"Martin, Ann M - BSC036 - Jessi's Babysitter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Ann M)

guess you'll really need me to baby-sit now. I'll take care of Becca and Squirt every afternoon that I can. But who will watch Squirt while I'm at school? And who will baby-sit while I'm at my dance lessons? And, hey! Who will drive me to ballet class?"
Mama and Daddy exchanged a glance. I didn't like the look of it.
"What?" I asked. "What is it?"
"Well," Daddy began, and cleared his throat, "your mother will need more than just a sitter. She won't have time to shop or cook or car pool or take care of the house. So ... um ... so your Aunt Cecelia is going to move in. In a couple of weeks."
"Aunt Cecelia!" cried Becca and I at the same time. "Nooo!!"
Aunt Cecelia is absolutely awful. I can't tell you how many things are wrong with her. She may be Daddy's older sister, but she smells funny. Bad perfume, probably. And she is bossy and mean and thinks Mama and Daddy don't raise Becca and Squirt and me right. She thinks they let us run wild, which couldn't be farther from the truth. See, what happened was that not long ago, Mama and Daddy went away on a three-day weekend. They left me in charge, since we had a mini-vacation from school. It was the first time I'd been allowed
to baby-sit overnight. Unfortunately, Becca had been invited to go sailing on Saturday — and the boats got caught in a storm, and Becca and the others were stranded on an island off the coast of Connecticut for two days. No one knew where they were. Aunt Cecelia came to stay until the crisis was over, and she was appalled that Mama and Daddy had left me in charge of Becca and Squirt.
She thought something was seriously wrong with our family.
I think she also wanted a family to live with, since her husband had died recently, and she was all alone in the house she'd moved to in Queenstown, Connecticut, after she found that she couldn't bear to stay in her home in Oakley. The house had too many memories.
This is my Aunt Cecelia: bossy, strict, mean.
Becca and I cannot stand her. And now she would be living with us. She would be caring for Squirt, cooking, and helping with the housework. She would also be ... my babysitter. I am far too old and responsible to need a baby-sitter. After all, I'm a sitter myself.
But Aunt Cecelia does not trust me. She thinks it was my fault that Becca got lost at sea, even though Mama and Daddy gave Becca permission to go on the sailing trip.
When the "celebration" was over, Becca and I huddled in my room.
"Can you believe this?" I asked her. "Aunt Cecelia coming here. Moving in. This is a nightmare."
"A triple nightmare," agreed Becca. "Maybe we could talk Mama and Daddy out of letting her come."
"I don't think so," I said. "But I bet we could fix it so that Aunt Cecelia wouldn't want to stay once she got here. You know, put shaving cream in her slippers, a fake spider on her pillow."
"Honey in her hairbrush!" cried Becca.
"Shh!" I hissed. "That's a great idea, but keep your voice down. We don't want Mama and Daddy to know what we're up to."
Chapter 2.
Becca and I plotted about a dozen ways to get Aunt Cecelia to leave. Most of them were very mean. We wrote them on a list, which I hid way back in my desk drawer.
Then Becca left.
I sat on my bed and felt depressed for awhile. Then I did what I always do in a tough situation.
I called my best friend, Mallory Pike.
Ring, ring went the Pikes' phone.
"Hello?" said a voice. It was Nicky, Mal's brother. (Mal has seven younger brothers and sisters.)
"Hi, Nicky. It's Jessi. Is Mal home?"
"Yup."
"Well, can I speak to her, please?"
"Maybe."
"Nicky."
"Okay, okay, okay. . . . Oh, wait a second.
1 just remembered. Mal isn't here after all. She
went to the store with Mom."
"Could you have her call me back, please?"
1 asked. "I really need to talk to her. This is a
matter of life and death . . . sort of."
"Life and death?" repeated Nicky. "Gosh." We got off the phone. I went back to my
room. 1 closed the door. Then 1 opened my
door again and hung a sign on it that I'd made.
The sign read (in big bold letters):
77//J
Mallory thinks the sign is dumb. She says that if you want people to stay out of your room, you should put up a sign that just says: STAY OUT OR ELSE.
I think one reason Mal is my best friend is because I like her family. The Pikes are very open and loose. There are not too many rules in the Pike house, even though there are a lot of kids. Here's who's in Mal's family, besides Mal and her parents: Byron, Adam, and Jordan, who are identical triplets (they're ten years
old); Vanessa, who's nine, very dreamy, and wants to be a poet; Nicky, who's eight, and gets pushed around by -his big brothers; Margo, who's seven, and likes to tease; and Claire, who's five, the baby of the family, and seems to be stuck in a silly stage. She calls everybody "silly-billy-goo-goo."
At the Pikes', something is always going on. With eight kids, I guess that's not surprising. Anyway, Mal's household sure is different from mine. Even so, Mallory and I are alike in many ways. We're both the oldest in our families, but we feel that our parents won't let us grow up fast enough. We practically had to kick and scream in order to be allowed to get our ears pierced. Then Mal, who wears glasses, asked if she could have contacts, but her parents said no. They think she's too young. (Furthermore, Mal now has braces, so she isn't feeling particularly pretty these days, despite her pierced ears.) As for me, well, talk about being treated like a baby. Now Aunt Cecelia was going to move in. I would have a baby-sitter — and I'm a sitter myself!
Mal and I also have some fun things in common. We both love to read. Our favorite books are horse stories, especially the ones by Marguerite Henry, such as Misty of Chincoteague and Stormy, Misty's Foal. Mal likes to write,
too. She's kept journals for years and recently talked me into keeping one as well.
However, we do have our differences. As you know, I want to be a ballerina one day (I think), but Mal wants to be an author and illustrator of children's books. The other difference is pretty obvious, 1 guess — our looks. Mal is white, with red hair and freckles, and she's about average height. I'm black, with long eyelashes (Mama is jealous of them) and long, long legs. I'm lucky to have those legs for dancing.
I'm also lucky to have found a best friend in Stoneybrook, especially after leaving Keisha behind in Oakley, but I feel even luckier to have made other friends as well. It's always nice to have a group of friends, I thought, as I settled down for a good daydream. And my group of friends are the members of the Babysitters Club.
I guess I haven't mentioned the BSC yet, have I? Well, the BSC consists of seven girls who have a business to do baby-sitting in our neighborhoods. We meet three times a week and get lots of sitting jobs. Mal and I are both members — junior officers. We feel honored to be part of the club, because the other members are all thirteen-year-old eighth-graders.