Ann Martin - Dawn On The Coast

Claire, the youngest Pike (she's all of five years old), let Kristy in. She was still in her pajamas.

"Moozie!" she cried. ("Moozie" is what she sometimes calls her mom.) "Moozie! Kristy's here."

Moozie didn't appear, but Mallory did.

"Mom'11 be down in a minute," she said.

"Where's everybody else?" asked Kristy. (The house seemed strangely quiet.)

"The triplets and Nicky are in the backyard, and Vanessa and Margo are upstairs."

"Well," said Kristy. "Where should we start? How about with you, Claire? Let's get you out of those pajamas and into your play clothes."

"These are my play clothes, Kristy silly-billy-goo-goo," said Claire. "Today I'm wearing my pajamas all day long."

Kristy looked at Mallory. Mallory shrugged. That's another thing about the Pikes. Mr. and Mrs. Pike hardly have any rules. If Claire were going to school that day, of course she'd have to get dressed. But for staying at home? If pajamas was what she wanted, pajamas it was.

Claire streaked up the stairs, waggling her head and crying "Moo!" Was she calling her mother or making cow sounds? Did it matter? This was definitely going to be one of Claire's sillier days.

The back door swung open and the triplets appeared. They each grabbed a cookie from the jar on the kitchen counter and then raced back outside. The door swung open again. It was Nicky. He'd come for his cookie. (The triplets are ten and Nicky is eight. He sometimes has a hard time keeping up.) BANG! Nicky was back out the door, following his brothers.

"Kristy, hi!" It was Mrs. Pike. In her hurry, she grabbed a sweater out of the closet. "Oops, that's Vanessa's," she said. She grabbed another. "I should be back early afternoon. More library business. And if the meeting gets out on time, I'm going to squeeze in a haircut."

She gave the sitters last-minute instructions and reminded Mallory that there was canned ravioli and homemade cole slaw for lunch.

Ravioli and cole slaw? Well, I guess, when you're getting meals together for eight kids every day, you come up with some pretty unusual combinations.

Mrs. Pike called good-bye over her shoulder and hurried out the door.

"I'll go let Vanessa and Margo know I'm here," Kristy said to Mallory.

To keep all fronts covered, Mallory headed out to the yard.

Vanessa and Margo are two of the middle kids. Vanessa is nine and Margo is seven. You can pretty much trust them to play well by themselves, but you always have to check to see what they're up to. In this case that was a good idea. Claire had joined them and Vanessa was showing her sisters how to write a letter in "invisible ink." She had dragged a carton of milk upstairs and the three of them were dipping paintbrushes into the milk and using it as ink to write messages on white paper.

"Kristy!" Vanessa said when she walked in. "Read my message. Can you, please? It's invisible, like the seas." (Vanessa is a budding poet. She loves to rhyme and doesn't always

care so much about making sense.)

Kristy looked at the blank sheet of paper.

"A polar bear in a snowstorm?" she guessed.

"Silly-billy-goo-goo!" cried Claire.

"No, it's a message," said Vanessa. She held the paper flat and blew on it so the milk would dry. "You can't see it now," she said, "but watch this."

She strode out of the bedroom and into her parents' room, where there was an iron and an ironing board standing up in the corner.

"Heat," she said. "We'll iron the messages and the heat will make the milk letters turn brown."

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute," said Kristy. "I'll be the one to do the ironing."

"But I iron all the time," said Vanessa. "For Mom. I do practically a basket a week."

Kristy considered.

"Well," she said. "You can iron, but I'll supervise. Claire and Margo, you sit over here and watch."

Kristy sat on the edge of the bed and patted places next to her for the two younger girls.

Vanessa waited for the iron to heat up and then ran it lightly over the sheets of paper. As she predicted, the white letters darkened and the messages came clear.

Ill

Vanessa's message read:

"Ships on the ocean, Ships at shore, Wipe your feet, And close the door."

Margo's said, "My teacher is a big baboon."

Claire's just said, "CAT HAT RAT FAT CLAIRE." (Well, when you're first learning to write, you don't have a lot of words to choose from.)

"Let's write some for the boys!" Vanessa cried suddenly. She started out the door.

"Hey! Iron off," Kristy reminded her. (When you're a baby-sitter you do have to be thinking about safety all the time.)

Vanessa ran back and unplugged the iron, and the girls ran back to their room to write more secret messages.

By the time lunch rolled around, the girls had a stack of paper a few inches high. Each of the pieces had a secret milk-message written on it. It had been a busy morning.

Mallory was in the kitchen heating up the ravioli. (She had opened a giant-sized can. It looked like it was meant for an army platoon.) Kristy started dishing up the cole slaw.

"Nicky's in a little bit of a funk," Mallory said, filling Kristy in on the backyard crew.

"The triplets wouldn't let him play with them."

"Again?" said Kristy. This was an ongoing problem.

"Well, they were playing Frisbee and all they'd let him do was fetch it when it went out of the yard."

Nicky banged through the door and into the kitchen. He slumped into a chair and began to kick his feet back and forth.

"Hi, Nicky," said Kristy.

"Hi," Nicky said glumly.

The triplets trooped in behind him.

"Ravioli?" said Byron. "Cole slaw? Ugh!" But he sat right down at the table, and Kristy noticed that when she put his plate in front of him, he gobbled the food right up.

"We've got secret messages for you," Margo said to the boys. She handed Jordan the stack of papers.

"Who cares?" he said. He pushed the papers aside.

"Look at them," Vanessa said. "They've got secret messages on them. Bet you can't read them."

"Don't want to," said Jordan.

Margo grabbed the papers up.

"Well, don't then," she said. "We don't care."

Adam had taken his spoon to his plate and

was mixing the ravioli in with the cole slaw.

"Ooh, gross," he said. "Snake guts."

Nicky grinned.

"Hey, that's what it does look like," he said. "The tomato sauce is the blood."

Unfortunately, when Nicky said that, he had a full mouth of ravioli himself, and some of it splurted out on the table.

"Yuk!" Adam cried. "Ooh, Nicky! Say it, don't spray it!"

Nicky sat there quietly for a moment. Kristy thought he might be about to burst into tears. Instead, he looked at her and said, "May I please be excused? I want to go to the hideout."

Now, there's an example of one of the few rules in the Pike house. Nicky is allowed to go to the hideout only if he tells whoever is in charge where he's going.

"Eat some more ravioli first," said Mallory.

Nicky did, and he was excused.

The hideout that he disappeared to was the secret passage I told you about, the one that's in my house. Nicky goes in through the trapdoor in our barn. He usually just sits in there, reads or whatever. It's his special place.

That day, a half hour passed, then forty-five minutes. Lunch was cleared and cleaned up and the kids all went outside together to play in the backyard. Kristy decided she'd go check

on Nicky. He was right where he said he would be, sitting alone at the head of the tunnel. Kristy climbed down the ladder and joined him.

"Hey, Nick," she said.

"Hi."

"Whatcha doin'?"

"Nothin'."

It took Kristy awhile to get Nicky talking, but they did talk some about how hard it sometimes was to be a younger brother.

"This feels like when Dawn talked to me," Nicky said.