child model, that he'd been in a lot of magazine ads and even on one TV commercial here. Somehow, that had all led to the job on P.S. 162.
"Wow!" I said. I couldn't believe that no one had told me any of this before. This was hot news, and I wanted a chance to talk about it with my friends. I couldn't wait for the next meeting of the Baby-sitters Club.
Chapter 2.
By the time I skidded into the meeting on Monday, everybody else was already there. Kristy Thomas (remember, I told you she's the one who started the club) was sitting in her director's chair, wearing her visor, as usual. As I walked in that day, she was chewing on the tip of a pencil, waiting for Claudia's digital clock to turn to 5:30 so she could start the meeting. When I caught sight of her, I almost giggled. To me, it kind of looked like she was gnawing on a cigar. The way Kristy sits in that room and takes over, you'd think it was her house, her bedroom and her director's chair. That's because she's the club president, but actually we hold the meetings in Claudia Kishi's house. Claudia is our vice-president. She has her own bedroom with her own phone and private phone number, and she's nice enough to let us use them for the club. I should probably tell you a little bit about the club members so you know who we are. There're six of us all together. I'll start right at the top.
Kristy? Well, she's . . . Kristy. Sometimes people think she's a little bossy, but she certainly does know how to take charge of the club, and I really admire her for that. Kristy's a tomboy type. She's short for her age and she's got brown hair and brown eyes. She always wears jeans, a turtleneck, a sweater, and sneakers. I think I'd faint if I ever saw her in a dress.
Kristy lives with her mom and Nannie (her grandmother), her three brothers, her stepfather (Watson) and her newly adopted little sister, Emily Michelle. Watson has two other kids from when he was married before, and sometimes they come to stay at the house, too. I call it a house, but I'll tell you what it really is - a mansion. No kidding. See, Watson is a millionaire. And when Kristy's mom married him last year, Kristy and her brothers moved over to the ritzy side of town. Kristy still goes to our school, but she does live a little far away from the rest of us. So we pay her brother Charlie to give her a ride to Claudia's house every time we have a meeting.
Claudia is about as different from Kristy as you can get. I'm talking sun and moon. Claudia is Japanese-American and she's got long, sleek, black hair that she has fixed a different way every time I see her. You wouldn't think there could be so many ways to fix hair. That Monday, for instance, she had two French braids pulled back and wound into one. She's also a wild dresser. At that meeting she was wearing a bright pink T-shirt, a short red flouncy skirt, and underneath the skirt she had on black footless tights that she had rolled up to mid-calf.
Claudia has a little bit of trouble in school, but what she's really good at is art. That's probably why she gets such interesting ideas for putting wild and colorful clothes together. She loves to paint and sculpt and make collages, and her room is cluttered with the boxes she keeps all her materials in. She's got boxes of paints, boxes of brushes, and boxes of fabric scraps, interesting bits of paper, ribbon, wood pieces, everything. You name it, Claudia can turn it into art.
The only boxes in her room that aren't filled with art supplies are the ones stuffed with junk food. You might not think someone so into art would be into Cheez Doodles and Tastee Cakes, but Claudia is. She keeps a stash in her room and passes it around at all our meetings.
The secretary of our club is Mary Anne Spier. Mary Anne is short, like Kristy, and also has brown hair and brown eyes. Sometimes Mary Anne can be on the quiet side, and she's very sensitive (also romantic), but she's extremely organized, and that's exactly what makes her perfect to be club secretary. Mary Anne's job is to schedule all the baby-sitting appointments as they come in. She has to keep track of everyone's schedule, so she always knows who's
free when, and believe me, that's a lot to juggle. Take me, for instance. I probably have the busiest schedule of anyone in the club, what with my ballet classes and a semiregular sitting job. Keeping track of me alone is practically a full-time job.
Mary Anne's mother died when she was a baby, so she lives alone with her father. Mr. Spier can be kind of strict, but in the past year he's loosened up a lot. Now Mary Anne even has a boyfriend! His name is Logan Bruno and he's very nice. Can you believe it? The shyest girl is the one who gets the steady boyfriend? And to top it off, she's the only club member who has one! The last important officer is our treasurer, and that's Dawn Schafer. Dawn has long, white-blonde hair and she's a real California girl. Her whole family used to live in southern California, but then her parents got divorced. Now her father lives there with her brother, and Dawn lives here with her mother in an old, restored farmhouse.
Dawn's an independent type. She has her own opinions and she does what she likes. For instance, she won't have anything to do with Claudia's junk food. Dawn's strictly a natural-foods girl. Her idea of a good sandwich is tofu, sprouts, and tahini on whole wheat pita bread. Try offering that to Claudia.
Those four are the eighth-grade members of the club. Then there's Mallory and me, the lowly sixth-graders. We are the junior officers. We came into the club when one of the other girls, Stacey McGill, moved back to New York City. (My family moved right into her old house!) Since we're younger, we mostly take jobs in the afternoons or weekends. The only night jobs we're allowed to take are with our own families.
You know pretty much about me already, and you know that Mallory is one of eight Pike kids, so I'll just add that Mallory loves to read and that sometimes she even writes and illustrates her own stories. She has glasses and braces (which she hates), and pierced ears (which she loves), and she's just about the best friend I could have hoped for when I moved to Stoneybrook.
I think that's all you need to know about the dub members. Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. We also have two associate members, Shannon Kilbourne and Logan Bruno. (Logan's not just Mary Anne's boyfriend. He's also a great baby-sitter.) We call our associates to help us out if we get too many jobs to handle ourselves. Logan and Shannon don't come to the meetings or anything. They're kind of like our standby crew.
Anyway, I was telling you about that Monday's meeting, wasn't I? When I slipped into Claudia's room that afternoon, I found a place on the floor next to Mallory. Kristy waved that pencil of hers through the air like a baton.
"This meeting will now come to order," she said.
I always sit up straighter when Kristy starts a meeting.
"Any business?" she asked.
"Dues are due." Dawn smiled.
We all groaned. Really, none of us minds paying dues. The money goes for things we need, like Kid-Kits, which are these neat boxes of toys and games we sometimes bring on jobs with us. I think we just like to groan every week because it's fun.
"All right, all right," Kristy cut us off. "Any other club business?" she asked, after Dawn had collected our money.
"Anyone want M & M's?" Claudia asked. She fished a bag of candy out from under her bed and passed it around.
Kristy heaved a loud sigh. She doesn't consider Claudia's snacks to be "club business." (But I notice that she always takes something when the bag comes around.) Of course, I was dying to bring up the matter of Waldo, but I knew that if Kristy didn't consider snacks to be official enough business, she'd hardly approve of my bringing up Waldo. I knew that I'd have to wait until the end of the meeting for that.
Kristy flipped through the club notebook. We use the notebook to write down all the important things that happen on our jobs - things about the kids, the families, anything the other sitters should know. Then, once a week, we're supposed to read what everyone else wrote. That's Kristy's way of keeping us all informed.
I was still thinking about Waldo when the first couple of calls came in. Mary Anne scheduled some sitters. The phone rang a third time. Kristy took the call.
"Oh, hello, Mrs. Masters," she said. "Yes, I've heard of your family. . . . You're back in town? . . . Sure. . . . Sure. . . . We'd be delighted to sit for your boys." Mallory nudged me and grinned. I shot her a questioning look. I hadn't recognized the name.
Kristy hung up and gave us the news. Someone named Mrs. Masters was looking for an afternoon sitter for her two boys, Derek and Todd.
"Derek!" Now I got it. "Derek! You mean Waldo? Are you saying that that was Waldo's mother calling us for a baby-sitter?" Kristy shot me a look that said, Calm down, Jessi, this is a baby-sitting job, not a meeting of the Derek Masters Fan Club.
Mary Anne checked the appointment book.
"Someone for Wednesday?" she asked. "Well, it looks like the only one who's free is Jessi." Often on Wednesdays I sit for a family called the Braddocks, but the other club members had started to take over some of those jobs. That had left me with a little more free time.
"Me?" I squeaked. "You want to send me to baby-sit for Waldo?" "Derek," Kristy corrected me. "Derek and his four-year-old brother, Todd. Anyway, that would work out well, Jessi. The Masterses live only two blocks away from you." "They do?" I cried. How come I didn't know anything about that? I guess 1 thought the house should have a big neon star on top of it. Or Waldo's handprints pressed into the sidewalk outside, like at that famous Hollywood theater.
Well, this was more than I had bargained for. When I came to the meeting, I had only wanted to talk about Waldo. Now it turned out I was going to be baby-sitting for him.
Kristy called back Mrs. Masters and told her to expect me on Wednesday afternoon.
As you can see, things were already going awfully fast. That's what happens when you get involved with show biz.
Chapter 3.
The thing about my life is that my schedule is so crazy, I don't have time to dwell on any one thing for very long. After the meeting that day I rushed back to my house to dinner and homework. Then, the next day, right after school, I had dance class. . . . Or, as Mme Noelle would say, "donce closs." Mme Noelle is my ballet teacher and she's perfect for the role. I can't imagine her doing anything else. She's an older woman, and she teaches class in a leotard and a long rehearsal skirt. Instead of wearing ballet slippers she wears dance shoes with heels on them. Apparently, she was quite a beautiful ballerina in her time. You can still see it in the graceful way she moves her arms, and in her carriage in general. (I love that word "carriage." And I don't mean the horse-drawn kind. I mean the way she walks and moves and carries herself.) "Modemoiselle Romsey, point thot toe." That was Mme Noelle. Did I forget to tell you that she's a stern taskmaster? Well, she is. When you're there in class doing the exercises, she watches your every move.
"Modemoiselle Romsey, turn out the stonding thigh, if you please. Lead with your heel, and drop thot hip." There's no escaping the watchful eye of Mme Noelle. Now, the crazy thing about dance class is that part of you doesn't want a teacher to be scrutinizing you and giving you a zillion corrections, but then again, part of you does. When a teacher pays attention to you, it means she thinks your work in class is worth paying attention to. And, of course, the only way you get better is to find out what you're doing wrong.
"Modemoiselle Romsey, drop that hip!" (I know what I just said, but when I'm in class, sometimes it's hard to remember why it is I like corrections.) That day in class it seemed to take forever for my body to warm up and start to move the way it should. We started class with exercises at the barre and I just felt a little off. Then we moved into the room for what we call center work. We always start off slowly and work up to big leaps and things like that, Usually I like to stand in the front of class so I can correct myself from what I see in the mirror. But that day, Mme Noelle had already bombarded me with so many corrections that I decided to stay toward the back. It didn't matter, though. Mme Noelle saw me anyway.
"Modemoiselle Romsey! How many times do I have to say? Straighten thot back leg!" Oh, my head was swimming. In b
allet, sometimes there're just too many things to remember at once.
I was starting to feel a little discouraged toward the end of class, but then, when we lined up in the corner to do the final leaps across the floor, the man who accompanies us on the piano struck up a really different and wonderful piece of music. Usually he plays a lot of classical themes, which I do enjoy, but all of a sudden he switched to a lively waltz from an old Broadway show. I looked at Katie Beth, one of my friends in the class, and we both grinned.
Mme Noelle .walked us through a series of steps and then we did them to the music. Something about that music gave me energy. The footwork Madame had given us was fast, and when it was my turn my feet practically flew and I felt myself soar into the air. I caught a quick glimpse of my reflection in the mirror while I was at the height of my leap. Good grief! I looked like . . . like a ballerina! I mean, I know that's what I'm supposed to be, but it really feels super when all the hard work comes together.
This may sound corny, but every once in awhile in class my overwhelming love for ballet just comes flooding into me. Nothing else gives me so much pleasure. And no other art form seems as beautiful or as moving.
When the class ended we all applauded Mme Noelle. She bowed her head graciously as she always does and then held up one hand to get our attention. She had an announcement to make.
"Mes petites," she said. (That's what she calls us. It's French for "my little girls.") "I want to advise you thot the Stoneybrook Civic Center will be holding aw-di-see-ons for Swan Lake." (Did you get that? She meant auditions.) "The aw-di-see-ons, as I understond it, are Soturday next. Those girls who feel ready might be brave to try out." Auditions for Swan Lake! At the Stoneybrook Civic Center! That was really something. Swan Lake is a ballet about an enchanted swan, and it's one of the most beautiful ballets ever choreographed. And now it was going to be performed at the Stoneybrook Civic Center, which is a wonderful theater. The theater's not in New York City, but it's so good that it might as well be. A lot of famous stars you would have heard of are always performing there.
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