Ann Martin - Dawn On The Coast

"So who are your officers?" I asked.

"Officers?" asked Sunny.

"You know, president, vice-president, secretary ..."

"We don't have anything like that," said Sunny. "Everybody just does what they do."

"Oh," I said.

Another call came in. This time Sunny took the job.

Jill pulled a bottle of nail polish out of her purse and started working on her nails. I could just see Kristy if one of us tried that back in Stoneybrook.

I got up and looked at Sunny7 s bookshelves — two whole shelves of ghost stories. Sunny and I had fallen in love with ghost stories back in fourth grade, at just about the

same time. When our class went to the school library, we used to race each other because we both wanted to get there first, to get whatever ghost books were in that week. (I can still hear Mrs. Wright, our teacher, now. "Girls! No running in the halls!") Sunny had a lot of new books on her shelves now, a lot of books I hadn't ever heard of, like Ghost in Whitcomb's Briar and Seven Gothic Ghosts.

"Have you read Spirits, Spooks, and Ghostly Tales?" asked Maggie.

"Maggie loves ghost stories, too," Sunny explained. "I got her into them."

"Phew, I have to sit down," I said. What had happened? Had I died and gone to Dawn heaven? It sure felt like it. I was in California, where the weather was warm and beautiful. I was staying with my wonderful, goony dad and I had my good ol' brother back, too. Next, I found out my best friend in California had started up a baby-sitting club. Where they served apple slices for snacks. And to top it off, my old friends liked ghost stories, too! Sunny was piling up books in my arms to take back to Dad's with me.

"Vacation reading," she said.

Just then, the third and last call came in. It was Mrs. Austin, Dad's next-door neighbor.

She needed someone Saturday during the day to sit for Clover and Daffodil. I'd been their sitter many times before when I'd lived in California.

"You want it?" Sunny smiled at me.

"You bet!" I said.

Jill handed me the notebook and I penciled myself in.

We still had a few minutes of the meeting to go, so Jill painted all our fingernails and we sat around, waving our hands back and forth to dry the shimmering gloss.

"I've got one more surprise for you," said Sunny, blowing on her nails.

Another surprise? Sunny's eyes were twinkling. She blurted out the news.

"Our school's on spring break these two weeks, too!"

"Perfect!" I squealed. It was.

When it was time to go home, I grabbed my stack of books, popped in to say good-bye to Sunny's mom, and practically skipped the whole way home. It was 5:30, but the sun was still bright. It warmed my shoulders and toasted my hair.

The We V Kids Club might not be as busy or have as big a business as the Baby-sitters Club, but it sure was fun. I loved the way

everything in California was so easy, so free. I swung my hair from side to side as I skipped into the house.

"Hey," said Dad. "You look happy. Anything special?"

I stumbled to the table and dropped my books all over its top.

"Everything!" I laughed.

Chapter 6.

The Newtons, the Feldmans and the Perkinses. That's one big group, all right. And that group is a handful and a half.

Mrs. Newton had cleared everything ahead of time with Mary Anne and Claudia. All the parents were going out together for dinner and a concert, so it seemed natural to put the kids all together and get two sitters. The plan was that everyone would stay at the Newtons. Jamie Newton is four and his little sister Lucy is just a baby. They're real cute kids. By themselves they're a pleasure. Then there're the Perkins girls, Myriah, who's five and a half, Gabbie, who's two and a half, and Laura, the baby. (I hope you're counting babies. That makes two.) Baby-sitting for Myriah and Gabbie is usually as easy as baby-sitting for Jamie. Myriah's really smart and Gabbie is really cute. She calls everybody by their full names. "Hello, Dawn Schafer," she always says to me.

So far, so good. But when you put those kids together with the Feldmans, well, then you might have yourself a problem. The Feldman kids are Jamie and Lucy's cousins. There's Rob Feldman (he's ten), Brenda Feldman (she's six), and Rosie Feldman (she's four). Hmm, what can I say about the Feldmans? Well, to start, Rob is a girl-hater. He's got it in his head

that girls are no good, and that goes double for girl baby-sitters. His sister Brenda is just a fussbudget. It's hard to get her to enjoy anything. And the little one, Rosie, well, she's a one-girl noise machine. (But the thing is, unlike a machine, you can't just turn her off. And she can really give a baby-sitter a headache.)

When I got to talk to Mary Anne about it, she told me that she and Claudia had tried to plan the whole thing out ahead of time. They were going to give the kids an early dinner, and then, while it was still light, they were going to put the babies in their carriages and march the whole group over to the school playground. Outside, Rosie could make as much noise as she wanted. Rob could even hate girls. He could show off on the monkey bars and feel as superior as he wanted. The other kids, of course, would be perfectly happy on the swing set or in the sandbox. And when they'd tired themselves out? Home to the Newtons' house and into pajamas.

Well, it sounded like a good plan. Mary Anne and Claudia were very pleased with themselves for having so much foresight. Except, of course, it rained. Early that evening, when the two of them arrived at the Newtons, the sky had turned a dark shade of purple and

a few big, splotchy raindrops had already splattered the front walk.

Mary Anne looked at Claudia. Claudia looked at Mary Anne. Jamie answered the door.

"Hi-hi!" he said.

Gabbie was right behind.

"Hello, Mary Anne Spier. Hello, Claudia Kishi," she said.

Jamie and Gabbie, both with their characteristic welcomes. Mrs. Newton was right behind.

"Hi, girls. Great. You're a few minutes early. Everybody's here. The kids are in the playroom. I made a big pot of chili for dinner. The babies, of course, get their own food. Come in the kitchen, let me show you."

Mrs. Newton had organized everything as well as she could. Dinner was on the stove, cots and sleeping bags had been set out in the living room (this was going to be a long evening), and she had settled the kids in the playroom with coloring books and toys. (Rob was watching television.)

Mary Anne and Claudia went to the playroom and sat themselves among the group. Mrs. Perkins was there with the babies, who were playing on the floor with plush toys.

"They'll go to bed by seven, seven-thirty," she said.

The parents all gathered around their broods to say good-bye, then they were off. The crowd looked smaller after the six adults had left but, somehow, it did not look quite small enough. Big drops of rain were now pelting the windows. (It kept up the whole night long.)

"How about one of us takes the babies, and the other the kids?" Claudia suggested.

Two little babies or six growing (active) kids. Somehow, it didn't seem balanced. Mary Anne looked skeptical.

"Okay, how 'bout we do it that way, then trade off?" Claudia suggested.

Mary Anne took baby duty first and Claudia took the kids.

Now, when you're baby-sitting for a crew, you'd better place yourself so that you can keep an eye on everybody at the same time. That's one thing we learned when we ran a play group last summer. You can't afford to get so involved with any one kid that the whole group falls apart. Claudia pulled a chair up to the play table. Jamie and Gabbie were working at one end and Myriah, Brenda, and Rosie were working at the other. All the kids had fresh sheets of white paper and their own little box of crayons. (Thank you, Mrs. Newton.) Except for Rob's television blaring in the background, the room was surprisingly peaceful.