Ann Martin - Kristy's Great Idea

Mary Anne remained silent. She hates arguments.

"Well, how do you think I feel, being lied to?" I shouted. "Talk about tact. It made me feel like a little kid."

"You are a little kid," said Claudia. "Look at how you're dressed."

I looked. "What's wrong with the way I'm dressed?"

"Really, Kristy, a sweater with snowflakes and snowmen on it? You look like a four-year-old."

"Well, you've got sheep barrettes in your hair," I yelled. "You think they're adult?"

"Sheep," Claudia informed me witheringly, "are in."

"Who cares? Everything's in sometime. First it was frogs, then pigs, now it's sheep. Maybe next week it'll be snowmen. And how do you expect me to keep up with that stuff, anyway? I don't have time for it."

"That's because you and Mary Anne are too busy playing dolls."

"Dolls!" I yelled. (Mary Anne looked as if she'd been slapped in the face. I knew she was going to start crying soon, and it only made me angrier.) "We do not play with dolls!" The thing is, though, that we just gave them up over the summer.

At that moment, surprisingly, Mary Anne spoke up. "Claudia, Kristy didn't mean to upset Stacey." Mary Anne's chin was trembling. Her eyes were about to overflow.

"Didn't mean to upset her! She accused her mother of lying."

Mary Anne's eyes spilled over.

"Oh, what a crybaby," Claudia said, but I could see she felt bad.

Suddenly a knock came on the door.

"What!" yelled Claudia.

The door opened a crack. I was terrified that Janine was going to be on the other side of it with some stupid comment like there's no such word as crybaby.

But it was Mimi who poked her head in. "Excuse me, girls," said Claudia's grandmother in her gentle, slightly accented voice, "but what is going on in here? Downstairs I can hear you. You are yelling. What is wrong, and may I help you in some way?"

We all grew quiet. I felt slightly ashamed. "I'm sorry, Mimi," said Claudia. We'd all been standing up about ready to kill each other, and now we found places to sit down again.

"Are you girls all right? May I help?" Mimi asked again.

"No, thank you," said Claudia, sounding subdued. "We didn't mean to be so loud."

"All right. If you need me, I will be in the kitchen. Claudia, your friends must leave in fifteen minutes."

"Okay."

Mimi tiptoed out and closed the door softly behind her. I looked at the four of us and saw

that we were sitting as if we were at war: Mary Anne next to me on the floor, Claudia and Stacey together on the bed. We were facing off.

The phone rang.

"I'll get it," we all said, and leaped for the phone, each of us determined to answer it. Stacey and I got to it first and both grabbed it off the hook. We had a real tug-of-war, yanking it back and forth, before I jerked it out of Stacey's grip.

"Baby-sitters Club," I said gruffly. "Yes? . . . Yes?" It was a new client. He needed a sitter for Thursday after school for his seven-year-old daughter. I took down all the information, and said that I'd get back to him in five minutes.

"Well?" said Claudia after I'd hung up the phone.

Stacey was so mad she had turned red. No kidding. She couldn't even speak.

"Who's free Thursday afternoon?" I asked. "It's a seven-year-old kid, Charlotte Johanssen, on Kimball Street."

"I'm free," said Claudia.

"So'm I," Stacey managed to say through clenched teeth.

"Me, too," said Mary Anne timidly.

"Me, too," I added.

We glared at one another.

"Well, now what?" said Stacey.

"Yeah." Claudia narrowed her eyes. "Whose dumb idea was this club, anyway? Four people all wanting the same job. That's stupid."

"Since the club was my dumb idea," I snapped, "I'll take the stupid job." And I did. After I'd hung up the phone for the second time I said to Mary Anne, "Come on, let's go. I can see we're not wanted here."

Claudia looked a bit sheepish. "Kristy . . ." she said hesitantly.

"Save it. I'm not speaking to you at the moment."

Mary Anne and I left the house without bothering to say good-bye to Mimi. Mary Anne was crying again. I almost said something nasty to her, but realized that if I did, the four of us might become three against one, which was definitely worse than two against two.

"Don't cry," I said at last.

"I'm sorry. I just hate fighting, that's all."

"Me, too. But we'll all be friends again soon."

"I guess so."

"I know so. We've got the club to hold us together, right?"

"Right," agreed Mary Anne.

But she didn't sound very sure, and I didn't feel very sure.

So even though I was worried about the fight and sorry we'd had it, I believed that it would all blow over soon enough. And by later that evening, I heard such astonishing news that I forgot all about the fight anyway.

Mom and Watson had gone out to dinner, and my brothers and I had finished our homework and were sitting around the kitchen table playing Monopoly. Well, Charlie and Sam and I were playing Monopoly. David Michael, who had fully recovered from his virus, was busy making G.I. Joe attack a ferocious enemy Kleenex box. Sam had just bought all four railroads and was cleaning Charlie and me out, when the back door opened and in walked Mom and Watson. We hadn't expected them home so early.

"Surprise!" cried Mom, coming into the kitchen. Watson threw a handful of confetti on her.

My brothers and I smiled. "What's going on?" asked Charlie.

Mom and Watson looked at each other, eyes sparkling.

I got a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"You tell them," said Watson.

Mom turned to us. She looked radiant. "I agreed to become engaged," she said.

Already?

Mom held up her left hand. There was a ring on her fourth finger with a diamond on it about the size of a boulder.

"Wow," I couldn't help saying.

We all crowded around to look at the ring. "It's pretty," said David Michael.

"It means Watson is going to be your step-daddy," Mom told him.

"Really-really-really?" David Michael jumped up and down. Sam hugged Mom, and Charlie shook Watson's hand. But I just stood there. I wasn't upset, but I wasn't happy either. I could only think of questions. Finally, I asked just one. "When will the wedding be?"

"Oh, not for months," replied Mom.

I let out a sigh. That was definitely a relief.

On Tuesday, Mary Anne and I avoided Claudia and Stacey in school until the very end of the day. Then I screwed up the nerve to ask Claudia if she wanted to hold a Babysitters Club meeting the next day as usual. She said it was all right with her.

That night, for a change, Mom and my brothers and I went over to Watson's for dinner. Andrew and Karen were there. Watson was taking care of them more often than usual since their mother had broken her ankle.

Karen was in rare form. She loved having company and spent a long time trying to straighten out all the relationships. "If my daddy and your mommy get married — " she started to say to me, hopping from one foot to the other while Watson passed a plate of potato chips and onion dip around the living room.

"When we get married/' Watson interrupted her.

"Okay, when you get married, Kristy, you'll be my stepsister, and Charlie, you'll be my biggest stepbrother. . . . How old are you, anyway?"

"Guess," said Charlie.

"Thirty-five?"

That broke Charlie up. '"Thirty-five! That's practically over the — "

"Watch what you say, young man," said Mom. "If thirty-five is over the hill, then I better start shopping for Geritol and Dentu-Grip."

Everyone laughed.

"Twenty-nine?" Karen guessed.

"No!" said Charlie. "I'm sixteen."

Karen stared at him. "Okay," she said at last. She turned to Sam. "You'll be my next biggest stepbrother."

"Yeah, and you know how old I am? A hundred and twelve."