"Babysitters Club 033 Claudia And The Great Search" - читать интересную книгу автора (Babysitters Club)

remember that my mother expected me to be mature then, but also wouldn't give me many privileges. However, Jessi's and Mal's parents did let them get their ears pierced recently. (Kristy and Mary Anne are the only club members who don't have pierced ears.) But now Mal's got braces on her teeth, and she wears glasses and isn't allowed to get contacts yet, plus neither Mal nor Jessi is allowed to babysit at night, so they still have a long way to
go. Both Jessi and Mallory have younger brothers and sisters, but Jessi has just two - her eight-year-old sister, Becca, and her baby brother, who's nicknamed Squirt - while Mal has seven. And three of her brothers are identical triplets! Also, both girls like to read, especially horse stories, but Jessi's other interest is ballet, while Mal likes writing and drawing. Jessi is a really talented ballerina. You should see her dance. She takes special classes at a ballet school in Stamford, and she has performed leading roles onstage before lots of people. Mallory is talented, too. She keeps a journal, and is always writing stories and illustrating them. She says she wants to be an author and illustrator of children's books someday.
One last difference between the girls. Mal is white and Jessi is black. I don't see what the big deal is, but when the Ramseys first moved to Stoneybrook (and by the way, they bought Stacey's house when the McGills went back to New York!), people here gave Jessi's family a really hard time. Some people wouldn't let their kids play with Becca, other people avoided the Ramseys. I guess this is because there aren't many black families in Stoneybrook (Jessi is the only black student in the whole sixth grade), but sheesh. What's wrong with people? At least things have quieted down. Becca and Jessi have friends now, and most of the Ramseys' neighbors have accepted them, thank goodness.
So those are my friends, the ones I'd see in just a few hours when our first BSC meeting of the week got underway.
Chapter 3.
I felt as if I'd been watching clocks all day. First I'd watched the one in science class. Now I was in my room watching my own clock as the digital numbers flipped toward five-thirty. I was waiting for our BSC meeting to begin. The meetings are always held in my room, the official club headquarters.
While I waited for my friends to arrive, I started thinking about the BSC, so I'll tell you about our club, how it got started, and how it works. As I said earlier, Kristy is the president and founder of the club. It was one of her big ideas. She got the idea way back at the beginning of seventh grade. In those days, she (and Mary Anne) still lived across the street from me, and Watson Brewer had not yet proposed to Kristy's mother. Mrs. Thomas was working full-time, and David Michael was just six then, so it was up to Kristy, Sam, and
Charlie to take turns watching him in the afternoons. This arrangement was fine until the day came when nobody - not Kristy, not one of her brothers - was free to sit for David Michael. So Mrs. Thomas started calling babysitters. Since it was a last-minute situation, she had to make call after call, trying to find someone who wasn't already busy. Kristy watched her mother doing this and thought, Wouldn't it be great if a parent could make one call and reach a whole group of baby-sitters at once, instead of having to make so many individual calls? And that was how her great idea was born. She discussed it with Mary Anne and me, since all three of us did some baby-sitting, and then she asked us to form a baby-sitting club with her. Of course, we agreed right away, but we decided three people weren't enough. I suggested that we invite Stacey McGill to join the club, too. She had just moved here, but she and I were already getting to be friends. Stacey was glad to join the club. She had baby-sat in New York, and she wanted to meet people in Stoneybrook.
So that was the beginning of the club. We decided to hold our meetings three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons from five-thirty until six. Parents
could call us at those times and they would reach four experienced sitters at once. They were bound to get a sitter with just one phone call.
How did people know about our club and when to call us? We advertised. We sent out dozens of fliers in our neighborhoods, and we even placed an ad in the Stoneybrook News. Sure enough, we got job calls at our first meeting, and business has gotten better and better since then. By the middle of seventh grade, we even needed a new member to help us out, so we asked Dawn (who had just moved here) to join the club. Then when (gulp) Stacey moved away, we replaced her with both Jessi and Mal, but naturally we let Stacey back in the club when she returned to Stoneybrook. Now we have seven members and two associate members, and Kristy says the BSC is big enough.
We run our club very officially and professionally, thanks mostly to Kristy. Kristy makes us keep a notebook in which we write up every job we take. Then we're responsible for reading the book once a week. None of us really likes to do this, but we have to admit that knowing what's going on with the families we
sit for and seeing how our friends solve sitting problems is pretty helpful.
Also, each of us holds a certain position in the club. Kristy is the president, since she started the club, and since she has such great ideas for it. One of her great ideas was Kid-Kits. A Kid-Kit is a decorated box or carton (we each have one) filled with our old toys, books, and games, plus new items such as coloring books and art supplies, that we sometimes take with us on baby-sitting jobs. Kids love them - which makes us popular sitters and really helps our business!
I'm the vice-president. This is mostly because I have a phone in my room and my own private phone number. We can take calls here without tying up someone else's line or getting a lot of calls that aren't for us. That's why my room is club headquarters.
Our secretary is Mary Anne. She probably has the biggest job of any of us. It's up to her to keep the club book in order. The record book (which is entirely different from the notebook) is where we keep track of all important club information: the names and addresses of our clients, the money we earn and how our club dues are spent (that's really Stacey's
job - she's the treasurer), and our schedules and appointments for baby-sitting jobs. Scheduling is the biggest of Mary Anne's duties and she sure is good at it. This is lucky, since originally we just wanted Mary Anne to be the secretary because she had the nicest handwriting of any of us. We had no idea what her job would turn into. Mary Anne has to keep track of my art classes, Jessi's ballet lessons, Mal's orthodontist appointments, etc., in addition to scheduling every job that's called in. Mary Anne is terrific at this. As far as we know, she has not made one mistake. We're grateful to her for that.
As I mentioned before, Stacey is the club treasurer. It's her job to record the money we earn. This is just for our own interest. Each member gets to keep all the money she earns on a job. We don't try to divide the money up or anything. Stacey is also in charge of collecting our weekly dues each Monday. She just loves this part of her job. Stacey likes having money (even when it's club money, not her own), and hates parting with it. But she does have to part with it. The dues money goes into the club treasury (a manila envelope) and is spent on various things: paying Charlie to drive Kristy back and forth to BSC meetings
now that she lives so far from my neighborhood, paying part of my monthly phone bill, buying items - such as art supplies, soap bubbles, or activity books - for the Kid-Kits, and . . . fun stuff! We like to have a club sleepover or pizza party every now and then. Since Stacey is so great at math, she makes a very good treasurer.
Dawn is the club's alternate officer. That means that she can take over the job of anyone who can't make a meeting. For instance, if Mary Anne were sick, Dawn could handle the notebook and do the scheduling until Mary Anne felt better. Dawn is like a substitute teacher (except that we don't throw spitballs behind her back when she's in charge). In case you're wondering, Dawn became the treasurer when Stacey moved back to New York, but she gladly turned the job over to Stace again when she returned. Dawn is a good student, but she's not as quick at math as Stacey is. Besides, she hated collecting dues because we're all so crabby about parting with even a little of our hard-earned money. At one time or another, Dawn has taken over every job, even Kristy's. (Our president has only missed one meeting, when her dog Louie was really sick.)
Jessi and Mallory are the club's junior officers. They don't have actual jobs, though. Junior officer means that they aren't allowed to baby-sit at night (unless they're sitting for their own brothers and sisters). They can only sit after school and on weekends. This is still a big help. The junior officers free us older members up for evening jobs.
Last but not least, our club has the two associate members I mentioned earlier - Shannon Kilbourne and Logan Bruno. Shannon is a friend of Kristy's. She lives across the street from Kristy in her new neighborhood, and she goes to a private school, so nobody but Kristy sees her very often. Logan, as I mentioned, is Mary Anne's boyfriend. He's an eighth-grader at SMS with us, and he is sooooo nice. He's perfect for Mary Anne. He's funny, sweet, and understands Mary Anne and her moods really well. Logan's family comes from Louisville, Kentucky, and Logan speaks with this terrific southern accent. Anyway, both Logan and Shannon have done a lot of baby-sitting, so as associate members, they're our backups. They're people we can call on just in case the BSC is offered a job that none of us can take. Believe it or not, that does happen sometimes. And when it does, we like to be able to say, "We're sorry, none of us can take the job, but
let us recommend one of our associate members." Then we call Logan or Shannon - and we don't have to disappoint our client.
I think that's everything you need to know about the BSC. It may sound complicated, but it really isn't. And belonging to the club is tons of fun. That's why I couldn't wait for my friends to arrive on that bleak Monday when Janine won her ten millionth award and I got left in the dust again.
At 5:20, Kristy arrived. At 5:23, Dawn and Mary Anne arrived. And by 5:29, we had all gathered in my room and taken our usual places. Kristy sat herself in my director's chair, wearing a visor, a pencil stuck over one ear. Mallory and Jessi sat on the floor, leaning against my bed. Dawn and Mary Anne and I lined ourselves up on my bed, leaning against the wall, and Stacey sat backward in my desk chair, facing into the room, her arms slung over the top rung of the back. (Sometimes Dawn sits in the desk chair and Stacey joins Mary Anne and me on the bed.)
As soon as my digital clock turned from 5:29 to 5:30, Kristy (who'd been watching that clock like a hawk) said, "Order! Come to order, please!"
The rest of us stopped talking. Mal and Jessi put down this gum-wrapper chain they've been working on since the beginning of time.
And before Kristy had even finished saying, "Any club business?" Stacey had leaped up, grabbed the club treasury, and was passing it around, saying, "Dues day! Dues day! Fork over!"
With sighs and groans, my friends and I reached into pockets or change purses, pulled out our dues, and dropped them in the manila envelope. Then Stacey plopped onto the floor, dumped out all the money, counted it up in her head just by looking at it, and announced, "We're rich!"
She parceled out money to Kristy, who needed to pay Charlie, and to Dawn, Jessi, and Mary Anne, who needed new items for their Kid-Kits. Just as she was finishing up, the phone began ringing. Mary Anne scheduled four jobs. As soon as she was done (and as soon as I had handed around a bag of Doritos, which everyone except Stacey and Dawn helped themselves to), Kristy said, "I have some business to discuss." She adjusted her visor. "Well, it's not exactly business, but you should know what's going on with Emily Michelle right now." (We try to keep each
other informed about problems with kids the club sits for.)
"With Emily?" Mary Anne repeated. "Is something wrong? Is it serious?" (Mary Anne gets worked up very easily.)
"I - I don't know. I mean no, well . . . yes." Kristy drew in a breath. "Okay. This is it. You know how Doctor Dellenkamp says Emily is language-delayed?"
The rest of us nodded. We knew, and it made sense. Emily had grown up in Vietnam, where the people around her spoke a different language. And part of her life had been spent in an orphanage, where she probably didn't get a lot of attention. So it was no wonder that at two, she didn't speak much English.
"Well," Kristy went on, "the pediatrician says Emily isn't making as much progress as she'd expected. Plus, Emily has some emotional problems. She's started having these nightmares - at least, we think she's having nightmares - and she wakes up screaming. 'Me! Me!' " (Kristy pronounced the word as if she were saying "met," but leaving the "t" off the end.) " 'Me/ " she informed us, "is what Vietnamese children say for 'Mama' or 'Mommy.' Plus, she seems scared of everything - the dark, loud noises, trying new
things, and being separated from any of us, especially Mom and Watson. Doctor Dellenkamp isn't too worried about the fears, even though Mom and Watson are. The doctor says the fears are a delayed reaction to all the upheaval in Emily's life. You know, losing her mother, going to the orphanage, getting adopted, moving to a new country. The doctor says Emily will outgrow the fears and nightmares. She's more worried about Emily's speech, and even how she plays. She says she doesn't play like a two-year-old yet. She still thinks Emily will catch up, though."
Kristy sighed. "I wish," she continued, "that I could spend more time with Emily, but I've got that job at the Papadakises' now."
The Papadakises live across the street and one house down from Kristy. They have three kids. The oldest is a boy, Linny, who's friends with David Michael. Then there is seven-year-old Hannie, who's one of Karen's best friends, and Sari, who's about Emily's age. Recently, their grandfather fell and broke his hip, so he had to go into a nursing home to recover. While he was there, he came down with pneumonia, and he's pretty sick. Of course, Mr. and Mrs. Papadakis want to be with him as much as possible, so they asked Kristy to sit
for them three evenings a week, plus some in-between times. (I think they signed up other sitters, too. Shannon Kilbourne, for one.)
We were all saying things like, "Gosh, Kristy, that's too bad," and, "Try not to worry too much," when the phone rang again.
Jessi answered it, "Hi, Mrs. Brewer!" she said brightly. (It was Kristy's mom!) She listened for a moment. Then she said, "Okay, we'll check the schedule and get right back to you." Jessi hung up the phone. "Your mom needs a sitter next Friday night," she said. "She knows you'll be at the Papadakises' then. She says she needs someone for about three hours to watch David Michael and Emily Michelle. Andrew and Karen won't be there that weekend."
Mary Anne checked the record book. "Claud," she said, "you're free that night. Want the job?"
"Of course!" I replied.
I was beginning to feel a little more cheerful. I'd almost forgotten about the awards ceremony that afternoon.
Chapter 4.
My good mood didn't last long. As soon as the meeting was over and my friends had left, I began to feel sort of depressed. I flumped down on my bed and propped my leg up on a pillow. I broke that leg not long ago, and now, every time it's going to rain, my leg aches.
Goody, I thought sarcastically. Rain. That'll improve my mood.
I lay there and went over the events of the day. Monday had started out with Janine coming into my room about fifty times, each time in a different outfit - although her clothes are so boring that the outfits all looked the same to me.
I don't like any of Janine's clothes, so I told her each outfit looked fine, which confused
her. She chose the dull awards-ceremony outfit by herself.