"Babysitters Club 091 Claudia And The First Thanksgiving" - читать интересную книгу автора (Babysitters Club)

BSC091 - Claudia and the First Thanksgiving - Martin, Ann M.
Chapter 1.
"Pass the milk, please," said my older sister Janine.
"Why? Is it failing?" I asked. I cracked up.
My mother shook her head. My father made a face. Janine just looked at me.
"It's a pun," I explained.
"We know," said my mother. She smiled a little bit.
"As a humorous application of a word designed to play on two of its meanings, it was somewhat funny," said Janine. "Now, may I please have the milk?"
Okay, so maybe breakfast time is a little early for jokes. And maybe someone like me shouldn't be making jokes about passing and failing.
I picked up the milk carton and handed it to my sister.
Trust Janine to have the definition of pun right on the tip of her tongue. She is very
familiar with the word "pass" as used to mean doing your school work right. In fact, Janine has not only passed every course she's ever taken with triple A pluses or something, she's also taking courses at the local college, even though she's still in high school. That's because my sister, who has no sense of humor at the breakfast table, is a genuine genius.
Not me. At least, not when it comes to school. I'm much more familiar with the opposite of pass. You know, that word, fail, which means doing your schoolwork wrong. School bores me. Homework bores me. I don't understand math, and I think the rules for spelling are much too rigid. Naturally, neither my teachers nor my parents agree. My father likes math so much he works at an investment firm and my mother likes to read so much she is a librarian.
They don't understand how they could have a daughter like me.
I mean, numbers are not my thing, and neither are words (except in Nancy Drew books, which for some reason my parents don't like). I'm an artist. Colors and shapes and designs and textures - that's more like it. The world is an amazing-looking place, if you know how to look at it. And it's much more fun to describe it with images than with words.
So Janine goes on being a genius, and I work
on my art every chance I get. And someone checks my homework every night to make sure I don't fail.
"Pass the marmalade, please," I said. My sister gave it to me without comment.
There was a distressing lack of junk food on the table (I'm a junk food connoisseur) but I made up for it by stirring several spoonfuls of orange marmalade into my oatmeal. I saw Janine making a face, and I was afraid for a moment that she might launch into a lecture on Good Nutrition. Fortunately, she didn't say anything.
I could have chosen grape jelly, but it didn't fit in with my color scheme for the day. Since it was the end of October, I was wearing autumn colors: red, orange, yellow. I liked the effect I'd created. It was sort of post-modernist pumpkin.
Oh. Wait a minute. Before I describe what I look like, I guess I should say who I am.
I am Claudia Kishi. I am thirteen years old and I'm an eighth-grader at Stoneybrook Middle School in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. I have long black hair and dark brown eyes and pierced ears - one hole in my left earlobe and two holes in my right one. I live on Bradford Court, where I have lived all my life, with my mother, my father, and Janine. My grandmother, Mimi, who was my best friend, lived
with us too, until she died not long ago. I still miss Mimi.
As I mentioned before, I work very hard on my art. It is, needless to say, one of the few subjects I do well in at school. I've even had my own art show, which I held in the garage. The theme was junk food images.
Besides being an artist, I am the vice-president of the Baby-sitters Club, or BSC. That's because I am one of the founding members of the club, and also because I have my own phone line in my room. But I'll tell you more about the club later.
Now, where was I? Oh. Right. My autumn fashion colors. I'd put on a pair of baggy pants, not blue, not black, but yellow. With these I was wearing my red Doc Martens, laced with orange and yellow laces, and this great, funky, enormous shirt that I found in a vintage clothes shop. It has a leaf pattern on it. The leaves are in a Hawaiian print design, and the colors are fabulous. Underneath I was wearing my red and yellow tie-dyed long underwear shirt. To complete the ensemble, I had on earrings that I'd made myself, shaped like pumpkins, and a fringed yellow-and-white scarf tied around my hair.
I looked (I modestly admit) pretty great. I did not look as if I belonged with the other three people sitting at the table. My mom wore
a tailored navy dress with little pearl earrings. My father was wearing a navy pinstripe suit (the jacket was hanging on the back of his chair). Janine was practically a rainbow by comparison: She was dressed in a navy wool skirt and a navy v-neck sweater over a pink oxford shirt.
I finished my oatmeal. Then Mom and Dad left for work, Janine left for high school, and I grabbed my jacket (yellow, with big black buttons, also from the vintage clothes shop) and went outside to wait for my friends, so we could walk to SMS together.
Two seconds later, Stacey McGill came cruising into view. Stacey is my best friend and a fellow BSC member. She's from New York City. This is something you would know the second moment you saw her.
During the first moment you would just stare, because Stacey is off-the-scale gorgeous, with her long, blonde hair and deep blue eyes, and elegant bones. By the second moment, though, you would have taken in her cool clothes and known that she is Not From Around Here.
That's because, like me, Stacey has a style of her own. But while mine is Kishi original, hers is New York sophisticated. She was wearing an oversized midnight blue turtleneck under a cropped black wool jacket with square
gold buttons. She had on black suede ankle boots, the kind that wrinkle around your ankles. Her fitted black jeans were tucked into the tops of the boots. She had looped a light blue muffler around her neck and wore matching gloves.
I waved wildly (as if we hadn't just seen each other the day before, and talked on the phone the previous night). Stacey nodded and walked over to me.
"What's happening?" she asked.
"Same old same old," I replied. "Hey, guys! Happy Halloween!" Stacey turned to see who I was talking to.
"Mar and Mal," she said with a grin.
Mary Anne Spier wrinkled her nose and Mallory Pike grinned back. They are both good friends of mine, too, as well as fellow BSC members. Mallory kept on talking as they fell into step with us.
"So I said to them, 'I don't care if you are triplets, it doesn't mean you each have to tell me the same duck joke.' "
Mallory lives large - at least, she lives in a large family. She is the oldest of eight siblings, three of whom are triplets. In a family that big, something outrageous is always happening, and so Mal usually has funny stories to tell. Maybe that is why she wants to be a children's book writer when she grows up.
Mary Anne, who grew up as an only child, is quiet and shy. But she is a great listener, which is probably what encouraged Mal to put such energy into the story she was telling.
"Triplet trouble?" asked Stacey.
Mal pushed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose and answered, "No more than usual. We rented some old videos - one was a movie with the Marx Brothers called Duck Soup - and the triplets have been doing imitations of the comedy routines ever since."
"I love the Marx Brothers," said Stacey. "I went to a Marx Brothers movie festival once at an old theater in New York."
"I think we're about to have our own Marx Brothers festival at my house," said Mal.
"There's Logan," said Mary Anne. It was her turn to wave, very enthusiastically.
Logan Bruno is (could you have guessed?) Mary Anne's main squeeze. Mary Anne would die if she heard me describe Logan that way. But he is her boyfriend. He's a good-looking guy, a casual dresser, with blue eyes and brownish blond hair. Mary Anne thinks he looks just like the movie star Cam Geary, and I have to admit she's right. In addition to good looks, Logan has a nice Southern drawl and a way of putting you at ease that guys his age often lack. He's sensitive and understanding, too (like Mary Anne). Plus he's majorly involved in just about every sport on earth.
It's a combination that makes Logan a good baby-sitter. So Logan is in the BSC, too. He's an associate member, which means he fills in for us when we can't schedule one of our regular members for a job.
As Logan caught up to Mary Anne, she slipped her hand into his and smiled up at him. The two of them slowed down a little, so they lagged behind the rest of us as we walked. Stacey and Mal and I went into our movie reviewers mode. Since it was nearly Halloween, we concentrated heavily on the Grossest Movies Ever Made. By the time we reached Jessica Ramsey's house, we were arguing about Sickening Special Effects.
"I'm glad the triplets can't hear you," said Mal. "I don't want them getting any more disgusting ideas for their Halloween costumes." She ran around to the side door and knocked. A moment later she and Jessi were hurrying toward us. They were both giggling.