Ann Martin - Claudia And the Clue in the Photograph

Mary Anne smiled. Obviously, Buddy only had one thing on his mind. "Well, I told everybody in the BSC about how you wanted to do something, and they agreed that we should come up with a project."

"So what’s it going to be?" asked Buddy.

"Yeah, what should we do?" said Suzi.

"Do!" echoed Marnie.

"That’s the only problem," Mary Anne admitted. "We didn't think of anything yet."

Buddy's face fell. "Oh," he said.

"But I'll tell you what," said Mary Anne. "Claudia's over at the Pikes', helping Mal sit for her brothers and sisters. Why don't we go over there? I bet if all of us think hard, we can come up with a terrific idea."

"Yea!" said Buddy. "Let’s go right now!"

"Mom said you have to feed all the pets before you go anywhere," Suzi reminded him.

"Merturple!" said Marnie.

"Mer — what?" asked Mary Anne.

"She means Mr. Turtle," explained Buddy. "He's her favorite. I like Frisky best, though."

"Frisky's the gerbil," Suzi said. "But he's not really very frisky. Mostly he sleeps."

Mary Anne followed the kids to their playroom, where all the animals are kept. Buddy and Suzi fed them, introducing the new ones to Mary Anne. The Barretts used to have a dog, a funny-looking basset hound named Pow. But then Marnie became allergic to dogs, and they had to give Pow away. (Happily, he didn't go far. In fact, the Barretts would be seeing their beloved mutt that day, since it was the Pikes who took him.) Anyway, now

the kids have an ever-expanding menagerie of nonallergenic pets, and that day Mary Anne met them all, including the fifteen guppies named after famous baseball players.

Finally all the pets were fed. Mary Anne left a note for Mrs. Barrett, and then she and the kids headed for the Pikes' house, which is right down the block from the Barretts'. At the time they arrived, Mal and I were sitting on the front porch, watching the Pike kids do their thing.

"Doing their thing" means something different for each of the Pike kids. Here's how the scene looked that afternoon: For starters, Jordan and Adam, two of the ten-year-old identical triplets, were teasing Nicky, who's eight, about his new haircut.

"You look like one of those cactuses out West," said Adam.

"Do not!" said Nick.

"Cactushead," said Jordan.

Nicky stuck out his tongue. "I know I am, but what are you?" he sang.

Jordan and Adam shouted with laughter. "That's backward, cactushead," said Adam. "You're supposed to say 'I know you are but what am I?' "

"I know that," said Nicky, with dignity. He walked away from them — they were still laughing — and joined his younger sisters,

Margo (seven) and Claire (five), who were busy dressing up Pow as a baby.

"Can you help us tuck him into the carriage?" Margo asked. "Every time we try to squish one part of him in, another part sticks out." Nicky was glad to stay and help, if only to avoid more teasing from his brothers.

Meanwhile, Byron, the third triplet, was trying to retrieve a Frisbee from the porch roof, with Mal watching anxiously as he climbed along the gutter. Vanessa, who's nine, was sitting on the porch rocker, oblivious to the chaos. She's wanted to be a poet for as long as any of us can remember, and she's happiest when she's scribbling in one of her notebooks.

When Mary Anne arrived with the Barrett kids, the first thing Buddy did was say hi to Pow. "He'll stay in the carriage if you give him a Milkbone," he advised the girls and Nicky. Then he joined us on the porch, and he and Mary Anne told us why they had come.

Almost instantly, all the Pike kids dropped what they were doing and came over to join the discussion. Vanessa turned to a new page in her notebook, in order to take down ideas. Byron came down from the roof, without the Frisbee but with two softballs he'd found. Claire and Margo set Pow free, and Nicky,

Jordan, and Adam made up and sat down to brainstorm,

That’s what Mary Anne called it: brain-storming. "We did brainstorming in my social studies class last year," she said. "It’s the best way to come up with ideas. Everybody just shouts out anything they can think of, no matter how silly it is. You'd be surprised at the creative stuff we'll come up with."

Naturally, after that, there were a few minutes of total silence. Nobody wanted to shout out the first silly idea. Finally, I decided to jump right in. "We could send an airplane over Dawn's favorite beach, towing one of those big, long banners. It could say 'DAWN SCHAFER, PLEASE COME HOME TO STONEYBROOK'!"

"Uh-huh," said Vanessa, writing it down. Nobody else said a word.

"Well, you said we could say silly ideas," I said, blushing.

Just then, Buddy piped up. "If we put all our money together, maybe we could buy her a plane ticket home."

"Yeah!" said Nicky. "I have . . ." he dug in his pocket, "seventeen cents."

"And I have three dollars in my bank upstairs!" said Adam.

"I think it’s going to cost a lot more than that," said Mal gently.

"Okay," said Jordan, "speaking of planes, how's this? We'll hire a plane to fly over Stoneybrook and take one of those pictures from above. Then we'll frame it and send it to her."

"That's pretty expensive, too," said Mary Anne. "Anyway, it seems like it should be something we can make for her."

The kids continued to brainstorm, shouting out ideas for everything from a singing telegram to a giant mural to a care package full of homemade cookies.

"I've got it!" I shouted, after a few more minutes. I had been thinking hard, ever since Jordan had mentioned pictures. Since I have photography on the brain lately, my ears had perked up when I heard that word. "You know that book, A Day in the Life of America?"

"You mean the one where they gave a whole bunch of photographers one day to take pictures all over the country?" Mal said. "We have that book. It's pretty cool."

"Well, how about A Day in the Life of Stoneybrook?" I asked. '^We can set up a bunch of you kids with cameras — I'm sure we can borrow a few — and you can take pictures all over town. Then we'll make up an album for Dawn."

"Yeah," said Buddy, starting to grin. "Yeah! I like it."

Mal went to find the book. When she brought it back, the kids passed it around and looked at it. They loved it, so the matter was decided. We agreed to round up more photographers — all clients and members of the BSC — and we set our "day" for the following Sunday.

That night, Mary Anne couldn't resist calling Dawn. "The kids are planning a big surprise for you," she told her stepsister. "And you are going to love it." Then she called me, and we talked about the project some more. I think Mary Anne and I were even more excited than any one of the kids who had been over at the Pikes' that day, but none of us could wait for next Sunday.

Chapter 4.

Before I went home that Saturday, I borrowed the Pikes' copy of A Day in the Life of America. Later, when I sat down and looked it over more closely, I began to realize that our project was going to take a lot of planning. For the real Day in the Life book, the editors had asked two hundred of the world's top photographers to take pictures all over America during one twenty-four-hour period. From what I read, it took a major amount of coordination to pull that together.

We weren't using two hundred photographers for A Day in the Life of Stoneybrook, but there was still a lot to figure out. My friends and I spent every spare minute during that week plotting and planning for our big day on Sunday. First, we called around to find out which of our regular charges wanted to be part of the project. Then we rounded up all the cameras we could find, so that each kid would

be able to take pictures. I borrowed Janine's instamatic, and Mary Anne dug up her dad's old Brownie camera. The Pikes had a Polaroid, and Stacey and her mom volunteered their one-step camera. Shannon was going to use her point-and-shoot, and , Watson loaned Kristy his fancy Nikon, after she promised to take good care of it. We also withdrew some money from the BSC treasury to buy film and a couple of those new disposable cameras.