Ann Martin - Claudia And The New Girl

Dawn grinned. Mrs. Perkins is great. What a nice mommy. We know this one mommy — Jenny Prezzioso's — who gets hysterical at the very thought of a mess or a little dirt.

After Mrs. Perkins left, Myriah introduced Dawn to some of the "customers" in the beauty parlor. First she held up a bear whose plastic snout was covered with lipstick and who was wearing a shower cap.

"This is Mrs. Xerox," she said. "She's having her hair permed."

"I put her lipstick on," spoke up Gabbie. She had finished her own makeup job and looked at Dawn solemnly from garish eyes. Lipstick, red and pink, stretched from ear to ear. She held up the hand mirror again. "Don't I look pretty? I'm a lovely lady."

"And this," Myriah went on, holding up a baby doll, "is Mrs. Refrigerator. She just needed an eye job. . . . Oh! I better do my eyes!"

Myriah jumped up on the stool again and began collecting tubes of mascara and eyeliner.

The phone rang.

"Can I get it?" cried Gabbie. She leaped off the toilet, spilling a lapful of hair curlers.

"Better let me," said Dawn. "I'll be right back. You guys keep . . . keep up the good work." She dashed into Mr. and Mrs. Perkins' bedroom and picked up the phone, which was ringing for the third time.

"Hello, Perkins residence," she said.

"Dawn?" asked a disgruntled voice.

"Yes. Jeff? Is that you?"

"Yeah."

"What's up? Are you at home?"

"Not exactly. I'm kind of at school. Using the teachers' phone. And I'm kind of in trouble."

"What do you mean, 'kind of in trouble'?"

"Oh, all right. I am in trouble. And Ms. Besser wanted me to call Mom. She won't let me go home until she talks to her. Only I called Mom's office and they said she went to a meeting somewhere in Stamford. So then I remembered you said you were sitting at the Perkinses' and I looked up their number. What should I do now, Dawn?"

"Okay," Dawn said, trying not to get upset,

"let's start at the beginning. Why are you in trouble with Ms. Besser?"

"I threw an eraser across the room. You know, a big blackboard eraser."

"Gosh, that doesn't sound so bad. I mean, you shouldn't have done it, but — are you sure that's all you did?"

"It was sort of the third time I threw it across the room. And it knocked over Simon Beal's tile mosaic. And the mosaic broke. And one of the tiles cut Lynn Perone's leg. ..." Jeff's voice was fading into nothingness.

"Oh, Jeff," was all Dawn could say. She paused, thinking. "You're sure you can't get in touch with Mom?"

"They said she isn't coming back to the office today. She's going to be in Stamford until five o'clock."

"Well," said Dawn slowly, "I guess I could come to school myself. Maybe I can talk to Ms. Besser or something. I can't let you sit there all afternoon."

"Oh, that'd be great."

"All right. But Jeff, I want you to know I'm not happy about this. I'm baby-sitting. I'll have to bring Myriah and Gabbie with me."

"Okay," replied Jeff, but he didn't say he was sorry.

Dawn returned to the bathroom. "You guys," she said, "I'm really sorry, but we have to close up your beauty parlor for awhile. We've got to go over to your school, Myriah."

"We do?" Myriah looked awed. At her age, going to school after hours is kind of like sneaking into an amusement park when it's been closed for the night.

Dawn tried to explain why they had to go, while figuring out the fastest way to get the girls there.

"But let's not close the beauty parlor," said Myriah. "Let's take it with us."

"Whatever," replied Dawn, who just wanted to get going fast.

"Goody!" cried Myriah and Gabbie, scooping up makeup and curlers and supplies.

Dawn hustled the girls and their junk downstairs. She didn't have time to wash their faces. She just loaded them and their things into Myriah's red wagon and ran them over to the elementary school in what must have been a wagon-pulling record.

When she reached the front door, she wasn't sure what to do with the wagon, so she pulled the girls right inside and down the hall to Jeff's fifth-grade classroom. She found him sitting sullenly at his desk, while Ms. Besser worked quietly at hers.

"Urn, excuse me," said Dawn.

Ms. Besser and Jeff both looked up in surprise at the sight of Myriah and Gabbie in the wagon with their lipstick-smeared faces.

"I'm Dawn Schafer, Jeff's sister." Dawn explained why she had come instead of her mother.

"And I," spoke up Myriah, "am Miss Es-merelda. I run a beauty salon. This is my assistant," she added, climbing out of the wagon and pointing to Gabbie.

"I am Miss Gabbie," said Gabbie.

"Would you like a makeover?" Myriah asked Ms. Besser.

"Oh . . . not today, Miss, um — "

"Esmerelda," supplied Myriah. She turned to Jeff. "Would you like a makeover? From our traveling beauty parlor?"

"No way," replied Jeff, turning red.

"I would like a makeover," Gabbie told her sister.

"Oh, good," said Myriah, and got to work.

Ms. Besser led Dawn into the hall. "I'm very concerned about your brother," she said. "He's gone beyond just being a nuisance or a disturbance in class. If Lynn's cut had been any worse, she would have needed stitches. I wanted to talk to your mother in person. I think we have a serious problem."

"I'm really sorry we can't reach her," said Dawn.

"So am I," Ms. Besser replied.

"I can have her call you tomorrow. Or even at home tonight. Maybe she could set up a conference with you or something."

Ms. Besser nodded. "At the very least. All right. Please do have her call me tonight. I'll give you my home number." She paused. Then she added, "Thank you for taking the trouble to come over here. I can see that it wasn't very convenient for you. You seem quite responsible."

Dawn wasn't sure how to respond to that, so finally she just said "Thank you." A few minutes later she left the school with her brother and the Perkins girls. Jeff immediately headed angrily for home. He had barely spoken to his sister. By the time Dawn and the traveling beauty parlor reached the Perkins house it was 5:15.

Mrs. Perkins met them at the front door. "Where were you?" she asked anxiously.

"I'm really sorry," said Dawn. "I should have left a note." She told Mrs. Perkins what had happened, and apologized six or seven times. Luckily, Mrs. Perkins was forgiving and understanding.

Later, as Dawn pedaled her bike home, she wondered how often she'd have to bail Jeff out of trouble. She flew over a little hump in the road just then, and as she did, pictured herself in a roller coaster, just beginning to pick up speed. Mom, she thought, I have a feeling you and I are in for a bumpy ride.

Chapter 7.

"I am an artist and my craft is calling," said Ashley earnestly.

"Calling what?" I replied.

"Calling me. Like the call of the wild."

It was lunchtime, and Ashley and I were sitting by ourselves again. We had this conversation going, only (and this was so stupid) I didn't know what we were talking about. It's pretty pathetic to be one of the persons in a two-person conversation and not following the drift of things at all.

I glanced across the cafeteria at the Babysitters Club's table and sneaked a peak at Kristy, Stacey, Mary Anne, and Dawn. The usual lunchtime things seemed to be going on. Dawn was eating what looked like homemade fruit salad. Kristy was holding up a noodle from the hot lunch and saying something about it which was making Mary Anne turn green. Stacey was rolling her eyes.

I smiled to myself. Kristy always gets gross at lunch and we always give her a hard time about it, but right now I was missing her disgusting comments.

I kind of hoped that one of my friends would look over at me and smile or wave, but none of them did.

I was sitting with Ashley because it was getting to the point where, if I didn't choose a subject for my sculpture and start working right away, I'd have to withdraw from the show. Here's what had led up to Ashley's saying, "I am an artist and my craft is calling":