Claudia and the Bad Joke

by Ann M. Martin

  Logan and Shannon, as I said earlier, are associate members of the club, meaning that they don’t attend meetings. Mal and Jessi are junior members. The rest of us hold offices. You know about Kristy’s. Her office is president. As president, she gets great ideas, conducts the meetings, and generally keeps things running.

  I’m the vice president. That’s because we hold the club meetings in my room, and that’s because I’m lucky enough to have my own phone and personal, private phone number. When job calls come in, which is often, we don’t tie up anyone else’s line.

  Mary Anne is the club secretary. She probably does more actual work for the club than the rest of us put together. You see, it’s the job of the secretary to keep the club record book in order and up-to-date. The record book is one of the two most important features of the club. (I’ll tell you about the other one in a minute.) It’s where Mary Anne writes down the names and addresses of our clients, it’s where Dawn (our treasurer) keeps track of the money we earn, and it’s where Mary Anne schedules our baby-sitting jobs. That is not easy to do. Mary Anne has to remember all sorts of things, like when Jessi goes to her ballet lessons or when I go to my art classes, in order to know when we’re free to sit. Somehow, she keeps everything straight, though. The appointment calendar in the book is always accurate and contains the latest information. Thank goodness for Mary Anne.

  I might as well tell you about the other important feature of the club now, while I’m on the subject. It’s the notebook we keep. This, of course, was Kristy’s idea. None of the rest of us would have thought of it, and none of the rest of us like writing in it very much — but we all admit that it’s helpful. In the notebook, each of us is supposed to describe every job we go on, even if the job is, say, Mallory taking care of some of her own brothers and sisters. It’s surprising what we can learn by reading about our friends’ sitting experiences. Plus, it’s just good to know what’s going on with the kids we sit for. Anyway, we write up our jobs, and then we’re responsible for reading the notebook once a week. We keep the record book and notebook in my room, the club headquarters.

  The fourth office in our club is treasurer, and that belongs to Dawn. Dawn took over the job from Stacey when Stacey moved. Stacey had been a great treasurer. She loves numbers and is a real math brain. Dawn is just average at math, but she’s doing a fine job. She keeps careful records of who earns how much money, and she watches over the treasury, always remembering to collect dues, to give Kristy money to pay Charlie, and to let us know when club funds are getting low. And that’s about it. I can’t think of much else to tell you, so I’ll just let you see how a typical meeting is run.

  Kristy began it at five-thirty on the nose.

  “Any urgent club business?” she asked.

  We shook our heads. We’d been busy, but things had been running smoothly.

  “The treasury is fine,” Dawn spoke up. “We’ve got plenty of money to pay Charlie, and more left over in case anyone needs anything for her Kid-Kit.”

  Oops. I forgot to tell you about Kid-Kits. Kristy thought those up too. Naturally. They’re boxes that we decorated and keep filled with our old toys, books, and games, plus a few new items such as coloring books or activity books. We each have one, and sometimes we bring them with us when we baby-sit. The Kid-Kits are always a surprise and always a treat. Children love them!

  We were discussing what we needed for our Kid-Kits when the phone rang. Jessi answered it, and Mary Anne, record book open, set up a job for Dawn. As soon as she hung up, it rang again. Mrs. Perkins, whose family moved into Kristy’s old house, was calling to say she needed a sitter for Myriah and Gabbie. Then two more of our regular customers called.

  We had just arranged sitters for those jobs, when the phone rang a fifth time. Kristy’ answered it. After saying yes a lot, asking a bunch of questions, and nodding her head, she told the caller, “I’ll get right back to you.” Kristy hung up. “Okay,” she said to us club members, “a new client. Mrs. Sobak. She lives on Cherry Valley Road. She needs a sitter for her eight-year-old daughter, Betsy, this Thursday afternoon.”

  Mary Anne was looking at our calendar. “Claudia, you’re free,” she said.

  “Great,” I replied. “But I’m confused. I know other kids in that neighborhood who sit for Betsy Sobak. How come her mother is calling us?”

  Kristy shrugged. “Don’t knock it,” she said. “A job is a job. Mrs. Sobak’s regular sitters are probably all busy. Maybe the Sobaks will become regular clients.”

  “Right,” I agreed.

  Kristy called Mrs. Sobak and told her that I would be Betsy’s sitter. When she hung up, she looked at her watch. “Almost six,” she announced. “Oh, hey, Mary Anne, can I have the record book for a sec?”

  “Sure,” replied Mary Anne. She leaned over, holding the book out.

  Kristy reached for it, pen in hand, and SPLOOTCH. She squirted blue ink all over Mary Anne’s white sweatshirt. Mary Anne gasped, but Kristy dissolved in laughter. “It’s disappearing ink!” she cried. “Sam lent it to me!”

  We all watched the ink disappear, but Kristy was the only one laughing. Somehow, a practical joke seemed funnier in the movies than in real life.

  The meeting ended at six o’clock, but it was six-fifteen before all of my friends had drifted away. Dawn was the last to leave. With her brother, Jeff, back in California, Dawn’s never in a rush to get home. She might be if she thought her mother would be there, but Mrs. Schafer works very hard at her job and recently hasn’t been getting home until seven on weeknights. And sometimes she goes out with this guy, Trip, whom Dawn calls the Trip-Man and can’t stand. Dawn has stayed over at our house for supper a few times, but that night, she headed home to start fixing dinner.

  I went downstairs to give Mimi a hand with our own dinner. I found her in the kitchen making a salad. I could smell chicken cooking.

  “Hello, my Claudia,” she greeted me. “How was meeting?”

  Mimi is native Japanese (English is her second language), but the reason she talks funny doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s because she had a stroke last summer. The stroke left her with a limp, and she can’t use her right hand. Also, she has trouble with her speech. Even so, my family is amazed at how much she’s relearned in the past few months.

  I kissed Mimi on the cheek. “The meeting was fine,” I told her. “Oh, I think we have a new client. Mrs. Sobak. She needed a sitter for her daughter, and I got the job. I go on Thursday.”

  “Wonderful!” said Mimi.

  “What can I do to help?” I asked.

  Words must have escaped Mimi just then, because all she did was point into the dining room. I knew she wanted me to set the table.

  I had just finished, when the genius came home.

  “Hello,” she said somberly.

  I guess life is a trial when you’re as smart as my sister, Janine. All I worry about is baby-sitting and art projects. And maybe school. Janine has to worry about molecular theories and foreign politics and things like, Will the Earth ever revolve so near the sun that it burns up?

  My parents came home not long after Janine, and since Mimi’s dinner was ready, we sat down to eat.

  “How was school?” Dad asked when we’d all been served.

  I was hoping he was asking Janine, but no, he was looking at me.

  Darn. That simple question can be very touchy.

  “Fine,” I replied.

  “Did you get your math quiz back?” Janine wanted to know.

  I shot her a killer look, but everyone was waiting for my answer. They had all helped me study for that quiz.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  Silence.

  “And how did you do?” Mom finally asked.

  “I got, um, an eighty-one.” I put a huge bite of chicken in my mouth, hoping no one would ask me questions when they could see that I was trying to chew.

  No one did. More silence.

  I swallowed my chicken. I sighed. “An eighty-one,” I
told them, “is good. It’s a B-minus.”

  Mimi smiled at me from across the table. She didn’t say anything, though, and this time it wasn’t because of her stroke. It was because she and my parents don’t agree on my schoolwork. My parents think I could try harder and do better; Mimi thinks they should leave me alone. But Mimi isn’t my mother, so she doesn’t say anything.

  I changed the subject in what I thought was a very kind and thoughtful way. “Tell us about your research project,” I said to Janine.

  Janine’s projects are all boring, so I hardly ever ask about them. However, Janine loves to talk about them. She was flattered that I’d asked. I was relieved that she had something long-winded to say.

  The attention was off of me and my B-minus (which, frankly, I’d been sort of proud of).

  When dinner was over, Mom and Dad and Janine cleared the table and began cleaning the kitchen. Mimi and I went into the living room to do my homework. It’s sort of a family rule that somebody has to give me a hand with my homework each night. This is because my grades used to be so bad. My homework was always a mess, and I didn’t know how to study for tests or quizzes. The best homework nights are the ones on which Mimi helps me. The worst are the ones on which Janine helps me. I wish I didn’t have to have any help at all, but my parents told me I couldn’t stay in the Baby-sitters Club unless I kept my grades up.

  “All right,” Mimi began, “what are your assign — assign — what is homework?”

  “One page of math problems, read this chapter in my science book, and answer these questions for English,” I told her.

  Mimi nodded. “Where to start?”

  “English,” I said promptly. I don’t love English, but I hate math and science

  “Why not get bad work done first, then do English?” suggested Mimi.

  I screwed up my face. “Okay,” I agreed.

  We began with the math. I don’t know what it is about numbers. They just don’t make sense to me. Stacey once said that she can “read” numbers the way she can read words. She understands them. She can look at a problem for a few moments, and suddenly she has the answer, without doing any figuring or writing. She calculates things in her head as if her brain were a computer.

  Not me. Oh, no. I sit and figure, and half the time I’m figuring wrong. Adding when I should be multiplying, subtracting four from ten and getting seven. What a mess!

  Mimi and I plodded through my work. Mimi is so patient. She never raises her voice or gets aggravated.

  “Now,” she said, when I had finished my math and science, “where are English plobrems, my Claudia?”

  I knew she had meant to say “problems.” “They’re just some questions,” I told her, “and they’re right here.”

  In English class this year we’re reading the Newbery Award-winning books. We’ve already read several. Now we’re reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. I didn’t think I would like it, but really, it isn’t bad.

  Mimi looked at the list of questions and read the first one. “In what — in what ways is main — is the main character in Roll of, um, Thunder, Hear My Cry simi — similar to main — to the main character in A Wrinkle in Time?”

  “Oh, lord,” I replied, “They couldn’t be more different! I hate questions like that.”

  “Think, my Claudia. Is anything the same about them?”

  “They’re both girls,” I said.

  If Janine had been helping me, she probably would have thrown down her pencil in disgust at that answer, but Mimi just said, “That a good start. What else?”

  We worked and worked. The more we talked, the more answers I found. When we were finally done, I kissed Mimi, thanked her, and escaped to my room.

  Ah, art. I looked at the half-finished pastel drawing on my easel. I just stood in front of it for several minutes, thinking. After awhile, I opened my box of pastels and slowly set to work. When I’m in the middle of a good project, especially a painting or a drawing, I can forget about everything else. Which is what I did. And which may explain why I jumped a mile when the phone rang.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hi, Claudia. It’s Ashley.”

  Ashley Wyeth is a new friend of mine. We have a funny relationship. It seems like we’re always mad at each other. We’re forever fighting, then making up. But Ashley is the only person who truly understands my love of art. She’s an artist herself — the most talented person our age I know. Before she moved to Stoneybrook, she lived in Chicago and went to this really great art school there. And she thinks I’m talented! Ashley can be a pain in the neck, though, because she’s always bugging me to quit baby-sitting and spend more time on my art.

  So when Ashley called, I braced myself for a lecture, but all she wanted was our English assignment. I read her the questions and then hung up. As soon as I did, the phone rang again.

  “Hello?”

  At first there was just silence at the other end of the phone. Then an odd-sounding voice said, “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?”

  “Huh?” I replied. “Prince Albert?”

  “Oh, never mind.” The voice suddenly sounded disgusted and the caller hung up.

  I looked at the receiver as if it could explain to me what had just happened. A goof call gone wrong, I decided as I hung up. The caller was probably someone who’d been at the film festival. Practical-joke season had begun — and I, for one, did not like it.

  It was Thursday morning and I was nervous. A couple of kids who used to baby-sit for Betsy Sobak had told me why they wouldn’t do it anymore.

  “She’s an incurable practical joker,” Diana Roberts said.

  “Well, she used to be,” Gordon Brown corrected her. “Supposedly she outgrew it, but I don’t sit for her anymore.”

  “Me neither,” agreed Diana. “I don’t think it’s safe yet.”

  “I’ll let you know,” I told them. “Her parents must have gotten desperate without you guys, because her mom called the Baby-sitters Club. I’m going to sit for Betsy this afternoon.”

  I was smiling, trying to pretend I wasn’t nervous. This wasn’t easy with Diana and Gordon looking at me sympathetically, but I put up a good front.

  “Be careful,” Diana called as she headed for the girls’ room.

  “Yeah, we’ll be thinking of you,” Gordon added.

  Oh, lord. What had I gotten myself into?

  I found out at three-thirty that afternoon. That was when I rang the Sobaks’ doorbell. I stood nervously on their front stoop. In a moment, the door was opened by a friendly looking girl with brown hair, which had been pulled into two ponytails and tied with big blue ribbons. She was wearing a very snazzy pair of red pants that were held up by red suspenders. Under the suspenders was a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt. The legs of her pants ended in cuffs, and on her feet were running shoes tied with purple laces.

  “Hi!” she said cheerfully. “I’m Betsy. Are you Claudia?”

  This was the kid I’d been afraid of?

  “That’s right,” I told her. “Claudia Kishi.”

  “Come on in.”

  Betsy held the door open for me and I entered the Sobaks’ front hallway. A woman bustled forward to meet me, trying to put on her coat and shake my hand at the same time.

  “Cookie Sobak,” she said. (Cookie?) “On my way to a meeting at the Woman’s Club. About to be late. Emergency numbers by the phone in the kitchen. Mr. Sobak works at Tile Corp., if you need to reach him. Better fly. Betsy — behave. Back at six. Ta-ta.”

  “Ta-ta,” replied Betsy. Then she stuck her tongue out at her mother’s back.

  “Betsy,” I admonished her, but I couldn’t help smiling. Mrs. Sobak was so, I don’t know, fake, that I kind of wanted to stick my own tongue out at her.

  “Listen,” I said to Betsy as her mother’s car backed down the driveway, “have you had a snack yet?”

  “Um, no. No, I haven’t.” A smile crept over Betsy’s face. (I was glad she was so easy to please.) “Want some cookies?” s
he asked. “My mom makes great oatmeal raisin cookies.”

  “Sure,” I replied. (Oh, goody. Cookies.) “Here, let me help you.”

  “No, no,” said Betsy hurriedly as she led me into the kitchen. “You’re kind of like my guest. I’ll serve us. Do you want some apple juice?”

  I didn’t, really, but I said yes anyway. Betsy seemed so pleased to be in charge of fixing our snack.

  “You sit right there,” she told me, pointing to a chair at the kitchen table.

  I sat. Betsy got busy filling glasses, opening the cookie jar, finding napkins.

  “So,” I said, “you’re an only child, huh, Betsy?”

  “Almost,” she replied, her back turned. “My sister, Pat, is twenty-three. She even has a baby. I’m an aunt now.”

  “Wow,” I replied, impressed. I didn’t know any other eight-year-old aunts. “Aunt Betsy.”

  “Yup. Here you go.” Betsy set a plate of cookies and two napkins on the table. Then she carefully handed me a tall glass of juice. At last she sat down, a much smaller glass in her hands.

  I reached for a cookie. “Mmm,” I said, after I’d taken a bite. “These are great. Your mother must be a good cook.”

  “The best,” agreed Betsy.

  I took a swallow of apple juice, wishing Betsy hadn’t poured me quite so much. There was an awful lot of juice in the glass, and —

  “Oh, ew! Ew!” I shrieked. Something else was in the glass. A fly! It was stuck in an ice cube!

  I’d barely gotten the first “Ew!” out when I realized the glass was dripping. Apple juice was running down my shirt.

  “What —?” I cried. I set the glass on the table. “Betsy, there’s a fly in my glass, and I think …”

  I stopped talking because Betsy didn’t seem the least bit horrified. In fact, she was laughing. Hysterically.

  When she got control of herself, she managed to gasp out, “Gotcha! The fly is fake. It’s in a fake ice cube! And I gave you a dribble glass!”

  “Well, that’s just great, Betsy,” I said. I knew that, as a baby-sitter, I wasn’t supposed to get sarcastic, but sheesh. “Now, I’ve got apple juice all over my white shirt,” I told her.