Ann Martin - Baby-Sitters Club 021

The twins exchanged a disgusted look as they switched their bracelets, and I frantically checked them over for some sort of difference. Anything at all. A hole in somebody's tights, a chip in somebody's nail polish. Just something that would tell me which one was Marilyn and which one was Carolyn. But I could not find one difference.

"Well, good-bye, you monkeys," said Mrs. Arnold, adding a hat to her outfit. "I'll be back before you know it. Remember to practice for half an hour, Marilyn." Mrs. Arnold left.

I stood anxiously in front of the twins. They stared at me. I held out the Kid-Kit as if it were both a shield and a peace offering.

"Kid-Kit?" I said. "You never did read those Paddington books. And I added some new puzzles, Carolyn." "Go-blit?" said . . . Marilyn.

"Der. Blum snider," was Carolyn's response.

And with that, the bracelets were off, tossed carelessly onto a couch in the living room.

Oh, no, I thought. But all I said was, "The least you two could do is speak English." "Okay," replied one twin. "Let's play hide-and-seek." "Well ... all right." How bad could hide-and-seek be?

"We'll hide, you seek!" cried the other twin. "Stand in the hallway, cover your eyes, and count to one hundred." "Okay." I covered my eyes and listened to the twins run off.

As they went, I thought I heard one whisper to the other, "In-bro duggan, tosh?" "Tosh," was the answer.

I began to count. I counted out loud. I had learned to do that long ago, playing hide-and-seek with my brothers and sisters, who would accuse me of cheating and skipping numbers if I counted silently and then came looking for them before they'd found a hiding place. "... Twenty-three, twenty-four," I continued. (I hate counting to a hundred.) ". . . Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred! Ready or not, here I come!" The Arnolds' house was quiet, and I wondered if the girls were hiding outdoors. We should have made some hiding rules before we began the game. Oh, well. Too late now. Besides, I hadn't heard any doors open or close.

I began to search the house. I felt funny, as if I were invading the Arnolds' privacy, so I stuck to the kitchen and living room and dining room at first. They aren't personal, like bedrooms are.

I found one twin behind a full-length curtain in the dining room. (I could see her shoes sticking out.) "Found you!" I cried, pulling the curtain aside. "Come on and help me look for your sister." Marilyn-or-Carolyn trailed behind me into the kitchen. "You must know all the good hiding places," I said to her. "Where should we look?" A shrug. "I don't want to look. You're the seeker. You look. Can I have a snack? We didn't have one after school." "Okay." Quickly I set out some juice and graham crackers. "You stay right here," I told Marilyn-or-Carolyn. "I'll be back when I find your sister." I left the kitchen, searched the den, returned to the kitchen - and found only some graham cracker crumbs and an empty paper cup. The snack was gone and so was the twin who'd eaten it. Oh, brother.

I kept searching and came across the other twin under one of the beds in the girls' room. "Found you!" I cried.

"Can I have a snack?" asked Marilyn-or-Carolyn.

"Sure." I set her up in the kitchen with juice and graham crackers. "Now where is your sister?" I wondered.

"Isn't she hiding?" "Yes, but I already found her once." "Oh." Marilyn-or-Carolyn tried to hide a smile. "My sister is sneaky. I bet she hid again. She does that sometimes." "Well, I better find her." I left the room. Of course when I returned, the snack and the twin were gone again. I should have known better.

I finally found a twin squished behind a couch in the living room, and she said, "Took you long enough. . . . Can I have a snack?" "You've already had one," I replied.

"No, I didn't." "Well, I gave out two snacks." "Then you gave both of them to my sister." "Sorry. If I knew which of you was which, that wouldn't have happened." Marilyn-or-Carolyn scowled. Then she said, "Okay, I'm Carolyn. Now can I have a snack?" I almost gave in, but I decided to be firm instead. Maybe that was my problem with the twins. Maybe I hadn't let them know who was boss. Besides, how could I be sure this twin was really Carolyn and she hadn't had a snack yet? I was beginning to see what the twins could do. Maybe this twin had already had two snacks and wanted a third.

"Nope. No snack," I told Marilyn-or-Carolyn. "There are two of you and I gave out two snacks. That's it. No more." "No more? No fair!" "It's very fair. Two twins, two snacks. I think you guys just fooled yourselves." "Gummy grog!" shouted Marilyn-or-Carolyn.

A moment later, her sister ran into the room. "What?" "Colley-moss. Der blum tiding poffer-tot." "Hanky? No gibble dandy." What was going on? The girls were using their twin talk so much I didn't have a clue.

Well, I was sorry I made them angry. Too bad. They had tried to trick me. Oh, all right, they had tricked me.

For the next hour or so, Marilyn and Carolyn chattered away in their twin talk. They ignored me. But at five-thirty they couldn't ignore me. That was when I said, "Time to practice, Marilyn." "Which one of us is Marilyn?" asked one twin.

"Oh. So you can speak English," I replied.

" 'Course we can. . . . Which one of us is Marilyn?" "The one of you who hasn't practiced yet, and who has only half an hour to practice before her mother comes home. If she doesn't start playing the piano now, I'll have to tell her mother she didn't get all her practice time in." Reluctantly, one twin sat down at the piano. While Marilyn played, I tried to talk to Carolyn, but Carolyn would have nothing to do with me. She took Paddington Marches On out of the Kid-Kit, opened it, and both girls ignored me again until their mother returned.

Chapter 6.

Finally. Somebody besides me had to sit for the twins and got to see what terrors they were. I think Kristy had sat for them once quite awhile ago. And Mary Anne, too. But no one else. And no one had sat for them recently.

1 was almost glad when Claudia had her bad experience with the Arnold girls. Not that I wanted her in trouble. I didn't. Not at all. It was just that, until Claud sat for the twins, I'd been worried that I wasn't a very good sitter. Like, maybe I didn't have enough control or whatever. But when I read Claud's notebook entry and saw that she'd had trouble, too, I realized the Arnold girls simply were trouble. They were twin trouble. Double trouble. Us baby-sitters were fine.

Anyway, Claudia took her Kid-Kit with her to the Arnolds' that Saturday morning. She'd learned, from reading my entries in the club notebook, that the twins like the Kid-Kits, so she went prepared.

Claud's job was to be longer than my afternoon jobs. She was taking care of the twins from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon while their parents went to an antique car show in Stamford. Poor Claud. Five hours with the twins. At least there were special things to keep the girls busy.

"Marilyn's piano lessen is at eleven-thirty," Mrs. Arnold told Claud. "Her carpool will arrive at eleven o'clock. She's going to be in a recital next week, and today is a special rehearsal and lesson. It'll last an hour and a half. She'll be dropped off here around one-thirty. While Marilyn's gone, Carolyn should work on her project for the science fair. Carolyn just loves science, don't you, dear?" Claudia looked doubtfully at the twins in their red flared skirts, blue sweaters, white turtlenecks, and Mary Janes. The girls were pretty, Claud thought, and they were dressed nicely (even if they were a little dressed up for a Saturday morning), but somehow they had the look of terrors about them. They were scowling and didn't appear to love anything, including science and piano-playing.

"Don't you love science, dear?" Mrs. Arnold repeated.