The Truth About Stacey (3 page)

“Come on,” said Claudia. “Let's start making the Kid-Kit boxes now. It'll be fun! You guys each get a box from home and come back here. I have pastels and fabric and paints and all sorts of things we can decorate them with.” (Claudia loves art.)

“We'll make the best boxes ever!” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “In fact, we'll be the best baby-sitters ever! Let's get to work!”

The following Monday was a glorious, warm day that felt more like May than the middle of November. At exactly three-thirty, armed with my Kid-Kit, I rang the bell at Charlotte Johanssen's house. Charlotte, who's seven, is one of my favorite baby-sitting kids. Her mother is a doctor and her father is an engineer. Charlotte is an only child who's very smart but is shy and doesn't have many friends. I can sympathize when she gets lonely.

Dr. Johanssen answered the door. “Hello, Stacey,” she said cheerfully, even though she looked quite tired. That Monday must have been one of her days off, because Dr. Johanssen is usually working at Stoneybrook General Hospital. Her schedule changes from month to month.

“Hi!” I replied.

“How have you been feeling?” Dr. Johanssen always asks me that. When anyone else asks,
I get annoyed, but not with Charlotte's mother.

“Hungry,” I said honestly. “And I've lost some weight.”

“Any problems with your insulin or your blood sugar level?”

“Nope. I think I just need to eat more. After all, I am twelve.”

“That sounds sensible. What are you doing about the problem, though?”

“Mom called Dr. Frank today, but she hasn't been able to talk to him yet. I guess she'll know something by the time I get home.”

“Stacey! Hi, Stacey!” Charlotte bounced into the hallway, beaming. She's always glad to see me.

“Hi, there,” I said.

“What's that box?”

“Something special. I'll open it as soon as your mom leaves.”

“Mom, go, go!” cried Charlotte. She never wants her parents to leave, even when I'm the baby-sitter.

“Is that a hint?” asked Dr. Johanssen, pulling on a sweater.

“I think so,” I said.

“All right, girls. This meeting will be a quickie, I hope. I should be home between five and five-thirty.”

“See you later, Mom.” Charlotte practically pushed her mother out the door. “Now?” she asked me.

“Just let me take my jacket off.” I hung it in the front hall closet while Charlotte hopped impatiently from one foot to the other. Then we sat down on the floor in the living room.

“Can you read what this says?” I asked, pointing to the words on the lid.

Charlotte leaned over for a better look. “‘KidKit,' “ she said promptly. “It's pretty.” I had covered my box with blue flowered fabric and glued white rickrack along the borders. Then I had cut the letters for “Kid-Kit” from green felt.

“Thanks. I'll bring this with me every time I baby-sit.” I lifted the lid. “There's all sorts of fun stuff in here. And I'll change it once a month.”

“Oh, neat,” said Charlotte softly as she pulled the things out of the box. “Chutes and Ladders … Spill and Spell …
The Cricket in Times Square.
What's this book about?”

“Oh, you'll love it, I think. It's about a cricket named Chester who accidentally winds up in the middle of New York City and makes friends with a mouse named Tucker, a cat named Harry, and a boy named Mario. We can read a little each time I baby-sit. And I can tell you about New York.”
Charlotte loves to hear about when I lived in the city. “And after we finish that book, we can read
Tucker's Countryside
and
Harry Cat's Pet Puppy,
which are more stories about those animals.”

“Goody.” Charlotte continued to look through the crayons and chalk and drawing paper, the jigsaw puzzle and Colorforms and jacks.

“We can do anything you want,” I said, “but even though I brought the Kid-Kit, I have one other idea.”

“What?”

“We could walk downtown. It's such a beautiful day. We could look in the store windows and find out what's playing at the movie theater, and maybe stop off at your school playground on the way home.”

Charlotte looked as if someone were holding out two huge ice-cream cones, each made from one of her favorite flavors, and telling her she could have only one of them. She glanced out the window at the sunshine, pawed through the box once more, and then looked at me. “Downtown,” she said at last, “if you promise to bring the KidKit back.”

I crossed my heart. “Promise.”

So we put our jackets on and walked toward town. The center of Stoneybrook is about half
a mile from Charlotte's house. We could run there in ten minutes or walk there (fast) in under twenty, but we dawdled along, taking our time. Charlotte kept stopping to pick up acorns.

“I should save these,” she said. “Then if I ever got a pet squirrel, I could feed them to him.”

“Now, what would you do with a pet squirrel?” I asked her.

“Talk to him.”

“But you have Carrot. You can talk to him.” (Carrot is the Johanssens' schnauzer.)

“It would be nice to have more than one person to talk to.”

“Don't you have any friends, Charlotte? I mean, people-friends?”

Charlotte shook her head. She stooped down, picked up a particularly fat acorn, and stuffed it in her pocket as she stood up.

I looked at Charlotte. She's pretty—chestnut brown hair, big, dark eyes, and dimples in her cheeks when she smiles. She's smart, she's considerate, and she's sweet. So what was wrong with her? Why didn't she have any friends?

“The kids don't like me,” she said, “and I don't like them.”

“The kids in your class?” I asked. “Why don't you like them?”

“Because they don't like me.”

“All right, why don't they like you?”

Charlotte shrugged. Then she stuck one thumb in her mouth and put her other hand in mine. We walked in silence until we reached the town.

“What shall we do?” I asked.

Charlotte perked up. She took her thumb out of her mouth. “The candy store!”

“Okay.” Polly's Fine Candy is pretty spectacular as candy stores go. It's even better than a lot of candy stores in New York. I could understand why Charlotte wanted to go to it. It's a sort of fairyland. And in November, with the holidays just around the corner, it was more spectacular than usual.

The only thing I don't like about Polly's Fine Candy is Polly. She runs the store and is about a hundred years old. Her younger sister, who looks every bit as old as Polly, helps her. Any time kids go in the store, they fasten their eyeballs on them and don't take them off until the kids leave. But Charlotte and I were prepared to brave the sisters.

We approached the store. Long before we reached the doorway, we could smell chocolate. We breathed it in.

“Mmm, heavenly,” I said.

“Yeah, heavenly,” echoed Charlotte.

We looked in the windows. One was ready for Thanksgiving. The biggest chocolate turkey I'd ever seen was surrounded by smaller chocolate turkeys. They were standing in a bed of candy corn and gumdrops.

Charlotte and I looked at each other and smiled.

“Now the other window,” said Charlotte.

We crossed in front of the doorway and gazed at the second window.

“Christmas already?” asked Charlotte, staring at a tree and Santa and presents. She looked both perplexed and dreamy. “Stacey, how long? How many days?”

“Pretty long, Char. About five weeks. The stores like to get ready early. Come on, let's go inside.”

We walked through the doorway, and I was pleased to see that we weren't the only people in the little shop. Three other customers were there, and Polly and her sister were busy helping them—which meant that they were too busy to watch Charlotte and me.

The outside of Polly's Fine Candy had smelled of chocolate. The inside smelled of chocolate, and much more—ginger and cinnamon and licorice and marzipan and cream and raspberry filling
and roasted nuts and raisins and cherries and spun sugar. The air was heady and warm. It was almost more than I could stand. I tried to figure out how much it would hurt to have just one piece of white chocolate.

“Look, Stacey!” Charlotte cried. She ran to a display of elaborate gingerbread houses decorated with candies and white frosting. “Oh, elves! And mice. Look at all the little creatures that live in those houses…. Oh!” She grabbed my hand and pulled me to the penny-candy counter. We were facing bin after bin of candy: butterscotch drops and Mary Janes and Gummi Bears and licorice sticks and peppermints….

“Please, Stacey, could we get just one thing?
One
thing each?” pleaded Charlotte.

I noticed bite-size bars of white chocolate and thought I could actually
taste
one melting in my mouth.

I felt in my pocket. I had two dollars, more than enough for two pieces of candy.

“Please?”

I pulled the money out and put it on the counter. At that moment, Polly's cuckoo clock chimed. It was four-thirty. Slowly, I put the money back in my pocket and let out my breath. I couldn't believe what I'd almost done.

“Better not,” I said. “It's too close to dinner. Your mom doesn't like you eating sweets anyway.”

“I know,” said Charlotte. “I just thought—”

“It's okay. I wanted a treat, too, but you're not the only one who's not supposed to eat sweets. Come on, let's go.”

We left the store, Charlotte looking longingly over her shoulder. “Hey!” I said. “We have enough time to go to the playground before we head home.”

“Goody!”

It was growing dark, but I thought we could play safely for ten minutes. I felt cheered when we reached the school and saw a group of children hanging from the monkey bars. “Come on,” I said. But Charlotte had stopped in her tracks.

“No.”

“It's okay. It's not dark yet. And there are other kids here.”

“No. I want to go home. Let's go.”

Too late. The children had spotted Charlotte.

“Hey, there's
Char
-Char,” cried one.

“Hey, teacher's pet! Go away!”

“Yeah! Charlotte, Charlotte, go away, don't come back another day!”

“Teacher's pet, teacher's pet …”

“I am not the teacher's pet!”
shouted Charlotte. She turned and began running home.

“Hey! Wait up! Charlotte?” I caught up with her easily.

“Go away.”

“It's me, Stacey.”

“I said go away.”

“I can't. I'm your baby-sitter. I have to stay with you.”

Charlotte marched straight ahead, chin held high, tears dripping down her cheeks.

“Did those kids tease you because they saw you with a baby-sitter? … Charlotte?” I tagged along at her side.

“No,” she said at last, sniffling. “They don't know you're my sitter.”

“Why are you mad at me?”

Charlotte stopped walking. “I'm not mad at you.”

“Just upset because they teased you?”

“I guess.”

“How come they teased you?”

“I don't know.”

“They called you the teacher's pet.”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Hey, listen, I got teased a
lot
last year.”

“In New York?”

“In New York.”

“Who teased you?”

“My best friend. Well, she used to be my best friend. Now she's my former best friend.”

“Why did she tease you?”

“It's a long story.”

“Don't you want to talk about it, either?”

“I guess not.”

We were approaching the corner of Charlotte's street. She had stopped crying and was holding my hand again. Suddenly, she squealed and pointed at something. “Look at that!”

I looked. All I could see in the dusky light was a bunch of helium balloons bobbing down the street toward us. I looked harder and realized that a person was behind them. Either that, or the balloons were propelled by a pair of legs wearing jeans and sneakers.

The balloons spoke. “Hi!”

I peered around them. Holding tightly to a handful of strings was a pretty girl, probably a couple of years older than I, tall and very thin, wearing a sweatshirt I would have died for.

She separated a red balloon from the bunch and handed it to Charlotte. Then she turned to me. “I'm Liz Lewis,” she said, “president of the Baby-sitters Agency. I hope you'll call me if you
ever need a sitter for your little sister.” Charlotte giggled. “The number's on the balloon. Later!” She walked on.

A shiver ran down my spine, and I suddenly felt cold through and through.

Charlotte was holding the balloon in both hands. She turned it around and read slowly, “The Baby-sitters Agency. Call Liz Lewis 555-1162 or Michelle Patterson 555-7548.” She looked up at me. “More baby-sitters? What's an agency, Stacey?”

“It's another long story. Come on. Let's go home.”

I knew I'd be on the phone with Kristy again that evening.