“Just a little rusty, that’s all,” I said. “And, you know, mad at myself for not being in shape.”
“Hey, don’t sweat it, Logan,” the coach said, patting me on the back. “Just let me see you at practice regularly, okay? And if you can make it Saturday morning I’m going to have some full-uniform wind sprints — strictly optional.”
“Right, Coach,” I replied. I didn’t say a thing about the health fair. Another practice down the drain.
After Coach Mills walked away, I could hear Steve crack, “What’s up, Lois, secret baby-sitting talk with the coach? You going to take care of his kids tonight?”
That did it. I whirled around. A few other guys were standing next to him, grinning at his joke. “Look, you idiots, mind your own business! Just cut it, okay? It’s not funny any more!”
“Who-o-o-oa, just kidding,” Steve said. “Where’s your sense of humor?”
“Yeah, Lo — Logan,” Harry said (I could tell he had almost said Lois).
I turned and walked away. My sense of humor was gone, thanks to their “jokes.” I played out the rest of the game, then stormed into the locker by myself and changed without taking a shower. I didn’t even want to talk to Austin.
Mary Anne was waiting by the locker room door when I came out. She had this kind, sympathetic look on her face, which should have made me feel better but somehow made things worse.
I tried to smile but probably didn’t even manage that. Mary Anne walked out of school with me. She put her arm around my shoulder when we got outside, but she didn’t say a word as we walked home, and neither did I.
On my front porch, I finally turned to her and said, “Sorry I’m so grumpy. Those guys really got on my nerves.”
Mary Anne nodded. “I know. Mine, too. Some friends.”
She stood there, smiling warmly. I could tell she wanted to be invited inside.
Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to invite her, but I couldn’t. The way I was feeling, I just needed to eat, plod through my homework, and fall asleep. I didn’t need sympathy or pity or cheering up. I didn’t need to think about anything serious at all.
I gave Mary Anne a quick kiss and said, “Thanks for coming to practice. I’ll call you tonight, okay?”
I could see disappointment flicker across her face, but only for a split second. She squeezed my hand and said, “Okay. And don’t worry about … you know.”
“Yeah,” I said. “ ’Bye.”
“ ‘Bye.”
I walked inside and heard my mom call from the kitchen, “Is that you, Logan?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“How was practice?”
“Fine.”
“Can you help me fix a salad?”
“As soon as I put my books in my room.”
There was a sudden burst of footsteps from the stairs. “Logan! Logan!” Kerry and Hunter screamed.
“Hey,” I greeted them.
“I’m having a birthday party for Tricera!” Hunter said, holding up a plastic dinosaur with a Dixie cup on its head. (His dinosaur’s last name is Tops, for obvious reasons.)
“Great,” I said.
“Do you have to baby-sit tonight?” Kerry asked.
I half expected her to call me Lois. “No,” I answered, not even looking at her.
“Goody!” she replied.
I walked into my room, plopped my books on the desk, and plopped myself in my chair. I was exhausted, plus I could feel a headache coming on, not to mention all the muscle aches in my arms and legs. I exhaled loudly, leaned forward, and covered my face with my hands. I was kind of hoping Kerry and Hunter would be gone by the time I looked up.
No such luck. They were both staring at me curiously. “Are you okay, Logan?” Kerry asked.
I just shrugged. A lot of help it would be to tell a nine-year-old and a five-year-old my problems. “I have to help Mom,” I said.
“I’ll help, too,” Kerry added.
“Me, too,” Hunter echoed.
They followed me downstairs. Mom and Dad managed to find jobs for them to do, and we sat down to a dinner of leftover meatloaf and gravy.
About halfway through, Dad said, “You’re awfully quiet tonight, Logan.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The guys at practice were giving me grief about baby-sitting.”
Dad chuckled. “Well, boys will be boys. Just wait till one of them has a girlfriend.”
That wasn’t exactly the point, but I didn’t have the energy to say anything about it. Instead I ate the rest of my dinner, nodding at whatever anyone else had to say.
My grouchiness stayed with me all night. I could tell Mom and Dad were concerned, but they left me alone. As for Kerry and Hunter … well, in the middle of math homework (bo-ring!), I heard a knock on my door and Kerry peeked in. “Hi!” she said. “I thought you might be hungry.”
She brought me a little bowl of yogurt with granola mixed in and put it on my desk.
“Thanks,” I said.
Then I heard a growly voice saying, “I’m going to get Logan!”
Hunter came into the room on his hands and knees, with a plastic tyrannosaurus and good old Tricera Tops. He thrust the tyrannosaurus forward and let out a roar.
“No! No!” he said in his Tricera voice. “I’ll protect him.” He made Tricera attack the tyrannosaurus with its horns.
“Ow! Ow!” he yelped, as the tyrannosaurus.
I had to laugh. I could tell Hunter and Kerry knew something was wrong, and they wanted to cheer me up. “Thanks, guys,” I said, “for the food and the protection.”
I felt a little better after that, but when I went to bed that night, I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. This split schedule wasn’t working out. Something had to give. I might have to make a choice between sitting and sports.
I had a feeling I knew what was going to win. And it wasn’t going to make Mary Anne very happy.
There was one major problem with the health fair idea, and no one in the BSC had thought of it.
To kids, it sounded boring.
Jessi and Mallory discovered that the hard way on the day of the fair. As I mentioned before, Mal has seven brothers and sisters. Three of them are triplets: Adam, Jordan, and Byron (they’re ten years old). Next are Vanessa (nine), Nicky (eight), Margo (seven), and Claire (five).
Getting seven kids to do anything is a major triumph. Getting them to do something they don’t want to do … Well, let’s just say I was glad I was sitting for the Hobarts that day.
Jessi arrived at the Pikes’ while the kids were eating breakfast. They were all huddled over their food, having a discussion.
“Is maple syrup a health food?” Margo asked.
“It’s natural, that much I know,” Mallory replied. “But I’m not sure you’d call it a health food.”
“Bacon is,” Nicky said.
“How do you know?” Adam asked.
“ ’Cause James Hobart says his mom says it makes him grow big and strong,” Nicky retorted.
“That doesn’t mean —” Mal began.
“How about ice cream?” Vanessa asked.
“Of course not!” Mal said.
“Well, it has milk in it,” Vanessa replied.
“Can I have some ice cream at the fair?” Claire asked.
“There’s no ice cream at a health fair, dum-dum,” Jordan said.
“I’m not a dum-dum!” Claire cried.
“I guess that means no cotton candy, either,” Adam said.
“No way,” Jordan said. “There’s probably just rice cakes and low-fat frozen yogurt. Alfalfa flavor.”
“Ew!” Margo said.
“Well, I’m going to go on the rides!” Claire asked. “You’ll take me, right, Jessi?”
Jessi shrugged helplessly. “No rides, Claire.”
“No rides, no good food, no nothing,” Adam said. “Why do we have to go to this dumb fair?”
“It’ll be a good experience for you,” Mal told him. “You’ll learn a lot.”
&n
bsp; “School is for learning,” Jordan said. “Fairs are supposed to be fun.”
“Maybe it will be fun,” Jessi suggested.
“Yeah, right,” Adam muttered. “It’s just going to be a bunch of nurses and doctors giving you checkups.”
“We’re going to the doctor?” Claire said, her voice filled with panic.
“No!” Mal exclaimed. “Now will you guys finish your breakfasts and get ready to leave?”
What a zoo. Reluctantly, the Pikes dug into their food again, but slooowly. Vanessa began cutting her waffle into smaller and smaller pieces, Claire mashed her scrambled eggs with her fork, Jordan peeled the crust off his toast, Adam slurped the milk from his cereal bowl and insisted on more.
Mal said getting them away from the table was like moving a mountain. Jessi thought it was more like moving seven mountains. Whatever, the kids finally began to get ready.
Sort of.
“Can’t we watch the Peter Pan video?” Nicky asked as he brought his bowl to the sink.
“Why can’t we go to the playground?” Margo asked.
“Or find a real fair,” Claire said.
“Bathroom time!” Mal announced, ignoring the requests.
“I get the downstairs bathroom first!” Nicky called.
“Share it,” Mal said.
“No!” Nicky insisted urgently. “I need … privacy.” He looked at Jessi and blushed.
“Okay, some of you can go upstairs,” Mal said.
“Not me!” chorused six voices.
“Let’s choose straws,” Adam suggested. He pulled some toothpicks out of a kitchen drawer and counted out six. Then he broke one, mixed them up, and held them out so they looked the same size.
Mal and Jessi just sighed with resignation. They watched as Vanessa “won” and trudged upstairs.
Margo ran to her room, yelling, “Want to hear me read Sneetches? I can read the whole thing!”
“Just for a minute —” Mal began to say.
She was cut off by a crash from the play room near the kitchen. Jessi ran there to see Claire in the middle of a pile of spilled Lego blocks. “I’m going to build a city!” she said gleefully.
Well, Claire never got to build that city, and Margo read only as far as Sylvester McMonkey McBean’s entrance. Jessi and Mal, champion baby-sitters, somehow lured them all out of the house.
But the torment wasn’t over yet.
As they walked across the Pikes’ front lawn, Vanessa knelt down and exclaimed, “Ooh, look, a firefly in the daytime!”
Claire and Byron began running toward her, but Mal pulled them back. “Come on, everybody, let’s sing a marching song.”
“Yuck, I hate that,” Nicky replied.
“How about the ‘Following the Leader’ song from Peter Pan?” Adam suggested.
“Great idea,” Jessi said. “I’ll lead.”
“No, me!” Adam insisted.
Adam and Margo started singing, “ ‘We’re following the leader, the leader, the leader …’ ”
Behind them, Nicky crouched like some kind of monster and sang, “We’re swallowing the leader, the leader, the leader; we’re swallowing the leader and throwing him up!”
“Ew, that’s disgusting!” Byron said.
“You’re doing that because you don’t know the real words,” Adam said.
“Do too!” Nicky snapped.
“Sing it the right way, guys,” Mal said.
The triplets, Nicky, and Margo half-heartedly sang with Jessi and Mal. Vanessa lagged behind them, looking up into the trees and talking to herself.
Actually, she was composing nature poems. Jessi heard her reciting: “Firefly, firefly in the day. Will you stay or go away?” Stuff like that.
An older man passed them on the sidewalk and smiled. “Fine singing group you got there,” he said.
“You’re a silly-billy-goo-goo,” Claire told him. (That’s one of her favorite expressions.)
Mal was at the end of her rope. “Claire, that’s not nice!” she said. She would have said something much stronger if they hadn’t turned onto Atlantic Avenue just then and seen the shopping center. Over the main entrance was a sign that said WELCOME TO THE FIFTH ANNUAL STONEYBROOK HEALTH FAIR.
As soon as they walked through, Margo shouted, “Look! There’s Mary Anne and Kristy!”
For the first time all morning, the kids actually began running.
As Jessi and Mal watched the Pike kids near the BSC booth, they looked at each other and laughed. “If they do end up having a good time here,” Jessi said, “I’ll eat alfalfa ice cream.”
I’ll explain that last remark later. In the meantime, I’ll just say that Saturday was not my favorite day of all time — although it was a great day for the BSC.
By the time the Pikes arrived, the fair had been going for a half hour. Kristy and Mary Anne had already given out a dozen or so pamphlets, and they were deep in conversation with a couple who’d just moved into town.
“This is a great idea, honey,” the man was saying to his wife as he looked through a pamphlet. “We can keep this out for sitters when they come.”
“As a matter of fact,” Kristy said, “we’re sitters. Here’s our number.”
She handed them a flier just as the Pike kids ran to the booth, screaming hellos. “Hi, you guys!” Mary Anne said.
“We sit for a lot of kids in the neighborhood,” Kristy explained to the couple. “As you can see.”
“And you do it very well, it seems,” the woman said with a smile. “We’ll be in touch.”
As they walked away, Kristy said, “Perfect timing! You guys are the greatest advertising!”
“Maybe we should go back and do it again when the next family comes,” Jessi said, as she and Mal approached the booth.
“You can direct them, Jessi,” Mal said. “I’ll watch.”
“Guess what, Mal?” Kristy said. “Everyone loves the way the pamphlets look.” (Mal’s dad had been able to get someone at his office to type them up on the laser printer and staple them together.)
“Great!” Mal replied.
“What do you think of our booth?” Mary Anne asked.
The booth, by the way, was basically a card table and two chairs. The BSC fliers were stacked on the left side of the table, the pamphlets on the right, and a big sign was draped over the front.
The sign was Claudia’s work, and it looked like this:
“It’s fantastic,” Jessi said. “We noticed it the minute we came in.”
Margo’s voice interrupted the conversation: “Mallory, can I have my blood pressure taken at the bloodmobile?”
“Me too!” most of the other Pike kids piped up.
“If you want,” Mal said. “Just line up together and don’t fight.”
The bloodmobile was next to the BSC booth, and a woman and man in hospital whites began taking the Pike kids’ blood pressure and pulse. Next to them was a team of people demonstrating CPR with different-sized plastic dummies. Then there was a nutrition booth with information about the real four food groups; a group of cooks preparing food in a wok under a sign that said MACROBIOTIC CUISINE; a wilderness-survival group signing up high-school-age kids for hikes; and booths set up by the local YMCA, a running-gear company from Stamford, a chiropractor, and a pediatrician, among others.
In a nearby corner of the shopping center, the “Tommy Anatomy” show was about to begin. “Tommy Anatomy” is a local actor who puts on a musical about the human body, mostly at elementary schools and playgrounds. He wears a costume with the human body painted on it —bones, organs, tissues, blood vessels, the works — and uses it to point out things as he sings to a tape recording.
“Ladies and gentlemen and bodies of all ages!” he announced. “I’m Tommy Anatomy, but my friends call me Gross! Let me sing you a song that’ll touch your hearts, stimulate your minds, warm your bones, and get your blood flowing!”
Corny, I know, but immediately kids gathered around. He was a popular event, but even during
his show, a bunch of people visited the BSC booth. Among them were Claudia (with Jamie Newton), the Ohdners, the Papadakises, and the Braddocks. A lot of people Kristy didn’t even know came, too. (“New business, a good sign,” she insisted). At one point, a young couple wandered over and began looking at the pamphlet. Kristy figured they were college-age.
“Are you guys baby-sitters?” she asked.
“Uh, no.” The woman smiled. “I’m two months pregnant.”
“Sorry!” Kristy said, laughing. “In that case, take one of these, too.” She handed the woman a flier.
After they left, Mary Anne said, “I don’t know how you do that, Kristy. Just blurt things out like that. And people don’t even get mad at you.”
Kristy shrugged. “What’s to get mad at? I’m lovable, funny, smart —”
“And conceited,” came Stacey’s voice.
Kristy turned to see Stacey and Charlotte Johanssen standing behind her. “Hi, Stace!” Kristy said. Then she looked at Charlotte and said, “You think I’m lovable, right, Chart?”
“Oh, brother,” Charlotte murmured.
Everyone laughed, especially Kristy. (It’s true that she has a big ego, but she does have a sense of humor about it.)
That was about when Kristy saw me. Johnny Hobart was riding on my back, pretending to be a cowboy, while Mathew galloped along next to us. “Thataway, Logan-horse!” Johnny called out, pointing to the booth.
“Giddyup, Logan!” Kristy shouted.
“Me too!” Mathew shouted back. “I’m a horse, too!”
“Careful, Math —!” Kristy saw that Mathew was about to gallop into someone, but by the time she warned him, it was too late.
“Oops!” Mathew said, bouncing off a person about a foot taller than him. “Sorry.”
Clarence King turned around. He didn’t look at Mathew. I don’t know if he even felt the collision.
Instead, he grinned at me and said, “Hey-y-y-y, how’s the little mommy today? Guess you don’t need wind sprints, playing horsie like that.”
Pete Black, Harry Nolan, and Irv Hirsch were with him, snickering at King’s incomparable wit. They were still in football gear, even though sprints had ended. I guess they figured they looked cool.
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