Ann Martin - Kristy And The Snobs

"Because ... I don't know. I mean, what would you have done? They're new clients. We have to be nice to them. We don't want Mrs. Snob coming home and hearing the little Snobs saying, 'Oh, that Kristy is so mean. She makes us say please and thank you and get our own Cokes.' Besides, I can't force them to do anything they don't want to do."

Stacey laughed. "No, but there are ways to get around those kids. Believe me. You don't have to - "

Ring, ring.

Stacey interrupted herself to answer the phone. "Hello, Baby-sitters Club. . . . Oh, hi, Mrs. Delaney."

"Mrs. Delaney?" I whispered. I made a gagging sound and pretended to choke. Stacey turned away so she wouldn't have to look at me.

"Next Tuesday?" she was saying. "Both kids. Okay. . . . Okay. . . . I'll call you right back." She hung up the phone and turned around. "Kristy, don't do that!" she exclaimed, giggling. "You almost made me laugh. And I

almost called Mrs. Delaney 'Mrs. Snob'!"

We all laughed then and felt a little better. Claudia, the junk-food addict, found a bag of Gummi Bears stashed inside her pillow case and passed them around to those of us who'll eat candy (herself, Mary Anne, and me). Then she found some M&M's and passed those around, too.

Mary Anne was looking at our appointment calendar. "Three of us are free on Tuesday," she reported.

I wrinkled up my nose. I certainly didn't want to sit for the Delaneys again.

"It's you, Stacey, and Dawn," Mary Anne went on.

I noticed that Dawn looked as unenthusiastic as I felt.

"Can I go?" asked Stacey.

"Can you?!" I replied. "Be my guest. You can be the Delaneys' permanent baby-sitter, for all I care."

"Great," replied Stacey. "Because I know just how to handle the Snobs."

Once again she was interrupted by the ringing phone. We took a couple of jobs then and called Mrs. Delaney back, and when we were done, we'd forgotten all about Stacey's plans, whatever they were.

"You know," I said, leaning back in the di-

rector's chair and yawning, "there might be another snob-related problem. Not with the Snobs, but with the snobby girls I told you about. Shannon and Tiffany and their friends."

"Is Shannon the one who was mean to Louie?" asked Mary Anne, who has a soft spot in her heart for animals.

"Yes," I replied. "And the thing is, I didn't know it at first, but I guess she baby-sits in the neighborhood, too. I know she sits for the Papadakises anyway. And the other day she accused me of pushing her out of her sitting jobs."

"Oops," said Claudia.

"Right," I replied.

"Well, she can't be the only baby-sitter in the neighborhood," Dawn countered. "I mean, look at us. You started this club so there would be enough sitters to go around."

"That's true," I said slowly.

We were sitting silently, the five of us mulling this problem over, when all of a sudden Dawn began to cry. The rest of us looked at each other with our eyebrows raised. Not only is Dawn not a crier, but, well, what was she crying about?

"Dawn?" Mary Anne ventured. She and Dawn were sitting on Claudia's bed, and Mary Anne scrunched over until she was right next

to her. "Dawn, what's the matter?" she asked worriedly.

At first Dawn just shook her head. She couldn't talk. Then she opened the club notebook and pointed to the account she'd written of sitting for her brother.

"Oh, you're upset about Jeff?" asked Mary Anne.

Dawn nodded, sniffling.

Mary Anne and I filled Claudia and Stacey in on the news, in case they hadn't gotten around to reading the notebook. Then, when Dawn had control of her voice, she added that her mother had had a long talk with her father, and that her father, for some reason, hadn't seemed crazy about the possibility of Jeff's living with him.

"I don't know," Dawn said, (only, with her stuffed nose, it sounded like "I dote dough"). "I don't know which is worse, the thought that Jeff hates living with Mom and me and wants to leave us, or the thought that maybe Dad doesn't want him. And," she went on, "if Dad doesn't want him, I assume he wouldn't want me, either. Not that I'd like to move back to California. It's just that it's awful to think your father doesn't want you."

"Tell me about it," I said bitterly. My parents'

divorce hadn't exactly been friendly, and my dad never writes or calls my brothers and me. I don't think he cares about us at all. "But Dawn, are you sure he doesn't want you and Jeff?" I asked. "Maybe he's just enjoying being a bachelor again. I mean, first he was a family man, then he probably got used to living with-out you and Jeff and your mom, and now he's just, I don't know, unsettled by the thought of another change."

"You know," said Dawn, brightening, "maybe you're right. I mean, he didn't say, 'I don't want Jeff.' He said something about having to change his work hours, and needing to get a housekeeper. Stuff like that."

We all agreed that Mr. Schafer was probably an okay dad who'd just been taken by surprise by the ten-thirty phone call. The meeting ended then, and I went home feeling subdued. I had problems, we all had problems. At the moment, Dawn's were the biggest. (They were certainly bigger than Tigger's worms.) Although I knew our problems would work out eventually, I realized that, as a group, we were kind of under the weather.

Charlie parked the car in the garage and we went inside. We found Watson home early, starting dinner. In the living room, Sam was

helping David Michael with a tricky subtraction problem. Boo-Boo watched them from an armchair. Maybe because he's a cat, or maybe just because he's Boo-Boo, he always seems to watch people suspiciously, as if, right now, my brothers weren't doing math, they were plotting ways to torture Boo-Boo.

"Louie!" I called. "Louie! Where are you, boy?"

"Woof!"

Louie's woof came from Watson's library. I wandered in that direction and found him curled up on an Oriental rug.

"Hey, David Michael!" I yelled. "Did you feed Louie?"

"I put his food out and called him to dinner but he wouldn't come," he replied.

"Okay!" I knelt next to Louie. "Don't you want supper?" I asked him.

Louie's head was resting on one of his front paws. In order to look at me, he raised his eyes, but he didn't move his head.

"Come on, it's supper time," I told him, trying to sound excited about it. "Time for doggie treats. Maybe David Michael will let you have a people cracker later. Remember how much you liked the one in the shape of the vet?"

"Mmm-mm," whimpered Louie.

"Come on, I know you're hungry. All you have to do is stand up and walk into the kitchen. . . . Come on."

I stood up, urging Louie to get up, too. He staggered to his feet - and I mean staggered. He got his front legs up first and tried to raise his hindquarters, but his left front paw collapsed and he fell stiffly. Finally I picked him up around his middle and held him in place until all four legs were steady. Louie and I started toward the kitchen. But we hadn't even left the library when Louie jerked to a stop, squatted, and had an accident on one of Watson's Oriental carpets.

"Louie!" I scolded. "Mo-om! . . . Watson, is Mom home yet?"

"Kristy, what's wrong?" called Sam. He and David Michael came running.

"Whaf s wrong? That is whaf s wrong." Louie was getting painfully to his feet, and I pointed to the mess on the carpet.

"Louie!" David Michael cried. "How could you do that? He's never done that," he said to Sam and me. "Never."

"Oh, he did it all the time when he was a puppy," replied Sam mildly. "I'll go get some paper towels."

Louie knew he'd done something wrong and he slunk out of the library with his tail between his legs.

"Bad, bad dog!" exclaimed David Michael, shaking his finger at Louie. "You're not a puppy now." But then he bent down to hug him. "Louie, I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean that. I don't think you could help yourself. Could he, Kristy?"