Ann Martin: Baby-Sitters Club 030

As you can imagine, I was not in a great mood when I arrived at the Arnolds' house for a sitting job that afternoon. I would never in a million years have taken my feelings out on the girls, but I was hoping that maybe they would be an amusing change of pace.

No such luck. At least, not at first. Mrs. Arnold told me as she was putting on her coat that Marilyn was in the living room, practicing for a piano recital, and that Carolyn was up in the girls' bedroom. Something in her voice implied . . . trouble.

After Mrs. Arnold left, I decided not to interrupt Marilyn (who was playing quite loudly and with a lot of force), and to see what Carolyn was up to instead.

The first thing I saw in the twins' bedroom was that the masking-tape divider was back. I guessed that was why Marilyn was downstairs practicing so loudly. She was angry because she couldn't enter her own room. She'd have had to cross Carolyn's side first.

"Hi," I said to Carolyn. "Your mom just left." "Okay." Carolyn went back to Baby Island, the book she was reading.

"I guess you're mad at your sister again, aren't you?" "You mean Jerk-Face?" "No, I mean Marilyn." "Same thing." "Look," I said. "You two cannot go on fighting forever. What's the problem this time?" "I said I was inviting Haley over to play, so then Marilyn said she was inviting Gozzie over to play." "So?" "We wanted to play separately." "Couldn't you and Haley - or Marilyn and Gozzie - have played outdoors while the others played indoors?" "No. We both wanted to play in our room." I sat thoughtfully on Marilyn's bed. "You know what's wrong here?" I said. "You and Marilyn are very different people now. You've gone off in different directions. I think you need your own space. Do you two have to share a room?" "No," Carolyn answered, brightening.

"Then why doesn't one of you move into the guest room? Or the sewing room? There are plenty of rooms on this floor." "Yeah!" So Carolyn and I ran downstairs and interrupted Marilyn's practicing. We told her our idea.

"Yeah!" exclaimed Marilyn as happily as Carolyn had.

From then on, the afternoon was fun. The twins talked and made plans. They giggled. They couldn't wait for their mother to come home. When she did, they greeted her at the back door with cries of "Mommy! Mommy!" "What? What is it?" Mrs. Arnold looked slightly alarmed.

"Could we have our own rooms?" asked Marilyn.

"I want the guest room!" said Carolyn.

"I want the sewing room!" said Marilyn.

Mrs. Arnold looked questioningly at me. I shrugged. "The girls seem to be having a little trouble sharing their room," I said. "I just mentioned separate rooms, and . . ."I trailed off.

"Well," said Mrs. Arnold, "I don't see why not. But your room is so cute now," she told the twins.

"We're not babies anymore," said Carolyn. "And we're not the same person. We're different." "But why do you want the sewing room?" Mrs. Arnold asked Marilyn. "It's so small." "I just do," Marilyn replied. "I like it." "And I like the guest room," said Carolyn. "Our old bedroom could be the guest room." Mrs. Arnold's eyes began to gleam. "It would be fun to redecorate," she said. "New curtains, new rugs, new bedspreads." "But can we choose our own things?" asked Marilyn. "You can decorate the guest room any way you like." "That's a deal," said Mrs. Arnold.

The twins began jumping up and down. They even hugged each other.

I went home feeling that I had accomplished something important.

Chapter 13.

"Hi, Stacey! Hi, Stacey!" Marilyn and Carolyn greeted Stacey at the door as if they were old friends, which they weren't. True, Stacey does see a little more of them now that she lives in their neighborhood, but she hasn't baby-sat for them very often.

It turned out that the twins were just eager to show off their new rooms - and Stacey hadn't seen them yet. Mrs. Arnold hadn't even left when the girls began tugging at Stacey's hands, pulling her upstairs.

"Look at my room first!" cried Marilyn.

"No, mine!" said Carolyn.

"Mine's closer," Marilyn pointed out.

"Oh, all right." At the head of the stairs was the sewing room. It was small, but it was bright and sunny and made a perfectly nice, if cramped, bedroom. All of Marilyn's furniture had been moved into it. "But we had to move some of my toys downstairs," she told Stacey. "I didn't mind. Look. New wallpaper and a new rug and a new bedspread. See how they match? Mommy let me pick out everything." "All yellow," Stacey said. "Very nice." Personally, she thought it was just a little on the dull side, but she would never have said so.

"Now come see my room," cried Carolyn. So she and her sister and Stacey passed the girls' old room, turned a corner, and entered Carolyn's new room. Boy, was it different from Marilyn's. The rug was shaggy and blue. The bedspread was printed with cats, and two pillows in the shape of cats sat at the head of the bed. The wallpaper was blue-and-white striped, and the curtains and wastebasket matched the bedspread. The wastebasket came complete with pointy cat ears and a furry cat tail.

"Neat," said Stacey. "I didn't know you like cats." "I didn't, either," replied Carolyn, "but I saw all this stuff and I knew it was what I wanted. Mommy wanted me to get pink-flowered even/thing - " "And she wanted me to get blue-flowered everything - " added Marilyn.

" - but then she remembered that she'd told us we could choose whatever we wanted. Within reason," finished up Carolyn.

"I think you each did a very nice job," said Stacey. "A room should reflect your personality. I'm glad your mom let you make your own decisions." "So are we," said the twins at the same time.

Stacey waited a moment. Then she said, "Well? Aren't you going to hook pinkies? You just said the same thing at the same time." The girls laughed. "If we hooked pinkies every time we did that," Carolyn began, "we might as well just have our pinkies joined." "Yeah. We're always saying the same things at the same time. That's because we're twins." "Identical, but different," added Marilyn.

Funny, thought Stacey. The twins had changed so much. They'd been allowed to go their separate ways and now they had their own rooms and their own friends. Yet they seemed closer than ever. Was that what moving apart could do? Make you grow closer?

It was something to think about.

"So what do you want to do today?" asked Stacey.

"You brought your Kid-Kit, didn't you?" Carolyn asked.

"Yup." "Oh, goody! Is there anything new in it?" "Come on down and see." The girls raced ahead of Stacey to the living room, and Stacey placed the Kid-Kit on the floor. Marilyn and Carolyn watched eagerly as she opened it.

"Okay," said Stacey, "in place of the Doctor Doolittle books we have the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books. And we have a new pad of paper and three sheets of new stickers. Plus pastels instead of crayons. Have you ever made a picture with pastels? They're neat. You can blend the colors with your fingers." "Like chalk?" asked Marilyn.

"Sort of." Stacey opened the new box of pastels and let the girls peer inside.

"Ooh," said the twins as they gazed at the tidy row of colors.

"Try experimenting," suggested Stacey. "We can sit at the kitchen table." So they did.

Halfway into her picture of a boat on the ocean, Marilyn said, "This is going to be for Daddy. No, for Mommy. I haven't given her a picture in awhile. No, wait. It'll be for both of them." "Mine will be for both of them, too," said Carolyn, looking at her close-up picture of a butterfly and a ladybug.

Interesting, thought Stacey. No more, "Mommy will like mine better ..." or, "Daddy always likes my . . ." That was a nice change.

"Hey," she said, "why don't you make frames for your pictures? They're so pretty I think they ought to be framed." "How do you make frames?" asked Carolyn.